Over the past few months there have been a lot of changes occurring in the Meek household. In part because a new baby is on the way and, well, we're just growing up!

About a month and a half ago we started using cups at every meal...no more sippies for us! We have transitioned to milk only in glasses and water during the rest of the day. I've also gotten rid of all the plastic...no more plastic cups (we use the same glasses mom and dad drink out of), no more plastic plates, etc. We're big kids now and we eat like it!

Three weeks ago we took the sides off of the cribs and are now sleeping in big kid beds. This transition has exceeded all my expectations! We decided against rails- have to learn sometime right?!- so the first few nights there were a few fall outs but other than that not one issue! The babes have yet to come downstairs, they don't put up a fight before going to sleep and for the most part stay in their beds. Yes, on occasion we play in our room a little before mom or dad comes to visit, but one trip upstairs is all it takes! In the mornings Fin likes to play by herself for awhile before waking up her brother...she like to take all of her things and pile them into her bed. Maybe it's a twin thing, but it seems like their beds are really theirs. It's like the one place they have that truly belongs to them. I think Fin puts things in her bed as if to claim them!

I don't trust women who tell me that they love being pregnant...are they out of their minds?! There are only two reasons a woman says this: 1) they are too old and too far removed from the actual 9 months they spent being miserable so can now recall the time with great fondness and 2) they are super skinny women who gain only 12 pounds total, don't start showing until 8 months, and whose only pregnancy related 'symptom' is that they have to pee more often. The first group gets a pass and the second group just serve to really annoy me. Obviously there are a ton of really beautiful things going on during pregnancy but the reality is that the majority of things goin' on are disgusting and painful and all in all sucky...here is my list of top ten:

1) Belly touching. Enough said.

2) People ask you a lot (and I mean a lot) of personal questions- "When are you due? Are you planning to breastfeed? Are you having a c-section? My (insert family member here) is pregnant and she...."

3) People treat you like you are completely incapacitated. I am not broken, I can still lift, walk, carry, and stand up. Although you are being nice to incessantly offer that I do none of the above your niceness sometimes really gets under my skin. If I need help I will ask. Promise.

4) When you are pregnant with two year old twins you receive a lot of unsolicited comments- things like, "Looks like you're going from one on one to zone." Yup, looks like it.

5) You get fat. Really this should be numbers 5-10. On the one hand you feel entitled to eat that entire box of cookies (yes, I did this a few days ago) because you are growing a life dammit! But then again when you start looking like a linebacker you tear up from the unfairness of it all...

6) Looking like a linebacker. What is it about pregnancy that turns women into football players? Faces get puffy, necks become slightly less defined, the fat on the backs of our arms and tops of our shoulders doubles, making us appear hunched over slightly even when we are doing our best to keep our chin up and spines straight because we know that we now totally look like Terrell Suggs.

7) When you sit down your formerly smallish chest now rests on top of your formerly smallish stomach creating a type of fat roll that t-shirts get stuck in and sweat loves to pool under. I'm so grossed out that I even just wrote that...

8) Stretch marks. You're kidding yourself by lubing up in cocoa butter. If you have so much as one on your body pre-pregnancy, guess what? You're gonna get lots and lots by the time you're done. I was so excited when I was pregnant with the twins that at 35 weeks and a ginormous belly I had NOT ONE stretch mark. After all I would be delivering any day so I was going to totally escape them, right?! I got my first one after going to see a movie at 36 weeks pregnant (the image of that little purple stripe is seared into my memory forever). I locked myself in the bathroom and bawled hysterically. To say they spread like the plague would be an understatement...

9) Vomiting, swelling, bulging veins, big cotton underwear, sports bras, dye free hair, really loose clothing, big brown spots on your face, exhaustion, peeing ALL THE TIME, you can't get comfortable enough to sleep while at the same time you've never been more tired in all your life...how many is that?

10) Did I mention you get fat? Sixteen additional pounds at 22 weeks and I'm feeling MISERABLE about all the fatness...a number my OB is "proud of." I got news for her, I can make her a lot more proud in the next 18 weeks...Go on, say it- 'linebacker.'

Brian: "I thought you would do nothing for at least a week after the party."


