I should have worn heels -- life at 5'3" - Update from West Scholes Manor

11:14 am - Update from West Scholes Manor

Wow!  I actually have a few minutes of online time!  I miss my computer.  But the girls and life in general keeps me pretty busy.  Lots of stuff happening around here...

The girls had their two month check-up yesterday (2 months already!).  They are doing well, though they are growing at different rates.  Weighing in at 11 1/2 lbs, Rachel is in the 60% for length and weight.  The Littlest Scholes, Lizzy, weighing in at just over 9 lbs is in the 10%.  Both are healthy and got their first round of vaccinations.  I was a chicken and sent Ken to the doc with them for that.  I got to do the heel prick a couples weeks after they were born, and it was traumatic (for me).  I know I'll have to get a thicker skin, but really it's only been a year or so since I've come to grips with getting poked myself without passing out.

New skills:  The girls are starting to smile now.  And my sister said she even got a laugh out of one of them (Liz, I think).  They are starting to grab at things now, so jewelry comes off as soon as I walk in the door.  And they are noticing dangly toys.  And already the flashy TV attracts their attention.  They get a good dose of Family Guy and Robot Chicken with Ken.  They watch Bones with me.  I'm not sure exactly how much crude cartoons and dead bodies might warp them, but it will be interesting to find out.

I went back to work the week before last.  Full-time.  It's been a bit of an adjustment.  On the one hand, I like getting back to a "normal" routine.  Works pretty busy as you might imagine.  I've been away for two months from a job that requires a lot of multi-tasking of information and systems set-up/maintenance.. it's a finely tuned process.  And no matter who was going to fill in for those two months, I knew I'd have quite a bit of clean-up to do to get everything back to my anal-retentive estimate of correctness.  And I do.  And I am.  I miss the girls when I'm at work, but I've called over to my sister's every day to check on them.  And they are always doing just fine if a bit fussy some days. 

The hardest thing about being back to work has been the commute and what little time is left over to actually spend with the itty bitties.  Our original child care plan fell through due to a cross-country move, so my sister stepped up to the plate.  However, she is going to have her baby any day now and she lives on the complete other side of the Portland Metro Area from St Helens.  For the last two weeks, Ken's been carting the littlest Scholes from St Helens to Oregon City (an hour drive), then driving the 1/2 hour back into the city to work.  Then in the afternoon, I've driven the 1/2 hour from downtown to O.C. to pick them up, then fight rush hour traffic back to St Helens.  On light traffic days, it was a minimum of two hours from the time I got off work to the time I stepped through the door at West Scholes Manor.  Brutal.

But we've found another child care option that we'll be implementing toward the end of October.  Ken, brilliant daddy monkey, found local child care and devised a strategy to actually afford it.  So the girls will be with strangers for the day (I don't really like that so much), but we'll be able to get our carpool back (cuts gas and parking by more than half), which gives us our talk time back (a whole lot of Lamentation, Canticle and Antiphon got hashed out in the wee hours of our drive into and from work) and gives us more time in the evenings with Lizzy and Rachel.  Only a couple of pieces of this plan left to figure out, but I think we're  pretty solid.  Yay!  *Glares at Universe and dares it to f*** with me again at it's own peril*

Despite the crazy commuting schedule, Ken and I have still managed to get a few dates (sans babies) together thanks to our friend Amy's awesome babysitting skillz.  And tomorrow, the girls are going over to Grandma and Grandpa's so we can make an excursion to wine country.  It will be the first wine tasting trip we've taken since I got pregnant.  Yay! 

Now that I have a new battery for the camera, new pictures should be forthcoming.  I tried to get a pic of their smiles with my cell phone, but they became more interested with the cell phone than in smiling.  I will catch that elusive facial expression.