Holidays 2019...a little late.

Here's a little recap of our holidays 2019, to fill the gaping hole in my blog. 

1.  We celebrated Chris' birthday!

A birthday raspa. 

2.  We spent Thanksgiving at home.  Gigi, Pops, and Grandma Dorothy visited, and we even went shopping on Black Friday. 

Our Thanksgiving dinner table. 

Eating fruit with Grandma Dorothy

The babies were already so big!

We visited a little Christmas village. 

3.  We spent a lot of time outside because the valley is perfect in the winter.

Cami has the cutest little legs.

These dresses are some of my favorites!

Our yard is looking so tropical lately.

4.  We all got sick at some point. 

I know she's sick when she takes naps. 

5.  Katy and I participated in the local Christmas parade with Katy's ballet class.  I had so much fun greeting all the people watching the parade.  A ton of fun!

6.  Katy wore her Santa dress at every opportunity.

7.  We saw Santa twice.  The first time was a surprise visit to Katy's ballet studio, and Katy wanted nothing to do with him.  The second time, Katy was ready.  The babies were champs and didn't cry either time.   Way to go babies!

Annual picture at Bass Pro Shop

8.  We took a family Christmas picture.  Maybe someday we'll be that family that hires a photographer in November to take Christmas pictures (doubtful).  For now (and likely forever) we are the family that uses a tripod and a self-timer a few days before Christmas.  Our timing definitely rules out any ambitious notions of a perfectly posed picture or sending out Christmas cards.

There must be something interesting off to the left.

9.  We hosted a Christmas Cookie decorating event at our house.  I baked soooooo many cookies and sadly have no pictures to prove it.  I hope to make the event an annual tradition so I'll just strive to do better next year.

10.  We played bingo for the first time and were shushed for laughing too much.  We're so rebellious.

11.  We spent Christmas at home, and then at the beach.

Cookies for Santa are ready!

Santa was here and he left a checked-off Santa letter!

Santa's goodies. 

Examining the loot out of the reach of little hands.

The Christmas Unicorn Fairy.

Christmas Day at the beach. 

12.  We visited family a few days after Christmas.  Katy had so much fun with her cousins, and we had fun celebrating New Year's Eve with a big gang of relatives. 

Some of the many Christmas cookies I baked.

Tent snacks.

The cousin gang.

New Year's Eve crew.

13.  And finally, our girls were just overall adorable.  I'm not biased at all.

The Christmas Tree was so much fun.

Cami and her tongue.

Rainbow is Not Always Easy

A few moths ago I blogged about the rainbow cupcakes Katy and I made and how they were more work than I anticipated.  Several years ago I also made a rainbow cake, which was also fairly time consuming.  For the girls' birthday party this year, I decided to make rainbow Rice Krispie treats because the recipe said it only took 30 minutes.  The recipe was so wrong.  It took us at least 2 hours, and I was completely over it by hour one. 

I've made three rainbow colored desserts now.  Rainbow colored desserts are never easy, and they are never fast.  Making such desserts should be attempted only if you have lots of spare time and spare patience. 

Rainbow Rice Krispie treats just left of the middle.

Twins and Sleep

The twins have not been the greatest sleepers, individually or as a team.  I say "as a team" because one big challenge for us the first six months with the twins was not just getting them to sleep well, but to sleep at the same time.  Fast forward to somewhere between 10 and 11 months old, however, and they were finally both consistently sleeping through the night!  (Napping during the day has been just as challenging and honestly the challenge is not over, but I'll save that for another blog). 

Catarina was also very challenging the first few months of her life.  She cried a lot. A LOT.  Sometimes for hours at a time.  It was very frustrating for both Chris and I, and there were lots of tears on my part.  The first months with the twins were challenging enough with the poor sleeping habits and the fact that there were two babies.  Catarina's crying on top of all that was a lot to handle.  

The stress and anxiety of all that was going on those first few months left me in survival mode and robbed me of a lot of the sweet bonding moments I had with baby Katy just enjoying her as a baby. This of course also caused anxiety and guilt on top of the anxiety and guilt everything else was causing. 

Last night, after a couple months of consistently sleeping through the night, Catarina woke up crying at midnight.  I went into the baby room, picked her up, and sat down to rock her.  She instantly calmed down and fell asleep on my chest.  It was so lovely that I didn't want to put her back to bed.  I wanted to sit there and just enjoy her sleeping on my chest to make up for all the sweet sleeping moments we lost when she was tiny, she was crying all the time, and we were all so stressed out.  So I didn't put her back to bed.  For half an hour I sat there holding her, listening to her breathe, and running my hands over her soft head as I though about how far we have come since those first stressful months together. 

Unfortunately, my presence in the baby room awakened Cami.  Poor Cami is going though some kind of sleep regression right now where she fights her sleep. So for the next hour and a half, I was up and down trying to get Cami back to sleep.  But at least Catarina and I squeezed in a therapeutic bonding session first.  This is just life with twins, or at least my life with twins who have had (and continue to have) a very hard time learning to sleep well.  

  

MIA

I haven't blogged since November of last year.   I'd love to blame the twins for my extended absence but it seems their big sister was the culprit this time.

Many months ago, a certain four-year-old (who is now five) spilled water on my laptop and didn't tell me.  Several hours later I discovered a puddle of water on my keyboard and water soaked through to the counter.  I was one unhappy mama! 

Miraculously, most of the computer survived and only the trackpad was damaged.  At first, the trackpad worked with a terrible lag every now and then.  It was like using the internet in the nineties, but I found a way to work around it.  After a couple months, however, the curser just started moving and clicking on things in crazy fast order on it's own.  For a couple months, I could correct the problem by leaving the computer off for a couple days.  After a couple weeks, however, it happened every time used the computer.  It became dangerous because the curser would even start deleting things!  So the computer stayed off.  For months.  And I couldn't blog because I am not about to blog with a phone.  No thanks!

A couple weeks ago, however, my husband-hero fixed the trackpad for me!  I can blog again, so get ready for lots of updates!