NOT A CHANCE! I have done very little with the new babe's room and there is soo much to do! This week I have stripped the dresser and it is now awaiting paint. The baseboards have been filled (we added a quarter round after tearing up the carpet and the nail gun holes needed to be filled). And I have painted the window casings. Yesterday I took apart the guest bed- which B pointed out was a terrible idea as we have lots and lots of guests coming to stay between now and January 5th. Whoops. They'll understand it was getting in my way of nesting, right?! I got into a little bit of trouble for lifting the dresser onto towels and pushing it across the room (one of the reasons I despise being pregnant- people treat you like you are handicapped!) but all in all a good start for this week.


Next up, painting the doors and baseboards, then the walls a delicious dovetail gray (two of which will have 18" horizontal stripes in high gloss contrasted against the flat), and finding the perfect rug. The latter of which is giving me some serious problems.

Brian, it's just what I do...

Three months ago I sat down and started making these...


I think they (all THIRTY SIX) turned out marvelously! I am super proud of my non-creative self!


Every fence post and pony cut by my non-crafty hands, fonts were downloaded, tails were tied, and raffia was attached...five more days until my little ones celebrate turning two!

Manga and Papa threw the babes a Dora luncheon celebration this afternoon...

Complete with cake and candles- candles that we can now blow out all by ourselves because we are two whole big years old!


The hands down favorite gift of the afternoon was the electronic Dora toothbrushes...they won't take them out of their mouths.



Or perhaps it was the books...no, maybe the stuffed animals...hmm, the cash register...


Definitely the new grocery store!


The best part of the whole morning, however, was when we announced at 1:30 that it was time to head home and take a nap. Fin literally started running around the family room and grabbing everything she had just opened, throwing it into a bag and then headed for the door. No goodbyes, no thank you's, no shoes, no help, just her and an enormous bag of gifts.


She carried them all the way to the car and, let me tell you, she was in a hurry to get them home. I think she thought that if she left without them she'd never see them again...

I read an article in Parents magazine about how the two year checkup was hands down the worst doctor's appointment ever. In preparation I called Dr. Joe about an oral medicine that can be prescribed to numb deep tissues 12 hours before shots. He sent me the study debunking the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal article I had read. I gave them tylenol for the first time pre-shots instead. We left the house with blankets and binkies and suckers and snacks and milks, ready for what lay ahead. I was nervous.

In the waiting room Parker started to do laps around the chairs- one of his favorite pastimes. He likes to count how many 'laps' he has run. We had a fabulous visit with the doc, the babes are off the charts in almost everything. Music to this proud mama's ears.


Parker weighs in at 36 pounds 7.5 ounces and is 39.5 inches long. A measurement apparently so unbelievable for a two year old that nurse measured him THREE different times...just to be sure I suppose.

Our little peanut comes in at only 27 pounds and is 37.25 inches long. To say my children are 'off the charts' is a little bit of an understatement...how tall is it when you're six and a half boxes above 95%?

They say that if you double children's heights at two you will have a pretty good guesstimate about how tall they will be as adults. This puts Parker at 6 feet 6 inches tall and Fin at a little over 6 feet tall...I'm not so sure how accurate this is. We have amazon children. Where did this height come from? Did they forget that they were twins and by unwritten definition they are supposed to be puny? I swear this next child is going to be over 12 pounds at birth...no problem.

We received two HUGE packages in the mail today right before our naps. We tore into them to find an awesome birthday present from Mimi and Pops- a huge tent that hangs from the ceiling! Getting them to go down was no easy task and when they woke up a few hours later they hadn't forgotten...to the basement they went and in the tent is where they played all day!

I started to feel the twins move when I was only eleven weeks pregnant. I suppose it had something to do with it being my first pregnancy and them being so squeezed in there. At my last OB appointment my only concern was that I had still not really felt the baby moving much...fast forward to this morning. The ultrasound tech said she had never seen such an active baby before. He was literally doing somersaults in my uterus onscreen. His hands were going this way and that, his perfect little legs kicking all the while. An hour later he was still at it. During my OB appointment she tried to find his heartbeat and all that could be heard was the whooshing noises the little machine picks up when the baby is moving...after a few minutes she started laughing and said 'how can I be worried about his heart when he's moving this much?' I suppose I have nothing to worry about...