It has been hard on me to keep two infants fed.  Nursing them does take many hours a day on my butt, babes to boob.  I do get a little depressed here and there sitting in my foam prison (twin nursing pillow) while life with the rest of my family goes forth without me.  But anyway… Ben wanted to really praise me for the great work I'm doing breastfeeding these babies and here is how he did it. "I mean, these babies are getting well fed and all from you! They are pooping MASSIVE poops and peeing all the time!" Aw. He really knows how to sweet talk a lady.

Art really was able to sum up why our simple walk through the Thomas Sadler Roberts Bird Sanctuary, where we have gone for Nature Day countless times, was the Best Ever nature day.  In his own words;

“It was the best nature day in the whole world. I walked around the corner and then I saw just a big shadow walking across the ground. And then I said ‘DEER!’  And it was a deer. It sitted right where we were, right Mama? Maybe that’s the path that deers like to go. We saw the deer, and then we saw a lot of the other deers. We got to see it’s WHOLE family. Then we got closer to them through the bushes and then they all runned away. And then we couldn’t find them.”

We walked slowly within 20 feet of the deer for what might have been an hour and both Ben and I felt it was pretty magical.  I almost felt as if I was following a unicorn, it was so special.  This brownish-grey deer just plodded along and we watched it eat leaves and traipse through the muddy grass.  We all sat down on a makeshift bench and ate snacks and the deer was less than fifty yards away eating leaves and snacks as well.  Then we finished up and continued to follow it.  We followed it all the way until it came to three other deer, all adult size.  It was very special.

And just yesterday I had not left the house once, nor had I changed out of my pajamas.  In fact, I was crying on the way to the bird sanctuary because it had been an hour since Netta and Bailey nursed and I so afraid they would be hungry when we got there.  I had this dread, seeing myself stuck on a bench nursing babies instead of walking and exploring with the rest of my family.  But the girls just stayed in their slings the whole two hours during our family nature walk and slept soundly, one on me and one on Ben.  Bailey and Netta’s first Nature Day!  And what a good one it was for all of us. 
– jess

Si came over for dinner tonight. This is a video of them running. and running. and running.

And dinner time.

Today we had a lovely nature day outing to the bird sanctuary at Lyndale Park Garden. We’ll post a lot more photos later tonight.

Olive(I know! Great name right? Say it with Garvin and you'll know why it
is an outtake…)

Found this in my notebook, some other names we were considering: Noreen
Theda
Drew
Holland
Andra
Thea
Cleo
Agatha

Art ran full speed into the couch in an effort to show Nanna how fast he can run. And it was really fast. Unfortunately he also banged his finger into the window sill and it’s since swollen up and turned a little black and blue. But hooray! It’s not broken. Just need a couple weeks of tender love and care.

On Thursday I stopped by to take some photos of a very special visit from Mother Earth at Art’s preschool. She read a book and gave each kid a little bulb that will turn into a flower in the spring. I could really see the wonder in their little eyes imagining mother earth actually showing up at their preschool.

Our wonderful neighbors down the way, Dina and Jeff, finally met our girls today. We practically had to pry Netta out of Dina’s arms, she was really enjoying holding a toasty twin.

Evva and her family came over today to play. First things first, she held a baby for more than 20 minutes.