New arrivals and new blog name!

Well the waiting didn't last long since the girls arrived last week! I was very thankful to make it to 37 weeks with twins and had an easy labor and delivery. It was < 5 hours, I was already fully dilated upon arriving at the hospital, and they both stayed head down so I didn't need a c-section.

It has been a blur of days since then, but we've also settled into somewhat of a routine. The other day my friend was commenting that after her baby was born all that existed in her world was the three of them. That's pretty much what it was like for us after Bubby was born. We did have multiple visits from both our parents (before my parents moved out here) but K took a 6-week paternity leave and it was mostly the three of us and Copper for that period. Now our world is the five of us, plus our dogs Nikko and Selena, my parents who come by daily, our fabulous night nanny/doula 4x a week, and our college-aged family friend who is a doula-in-training and comes 3 afternoons a week. It has allowed K to start working again this week and me to still do other things besides feeding the babies like spend time with Bubby, play with the dogs, and take walks. I've taken two 40-minute walks the last two days in the amazing sunshine we're having right now!

This is also largely because we've been blessed with two babies whose schedules are in sync right now. I tried out the tandem nursing a few times and while it worked okay, I didn't really enjoy it as much since I like spending some time with each of the girls separately. They seem to be pretty efficient at nursing so the total time I'm spending is not that much more than I did with Bubby. And then they sleep 90% of the remaining time (well one seems closer to sleeping 99% of the remaining time). I'm also feeling okay this time around about doing some combination of nursing and formula, especially since they are on the small side. One is just getting back to 5 lb again after her initial weight drop.

My new blog name was inspired by a favorite writer of mine - Henri Nouwen - and obviously a refocusing of things with our big life changes. When I started this blog years ago I was thinking that the focus would mostly be on fitness and triathlon training with other random life events included. It turned out to be a bit of everything and I never really got fully back into the triathlon scene. There's no one community now that I feel primarily associated with (e.g. triathletes versus twin parents) so it's still going to be a bit of everything. I do really care about fitness and am excited to get back into the swing of things.

And I'm happy to say on the topic of fitness that for years I've hoped for K (my hubby) to get into a good exercise routine besides the 2-3 years that he did a lot of road biking with me. So a month before the girls came we joined our local gym. They also happen to have an evening masters swim group that will hopefully work out for me. But K seems to have found his own exercise routine of going 2-3x a week and doing some spinning or treadmill and weights. I was hoping he had established it enough to keep going after the chaos descended. Yesterday we were having a relatively peaceful afternoon together and he asked when I thought he should target going to the gym. We had just finished a feeding so I looked at the clock and said - well if you go RIGHT NOW we can probably survive on our own until you get back. And we did! It was a nice milestone for both of us. I think everyone (including me) has been afraid to leave me on my own with the girls in case things were to go crazy and cause me to want to abandon the whole twin parenting thing. But so far so good....