My New Job

A lot can happen in 9 months, so I’ll summarize what’s happened since the last entry in Dec. 08:

• January 09: Steve again gets assigned to audit Mexico several times while I shiver in the Minnesota winter, pregnant with twins. He tells me how ‘cold’ it is in Mexico on a day that was ten below zero in Lakeville!

• February 09: We learn the twins are boys and start talking about names. Our families think we’re being coy calling them ‘Righty’ and ‘Lefty’ but the truth is, we just cannot agree on two boy names!

• March 09: In the midst of my stay-at-home or put-them-in-daycare dilemma, I learn that my teaching position will be eliminated for the 09-10 school year, meaning I will be laid off. So, I take that as a divine sign that I am to stay at home with my future sons.

• April 09: In my 30^th week of pregnancy, I start my maternity leave and begin weekly doctor’s appointments for my gestational diabetes and babies’ ultrasounds.

• MAY 25, 2009: MY WATER BREAKS AT 5:30 AM AND THE BOYS ARE BORN AT 9:30 AM VIA A C SECTION. MATTHEW WILFRED AND NATHAN JOHN ARE PREMATURE AT 35 WEEKS, 3 DAYS, AND SPEND 7 AND 10 DAYS IN THE NICU AT CHILDREN’S ST. PAUL, RESPECTIVELY.

• June 09:

· June 1: We bring Matthew home.

· June 3: We celebrate Steve’s 29^th birthday at home, happy because we know what tomorrow brings:

· June 4: Nathan comes home!

· June 15: We celebrate 7 years of marriage at home with a cake and reminiscing with our photo albums.

• July 09: Reality sets in as we enter our 5^th week of not sleeping: we are parents!

• August 09: The boys are cleared to travel after their 2 month appointment, so we plan a trip to Michigan. I am to stay there with the boys at my mom’s for 2 weeks while Steve gets back into the swing of things with a business trip to Brazil. It’s not to be: STEVE HAS EMERGENCY SURGERY AUGUST 2 TO CORRECT A BOWEL OBSTRUCTION. We spent 2 ½ weeks in MI while he recovers from the surgery and he struggles with a bout of pancreatitis.

• September 8, 2009. It’s my first ‘official’ day as a stay at home mom…my friends and colleagues returned to their classrooms today. I feel like I “should” be there with them, helping the 6^th graders unlock their new lockers, reading students’ schedules and directing them to the correct room, trying in vain to memorize faces and names that I won’t learn until Thanksgiving, staying late to finalize lesson plans for the rest of the week because I didn’t actually finish them during workshop week last week…wow, I didn’t think I’d miss it.

However, I spent my day playing with my three month old sons, nursing them, rocking them, singing to them and reading to them. We took a ride to pick up a swing for a pregnant friend and stopped by the vegetable stand in Farmington for the best sweet corn I’ve ever tasted. The boys had a rolling over contest, which Nathan won 2-0! Go Nathan! Matthew has beaten him every time we’ve played, until today. Now they’ve fallen asleep to the thumping of the dryer, pushing their little tushies high into the air.

I ask myself, can life get any better than this?

Yes, it can.

Steve is going to grill salmon tonight to eat with the sweet corn, we’ll take the boys for a walk around the neighborhood and then begin our nightly bedtime routine: baths and babas. If it goes well, they’ll be down for the count around 8:30 and they will sleep through the night. Yes, it’s happening – they are sleeping through the night (more often than not)!

Then I get to do it all over again tomorrow.

God is so good to us, it’s indescribable!