End of October

Wow has time flown by. It seems like I have not had a day to just sit and get online for a whole month, then I looked at the last time I blogged, and it pretty much was the last time I was online...even to pay my bills. I have been working so many hours lately, and I come home and want to spend every minute with the girls that I can, and so by the time we get them to sleep I am usually ready to sleep too. So this is the first time I have been able to do something other than sleep and work and rock babies.
The girls are doing so well, they are getting such little personalities, and cooing and talking all the time. We have gotten them on a schedule now thanks to Ben's hard work, and when we are able to abide by this they are mostly good little happy babies. I have decided that I LOVE this age. The smiling and cooing and talking.

Ben and I have also been so thrilled about a program they have here in Kennewick. It is called "Ready for Kindergarten". It is a local program where they have a 3 hour class once a quarter and they give you a few educational toys and some books and teach you about reading to your children and how to teach them starting when they are just babies. So Ben and I have been playing with them teaching them things with the toys, and reading to them. They love being read to, and it is so fun to see them really pay attention to the book, and look at the pictures. Ana loves story time, and Emily likes it for a few minutes and then gets kind of bored.
Ben's mom has been sending us books from the "little golden books" series and we have been reading many of those. Plus we have a subscription to a book club that sends lots of Dr. Seuss books which are so fun to read, and they have great pictures for the girls to look at.
I cant wait to get home from work to be with the girls and I wait impatiently all week for my days off to be able to see these little ones grow and develop.
We are looking for a part time"nanny" for a few days a week to help out, and help Ben keep his sanity. I have asked one of my cousins and we will see if she is able. If not, we will keep looking.
There are a lot of ladies at the church who love to come help Ben out during the days and have a great time.

Poor little Butch gets very little love nowadays, he gets whipped by burp clothes a lot, and yelled at. Poor little guy.

Ben and I got to go out last night and spend some time with some people our age, without the kiddos (well kindof) We went to a church event where they had daycare, so I was in the next building over, and got called out a few times to go feed the girls. It was a masquerade ball, and a murder mystery. It was tons of fun.

I know that this is a little disjointed, but I wanted to put lots of goings on in here, and I don't have a lot of time.

Daddy Day Care

I need to write a post about Ben. He has really struggled with the new task of his; to be a stay at home dad. He is an awesome dad, but feels the pull as the father to be the provider, and it is hard for him to “sit around” all day and do nothing to provide for the family while I go out and work all day.
He grew up in a family, and in an area where the man was the man, and went to work and provided for the family. So he has had to shift his paradigm to figure out how to handle the change in his life. He never intended to be a stay at home dad, and still struggles with the day to day things. I have told him that I am so grateful that he is able to be at home with the girls because I would rather not put them in daycare. I am so thankful that my little girls are learning and developing from their daddy instead of a stranger. I am blessed to have married a man who would actually do it. I love him so much more for it. Yes he gets frustrated and irritated with the girls, but he has to take care of two infants…at the same time…with never intending to do this with even one. I am proud of him, and have so much respect for him for stepping up and being a man! A man who loves his daughters enough to put the status quo aside and do what is best for them.

