I am so sick of being sick ...

Ugh. I think I have been sick for like a month. It started with a cold. I took 2 days off of work, and stayed home and slept while the babies went to daycare. I'm going to go on record and say that those two days may well have been the most relaxing days I have had since the babies were born. Yes, it's true. I was sick, I vegged, I took Nyquil, I slept, I loved it.

But then I felt better and I went back to work. And the kids were sick. Colds. Coughs. Slight fevers. Nothing too bad. And we got lucky that it happened on a Friday. So I had to pick them up early from daycare by a few hours, but then we had the weekend to recoup.

All was going well, but then I woke up this Tuesday, and I was sick. Again. My whole head was beyond congested. My nose was so stuffed. My head felt like a brick. I went to work. I wanted to cry. And then wednesday. oh, Wednesday. I woke up feeling just as bad. I had to go into NY. UGH! Can I tell you how much I didn't want to take the train to Newark, then NYC, then the subway, then walk 5 blocks to the office? But I did it. I couldn't breath. But I perservered. I made it through my two meetings, and left at 2pm to start the 2 hour journey home. I got home at 4pm, picked up the kids, fed them, waited for Eric to get home. Felt like DEATH. Had to give the kids baths. Which kinda sucks. My mom and bro came over and helped Eric feed them so I could change our sheets and start the laundry. Did I mention that it was my birthday??? Yes, that is how I spent my birthday. Happy
34th to me! I went to bed at like 9pm and the day was over. Not my most memorable of birthdays. Luckily my mom is coming to babysit tomorrow night so Eric and I can go out to dinner. Then today, I get the call at 230pm from daycare. Jake threw up and had a 101.8 fever. You know what that means?? It means Jake can't go to daycare on Friday. And as crappy as I feel, I have a 4 hour meeting tomorrow. So Eric is staying home with Jake, and Hailey is still going off to daycare. Will this nightmare ever end? Will this cycle of sickness come to a close? Ugh.

We did have a nice dinner on Sunday at my parents for my birthday. My mom cooked a yummy meal and I invited my friends Michele and Tom and their son Michael and my friends Jan and Joan. Good times. Got two really cute pics of Opa (Grandpa in German) and the kids. Check 'em out.



The kids are so super cute. Seriously. As crappy as I feel, their little smiles totally keep me going. They have a new favorite thing. We have a rocking chair in the nursery. They love when I sit them in the chair like a big kid and rock them back and forth. They totally crack up. I got the CUTEST pic of them together in the chair. I love the way he is kinda holding her. My little mushes.


I guess that's enough for now. It's time for me to take my Nyquil and drop into a sleepy coma. I have a fun four hour meeting to sit through tomorrow while Eric stays at home with Jake. Just for a bit, I want to be in that movie Click (ya know, with Adam Sandler?) I want to hit the pause button. I don't want to miss a thing, I just want to get some sleep. So I would pause life for like a day just so I could sleep non stop. Then I'll start it all up again. If anyone knows how to do this, let me know. Until then, I will heart my Nyquil.

Until next time,
Erica

Why it's great to be infertile...

I was going to write a post about how we were all sick and I can't kick this cough and how the kids didn't even make it through one week of daycare without getting sick. But I'm going to write about something else. And if you aren't in the mood for a "I love my kids" post it is now time to turn away from this blog.

Still with me? Ok. Consider yourself warned. I spend/spent a lot of time focusing on how I WASN'T lucky. How it was HARD to get pregnant. How bitter I was (am) that I had to travel this hard road to get pregnant. And that my family is probably complete because I can't afford to have another child. But... BUT. And here's the thing. If I wasn't infertile, I wouldn't have twins.

Twins. I have twins. Never in my life did I think I would have twins. Never even crossed my mind. I mean, I always thought it was a hereditary thing, and since I don't have them in my family, and neither does Eric, how would we have twins? I have since come to find out that identical twins do NOT run in families, but that is neither here nor there.

Now, there is something wonderful to be said for having one baby at a time (I assume). Mostly because you get one on one bonding time with that single child. You get to ease your way into parenthood. You get to really focus on giving that baby everything they need.

