What Time Is It?

I've decided that having a baby makes all sense of time become completely relative. Have to wake up at 4 am for your "baby watch shift"? That's ok, you got 5 or 6 hours of sleep before that. Not getting to go to sleep until around 5 am? Oh well, you get to sleep until mid afternoon. There really is no such thing as a routine bed time or wake-up time anymore. It does, however, make it incredibly difficult to get things done around the house, though.

Not only that, but it doesn't feel like I've gotten to just hang out with my husband in ages...ok, I take that back...since our date night just before Thanksgiving. Either one of us is awake taking care of the boys while the other one get some sleep, or I'm at work. I know it will get better though, it's only a matter of time. That time just feels kind of far off, especially when the boys are in the habit of having at least one of them awake all night long. I swear they plan it; "Ok Levi, you take the first shift and stay awake until the next feeding, and then you can sleep while I stay awake and cry." Ah, the joys of twins. But things like this make it so worth it:

Levi giving me a big smile.

Or this:

Asher blissfully sleep on the couch.

Yesterday was a doozie of a day, let me tell you. We left Baker by 7 am in order to get to Boise for the boys' eye appointment at 10:15...which it turns out was actually suppose to take place TODAY. My heart absolutely sank when the receptionist started looking highly confused and said, "Umm, I don't think you have an appointment today." I literally almost started crying. So we went back to the car, proceeded to spend the next hour feeding the boys, grabbed lunch for ourselves at Red Robin, made a quick stop at Babies R Us for a couple of necessities that you simply can't find in Baker, and then headed to Fruitland (right on the Oregon/Idaho border between Boise and Baker) for Nathan's dermatologist appointment, where (we hope) he can find out what he really is or is not allergic to.

For those of you not in the know, every couple of years or so Nathan gets a very severe reaction to...something, which causes hives, itching, and pretty severe swelling of his face. Which he then has to go on a round of steriods for. Not fun.

Anyway, we get to the dermatologist's office at 2:30 and I elect to stay in the car with the boys so I can get a little bit more shut eye (I've been awake since 1 am, by the way). Fourty-five minutes later, Nathan calls me to tell me that he's still in the waiting room but he should be going in soon. Yikes! By the time he gets out of his appointment half an hour later, I'm in the middle of nursing Asher and Levi has begun his pre-hunger-screaming cries. You see, the boys have two different stages of hunger crying; first is the minor crying, where they let out a couple of cries, fall back asleep, and then wake up ten minutes later to do it all again. After approximately half an hour of this (an hour if you're lucky), they will suddenly wake up fully and start screaming their heads off.

So we spent another hour and a half sitting the car in the doctor's parking lot, feeding the boys, drove a couple of blocks to the lab where Nathan got six vials worth of blood taken for tests, stopped off at WalMart for smaller and cheaper bibs than you can find at Babies R Us (the boys have begun spitting up with a vengence, especially Levi), and then finally headed back to Baker. Thirteen hours after we had left for the day, we finally got home.

Oh, did I mention that we have to go back to Caldwell on Monday for the boys' rescheduled eye appointment, plus Nathan has to go back to Fruitland on the 15th, 18th, and 23rd for various allergy testing appointments? But hey, that means we will get all of these appointments done before the end of the year, meaning that we won't have to pay anything for them because we've already met our deductable and out-of-pocket limit through our insurance for the year...imagine that! Ha ha ha.

Thank the Lord for good benefits!

Now if you'll excuse me, one of the boys is starting to do the first stage of hungry crying so I'd better start getting a bottle or two ready.