Musings on a maternity leave

Well, here we are...12 weeks in...and it's back to work (part-time, most likely temporarily), thanks to some very accommodating bosses. It's hard to believe it's been 12 weeks since Bayla and Harper came into the world. The hospital is all a blur, for which I'm grateful. Brady has adjusted, for which I'm equally grateful. The girls are both doing amazingly well-- they're our little miracles, truly. They're filling out and getting bigger, and we're waiting for their smiles. We have our screamy days and our calm days, and then we have our screamy screamy days. The bouncy chairs are our best friends, with the swings coming in a close second. We don't get to hold them enough, and we wish they'd eat more, and more quickly. We wish they'd sleep 6-7 hours and look forward to a more structured schedule. We laugh a lot, we cry sometimes, we grumble, and we trudge through our tired day, looking forward to feeling like ourselves again. But we don't complain, because we could not be more thankful for the bounty of blessings that we've gotten. Three beautiful children? A nice house? Enough money to pay the bills? Enough food to fill our tummies? What's not to love? There's a lot of love in and around us, and I am just so happy.

Here are some things I've learned the past 12 weeks:
1. I never thought I'd be content just staring at 2 babies.
2. I never thought I'd be so comfortable/happy paying for someone else to care for my kids.
3. I never thought I could go this long without having a meaningful conversation with my husband.
4. The DVR holds A LOT.
5. In a million years, I didn't think I'd be so torn about going back to work. If you knew the Becky of 5 years ago, you'd know what I mean.
6. Beans and rice makes an excellent (and fast) dinner, even 2 times a week. Frozen pasta too!
7. I complain about living all the way out in East Cobb sometimes, but we couldn't ask for more wonderful, caring, genuinely good people to live around. Our neighborhood is amazing.
8. A family of 5 produces a remarkable amount of laundry.
9. What's exhausting about twins, besides the obvious lack of continuous sleep, is that you have to make a million small decisions every moment of every day-- should I feed the one who's stirring first, or the one who usually goes first? should I change that wet diaper and risk waking her up? has she been in the bouncy seat too long? I have to be somewhere at 3, but they eat at 2-- how am I going to make that happen? is the diaper bag packed/do I need to bring x, y, or z?
10. I never thought a 3-yr-old would be harder than a preemie newborn.
11. Stretchy fabrics are highly underrated. Who needs to get into those old clothes anyway?
12. Daily hygiene is overrated.
13. Reminder: Health insurance companies love to screw you at every possible opportunity. It's like they enjoy it.
14. There's a lot of decent TV on between 8 a.m. and noon-- then it kinda sucks.
15. The most important thing: if you anticipate feedings, you save yourself a lot of grief, stress, and shrill screaming.
16. Waking a sleeping baby to eat, no matter how much of you dies inside each time you do it, is sadly necessary when you have 2 of them.

So I'm sure there's more, but it's time for another feeding, so I'm off to get the bottles ready. (see #15) More updates soon!