The Life of the Once and Future Preggo Monster

With the recent move, the unpacking and the explosion decorating theme we seem to be adopting, I have only now been able to get our pictures online. We haven’t been taking all that many anyway, but now at least we can put what we have online. We have three backlog galleries, located here, here and here. Recently Grandma Schnolis came for a visit, and took the girls to have their photos taken (in some very pretty dresses from Kathy K.) and you can see those pictures here.

Today is Saturday, September 8, 2007…I’m sitting in the living room of my new home, while Duke and Amaya blow raspberries at each other in the couch. My mom and dad are dying their hair black (you didn’t hear that from me) in the bathroom, and Zoey is asleep in the pack and play.

Ain’t life grand?

We are so extremely blessed to be where we are today. After making it through all we’ve been through, to realize it’s been less than one year and we’re where we are today?? It’s nothing short of amazing.

Gotta run…Amaya wants to play!

Move being the operative word! It’s been so long since I’ve been on this site…I’M BACK!!! Right now I’m blogging at my desk in my brand new OFFICE SPACE…yes, mama’s back to work!! YEEHOOO! I’m working part time as an admin assistant in the department of Pathology at Penn. I’m working with the morgue attendant keeping track of the cadavers that are donated for the medical and dental schools. It sounds morbid, but it’s very fascinating and certainly niche work. And the hours are great! I work three days a week, two full days and one half day, for a total of 20 hours a week. Today’s my second day in my first week, and so far so GREAT!

Well, we’ve been a little busy this summer, but here are some more pictures of the Schnolis Twins.

We also managed to find time and money to buy a house! It’s located in the same neighborhood we have lived in for years, which is great.

I have every intention of posting more pictures of the house online, but probably not until next month.  This month we’re moving, and cleaning, and packing, and planning, and everything else that goes into making this transition a success.  So wish us all luck…we’ll need it!

They’re both growing up right before our eyes. Zoey started standing up in her crib last week, so we lowered the mattress. Then yesterday we found Amaya standing up and contemplating exploring the world outside and chewing on the wood of her cirb. So today I lowered her mattress so neither of them can make an escape. We’ve got more pictures up in a new photo gallery, so check them out when you get a chance. We’ve got lots of great photos this time, including some of the girls trying to eat some carrots and succeeding only somewhat. They tried on their baseball caps and looked pretty cute, too.

Is this not cuteness incarnate??

Sometimes the babies are sleeping as I head off to work. This week I was lucky, though, as Amaya woke up right as I was getting ready to leave. Zoey was up just a few minutes later. I decided to pull out the camera and take a few photos. This is what turned out.

I’m continuously amazed at their expressive faces and growing personalities.

The girls visited the doctor this week and received a few more shots for their six-month checkup.  While they cried quite a bit in the moment, they recovered quickly.   The great news is that they are both in excellent shape.  After adjusting for being premature both girls are now near the 25th percentile for weight!  They’ve been hanging around in the single digits most of the time, so they’re a bit small.  Many of our friends have given birth in the last half-year or so, and our girls are the smallest.  This has been great in ways, too.  Our girls are still in Number 2 diapers.  They’re still wearing the cute little 0-3 months clothing, with some 3-6 months thrown in.  We have so much stuff for them to grow into, too, because our friends’ babies grew out of them before our kids even needed them.

Well, I didn’t think another month would go by with out updates, but it has. Actually it has been five weeks since this blog has seen any action on our part. Sorry about that folks! We’ve been busy looking at houses and contemplating moving in addition to all the other stuff going on. Still, we have some new pictures and I’m in the process of putting those online right now. Look what turned up in the Laundry, among other photos in Batch 1. If only it were that simple to keep these two clean.

Zoey and Amaya are doing really well. Amaya’s early digestion problems have all but disappeared and she’s gaining weight at, for her, a record pace. She has gained so much weight, in fact, that she has surpassed Zoey’s weight by almost a full half pound! She was born 1.25 pounds heavier than Zoey, but lost ground quickly. Zoey has stayed largely consistent in her weight gain, but Amaya has put on the afterburners to gain a bunch of weight and now tops off at nearly 14 pounds. Zoey is trailing slightly at about 13.5, or at least she was at their last doctor’s appointment last week. Really cute photos of the two of them together are now in Batch 2.

