I hereby make this solemn promise to myself

I will never, ever leave it so long between uploading my project 365 pictures ever again. My poor computer is protesting at the action by making clanking noises that belong sometime during the industrial revolution, not on the information superhighway. It sounds like somebody is running a steel mill in there - mysterious.

So, due to my behind-ness, lots of photos today. It's been quite a while, and things have happened.

The babies have outgrown their bearsuits. I nearly cried.
(Just to avoid any confusion, the captions refer to the photo above....)

It turns out we have a push-me-pull-you that sleeps in our cot.

The babies have started to learn what toys are for...


our little man is sitting up!


our little girl just concentrates on being beautiful...

all together.... aaaaahhhhhhhh.....

Grandma came to help us go to the hospital, and found out what happens when you say 'yes' to the question 'will you pose with the babies?' without asking any questions first

the babies turned seven months... (and J got home from work early because he was at a conference! Woo hoo! I think this is the first time he has ever seen the babies before bathtime on a weekday)

we bought our little man a carnivorous cardigan...


he found his feet...
I really don't like this picture, but it was a busy day and that was the only one I got. This spotty outfit sure looked a lot cuter on ebay.

there were weekends...

I can't remember what happened on this day, but it was obviously shocking

We went outside for the first time ever just to enjoy the sunshine rather than to get somewhere as quickly as possible through the whipping wind

yep, the babies have feet

I messed around with my flash, trying to get a vampire picture (who says being at home all day is not intellectually stimulating?)

dining al fresco

We visited J's family up north... this is the three brothers with their three sons. This photo makes me happy.

L appears to be plotting world domination

We see this face a lot at the moment... not quite sure what it means...

and L learned to sit up too.


I was warned, but I couldn't really believe it - it's all happening so fast.

Homemade MRIs

We've been home just over three months now, and  I feel very much like our transition phase is now over, and the rest of our lives has properly begun. And, like so many others who have been here before me, I feel like I'm in a phase of not quite knowing what to write. Endless photos don't count. After a little bit of musing, I think I've found out why. Is it because I feel awkward, writing about my new perfect life? Not so much. Is it because I'm just sooooo busy, with my new perfect life? Hmmm, not that either. No, I think it's this.  Here's my homemade MRI* of the inside of my brain, circa 2009:

*yes, i know that isn't what MRIs really look like. 
 

 See that one really big slice of pie? That gave me a lot to think about, mull over, and work through. Whereas now:

I am so totally not kidding about my new big slice of pie. It turns out that sadness was taking up an awful lot of space inside my head, and most of it just isn't there anymore. I don't mean that I've resolved every feeling of loss we ever had - far from it - but that big yellow isn't gnawing at me any more. And while I adore the babies, and love spending time with them, that feeling of happiness just does not take up as much space in my cranial area as the unhappiness did. Nothing sinister about that, in my opinion, and I've been making a conscious effort not to slip into anxieties or negativity about this new bit of our life, purely out of habit and reflex. Not saying that nothing is hard, because things sometimes are hard, but I don't want that pattern of thinking to be my default mode. There are definitely some things for me to be thinking about, in the short term and the long term. Do my children have developmental delays? Are they attaching well? Will they ever forgive us for adopting them? Really, I'd love to know, but it feels too early to be assessing much of it right now and I'm trying not to let the not-knowing automatically become panic.

Wow, don't I sound very zen about all of this. I swear, all I've drunk this evening is tea.

I'm looking at that 2010 graph again, and to be honest, part of it feels not quite right. Rather than a big area of empty space - a cranium just waiting to be filled - I sometimes feel like my entire brain has just shrunk. So much of what I'm doing all day - lots of rocking, lots of talking, lots of orange mush on babies, my hair and the floor, lots of singing - is wonderful, and important, and I'm very happy to be doing it, but it's using the instinct bits of my brain rather than the reasoning bits. And that's an odd feeling. Maybe some of that empty space should be re-labelled 'the not unpleasant mental torpor that comes from living at the pace of a baby, and also doing an awful lot of washing'.

About the mental torpor. I've been keeping a secret, guilty list of things that I now need to admit that I was wrong about, during all the time I spent over the last few years being angry at the people I knew who were parents (ie, pretty much everybody). I have something saved in drafts, but am having a hard time finishing it because of the mental torpor - which is ironic, because I'm pretty sure the mental torpor is on the list. (Wow, turns out that 'torpor' is one of those words that very quickly loses its meaning if you use it too many times in succession). I'm trying to think of a way to express myself that doesn't just end with me saying 'yeah, but I was right about ALMOST everything', which could potentially be construed as ungracious.  So, watch this space. But, you know, you could probably look away for a while without missing anything.

I think all I'm trying to say is that I haven't gone anywhere. It's just that the cogs are turning a bit more slowly at the moment. Please bear with me. And in the meantime, I'll probably keep plugging the gaps with baby photos.

Episode 163, In which Claudia cannot manage to insert any text between the photos

 

 

 

So, this has been the last few weeks. I was going to provide a running commentary, but didn't for three reasons:

1. I'ts pretty much all cutesy babies, except for one train and one cat and one massive baby-led-weaning-FAIL. You're smart. You can figure out which ones these are, I suspect.
2. I've just switched blog editors and wow, I thought the photo uploading in the OLD editor was bad. Now I can't seem to insert lines for captions between photos, or paste in more than one at once.  I'm sure it's fixable with a bit of googling, but
3. I'm hungry, and need to eat my lunch. Like, REALLY hungry. Anybody else find that motherhood all too easily means 12 hours of starvation followed by four hours of chocolate once they're in bed? Surely that's not just me. Surely? I'm such a good role model, really, it's amazing I'm not on TV.