A day in the life

So we are driving back from Portland when I start to get a pretty bad sore throat. I think to myself “great now I am getting sick and I will give it to my family” But I get home and find out I do not have to worry about that, everyone is already sick. We all got sick at the same time. So I get home from an exhausting trip to an exhausted husband who is not feeling well, and two sick little girls. It was a rough night! I should have had the next day off, but due to some items that the boss came out with at the meeting, I was going to need to go to work. I figured I could go in early stay for about 4 hours and then get out of there and come home so that Ben could get some things done that he had been waiting on me to come back for. So as I am getting ready to go to work, I call the doctor at 7:30am to see if there was a time we could bring the girls in to see him. They could fit us in right at 8:30, but could not see us at any other time. So I go wake Ben up and let him know that the doctor can see the girls soon, and if he wanted to shower and get ready he would need to get up right then. He was pretty bummed about that since it was the first time since I had gotten back the day before the girls had actually gotten to sleep at the same time and he could sleep.
While he was showering I got the girls up and dressed and ready to go so that once he was ready we could just go. We got to the doctor and pretty much he said what I thought he would say, and that is they have a cold. Gave us some idea of what to expect and then sent us on our way. We stop by Walgreens on our way home because our humidifier had died on us this past winter, and we needed a new one.
Once we get home, I feed the girls, and then pretty much leave to go to work. As I park and am just getting out of the car, my phone calendar goes off stating that I have a dentist appointment at 11. It was 10:50. Dang it! So back into the car I go and off to the dentist. I text my boss again letting her know that the girls were done with their appointment, but I had forgotten I had a dentist appt, so I was headed there, and once done with that I would make it to work.
At the dentist I find out that I have a cavity underneath one of my caps, and they are going to have to remove the cap, fix the cavity, and then recap the tooth to the tune of probably 2 grand. Awesome! Plus I think it is a cap that I had done in the past 5 years. Hence if it is I will have to pay all of it since insurance does not pay for a cap to be replaced before 5 years. More awesome!
Get done with that and back to work I go. I get to work, and start doing the stuff that I had to get done and turned in by that day. I get it done, and during all this get interrupted a bizzillon times. But the boss wanted to see it and sign off on it before I submit it, so I go into her and she gets the first section looked at and we get interrupted… this takes about a half hour to resolve…this happens 4 more times. I finally have to stop what I am doing and text Ben let him know I am not going to make it home to feed the girls, and go into my office and pump. Thank goodness I had my pump stuff with me.
It turns out with all the interruptions, and things that I get pulled into, I do not end up leaving until it is time to feed the girls again. I am rushing home pretty sure that one of them is going to be waking up any moment and screaming at the top of their lungs for me to feed them before I can get home. Sure enough I text Ben to let him know I am on my way and one is already crying. This makes me so mad when I go to work and can’t get out of there on time to be able to get home and feed my girls.
Once again we have a terrible night. I got very little sleep, and I am not sure Ben got any. I close the next day, so do not have to go in until afternoon. So Ben and I pull the girls into bed with us about 7am, just to be able to get a little sleep. It does not turn out to well, because of their poor little stuffed up noses and not being able to breathe. But we do end up getting a bit of sleep. I go to work and I am so tired I can hardly stand it. But alas, I have a job to do! I show up just in time to see one of my managers come out of my office and let me know that he is using my office to do an investigation into an associate who was stealing from us. Great…first order of business fire an associate for theft. So I get all the facts, write up the termination and do that. Then the Salon which no longer has a manager is a wreck and all the associates keep coming up and having drama and issues which they feel I have to be involved in. I get nothing done I am supposed to and it gets to be 6pm…time for me to be out on the floor. So I get out on the floor and see that we are doing pretty well. We close an hour later than normal, so the supervisors do an awesome job of getting everyone motivated to get the store clean so we don’t leave very much for the morning crew to do.
We get most of it done, and get out of there about 11:30p. I get home once again to sick babies and an exhausted spouse ready to turn it all over to me, who is also exhausted! We make it through another rough night, and today I had the day off. So I was able to help Ben a bit, and we got a little sleep again this morning. But my girl I had charge of this morning had other plans than to sleep so I was up pretty early and figured I might as well get started on the chores that had been neglected for two weeks due to all the travel! I worked on the dishes (which Ben had actually mostly gotten done the day before) and got laundry started. Tried to clean what I could with a baby in my arms.
Tried out a sling to hold Ana while I worked that I had gotten for free, and could not figure out how it worked so gave up on that idea. Finally got her back to sleep and put her down, and hurried fast to get some things done that I needed both hands for.
Then the other one woke up, and decided that it was time to eat! So fed the girls and this time they were tired and went right back to sleep! Hallelujah! So Ben went out and did the yard work while I wrote thank you cards and kept the laundry going.
This just keeps repeating all day! We had the cable guy come and fix our cable box, and the internet guy come and fix our internet yesterday and today so hopefully that will work better now!
I gave the girls baths while Ben was at the barber getting a haircut, and they were not happy about that! They normally love bath time, but this time I just think they are still really grumpy because they feel yucky still. Having them be sick just makes everything a little bit harder!
So here I am at 11pm writing this post because I know that they are going to wake up the minute I lay down if I do so and want to eat, so I will just stay up until they wake up to eat, and save myself the frustration of just getting to sleep to be woken up. I am so very tired!