Woot!

I didn't blog yesterday because I couldn't think of anything to say during the day. I was mostly focused on the return of Marvin! Hooray! He came back! And he was happy to see me! And he noticed I got bigger! And he got kicked! It was all very very exciting! The electricity bill we got in the mail was not so exciting. I've mentioned our place is small yeah? Well they charge us more to deliver the electricity than they charge us for the electricity! We'll work it out somehow!

This morning my wonderful son, who yells at me on school days for waking him up at 6:50am because he HATES getting up for school and wants to sleep more, was in my room this morning at 6:17am wanting to know where the DSi was. I love him. He's special. So of course, I could not get back to sleep! I picked up my book and read until it was time to go to some YARD SALES with mom! Woot baby! I was looking for some pots for the pland slips that my grandmother sent along with my mom....I found awesome stuff.

This is awesome thing number one I picked up. Bahahaha! A 3.5 foot pre-lit BRIGHT pink Christmas tree! Hahaha! I love it. $3. Nice. I also got a change table that has 2 drawers and cupboard, so Xander can use it in his room until it is needed, a baby sling, a vcr, (remind me to tell you what happened to our other vcr someday) and a plant pot! I left this morning with $20 and came back with $10. Too awesome. I had to run downtown and pick up another plant pot, but I've got all the plants situated now. Here's hoping they survive! I have to remember to water them more ofter here than back East.

Until next time!

18ish weeks

So my fabulous friend Fran, who I've mentioned before, is posting monthly pictures of herself on her blog as she gets smaller. I've decided that I'd better do the same...as I get larger! I'm 2 days shy of 18 weeks today, but probably the twins are further along than that by 9 or 10 days. But that still means I have 5 whole months to go, as my terrific treasure Tiffany kindly pointed out last night! So gaze upon this....with sympathy!




My five year old son is the photographer! I am wondering if my husband will notice a difference after being away for 6 days! I'll keep you posted on that for sure! This is what I see..

Leaning forward while sitting is again no longer part on my list of things-I-can-do. My main talents now include napping, peeing with freakish frequency, and apparently dribbling some stew on my shirt! Hahaha!! I'm awesome.

I'll do what I can to remember to take these pictures every so often. I'm getting super excited for my ultrasound next tuesday! I'll be 19 weeks and 3 days, so we'll see what they say about the size of the babies!!

Happy Birthday to Marvin!

I love May. May is awesome. Spring arrives for sure, (there are even robins up here now) summer starts to become more than a promise, the fabulous shades of green are everywhere! May is also a month for celebration for us! I get to say "May the 4th be with you" to remember my husband's birthday too, so that's awesome. Then there's Mother's day which is fun, and it's our wedding anniversary on the 18th! Marvin is 30 today. Hahahahha! And we'll be married for 9 years in 2 weeks. Yes, for those of you who read my age in a previous post, and can do math, I am a bad person.

Well....I WISH I looked that good anyway!

Unfortunately this year Marvin is a 5 hour drive south this week at a training session! So no birthday celebration today. But X and I will bake a cake on Friday that we can have together on Saturday morning when M is back and X is awake!

Funny story about the first birthday cake I tried to make for Marvin. He likes to tell it, so I'll put it out there. Back in the day when we were still "just dating" we were visiting my grandparents in PEI. My grandmother has a fabulous kitchen, you know the kind, with metal measuring cups from the 40s and unlabelled jars of ingredients. I love being in my grandmother's kitchen. We make jams and pickles when I'm there at the right time of year, and I'm always amazed at how much food comes out of one oven for family dinners set for 17 or more. ANYWAY, I was going to bake a cake from scratch for what must have been Marvin's 19th birthday...maybe 20th. I had everything in the bowl ready to mix, and my Nan comes in and starts laughing at me! Then she pushes the bottle of sugar toward me and says taste this. That's right. Unlabelled bottle of sugar turned out to be salt. There was no cake for Marvin that year. And I think it's been mixes ever since! Hahaha! Poor Marvin. He loves me though!

Happy Birthday!!

House hunting!

We're presently living in a 2 bedroom "townhouse, " and since I have 2 babies on the way, this situation is not going to be ideal for long. Actually, it hasn't been ideal from the get go as we moved into this place blindly trusting that it would be worth the extravagant rent rate. It really isn't. But that's what you get when you live surrounded by the oilfields that apparently provide 70% of Canada's income. It's just understood that everybody has money to spend. We don't.

So my mother (who is looking for a 1 bedroom place of her own) and I spent today looking for affordable, decent, clean 3 bedroom places. Good times. Most 3 bedroom places around here start at $3000. That does not include utilities. I found one, not in the area my husband wants to stay in, that was listed for $2695 including utilities, so we called and went to go see it. Oh my giddy aunt.

It was terrible. It had lots of "great features" including a kitchen counter, windows (yes she mentioned the windows), washer and dryer, and built-in desks in the 2 smaller "bedrooms." It's also an end unit which is worth mentioning a million times. She didn't mention the smell, the cave-like lighting, or the random guy locked in his room so we couldn't SEE the 3rd bedroom, but did mention that the reason for the brown leak stains in the ceiling were completely fixed now. She was confused about why theu used brown caulking to fix it though.

Now that I think about it I suppose I could use the built-in desk as a change table.....

Baby weight and reading!

Hopefully my posts won't be so long from here on in! Maybe.

