Art spent the afternoon with Bubbe today and, in an entirely unsurprising move, they went to Value Village (VV’s). If you ever try to reach Adria and she’s not home, your next call should be to Value Village and have her paged.

Anyway, Art came back with a fancy vest and tie (for Cait and Zach’s wedding). And some flippers! he was really excited to try them so we rode bikes to the pool to try them out.

I sometimes think about how Jessica and I approach this blog. And while it captures our family life honestly and colorfully, we inevitably share less about the bad stuff, at least in pictures. I wouldn’t want anyone to be misled into thinking our family is always as happy as all the lovely photos portray. You know? In fact, we’re often quite miserable! I’ll try and find ways to take photos of that…

Jess: “You know, the funny thing about this photo is that in a couple years it’s going to be alot more crowded.”

Classic Mom, according the Jessica. She was ribbing mike about his comment of her being a ‘bastion of negativity’.

Taken with an application on my fancy new phone.

So I was done reading books at 8:30, but forgot the bedtime snack.  We went downstairs to get pickles (since we were reading about Penny and Pickles pig and they were going past a big pickle truck so naturally, the kids wanted pickles) then I grumpily got them back upstairs for bed.  Sang some made-up dinosaur lullabies, which are the recent favorites, and said "I'm going downstairs now."  Lewis said, "Uh-not uh-coming upstairs anymore, Mama?"  and I replied that, no, I was not.  Started tidying the kitchen and Art came to the stairs saying that they were going to sit at the top of the stairs and not get back in their beds.  I said fine, just get back in bed by yourself.  I won't be coming up to tuck you in again.  So here it is, twenty minutes later.  I still hear the occasional feet stepping around in their room and I really don't know what they are doing but they are leaving me alone so I am happy.  At the very least they have learned that once I've sung the lullaby my work is done with them.  I outta' there!

My comfort level has gone down a big notch lately and my fatigue level has skyrocketed. I’m gaining nicely, the twins are growing really well and I weigh a good 170 pounds (!) which is really hard to carry around. I wake up with sore feet every morning and my favorite shoes are Ben’s crocs (pictured below). Ben has been cleaning the kitchen, mopping the floors, carrying the laundry and anything else that’s semi-heavy and basically giving me the go ahead to put my feet up at any time. Our goal is to keep these babies in there to full term. In the meantime, this is what I usually look like, or at least want to look like, after I’ve made dinner:

The stupidest things exhaust a 170 pound woman with babies squishing her lungs.

A couple days ago Jessica and I managed to slip away for an evening and leave the kids with Jessica’s cousin Cait (thanks, Cait!). The kids love it when she comes over, as do we. We ate tasty indian food at the slightly overpriced Dancing Genesha restaurant in downtown (we used our Groupon). Then, to top off our lovely evening we went grocery shopping. Yes, it’s true. It was fun though!

Jessica was just taking a shower and I heard a couple frustrated grunting sounds. I asked if she was ok and she said she had been bending down to pick up a razer she had dropped (bending over to pick something up is getting to be quite an effort for her) Everything was going nice and gruntless for a while then I heard another sound of a razer dropping.
“Awww, fuck it!” he said, exhausted.