You know, Matt and I exist outside of the babies. Shocking, isn’t it? Yes, our primary life roles these days are to be their 24/7 support staff with a smile on our face and a joyful spirit about our work. I relied on that joyful spirit today when Zach-a-bean pooped out the back of his diaper, completely missing his pants and covering his entire back and his shirt with poop. I had to toss him in the tub and find a way to get that shirt off without smearing poop ALL over him. I also needed it when Rissa rolled herself all over her crib, chasing her elusive teddy/blankie who shockingly refused to stay put when she flung it around and wanted me to come help retrieve it when she was supposed to be napping. But besides our support staff roles, we’ve been enjoying several things. Here is a photo walk-through of some items we get excited about:

My new shelves!!!! They are cleaned and set up in 2 rooms: one in the living room under my new paper lanterns, also from World Market ($0.70 each, 90% off is a beautiful thing!) to hold our mail in the basket on top and our scrapbooks; two in the guest bedroom next to my workspace to hold scrapbooking supplies and books etc. until I need them for holding scrapbooks.

Matt’s new monitor! Matt was working incredibly hard for a raise at his 5-year review at work and despite being a new father of twins, pulled off some extraordinary projects in time for the company to reap glorious benefits as a direct result of how much he rocks. He got the raise, and I told him that we should use some reasonable amount of his raise to allow me to buy him a new monitor of his choice and then we could waste any other “extra money” of his raise on frivolties such as formula, diapers, and ridiculously exorbitant healthcare prices for employees of small businesses. Pardon me, monstrocity monitor! Do you have the times?

Mr. Funky’s Hamsters! For my birthday, my sister-in-love and fellow crochet nut, Alana, got me Mr. Funky’s crochet book of small, cute, Japanese-y toy projects because she knew I’d be giving birth soon after my birthday and would have only short bursts of time to work on crafting. I can crank out one of these hamsters during 2 movies! You can see the hamster with the beret and man bag on the cover of the book, but I decided not to make those parts. As a sidenote, Alana wrote a lovely piece on the importance of crafting on her blog which you can read here. Without further ado, may I introduce you to Grapeseed, Apple Dumplin’, and Popper Majesty (pending permission to name the pink one Popper Majesty. Permission giver who coined that name: you know who you are, and you also know that is the BEST name ever. May I? I imagine our babies will rename them once they can form words anyway).

Oma! We went to Oma and Opa’s today to hang out. It was fabulous. The babies got cuddled, I was fed a special treat of spanikopita and grapes which worked out well because it was 3pm and I hadn’t yet found lunch, and we enjoyed chatting and watching 2 adorable cuties portray their broad range of activities… from I’m adorable and active to I’m screaming and hungry to I’m thoughtful and curious to I’m exhausted/take me home!

I don’t have a picture of this one and I’m ashamed to admit it, but The Bachelor: London Calling is so fun! Is anyone else wasting fun time on this show? I’ve never watched any of these Bachelor reality shows before because they seem to be a way for some rich guy to sleezily get a bunch of women to fight over him. But this season’s guy hasn’t been at all sleezy and seems very sincere to find a wife and take her off to London because family is important to him and he wants to settle down and crank out some kids. I like him. He’s a nice guy and so far he has sent home EXACTLY who I thought he should have and he appears to be trying to really get to know these girls. Anyway, it’s on tonight and he’s down to the last 3 girls and the show is going exactly according to my plans… we’ll see if that continues!

And finally, gardening. Although, I can’t say gardening is fun. Gardening is many things: scary, a futile effort, a way to get dirty and some sunshine… but fun? We’ll see. We have this glorious garden patch behind our garage that our next door neighbors used to garden for the amazing older couple who lived in our house for something like 70 years. Then they sold the house to a horrible couple who used that amazing soil as a trash bin for glass and nails and unmentionables. Then we moved in and cleared it out and for the last 2 summers, our neighbors gardened it FOR US and then gave us the food! They were so kind! I just didn’t have time to learn 2 years ago while we renovated and last year while I was enormously pregnant and taking classes and still renovating and nesting like crazy. This year, though, I want real tomatoes because hydroponic ones are icky. And though I’m what Matt’s mom would refer to as a “brown thumb” because no plant has ever survived my care, I’m gonna do this thing and our neighbors have great advice! Here are my baby tomato and bell pepper plants who cannot yet sustain themselves outside because we had sleet today.