A Summer At Home

When people ask me what we did this summer, I stare blankly for a few seconds trying to search my memory for what has filled the 74 days since the bell rang on the last day of school.  I say, "Well, we went to the Como Zoo! And, ummm, the boys took a music class through ECFE! And...oh ya, we went for walks every morning!"

The thing is, we didn't really go anywhere or do any of the typical big family summer vacations. We did not go meet Mickey Mouse and his princess friends. We did not soak our toes in the salty waters of the Atlantic or Pacific.  We didn't even load up the car to head Up North to a cabin in the woods.

But yet,  I can't name a summer that has been more enjoyable than this one.

Yes, our days were filled with a predictable meal, nap, and snack schedule. Bath and bedtime around here were as routine as brushing your teeth (we did that, too).

But it was in fact those daily routines and all the moments in between that made this the best summer ever. It was chasing my boys around our backyard while one was eating rocks, and the other trying to climb the slide. It was trying to prepare healthy meals while 2 hungry and growing boys were yanking on my legs. It was listening to Owen and Aaron's first word ("woof, woof") every time we passed a dog out on our walks, and then hearing them repeat it, over and over and over again until we got back home. It was lathering two wiggle worms up with sunscreen every day, when sitting still was the last thing on their minds.  It was seeing the curiosity in their eyes as they stopped in their tracks to pick up a stick out in the yard. It was driving across town to meet up with other twins and their mommas, who just get it. It was hearing the giggles of brothers who, on occasion, do not want the same toy at the exact same second, and think it is amazingly fun to play peek-a-boo with each other in the curtain on our patio door. It was taking Owen to get his 1st haircut and watching him be so brave sitting in that big red chair. It was climbing through tunnels at the park on playground equipment that clearly wasn't built for adults. It was both boys sitting in my lap to read the book Dinosaur's Binkit every single day. It was thanking God for Aaron's 2 top teeth, that finally broke through after months of painful teething. It was being there to get them out of their cribs when they woke up from every single nap. It was teaching the words "ishy" and "diaper" and "all done" and "big truck." It was driving my car home from lunches out with Daddy and looking back into the mirrors to see my 2 little pumpkins zonked out from a busy day. It was perfecting my tractor noises and crawling around the kitchen floor. It was saying "no, no" for the 817th time when the boys tried to pick the flowers from the pots on our deck. It was witnessing the boys "hug" for the first time, by leaning their heads towards each other and pausing momentarily before bedtime each night. It was....perfect.

I am so fortunate that my "real job" as a teacher allows me the summers "off" to stay home with my 2 most favorite 1 year olds. I know that it will be hard to leave them in someone else's care as I head back to start another school year tomorrow. The tears will be hard to fight back (okay, so they are already rolling as I type this now..)

And so, even though we didn't pick up any souvenirs from an out-of-state resort, my heart is filled with more memories than those kinds of vacations can buy, spent right here at home.

Scroll through the many photos from this summer below.....

 

In to everything.

I timed it: the boys' attention span is exactly 12 seconds long (if we're lucky). This means they can: open and close the doors to our office, try to unplug the computer, stand on tippy toes to try to pull down our blinds cord, make music on our vents, climb up 5 or 6 stairs until Mommy catches them, shut the front door with or without Brother in the way, try to unplug the lamp, and eat receipts from Mommy's wallet. All in under 1 minute.

Sleep.

One of the most common words of wisdom we would hear when I was pregnant was, "Sleep now, because when the babies come, you won't be sleeping much." The first few times we heard it, we would chuckle along with those veteran parents and nod like we knew what they were talking about. After about the 106th time of hearing it, we'd chuckle and then roll our eyes like ya, ya...we get it already. Sleep can't be that hard to come by once you have babies, right?

Well, little did we know, it would be almost 15 months before we got a full night's sleep once our twins were born. That is 414 nights of getting up in the middle of the night up to 10 times between both babies. Every. Single. Night.

The months would come and go, and our hopes of sleeping through the night seemed like a distant wish that no genie was granting. I would hear stories of friends and fellow moms with twins whose babies had slept through the night since they were 3 hours old.  We'd read baby books that said we could expect babies to sleep through the night at 12 weeks old. And 12 weeks came, and our babies didn't sleep. "Once the weather gets nice, the boys will playing outside and all the fresh air will make them so sleepy. For sure, that will make them sleep through the night," other parents would tell us with pity in their eyes. 

We tried swaddling, not swaddling, pacifiers, no pacifiers, noise machines, lullabies, white noise, no noise, a little warmer in the room, a little cooler in the room, ceiling fans, darkening blinds, having the boys share a room, separating the boys into different rooms, humidifiers, rocking to sleep, patting on the back to sleep, giving them a bottle in the middle of the night, warmer pajamas, cooler pajamas, bigger diapers, double diapers, changing the diaper in the middle of the night. Really. We feel like we tried EVERYTHING.

But what we did not try was letting them self-soothe themselves back to sleep when night waking. Ok, it's called crying. Good ol' Cry It Out (CIO).

I will be the first to admit that my threshold of listening to crying is about 5.5 seconds. I hate crying. It breaks my heart and it takes everything within me not to run to the rescue of one or both of my babies crying.

But it was time.

So I finally caved in to letting a little crying, not only so we could hopefully get some sleep one of these years, but so the boys could get some better sleep, too. While Mommy secretly loved the midnight (and 2am and 3:30am, and 5am...) snuggles, I was becoming a walking zombie and it wasn't pretty.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined. And after a couple nights we heard nothing but silence and crickets chirping (from the sound machine). All. Night. Long. 

So, I'm happy to announce that we can finally jump on the "Our Babies Sleep Through The Night" train! Can I get a Choo Choo?!

Aaron sleeping through the night! August 2013

Owen sleeping through the night! August 2013

PS: The 2nd most common words of wisdom I would hear from well-wishers was "Sleep when the babies sleep." Can I just tell you that that phrase does NOT apply to twin moms? It just doesn't work that way.