Vote for me and the little eagles!!

I found out last week that my blog was nominated for the Circle of Moms Top 25 Moms of Multiple Blogs.  Thank you so much to whoever nominated me.  It's an honor just to be on the list and I'm hoping to get a few new readers out of this.  I know I have found a few more blogs myself!!  Plus, who doesn't like to get votes!!  If you get a chance, click on the button below and vote for me!!  I'm pretty low in the rankings, but there is still about a week left, so if you get a chance, hop on over and cast your vote!!

Thanks!!


 

Finding Time to Exercise!!

I need some help.  I am a formerly very athletic person.  In my previously life aka before my miscarriage and infertility, I played basketball, volleyball and ran track and field in high school.  I played basketball and sailed in college.  I ran my way through medical school and intern year and I have completed 6 marathons.  I had just finished my first round of Insanity when we got pregnant the first time and I had never looked better.  Then, I had a miscarriage.  After that it was hard to exercise or commit to anything serious like Insanity or a marathon because I never knew if I was going to get pregnant and I didn't want strenuous exercise to be the reason why I couldn't get pregnant.

Then, we did IVF and got pregnant with our twins.  Throughout my pregnancy, I took it very easy until I was like 34 weeks pregnant and then I started walking again.  Postpartum, I took frequent walks with  the babies after I healed from my c-section.

Now, the twins are almost 7 months old.  I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but I'm really struggling with finding time to exercise besides taking the kids for walks.  Part of me really wants to be an athletic mom who is in great shape.  The other part of me is still so tired and still spending a lot of time nursing or pumping throughout the day.  The question is then Do I just wait until I'm done breastfeeding to start exercising again or is there some way to fit it in now?  How do you find time to be a mom and exercise?  Oh yeah and work ridiculous hours in the hospital.

Any tips or tricks for getting back into shape and finding time to exercise while breastfeeding or just in general would be very much appreciated!!

It's the little things!!

I've been inspired by Amber at Four to Adore to start writing about and celebrating the little things that happen each week.  You can check out her post here where she talks about how she found out about the idea and then got started with this weekly themed post.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with this every week, but I'm going to try.  After all, my babies are growing up so fast and I would love to be able to look back at a glance and remember all the little special things they do each week.

Here we go!

1. Saturday we had our 2nd set of professional photographs taken.  This time, I picked out the photographer and with her help 4 cute outfits for the whole family (minus our puppy.)  The photo shoot was outside.  The setting and weather were beautiful and we all looked great!!  I will post a picture as soon as we can them back.  I think the kids knew how exciting and important this was for me because at 6:30pm they were super happy and smiley...until 7:30pm when the started to melt down.  All in all, it was a great experience and I can't wait to see the results!!

2.  Sunday brunch with our baby group was a huge success.  Two of my friends from work had babies around the same time as I had the twins and we regularly hang out with our families for dinner, drinks, lunches.  Sunday, we decided to try brunch.  It was great...a little chaotic, but overall a great outing.  The babies were all awake and super cute and we got to catch up and share advice and recommendations as well as eat some delicious food.  I did have to share my toast with the little eagles, but that just made it more fun since I was able to give them real people food which the gummed and played with for a little while!!  They really are getting big!

3.  This one is about me real quick.  I got out of work a little early on Tuesday, so I headed home to pump, study, and make some brownies.  After I got the brownies in, I decided to lay down for like 15 minutes.  Well, I never heard the timer go off and about an hour later I woke up to some very well done brownies.  Oops.  We have still been eating them this week and they taste like very crunchy chocolate cookies!!

4.  The little eagles have a new favorite evening activity.

And it's called eating frozen bananas with this wonderful contraption.  Seriously, it has turned fussy baby time in the evenings into happy baby time.  It's kind of annoying to clean, but because it gives us time to clean up the kitchen and make dinner, it's totally, totally worth it!!

5.  We also bought the babies a bubble maker this week and tried it out on our back patio.  I think CJ may like it more than the babies and we didn't get any pictures because we were both holding babies, but we are looking forward to trying it out in the park this spring!!  Here's the one we got.

