Cat in Heels

After dinner yesterday I was playing with the girls when the first reports of the terror attack in Nice, France started showing up on my phone. News alerts, Facebook; I wanted to know what was going on. S wanted to wear one of my bracelets to bed and D was trying to decide if she was going to wear a tutu to bed. I finally decided that I need to focus on my twins and the precious little time I get with them every day. The horrors of the world will still be unrolling on Facebook and every major news network when they’re sound asleep. As I put my phone down D walked up to me and handed me a book. “Night-night book,” she said sitting down next to me. I stared down and felt a lump in my throat. The book was “ Brush Mona Lisa’s Hair .” France is under attack again and here I am staring at one of the most famous paintings in the world, which resides in the French’s most famous museum…and my little girl has no idea. She just likes interacting with the pictures. We are rea...

Is a love of accessories genetic? The girls have gone from shoe obsessed to everything obsessed. They love when I let them pick clothes. They like the My Little Pony socks Santa put in their stocking best ("pony, pony") are super excited about shoes and hats and tutus and getting their hair done… Maybe not the last one so much. They actually hate getting it cut, but they love doing hair flips and mugging in the mirror as soon as we say, “All done.” Pre-bedtime toddler selfies.  Seriously, what two year-old does hair flips? Playing in my shoes has now elevated to playing in my shoes and dragging my giant Voodoo Vixen bag around. Literally dragging because they can’t pick it up because it doubles as a diaper bag and is full of all of our crap. I’d consider cleaning it out so it’s toddler weight, but then the bag may disappear and I’d never see it again, and I would like to wait a few years before my handbags go missing out of my closet. I’ve even recen...

Tomorrow is officially the last day of the year and I feel like Christmas came in and took over my life like some kind of light and tinsel-covered tornado, and then it was gone…and here I am holding the remnants of tamales, homemade truffles, an extra pound, wrapping from 1,000 toys and my holiday cards. Not my holiday cards, but you get the idea. Yep, I didn’t send holiday cards this year. I bought them, but I just never really got around to it. Months ago I made the proud declaration that my family was going to get together and we would do pictures that didn’t suck to the level that they were OK for a holiday card. Each weekend I would think of these pictures and how I really need to bathe the twins and get them to sit still for 20 seconds, and then the thought would leave and move on with whatever else was going on in my life. Some days I would dismiss the thought because I was tired, the kids were dirty, I didn’t feel like fighting with them, someone is cutting a tooth and ...

Lots of stuff about having toddlers is challenging. Like keeping your clothes clean and making sure they don’t eat the dog kibble.  Another challenge that seems to not be getting better is shopping. The first problem is that anywhere we go seems to have only two double carts, both of which are currently being used by someone who has one child and a giant purse that obviously needs its own seat. At Target the don’t even get the excuse that the cart is shaped like a car and Little Timmy was having a meltdown if he didn’t get to ride in the car. Nope. Target has this monstrosity of a double cart that is an extender with two seats facing forward with a basket on the front. It looks like you’re pushing the kids on a roller coaster, except that there’s no rails, the thing can’t turn for shit and it’s not at all fun. Considering that it’s never available, I guess I can’t really complain about it. Instead I make the choice to put one in the seat and one in the basket. That was great ...

I am not one of those women who looked at my post baby body and thought “My body did something amazing.” Nope. I looked at my post baby body and wondered what in the ever loving hell happened. Why was my waist gone, where is that curve between by butt and my back, and for the love of all things holy, where did all this back fat come from?! It did something amazing in making twins, but it also paid a price.  I’ve never been a skinny girl. Instead I have always been the curvy girl who is always one bag of Cheetos away from chubby. In college I crossed over that line straight to fat, and then fought my way back. Post baby I decided to avoid mirrors and let breastfeeding do its thing. Except that it didn’t.  Thanks for the false hope world. I am one of those women whose body wants to hold onto every damn calorie for the baby (or in my case babies). At least I’ve got Salma Hayek in my corner on that one. I don't know why I bother to try to take pictures with to...

Trips to Target are practically a weekend ritual at this point. I obviously need laundry detergent, hand soap and a new coat all at once, and it’s a one stop shop for almost everything. This weekend I tossed the girls onto a cart, one in the seat and one in the basket, and headed inside (where I found the only double cart occupied by one kid). I gave a brief look through the clothes and where they leaned out of the cart in an effort to touch  everything , and we headed to the shoe aisle. Cute stuff but nothing earth shattering, let’s move along. They really liked these .  Oh, S needs winter boots, let’s check those out here. As I slowly navigated the cart into the children’s shoe aisle both girls started getting visibly excited. They stood up in the cart, leaned over, and then both started yelling “SHOES, SHOES!!!” in screechy toddler voice while desperately grabbing at all the shoes they could reach. S pulled her shoes off and threw them to the floor. The ...

I've come to the conclusion that toddlers have a lot in common with pets. Both are entertaining, loving and generally mischievous. Especially the toddlers.  The second you're not looking is when they get into something, and with twins it's really easy to not have one in your sights at all times, which means someone is into something at all times. One kid is trying to dig in her diaper, so you focus on that one and preventing the impending gross event and the other one is eating a dog treat.  One is running around with a dirty sock in their mouth, and while you’re trying to catch them the other one is chewing on a book.  One has managed to open a container of wipes and is pulling them all out and the other one is dumping out a toybox.  We may be spending too much time playing with the dog if this is how we carry toys. I could go on, but you get the idea. There’s more too.  One minute they’re all fun and cuddly, and want to sit on your lap, and th...

I should just give up entirely on writing about something interesting and instead just write about my everyday life. It goes like this: Wake up when it’s dark Shower, get dressed do hair and makeup Take out the dog (This gets its own line because the dog is so freaking slow in the morning I have to block out 10 minutes for him to pee).  Go to work and work all day (If I'm lucky I get a lunchtime workout in) 11 hours later I get home, eat dinner, play with kids and put kids to bed (this is all about an hour and a half) Watch TV and talk with hubby Go to bed Repeat I could never make a dinner like this. Not pictured: a glass of wine I’m going out on a limb here and saying that my schedule looks pretty much like every other working mom’s schedule in the entire world, except that I’m really lucky in that I don’t have to take the kids to daycare or cook dinner. Husband stays home with them and cooks. I used to cook when he worked a million hours a week in an office, bu...

This weekend we were getting ready to go out and as I was putting on shoes I noticed that S’s toes were almost to the end of her sandals. And I mean touching the very top inside. And they were hard to buckle. Apparently the kid’s feet grew overnight and her two month old shoes no longer fit. Of course I work all week, and Stride Rite is 30 minutes away which puts us straight into bedtime assuming I feed them dinner. That’s a recipe for two kids walking around Stride Rite screaming while trying to crawl under fixtures or just making circles while crying. Yes, they do strange things when they’re tired. Of course I need the shoes by Saturday because we have something to do, and I won’t have time in the morning with breakfast and naps and what not, mostly because I want to avoid being that person with two screaming children in a store. Of course there’s the internet, but free shipping is 5 days (i.e. after Saturday) and for some reason I feel like I need to see the shoes if I’m bu...