This should help clear up any confusion

We got a label maker. It's all kinds of useful.

Some Days are Better than Others

After the minor disaster zone that was yesterday, I've had to make a few resolutions to get me through today. Here they are:

1. I will not spill a box of cereal on the floor
2. I will not try to make both dinner and a bunch of baby food in half an hour
3. I will not, as a direct result of rushing from (2), cut my finger and sever a little vein
4. I will not allow the cat to push a lightbulb off the table and then play in the resulting broken glass. Actually, that already was today. I will not allow him to do this again
5. I will not stress if the babies smear orange food in each others hair, but calmly move their seats further apart
6. I will not go anywhere that means I will need to nod and smile along at about forty labour and birth stories
7. I will not worry that finding (6) difficult means that I don't really love the babies
8. I will not have any visitors
9. I will not try to get a double pushchair onto the bus
10. I will cut myself some slack.
11. I will limit myself to 10 resolutions for one day.

A fortnight of fotos

The last fourteen days or so have felt pretty busy. I'm keeping up with taking my project 31 photos, but haven't posted them for ages because I keep getting snowed under by the constant need to do... stuff. Lately I've been making a really huge effort to keep the house cleaner and tidier - I'm here a lot, and it seems that the cleaner the house is, the calmer I feel. And it's addictive. When it comes to cleaning, it seems that I have only two settings: 'zero', and 'hero'. While we were in the middle of the bone-crushing horror of waiting, I was definitely functioning at zero. Whereas now:

14 January

or something approximating that, anyway. I was very inspired by this post , which linked to this site, which is basically a crazy lady who leads what can only be described as an internet cleaning cult (she describes dusting as 'blessing your home', which freaks me out a little) but dangit, her weekly cleaning programme is fabulous and I'm addicted. A week in, and I hardly even had to clean up when the babies and I had a long awaited visitor:

16 January

they were very happy to see her, honestly, they were just a bit tired by this point.

(By the way - for those of you counting - 15 January's picture does exist, but has been censored by J as being too naked for the interwebs. And I'm sure he's right. But a crying shame - it was CUTE. And then he did the same to 17 January. Nevermind).

18 January saw us having a very tiring day:

at the hospital. We begged for, and were given, an appointment with a specialist paediatrician to do a general check on the babies' health. I know all babies have a paediatrician in the States, but that is not the case here and our GP took some convincing. But when we eventually did get to see a paed, he was truly fabulous, and was the first person to actually sit down and listen to the babies' history and then actually think about what the health implications might be. It. Was. Amazing. Not so amazing was the fact that he sent baby L off for an immediate X ray of her hips, and has now referred us to the hip clinic because he's a bit worried about her range of motion. Obviously if there's a problem we'd rather know as early as possible. And it doesn't seem to be anything major. But 'I think I should refer her on' are words that no parent really wants to hear.

The busyness continued with our official 3 month social work review on the same day. (Needing that X ray means we only just squeaked home in time with two INSANELY tired babies, which is a whole 'nother story). That wasn't exactly fun, but we seemed to get through it okay. The next day, I had to go to a weaning information session at our local clinic, which was not all that useful (are things like that EVER useful?) and afterwards I bit the bullet, went straight to the local supermarket and bought my first packet of baby rice.

It was our first outing in our new side-by-side double pushchair:

19 January

and I have to say, I was absolutely NOT prepared for the difference in the attention we would get - until then, I had been taking them out in one pushchair and a sling. Probably not helped by the fact that the babies' warm outfits are little bear suits and they do look undeniably gorgeous. But I was followed around the supermarket by an audible wave of sighs and whispers about the cuteness. I have never experienced anything like it. I think I unintentionally spread a lot of happiness that day.

What did not spread happiness was the introduction of the baby rice. Notice anything different in my standard 'two babies on a changing mat' photo?

20 January

My two little messy-mouths were not at ALL impressed.

Please, mummy, don't make me taste that again. Look how cute I am. Would you want to make this little face unhappy?

21 January

Well yes, it seems you would. You can torture us as much as you like, but we still have each other. (I came back from washing my hands to find them in this tragic pose)

22 January

I gave them a day off the evil solids for their six month birthday:

which they were pretty happy about. As was I, because it also gave me a break from the horror of cleaning up their new vesuvius-style poos for a day or two. (And seriously. SIX MONTHS? Where has the time gone? And then I remember - oh yeah, we haven't actually had them all that time. So I guess that's okay. Sort of. But SIX MONTHS? Already?)

I took so many pictures of them in their 'january' outfits that I could pretty much hear the camera shrieking in protest. So I declared this week to be kitchen macro week:

24 January 25 January
26 January
27 January

which was fine, but when I was reduced to photographing my dinner on Wednesday night (in my defense, another crazy busy day) I thought it might be time to switch gear again.

I've decided that the last weekday of every month is going to be 'sort out the clothes' day, where I jettison anything that they don't fit anymore. I knew that this month, I was going to have to say goodbye to my favourite outfit of baby I's. It's stripy and velour and incredibly cuddly, and it's baby gap but I got in on ebay for 99p. So yeah, I love everything about it. It was far too big for him when we brought him home, but now it only just skims his knees and is increasingly difficult to button. But oh, it's so adorable. Saying goodbye to this outfit feels like officially saying goodbye to the tiny boy that we brought home.

28 January

See? You can see most of his legs.
And that brings us to today. We have to go back to the hospital for follow-up blood tests, and I'm wondering where on a baby you can draw a significant amount of blood. I guess I'll know by this evening. I think I'd rather not.