Uncle Franklin and Auntie Christie have been helping out with babysitting. Franklin’s already teaching Zoey some of his tricks. This and more pictures are captured in Batch 4.

In addition, we have some new babysitters, too. Our friends David and Olivia, who both work with me in the Engineering School at Penn, took a turn babysitting the girls while we enjoyed a night out at the theater. The play was a bit off the mark, so I think they got the best end of that deal. It was really nice to be able to head out and have no worries about the girls. Those photos, as well as some of the girls in their cool sunglasses, are in Batch 3. Except I think David needs to learn not to eat Zoey’s toys…

In other news, Grandma Schnolis got the girls some Entertainment Saucers, and they are by far the girls’ favorite things. They stand up, grab on, chew up, drool on, reach for and smash pretty much everything on there. Zoey is drawn to the toys she can fit in her mouth and Amaya prefers the books on both. Pretty funny! Those pictures are updated in Batch 5.

Yes, there are indeed new pictures. It has been a while, and I’ll explain the delay in getting new stuff posted, but first let’s get to the important stuff. We’ve divided the new photos into three different galleries which you can find here and here and here. Feel free to check out the ever plumping twins.

so it’s been a while since I posted on the blog. It’s only been about 5 months since the twins were born, but it feels like AGES! It’s also been pretty tough for me to get back to being me…whatever that was. For a year I was a preggo monster, and when I finally came out of the haze of hormones, post-partum depression and some serious post-delivery complications, it was May 2007 already! Sheesh!

Some quick updates on life now…some of these stories may appear as their own blogs one day….

*Zoey and Amaya are ~13 and ~11 lbs., respectively. Both babies are doing well and getting cuter on a daily basis

*The babies are champion breastfeeders, and Amaya will even take formula and rice cereal in a bottle! All my worries were for naught. However, little miss Zoey refuses bottles, period. She allowed her aunty Christie to feed her rice cereal w/a spoon, but that too was a disaster. After their six month immunizations, they will begin solids, but I tell you what, Zoey loves her breastmilk…..
*I am officially a SAHM (stay at home mom) for now. We’ll see how long I can swing it

*I FINALLY have my appetite back…and now I’m addicted to Chocolate covered PoppyCock (aka PoppyCrack…please, no one buy me any as a present….)

*I’m in week two of a six week yoga program that will hopefully help give me some clarity and focus as I struggle to re-find myself.

Being preggers and now a mom was/is such an absorbing experience, it’s easy to lose sight of my own identity as Linda. So this yoga course is really helping my spirit.

But in the meantime, I’m loving life as the momma to two amazing little babes, and partner to my best friend in the whole world.

We’ve been Missing In Action on the Twins Blog lately, and we’re both sorry about that. Things around here have been really wild, but we’re getting organized and dealing with the stress of the babies pretty well. At least most of the time. Every once in a while they decide to go on a simultaneous crying frenzy and we both question our decision to be parents, but most of the time they’re a delight to be around.

They’ve gone on a couple of trips, recently, too. Last weekend Linda and the girls drove up to Allentown to spend a weekend with Christie and Cynthia. I enjoyed the quiet, but spent most of the weekend building a bed and catching up on all the chores that don’t seem to get done. The second trip was a day trip to New York City to visit their grandpa Tony, who just got back from a visit to Ghana, where he is preparing a newly constructed house to move back to. This was his first opportunity to see the girls, though the girls have been the talk of Accra with the pictures we sent a few weeks back.

We’ve got two new photo galleries up now, with close to 200 new images. The first gallery is a set of pictures from around the house, taken from Linda’s favorite perspective…the extra-close up. In that gallery are some photos of Linda’s mom with the girls, and a few nice ones of the girls together on the lime green boppy.

The second gallery is a variety of photos taken during the girls last pediatrician visit. This is the largest gallery we’ve ever had, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy some of the great photos. We’d like to give our thanks to Dr. Elena Huang, pictured above, who takes very good care of our girls.