6.  Finally, both babies slept through the night last night!  They do it off and on or one will sleep through and the other will wake up once, but I just want to celebrate that both babies were asleep by 8pm and we woke them up at 5am so that I could feed them before running to work.

Okay, that's all for now.  I'm still at work, but hoping to get home to my little eagles and CJ soon.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope your week has been made up of some lovely little things as well!!

Half a Year

Oops, I forgot to post their 6 month update.  Better late then never!!

The little eagles are 6 months old (April 3rd)!!  Wow, time sure does fly.  Life with the little eagles is difficult at times, but so, so worth it.  As we like to say in our house, "Twins are no joke."

It has been 6 months since the little eagles arrived and I am so thankful for them.  I love being their mom and I love being the wife of their incredible father.  It is so awesome to see CJ with them...and they sure do light up whenever they hear his voice.  Here's what's going on with them in bullet points.

 - They are eating solids and so far they like oatmeal and rice cereal as well as apples, pears, peaches, bananas, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, and peas.  They eat twice a day at daycare and have been doing a great job.
-Baby Boy is starting to crawl.  He's doing an army crawl now, but it won't be long before he's completely mobile.
-Baby Girl is sitting up on her own and loves her toes.
-They both like to babble and laugh and smile..and cry (when it's bedtime)
-Their mom (that's me!!) is back to her pre-pregnancy weight of 135lbs.  I would like to get down to 125 if I can before I stop breastfeeding.
-We all took our first trips together to New York and Pittsburgh.

And so much more!!

How not to store breast milk efficiently...

This is what my freezer current looks like.  As you can see we no longer here any ice in the freezer and we have very little frozen food.  It's pretty funny.  I am so thankful for my supply and proud of how much I have stored up. I was away for a work conference for 3 days so CJ gave the kids defrosted milk with some formula since we had an open container of formula that we needed to use up.  Otherwise, the kids have been getting only breast milk.  It's kinda crazy.  

I made it to my first goal of 6 months breastfeeding the twins.  I also reached my pre-pregnancy, pre-IVF weight of 134.  I would like to lose a little more weight and start to get in better shape.  My goal is 125lbs with exercising more regularly and light weight lifting as well.  I would also love to do Insanity again, but it's just not feasible while I'm nursing/pumping.  People keep asking me how much longer I'm going to continue breastfeeding.  I really don't know exactly, but I will need to be done and weaned by July 3rd (when the twins turn 9 months old) because I will not get breaks during the day to pump when I start my new job.  So, 3 more months.  I'm hoping by then the twins will have started to wean themselves too so that it can be pretty mutual.  I know that I will definitely miss it.  This has been an incredible experience that I'm only really starting to appreciate now that I'm thinking about weaning.  That being said I have weaned down to 6 nursing/pumping sessions/day (since the twins are only eating 6 times/day now anyways).  It's wonderful to be able to sleep through the night when the twins sleep through the night and not have to wake up and pump in the middle of the night anymore.

I'm on call today so that means lots of pumping and lots of missing the little eagles, but I have a full weekend off from work and home with them and CJ and I can't wait!!  Happy Friday!!

Happy Spring!!

Last night, as soon as CJ got home from work, we loaded the babies into their stroller and hit the sidewalk for a walk to a nearby outdoor shops/restaurant area.  We walked to a restaurant picked up our dinner and headed home.  It was beautiful and warm and it just felt so good to be outside and walking.  We are going to try to incorporate an almost daily walk into our routine now that the weather is finally getting nicer.  Plus, the babies can be kinda fussy around 6-7pm so its a good time to get them out of the house and outside.  It was wonderful.  We came home for some play time while we ate our dinner and then it was off to bed around 8pm for the kiddos.

I'm so happy that spring is finally here and we can go outside regularly with our babies.  This weekend, we are going to the park to try out the swings and we might have to pick up some bubbles for the babies to play with too!!

What fun things are you planning on doing now that it's finally spring??  Any suggestions for baby-friendly activities in the spring/summer?