I’ve got videos to show you. I know, I know, you are shitting your pants with excitement. I just need to figure out how, exactly, to get them from my camera onto the computer onto this blog. Stay tuned. Until then, a picture I didn’t need to set up. They figured this out all on their own:

Bet you thought I forgot about Thick to Thin Thursdays. Nope. But two weeks ago I gained weight and was stroppy, and last week I was busy shitting myself on the couch due to the swine flu. So as soon as I’ve posted this – babies willing – I’ll go update my weight loss stats. The short version of it is that as of yesterday, I am the same weight I was a few weeks ago.

I don’t know what is happening. Well, actually I do: I’m not writing down any foods, attempting to curb my eating, and I am eating a lot. I am craving a lot of comfort food. Not to mention the thought that with 14 week old twins, sometimes I don’t actually have time to eat, so shoving cookies in my mouth while warming bottles happens. Quite a lot.

A few days ago I was like, ‘Fuck it. I don’t really want to lose this weight yet. I want to eat.’ But you know what, I do want to lose it. Losing 60 pounds a few years ago gave me a taste of being normal sized (apologies to the curvy ladies out there – I think you’re gorgeous!). By ‘normal,’ I mean being able to shop in any store, feel really confident, and just generally being much, much healthier. Pregnancy with twins sort of fucks those things up, or it did for me…with the exception of confidence. I looked bangin’ when I was hugely pregnant.

All the information I read emphasized weight gain, weight gain, weight gain. And it worked. My babies were not born early, and they were a very good size for twins. I don’t regret the gain at all (59 pounds…the goal was to gain 60).

But here I am, oddly enough, a few years after wearing a bikini in public, and I am as heavy as I ever was. Heavy and weirdly flabby around my tummy. Granted, my stomach was out to HERE when I was pregnant, and then my muscles were cut through for the c section. The section also left a big portion of my lower abdomen numb, so that adds to the odd, out of shape feeling.

I want to lose the weight. I bought some clothes (I threw away all Fat Clothes when I lost the weight last time, vowing I did not need to keep them as I would not regain the weight. I kept it off, too, until the babies!) as I was feeling down wearing oversized pjs all day, every day. But I really don’t want to buy any more. I want to lose the weight, and lose it lose it lose it. I need to say that publicly, because last night’s McDonald’s sure did taste fine.

Total weight loss (I think): 7 pounds. To find out more, or to join in my weight loss crusade, click ‘Thick to Thin Thursdays’ on the right.

More and more I have trouble reading those fucking spam avoider things. You know the ones. ‘Enter the text you see in the box. Having trouble? Click here.’

They used to be so easy. ‘BoxMom.’ ‘RedSmile.’  Then they went a bit surreal….’AppP3lk43,’ etc. Now they are all artistically fucking dotted around with dabs of paint, and the lettering is all wavy and messed up. It’s like they got some people with dubious creative talents to design these things, just out of pity or something.

Either that or I am going fucking bananas blind.

So. Three things.

1. Coconut’s poop switched to smelling like butter flavoured microwave popcorn about a week ago, and now Snort’s smells that way too. I love it.

2. In the middle of the night last night, Snort was manipulating his tongue and practicing new sounds. He said ‘Hello’ as clear as day and it was freaky!

3. Snort’s face is all messed up and oozing. Think it is infected exzema. We have antibiotic cream, but doesn’t seem to be working. TMD taking him to the doctor this evening. Cross your fingers for him, and for me – my heart can’t handle anxiety, apparently. I am all nervy about this!

Allow me my tiny moments, my tear filled eyes, my swollen heart. As I hold one, look into eyes, giggle at a goofy smile – and the other at my feet, full of sounds and kicks and laughter. I bitched throughout pregnancy. People came here to leave me comments, and more than one person emailed to thank me for not looking at things through rose-coloured glasses.

I, too, rolled my eyes at all the women who were trying to get pregnant – as we cheered each other on, they did it with blinkie signature files and I did it with telling people how my wife stuck pessaries up my vadge. As I tumbled through pregnancy, I wrote about not being able to walk, about throwing up in the bathtub, and, yes, about the tiny sweet kicks that rapidly turned into thunderous wrestling matches in my stomach.

I told the truth then, unvarnished, so you can trust that I tell it now.