With twins it's so different. You can never focus on one baby for entirely too long. You never get a free moment. If one doesn't need you, the other does. If your husband is home, you can't hand the baby off and go do something, because there is another baby waiting to be fed/changed/etc.

But I've learned something in the past month. My twins are friends. They are each others first and best friend. They smile at each other. They play with each other. They chase each other around. They giggle at night when we put them to bed and they are supposed to be sleeping. They crawl to the end of each other's cribs and giggle through the slats at each other and make little high pitched shrieks and yells.

Their daycare teacher, Miss Andrea, said they are the first babies she has had in the infant room that really play with each other. Hailey always doesn't nap as long as Jake, and when she wakes up and comes back to the playroom, she crawls around and tries to find him and looks sad until he wakes up. Then she is all smiles and chases him around.

I am experiencing something right now that I am going to consider a gift from my infertiliy. I'm raising twins. A brother and a sister that are going to be best friends. Two completely different children that shared my womb and will always have a special bond. They will always see each other across the room in daycare, and know that they aren't alone. They will always have that familiar face by their side, and take comfort in it. It's just truly, the coolest thing ever.

I think it's so easy to focus on the bad side of infertily, but for me, there is a huge upside. My twins. There are days where it is hard. As they get older, and are more mobile, and get into everything, it's more work. I feel like I can't just get one babysitter, I need two. We NEED man to man coverage. So sometimes that's tough. And that daycare check, OH, that's a tough one to write. It's a heavy hit. And sometimes I'm just SO tired. I would love a break.

But the pleasure, the joy they bring, it's really immeasurable. How can you measure kisses and hugs? How can you explain how it feels to pick them up from daycare? To walk into the center, sit on the floor, call their names, and have their little faces light up, as they crawl over lightning speed to dive into my lap? You can't measure it. Sometimes I even get caught off guard tell people that I have twins. It still sounds super odd just coming out of my mouth. How the heck did it happen??

Oh yeah. I'm infertile. And maybe, just maybe, it ended up being the greatest blessing of my life.

Erica

Oh well, you've been good for reading this far. Here are some pics!

So much ...

There is so much to talk about. I could split it up into like 7 different posts. But I won't, because that is way too much work. I don't even know where to begin.

The twins are doing amazing. Today they are 10 months! 10 freaking months! How are my kids so old?? Hailey is crawling around all over, and pulling up on EVERYTHING! Yesterday I stupidly left the room, and Eric came down the stairs to find her already up two steps! Oh my! I will be making a run to Babies R Us for some gates tomorrow! Jake wasn't crawling, he was more scooting and flipping around. But as of this past weekend, he is offically on the move. He's starting to try to pull up too, and actually did it for the first time tonight! He was all smiles and very proud of himself.

What else? The kids attended their cousin Gracyn's first birthday party. They were ok. A bit crabby since they both needed a nap. Jen (Gray's mom) and I were pregnant at the same time, so it's unbelievable to me that we are already celebrating year 1! How the hell did that happen and where the hell did the time go? Here's a pic of the birthday girl. Click on the pic for more pics from the party.


Oh, did I mention that THE GIANTS WON THE SUPERBOWL!!! We are big Giants fans in this house. We had my sister and her husband over, as well as our friends Jan, Joan, Karen and Eric. The kids were dressed in full Giants gear. We even had their play area set up with a Giants motif.



My sister made her infamous superbowl cake, and it was very yummy!


Jake has started doing this weird thing. Both my kids used to get very worried looks when the camera came out. Jake has now decided to make this face every single time mommy points the camera in his direction.

Now seriously, have you ever seen anything cuter than that?? Maybe he is just trying to show off all his teeth (he has 7!). So he does that face all the time now! Here with Grandma ...

Here with Uncle Anthony...

And here with Uncle Jan...


Oh yeah, and the kids started daycare Monday. I didn't cry. I thought I would cry, I came pretty close to crying, but I didn't cry. I think I'm sad not because I don't think they will be taken care of, but because it marks the end of this era for me in a way. Now I'm back to work fulltime, in the office. No more time at home with my kids, except for weekends. And since I don't forsee us having any more kids, I'm kinda mourning the end of this maternity leave/time off with my babies thing. But we can watch them online at the daycare, so that's fun. Eric will send me emails just saying "Hailey is in the exersaucer" or "Jake is under the table". Yeah, I'm think productivity at both our companies may see a bit of a decline. hehe.

