A Different Life

So, I went in to my office the other day after 10+ weeks away. After greeting me warmly and catching up a bit, the administrative assistant asked me "So, is your life different?"

I was at a loss for words. The only thing I could think to say at that moment was "Well, sometimes I go to bed at 8pm!" Lame response, I know, but where does one start? (For those of you that know Brent and I from our previous life, this bedtime does signify a great deal. In that life, we would typically get home at about 8pm and so only just starting to get dinner underway.) So, anyhow, I thought I'd use this first real post from home to give you a sense of the shape our life is taking these days.

So, what can I tell you about life at the Brower-Toland home?

• We have now settled into a pretty consistent routine, which is good for all of us. The babies sleep, wake, eat, and even poop at pretty much the same time each day. Thankfully, time and our routine has all but erased the ravages of the post-traumatic stress we suffered from the 28 hour trip between Almaty and Saint Louis (for a while there Jesse's crying could induce painful flashbacks).

• Brent has become a morning person by force of necessity; he gets up at 5:30am each day so he can beat the traffic and get to work by 6:30am (this also gets him home by 3:30pm to relieve me for a few hours).

• I find that parenting involves every ounce of energy I have and every bone in my body. I have even discovered that my feet are a wonderful resource. Not only do they carry me up and down the stairs a million times a day, but while I hold and feed one baby, I often use my feet too grab and shake toys for the other baby while s/he waits for his/her turn. Sometimes I have to use both my feet to grab and pull Jess away from whatever dangerous endeavor he's embarking on. Brent has been known to gently and lovingly pat Evie with his foot. (We're still trying to feed them one at a time in order to maximize things like eye contact and closeness during feedings.)

• My wrists hurt a good deal of the time, I wear a Ben-Gay patch on my back at night, I have hickies (from Evie) on my left arm. Brent frequently complains of "bottle neck" (i.e. a kink in the neck one gets from looking for long periods down and to the left at babies while they drink their bottle).

• I am constantly doing laundry. How do two tiny little bodies change my routine from doing laundry once every two weeks (OK, I procrastinated on this chore before) to doing it every single day.

• I get up a lot at night to go in the nursery and check on the little people. The other night, Brent--probably tired of being awakened by my coming and going--followed me into the twins room whispering: "WHY ARE YOU PESTERING THOSE BABIES?" I don't pester them, though, I just touch them a little to see if they seem too hot or too cold...and that they're breathing.

• Whenever I leave the house without both babies in tow, I feel like there is an invisible rope around my waist. The farther and longer I'm away the more the tension increases--I feel nervous. When I turn back home, however, the tension begins to let up and relaxes fully when I reach the door. (When does that go away? I find it incredibly distracting!)

• We have musical hour often in the afternoons. I have an iTunes playlist for them which they really like (been playing the same play list since visiting them in the children's hospital in Kokshetau). Sometimes, I dance for them, sing, and clap. They, in turn, stare and smile as if seeing a circus monkey for the first time.

• The other day, I caught Brent doing an interpretive dance for the babies to the classical music on the mobile in their crib.

• We are using cloth diapers (and a diaper service). Our life now involves swirling nasty poopy diapers in the toilet before slopping them into the diaper pail. (Hey folks, I'm just trying to paint a complete picture for you!) And, I tell ya, when you open that pail toward the end of the week you just about die on the spot from noxious fume inhalation.

• I hear phantom baby cries all the time. If the kids are asleep, I'm always thinking I hear them crying. (I begin to suspect that they have begun a conspiracy they are crying but have agreed to stop right as soon as I reach the top of the stairs.) Brent, on the other hand, says he hears the catchy music from baby toys in his head all day while he is at work.

• Facebook seems to be a thing of the past for us.

• Our dogs, Tess and Abby, have now been relegated to the status of...dogs.

• Although to this point in our lives Brent has done all the cooking for us, I'm now stepping up to the plate. I am a baby-food chef. It's cool because you can hardly go wrong. At first, I poured over recipes. But now I get the hang of it. Steam, puree, mix at will. Butternut squash-cauliflower-apple is the specialty of the week. Jess and Eves like that one. Not so much, however, with the rice-spinach. Jess (who will eat whatever you put in his ravenous little mouth) actually started crying quite hard when I gave him a second bite of the spinach concoction. Thankfully, Brent--ever the culinary improvisor--takes my carefully pureed foods and mixes them to trick the little people into eating the less popular items. The spinach has been successfully mixed in with potatoes and oatmeal to make a potato-spinach-rice-oatmeal mash that was, apparently, a real hit.

So, upon reflection, I guess I'd express the change this way: it's not so much that our life is different as that we now have a different life. And a very wonderful one at that.

As far as Jess and Eves go, they are growing and changing by the day. Sometimes I feel a bit sad it's all going so fast. Evelyn now has four teeth coming in. She still does the army style crawl, but is becoming quite adept at that. Just the past few days, she's become very interested in following Jess around. Following him, involves pulling up on everything in sight. She attempts to pull herself up, but really can't do it yet. If possible, though, she'll pull him down. Jess, on the other hand, not only pulls himself up, but frequently claps for himself once he's up. Initially, that meant falling down immediately (since clapping required both hands) but he's now also learned to let himself down. Brent claims Jess can wave too, but I've not yet witnessed that. I'll keep you posted. He has two teeth coming in, and both his and Evie's hair is growing like crazy. The longer their hair gets the wavier it gets too. It's very cute. We're working with Evelyn lots on making eye contact with us (and other people too) and responding to our voices. She's definitely improving, but there's more work to do. Her personality emerges a bit more each day. It's so fun to discover her. She shows herself to be something of a wild child--for example, she loves to rock the house in her jungle jumper (see below).

So, without further ado, here are some pictures.