Motherhood is so sweet that sometimes I am filled up, up, up with adoration for my children, for myself, for my wife. I sing to them and am amazed to feel wetness trickling down my cheeks. We hold whispered conversations, we are a daytime team of three, we can conquer the world.

Sometimes I am so tired I can barely pick my feet up. There have been two occasions when I have sobbed uncontrollably and felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. But the real seed of truth in the middle of it all? I often have an uneasy feeling, a wondering where all the terrible days are. As I read twin blog after twin blog, I read of women sobbing on the floor, sitting between their two babies, not sure who to help or how.

Me? I feel like the motherfucking baby CHAMPION, a woman so capable and strong in this new way, this fulfilling way, this way where I am talking back and forth to these two little people. She with her face that lights up, that tightens and tenses her whole body in a tall sort of happiness, her funny chewing face and sometimes solemn eyes. He with his conspiratorial glances at me, his wide mouthed and uneven smile, his laugh so powerful he surprises me every time.

We are getting the hang of it, and sometimes it’s lather-rinse-repeat of the same tasks over and over, but more and more it becomes a joy, a moment I want to live deeply in, a time I can already feel slipping away and so I concentrate on remembering every instant. Really paying attention to what it feels like to have her sleep with her right arm tucked around my back. Loving every time I change his diaper and he chats chats chats until we are both filled up with new thoughts and ways to be.

I cheer her on as she holds onto a toy and gnaws its face. I apologise to him for the ridiculous scratch mitts that are back in the game, as his poor face oozes and reddens. They reward me with their patience, their independence, their sweet baby snuggles and wide eyes as they watch the trees bend and sway in the wind.

For them, I walked this evening on my own to the doctor’s office, my legs still so weak and sore from months of being unable to walk. I almost gave up and came home, and then I kept going because I want to take them on long walks, I want to stomp in crispy leaves with them. I want to watch him feed the horses. I want to lift her up and point out the trains whizzing past.

I don’t need to look at my mornings through rose coloured glasses, because life is just rosy. I have a daughter who looks so happy and amazed just to be awake, just to be hanging out with me in our home. I have a son gulping his bottle, sitting on my leg, so strong, busy looking at everything. I know their rhythms, their likes, what it means when they move their faces just so.

Motherhood makes me feel like I am the first woman to have done this, the only one to really understand what it means. Motherhood makes me deepen myself, makes me feel a fierce love and determination to create a life for these two little people to unfold in their own ways, at their own pace, in their own directions. I want to be there in the background, my arms and heart ready to catch them when they need it, but giving them the space and freedom to make mistakes and try new things and be their own selves.

I want nothing more than this cycle of life to carry on, to continue, to grow older as I watch them grow up.  I’ve been thinking of my grandma a lot lately. How she held my mother, how my mother held me. Here we are altogether, linked by this business of being alive, of doing things that are no different than what has happened for thousands of years for billions of women.

But in here, in my heart, in this house, it is our little team of three that laugh together, that experiment with what it means to have a brother, a sister, a mother, two children. We smile when TMD comes home, their eyes widen and bodies jerk when the post comes, the cat streaks to the door on both occasions. I sing them Christmas songs, we dance to rap music, I curl up with one or the other and we read. I take naps with little baby bodies held close, their heads turned in toward my heart. I touch her smooth, soft cheeks. I rub lotion again and again into his funny chapped skin, loving that he loves that so much. We live in a world of touch, of taste, of kisses and space.

Sometimes we all do our own thing, in our own ways. Other times the three of us look at each other, burble, talk, smile. They look at each other when the other one is not looking, and sometimes they get a little worried and look at me to make sure everything is okay.

And it is.

Better than okay.

Over and over and over again, we get repeats and do-overs and try agains. Through it all, I feel this time, this babyhood, as something so painfully sweet and slippery. Every day they grow up and into themselves more, and I find myself thinking of them as teenagers – and then I yank my attention back to right here, right now, because where else would I rather be?

I started writing something today that feels important, really important. And better than that, it feels good. Maybe I’ll tell you about it some day, or maybe you’ll read it yourself.

Been away on Swine Flu Island. Am on my way back to the mainland now, but on a rickety raft that isn’t moving too fast.

I think my favourite tourist attraction is the ’shit your pants without realising it and lay in your own poop soup for a few hours’ railroad company.

Happy three month old birthday! It’s taken a lot of booby and bottle, but you are so big!

(Snort = 14 lb 4.5, Coconut = 13 lb 2.5)