This morning was a bit of a struggle as X again declared he hated school and didn't want to get dressed! He claims they are not helping him learn to read. Well really, there's only so much you can do in a 3 hour school day with 20-odd 5 and 6 year olds! Especially when they are now incorporating daily recess to get them prepared for grade one. There's a funny joke in there about practicing recess rather than vowel sounds....

I just think X has had a little, well, a LOT of excitement recently and he's going to act out against school because that's safe. First we tell him I'm pregnant with one baby, then with two, then his "Charlotte Dodie" (my mother) arrives to stay on our couch while she looks for an apartment and now his daddy is away for a whole week! It's no wonder he was extremely random yesterday and a little emotional today.

While driving back home from dropping him off at school I caught the all-important celebrity news on the radio. Following celebrity news and looking at pictures on people.com is my guilty pleasure so I turned it up. The announcer opened with a story about Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon giving birth to twins over the weekend, one weighing 5lbs 6 oz, the other 5lbs 5oz. Then she exclaims how she can't imagine carrying that much baby-weight around! .....wait for it.... I'm doing the math... how many oz in a lb? X weighed that much! By himself! Oh my giddy aunt.

Info on my twins!

Over the past 4 weeks since I found out that I'm carrying twins there have been a couple of developments. Firstly, my fabulous friend Fran did some reseach because she's being vicariously pregnant with me! She discovered 4 different kinds of twins, depending on if the babies are sharing a placenta, or an amniotic sac, both, or none. There is also the possibility of conjoined twins. The only information I had until this past Tuesday I gleaned from the quick glance I got at the ultrasound screen in my hyper-emotional state the night I found out! Being as educated as I am in the radiology field I could tell right away that they are NOT conjoined. That's as much as I knew!

This Tuesday passed I had my first appointment with my family doctor since my ultrasound and found out a little more information! They are in fact didi twins...short for dichorionic/diamniotic, I think is how you spell it, meaning they each have their own placenta and amiontic sac. They are also measuring a day apart in size, meaning there were two fertilization processes making the probability of identical twins super minimal.

My doctor also informed me that according to the size of both babies she was changing my dates. When I had the ultrasound I was 13 weeks 5 days, Twin A was measuring at 15 weeks and Twin B was measuring at 14 weeks 6 days. So right now according to my original dates I'm 18 weeks 1 day along, but maybe according to the babies I'm 19+ weeks. I don't really know what to make of this seeing as how my first baby was born 11 days "overdue" at 10lbs 11oz. We'll just have to see what the next ultrasound has to say. My "detailed" u/s is booked for 2 weeks from now and I'm getting anxious!

Funny aside, at my first appointment with my doctor, which seems ages ago now, I told her that I want a planned c-section as my first delivery turned out to be an emergency c-section, and that while I was there I'd to the tube-tying thing. I'm 33. I'll be 34 by the time these babies are born. I know I'm not doing this again! So last Tuesday she confirmed the c-section planned, also I would get my tubes tied. So I corrected her...tube. I only have one fallopian tube, which plays a major part in likely theories on why I miscarried in 2004. TUBE?! How does this happen when you only have one tube? Like I would know better than she? Twins do not run in my family, nor my husband's. My maternal great-great grandmother gave birth to twins and my grandfather's niece had twins. This is not a pattern. Then my doctor says, this is why God made you this way. If you had two fallopian tubes there'd be 4 babies in there! I don't think my husband would have survived that alternative universe!!!

So now I've told you everything I know about the two tinies growing in my belly. I hope to know their genders and up-to-date sizes soon! I am beginning to feel more defined movement. I've been feeling shivery tiny movements for a couple of weeks, but now it's starting to feel more like the cartwheels I remember with X, so it could get interesting fast!

Conversations with X

My husband and I have been having a lot of fun sharing our new developments with Xander, our 5 year old son. We have a great video taken at about the 13 week mark asking him if he would like a baby brother or sister. His response? No. Babies just knock things over. Before we took the video he explained to me one day that he would like to have a brother, but not a baby, someone that was already his age. So we broke the news to him that I did have a baby in my belly (at 13 weeks we only knew of one) and it would in fact come out a baby. He came around, accepting the news, and the next day when my husband picked him up from school rather than me, he asked if his baby "brudder" was out yet and that's why mommy didn't come to school.

At 14 weeks it all changed. Although X was at the hospital with us when it all went down, he focused on playing his...well USED to be my....DSi. We waited a few days to explain the concept of twins to him, mostly because even though the doctor said everything was fine, I was yet to be convinced. After about a week we got another video where daddy explained that mommy had TWO babies instead of just one in her belly. His response? Oh man, I'm getting outta here. Apparently we've taken to teasing him about diaper duty just a little far. He's pretty convinced that every time a baby needs to be changed that will be HIS job. A nice dream for me....

Yesterday, I'm about 18ish weeks now, the heartbreak happened. I'm surprised I didn't see it coming because I've read so many accounts of this happening, but it blindsided me none the less. The three of us were sitting in the living room and randomly (if you don't know him you will learn that my son is EXTREMELY random) X asked me if I still wanted him to be healthy. I assured him that of course I want him to be healthy! X: But why? Me: What do you mean why? Because when you're healthy, you're happy, and happy is best. X: But you don't need me anymore. Me: What?! What do you mean I don't need you? X: Because you have a new baby. It's in your belly. (he's still a little foggy on the twin concept) At this point my husband thankfully entered into the conversation! Marvin: But you're our first baby buddy, we'll always need you. X: Are you sure? When we both assured him that we would always need him he seemed satisfied, but I will have to keep my eye on this!! Life is certainly going to change for all of us but we will have to be super careful to make sure our first "baby" always feels secure!