April has been gorgeous, so far! I’ve been sick, yet I can still appreciate the wonderful spring weather.
Adam was out of town on business this week so Katie needed some help with the girls. The Nanny they hired seems like a lovely girl and the babies are not only thriving, they’re happy and giggly so all signs point to a great arrangement! But Katie can’t afford to pay her for 12 hours a day and that’s where I stepped in.
I was up at their place every afternoon this week. The hardest part was keeping my sick face out of the babies’ faces. I want to kiss them all over but this week, I had to refrain from doing so.
Despite this rotten cold/bronchitis/whatever it is, I’ve been sleeping well. Yeah, I take Nyquil so there’s that but I never woke up coughing in the middle of the night and had to take another dose. Once I fell asleep, I was down for the count, which is the hardest thing when one is sick. My cough, which felt like flaming knives in my chest a week ago, now is just an annoying tickle in the back of my throat. Even with eight to ten hours a night, I was pretty tired all week. Spending five or six hours with the babies every day is exhausting in peak condition at my age. But it was so much fun!
Most afternoons, they were just about ready for their late lunch (early dinner?) bottle when I arrived. Some days, one or both of them were still asleep but that only meant I had time to warm their bottles up a bit before they awoke, starving to death. I find it amusing that two girls, who have had their every need met immediately since the day they were born, are still convinced that this time, no one is going to feed them. Especially Boop: she just knows we aren’t going to be able to figure it out this time.
They are both extremely charming little people, they just like to make their opinions known, fast and loud. As soon as I get those bottles in their mouths, they’re very smiley and delightful. They can’t say “thank you, Nana!” but it’s implied in the dimples they flash around the nipple.
Katie weighed them and they’ve both cleared 10lbs! Boopity is still a half pound heavier than Boop but it’s getting harder to tell them apart.
They’re starting to not only notice each other, but trying to get each other’s attention. Yesterday, I was feeding them on the couch, a girl in a boppy on either side of me. When I had to burp Boopity, I put the bottles down and put her on my lap, overlooking her sister. Boop looked up, saw Boopity on my lap and immediately started grinning and waving her arms, as if to say “Hey! I know you! I’m right here!” Boopity responded with a huge burp and matching grin. This went on for the duration of the feeding: whichever girl was being burped, the other would grin and squeak at her, like she was saying “Hey, you’re back! Where’d you go?”
After lunch, I put them on the floor and made faces at them. They think my tongue is hilarious. One of these days, Katie has to get some video of the two of them laughing. One tiny baby laughing is great but two tiny babies laughing is probably the best thing there is.
I stayed out at Katie’s most nights until after the girls had their early evening bottle and helped get them into their jammies and settled. I was never in a hurry to leave and it seemed like Katie should have a little break between work and dealing with two (yes, smiling, giggling babies but still; two) infants all by herself.
They really are easy. I think two sweet, easy going babies is probably easier than one cranky, colicky baby. I don’t know from experience; I never had a cranky baby. None of mine were prone to colick or ear infections or any of the evils that can bedevil a baby. The worst thing about any of mine was that they didn’t sleep through the nights (by that I mean five hours in a row) till they were about eight months old. That was probably on me: I never had the heart to let them cry themselves back to sleep. BoopityBoop let Katie get six to seven hours most nights. The book on training your twins to sleep was full of useful advice!
On Wednesday night, Jay came up and cooked us steaks on the grill! Boop slept through his visit but Boopity was a proper little hostess.
Thursday night, I didn’t take any Nyquil. I was starting painting classes again on Friday and I didn’t want to run the risk of being fuzzy headed. I figured it was going to be challenging enough after my four month hiatus, fighting the natural dullness that comes with being under the weather, without adding a narcotic film to my head. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t sleep but I was out cold by 10:30 and slept straight through till 6:30.
Class was as fun as ever! There were three others, one working in watercolor and one in pastels. Two of us set up little still lifes and worked in oils. I remembered how to lay in my underpainting, separating light from shadow…
After that, I was basically flailing in the dark.
My set up was an Easter basket on it’s side with plastic eggs and paper grass spilling out of it. I thought it would be fun to paint all those different colors! What a moron. Half way through class, I had no idea what color any of those stupid plastic eggs were. And that grass! That was not a color found in nature, at all!
With plenty of help from my instructor, I was able to drag my pathetic painting to a state in which it was possible to tell that yes, that seems to be a basket of some sort and those were possibly colored orbs falling out of it. The background looks okay because Rick painted it but the foreground is a distracting mess.
What fun!
Next week, we’re going outside!
I feel like a blind person shooting hoops who occasionally sinks one.
Speaking of hoops, the Final Four ended last Monday with a bang. Jay won the bracket! He came from behind to overtake Katie and Megan, who had racked up far more points than anyone else going into the last round but Jay was the only one who picked NC to win and win they did. By the time I got home from Katie’s (we didn’t even watch since Katie’s team was out), Zack had chucked all the losing brackets and put his Dad’s in the Frame of Glory, which hangs in a place of honor in our kitchen.
UST, National Champions of 2016, didn’t make it to the National tournament in ’17 but Jay won the bracket, which brought him nearly the same amount of personal satisfaction that the title did last year.
When you get to be our age, you realize that it really is the little pleasures that make life worth living.