I wouldn’t exactly call myself an extrovert.  While I have a bunch of great friends, I’m not exactly the type that likes everyone to know everything about me.  I’m quiet by nature and in truth that’s how I like it.  Every once in awhile I’ll be crazy and my husband and I will make friends with “outsiders” on vacation but then we end up regretting it because we end up seeing those same people non-stop and then we feel like we HAVE to talk to them every single time.  So the idea of having a blog and having others know my business is a little scary. 

But I started following a few blogs this year, not many but just enough that I remember to check in on them every so often.  I thought to myself this is a great way to not forget!  When the girls were nearing their first birthday I decided to write them a letter.  I was already starting to forget how hard and tiresome (but worth it) those first few months were and I wanted to always have those memories fresh in my head.  I was starting to forget some of their milestones.  I don’t know if was pregnancy brain that never went away or the fact that as each month passed, I was just amazed at their development and these little people who they were becoming that it was easy to forget events that happened months prior.  I found that each passing day with the girls brought so much joy that the days of the three hour feeding cycle through the night and functioning on only a few hours sleep while not so long ago, had long been forgotten. 

So I wrote them each a letter for their first birthday.  For now, it remains in their Baby Book, but one day they will have it to read.  I want the events and memories to always be vivid and vibrant.  I want the girls to one day be able to know all the wonderful things we did as a family, they learned or did for the first time, and the emotion accompanying it all.

I decided I would write a letter to the girls on every birthday.  But what was missing from these letters was pictures!  Justin is an awesome photographer.  He has such a passion for it, which is great because I LOVE having so much of the girl’s lives documented, and I can barely operate the camera.  This is not a joke…when I do take a picture I often cut out a few heads in the process.  Anyway, right now we have pictures galore downloaded to our computer and I wanted a way to tie my “journals” with Justin’s pictures. 

I want the girls to know how much I LOVE being their Mommy!  I always knew I wanted kids but I was never one of those women that felt like motherhood was my sole purpose in life.  When Justin and I got married, we knew that we wanted to experience life as a married couple for a few years.  We were enjoying life and vacations to the Caribbean and Europe that we knew would be infrequent once kids came along. But once we these little boogers came along, life has been WONDERFUL!  They have managed to light up our lives in ways I never knew possible.  I couldn’t be more in love with my kids. I love them so much that literally sometimes it hurts…CRAZY! 

So here we are and the time has arrived that I have gone from Stalker Blogger to Blogger. 

This may sound silly but one thing I don’t want to forget is that the girls drank breast milk until they were 13 months old.  I don’t want to forget because I consider this a HUGE accomplishment!  I don’t know that I ever had a true goal because I didn’t want to set myself up for failure, but I can honestly say that I was hoping to make it to at least 6 months but was going to be happy if I even made it through 3 months.  It was a huge time commitment but I had a great support system at home and at work who made the difficult task less challenging.  When the girls were 13 months and I completely stopped nursing and pumping, it was bittersweet.    On average I spent close to 4 hours pumping and or nursing everyday, prior to the last few months when I started weaning!   I HAD TWINS…there are not 4 extra hours in the day!!!!   Again, I am so proud of myself…no matter how tired or frustrated I ever was, I never once wanted to fold in the towel.  But now I must admit it is nice to have that extra time back in my day and now that my evenings are “free” I should have more time to cook and workout and sleep!  One definite bummer is that now that I’m done nursing and pumping, I have to start watching what I eat again.  This entire year was the first time in my life I could eat ANYTHING I wanted and I was still a size 2!  That is so not me so for once in my life it was so wonderful to live in the body of a naturally skinny person. Oh, if only that would last forever!

Anyway, LET’S BLOG!!!