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.