The final thing I want to talk about seems inappropriate within the tone of this post. Very light and all about my kids. But in some ways it belongs here. I look at my kids every single day, and I am so thankful for them. I read a ton of blogs, and my heart absolutely broke this past week for Mary Ellen and Steve. I'm already one who has a million questions about faith and God, but something like this, well, it makes you ask just another question. Why? Why does such a horrible thing happen to two people who so desperately want to have a child? But you never get an answer. Poor Mary Ellen has been through so much, and her journey has just begun. It just makes me angry. Angry and upset and so mad at the injustice of it. And it makes me appreciate my children, because one thing that is super obvious is that the sheer desire and passion to have a child just isn't enough. Because if it was, all my fellow bloggers would have children. Sometimes it's just dumb dumb luck. And I guess I have to realize that on some level I just got lucky. Because I don't deserve it more than anyone else. I didn't do something special that allowed me to carry them to full term. It's just dumb luck. And I'm so angry that luck isn't just knocking on everyone's door. Mary Ellen, my thoughts and with you and Steve.

Erica

Womans Best Friend

I'm sad today. And yesterday, and the day before. Our pug died. His name was Bucca. He was just the best pug EVER. My sister brought Bucca home without any warning like 15 years ago (give or take, we all get screwed up on the date). I was in college, but home for the summer. She didn't ask anyone, she didn't ask my parents, she didn't kind of hint that she was thinking about getting a dog. She just came home one day with this cute pug nosed little guy. We already had a dog (a collie) and a few cats, so it wasn't that my parents were against pets. But in typical and wonderful Chrissy fashion, she wanted something, and on impulse, decided she would get it. So Bucca came into our lives.

My mom told her she had one week to find another owner because we were NOT keeping that dog. Yeah, RIGHT! I think he won us all over in like 3 days. He was only a year old when Chrissy got him, and he seemed to be a normal sized pug. But he ended up HUGE! I mean really. Most pugs are like, I don't know, 20 lbs? He was 40!
Yeah, you read that right. He was so sweet, and so lovable. He wasn't super hyper, and he loved to cuddle and sleep. I can remember full weekends where Chrissy and him just stayed in bed and come out solely to take him outside, and to get some food, then back to bed.

He sold our whole family on pugs. They became our dog of choice. So then a few years later, we decided to go for pug #2. Zoe. She was Bucca's little sister, and followed him around from day one. I think Bucca didn't love it at the beginning, he simply tolerated her. But they became the best of friends.

Bucca had a great life. I always said if I came back as a dog, I would certainly want to be my parents dog, because boy was he spoiled! When I lived at home, I would come home from work and smell something cooking and be like "Mom, what's for dinner?" and she would say "Whatever you decide to cook yourself. I'm making this for the dogs." And there would be two hamburgers cooking. She would buy them a rotisserie chicken every week when she went grocery shopping that was just for them. We weren't allowed to eat it. It was for the dogs. They ate more table food then dog food, and every single night ended with the dogs and my dad splitting a bowl of Butter Pecan ice cream.

I can remember this one time when I was living home, and I was so sad, and I was crying in my room (don't ask me about what, probably some sort of stupid breakup with a stupid boyfriend) but Bucca walked into my room, jump up on my bed, and start licking my face. It's like he knew I needed some love, and he always gave it. Heck, he was even mentioned in the speech our best man gave at our wedding. Everyone loved him, and he loved to be around people.

He was old, and he lived a heck of a charmed life, for a dog. He was having trouble breathing, and he went to see a specialist, but it was too late. He died on Wednesday in an oxygenated cage at the specialist.

He was a wonderful wonderful pet, that brought my whole family a huge amount of joy. He will be greatly missed. And wherever he is, I hope he's got a never ending bowl of shrimp to eat (his favorite food!), a comfy bed to lay on, and a constant hand rubbing his belly! We love you and miss you Bucca!
R.I.P. Bucca





Love,
Erica