they like me.

We had such a nice blessing weekend, I'll probably do a little post about it when I upload pictures. Just thought I'd share how cute the girls were this morning. They are so happy and alert after their early morning feeding (somewhere around 7-8 AM), but I'm normally dead tired so I just swaddle them and make futile attempts to get them back to sleep. Yesterday I finally decided not to fight it and play with them. You can tell they just want to play.  They look like this every morning, like they're saying, "Mom, why are you trying to sleep, just look at how cute we are and how much we want to play."

I even did a video, it's kinda cute if you can see past my obnoxious baby voice..

I haven't been able to pin point when the girls started smiling. They've both had a couple random ones with me, but most of their smiles have been while sleeping or eating.  I worried they are just happy dreaming about when they were in heaven, then feel sorely disappointed when they must return back to reality with me.  It's hard to know if a baby really likes you if they don't smile at you.  On more than one occasion when I was at my whit's end I've told Brad they were trying to kill me. (you know, if insufficient sleep and surplus feeding could kill someone..)  What I'm getting at with all of this is that this morning they both intentionally gave me big smiles multiple times, definitely no accident. Subsequently, I think they like me.

YW

The girls had a shower this week from our cute young women.  I've been lucky enough to be a laurel advisor, and even though I've hardly done a thing they've allowed me to stay and have done so much for me! We seriously have the most amazing girls in our ward. 

It was a storybook shower so now I have all these adorable books to read the girls.

I hadn't even heard of most of them so it was fun to have new books to introduce them to.

I'm already thrilled with the books, and I'm sure the girls and all of our children will enjoy them for years to come!

Sick babes

I forgot to mention that one of the princesses got sick at the Hagen kingdom. Our little June got sick this week and I'm just hoping Lyla doesn't get it too. It's gonna be tough cause they share eating utensils... I've been so paranoid and careful with them, then last weekend I start to let my guard down and look what happened, I feel so bad for her.
They had their 2 month appointment on Monday and got some vaccines. So sad to watch them cry. (don't get me wrong, I love vaccines- if everyone were smart there wouldn't have been a big mealses outbreak in our area..) So sad just looking at band-aids on their little legs.

Way more sad watching June feel miserable with red eyes, coughing, sneezing, low-grade fever and struggled breathing through her stuffy nose. I know a little cold is minor, but I can't help thinking how hard it must be for parents to watch their kids suffer when they have more serious illness. Now that I have my own little ones I feel for them even more. Poor little June, I just hope and pray she starts to feel better soon.

little princesses

This royal wedding stuff is kind of a big deal.  There may not have been any paparazzi at our wedding and I didn't become a princess, but I've already gotten 2 little princesses out of this marriage. It may sound cliche, but it doesn't make it any less true!

Try to beat that royal fam, I dare you.

 I love when they link arms.

Oh, how I love them.

It's a good think we've got aunties and grandmas who like to play dress-ups as much as we do! :)

2 months!

I can't believe Lyla and June are 2 months old. I've had some of the longest nights of my life, but time is also flying by.  The girls have basically doubled their weight from when we brought them home from the hospital at 4 lbs 6 oz and 4 lbs 3 oz.  They have graduated 2 diaper sizes. (preemie, newborn, 1!) They aren't the shockingly tiny babes we brought home, they're like normal babies now! (and darling as can be) I can't get over their cuteness. Or their new fatness. I held 5 lb baby twins earlier this week and was in shock that our babies were ever so tiny.  They really do grow so fast! I went shopping after with the idea that we now had "big" babies and got some cute sandals for the girls, I thought the 3 month size would be great, I took it home and it was 4 times the size of their feet. I got newborn ones and they drown them too, I guess the girls still aren't that big.
But once upon a time they were tiny. Head the size of your fist tiny.

J

L

June came out so skinny, look at her little skin rolls:

Not anymore!  See how June has chubbed up her cheeks?
before:

At 2 months:

Lyla started with chubby cheeks, but it was deceptive. She still had a tiny little body.
cute, chubby birth cheeks:

2 months old:

priorities

They won't let me sleep, so I'll blog while I keep sticking binkies back in little mouths...

You may read about different hierarchy of needs in textbooks, but mine go like this:
1. feed babies/change babies/swaddle babies
2. sleep
3. eat
4. play with babies
5. do one thing for the house: groceries, Landry, make dinner, straighten up a room, etc.
6. something more for babies: go for a stroll, tummy time, etc.
7. something for me: a shower, get dressed, etc.
8. something fun to make me feel human: go out to dinner, go shopping, a little break. I'm not sure what else goes here...we don't make it this far down the list all that often.
I'm wishing the babies could understand that when they don't let me sleep it makes a crappy day for everyone. I go into survival mode and only take care of priority #1 and make desperate attempts to make it to priority #2. I feel like such a bad mom after a night of no sleep, its hard to talk or interact with the babies because I just want them to sleep so that I can too. Then I worry I'm delaying their development for my own selfish needs. I already can hold my head up and make noises and smile so I'm fine, even if I don't sleep... I'm just no fun when I don't get any rest. No one wants an ornery, boring mom, but that's what you get when you don't let her sleep. I just don't know how to reason with infants.

Still love the little stinkers. (and remind myself they are often little angels- as pictured above)

whose who

Per request I'm going to show anyone who is curious how to tell June and Lyla apart. They look so different to me I forget it can be hard to tell in pictures, probably impossible if you've never met them before...
When they were first born it was easy because Lyla was the one with the receding hairline, but then her hair started to fill in and June started loosing her hair, but it's already growing back again...so I wouldn't go off of hairlines. :)
LYLA- "little brad" (in cute, girly form) she has longer hair (about 1" long). Her eyes are more almond shaped like Brads and darker. She has bigger lips and a rounder face.

JUNE- "little me" Her hair is shorter. (about 1 cm long) She recently lost her hair in front, but it's already beginning to fill in again. Her eyes are lighter and often open very wide. :) Even though she caught up to her sister in weight and is starting to get some chub, her face is narrower and more heart shaped.

Now you can tell them apart even w/o seeing their hair, right?

If all else fails, they are often seen with their binkies- Lyla has the grey elephant and June has the brown monkey. :)

happy with newborns, it's true :)

I really want to appreciate all the fun and sweet little things I get to experience right now with these two little girls. You could sum up a lot of what I've said over the past weeks to "being a mom of twins is hard, whine, whine, but I love them."  When I'm extremely over tired it is almost immposible for my mind to reason and to appreciate whats going on in my life.  Luckily the good moments are happening more and more frequently, and the hard ones less and less. Hopefully that trend sticks!

Being a mom is quite the thing- it's really incomprehensible until it happens to you- the joy, the love, the lack of sleep- the physical and emotional ups and downs. I was so naive to think I could even imagine what it would actually be like!
When I think about them being older my first thought is how exciting it sounds for them to sleep through the night and not to be constantly feeding them all day. My next thought is that it's kinda sad that they will never be such sweet little cuddly babies again. We will never have sweet little baby Lyla and baby June again, and I know I'll miss a lot of things from this time.
This is what I love:
#1- Lyla and June are both so different. I really feel like they're equally cute, but in such different ways. They are each their own little person and the worst thought in the world is not having both of them in our lives now. In fact, my brain can't even remember what it was like before we knew them. When we called them Lyla and June while they were inside of me, yet had no idea what their little personalities were like or how they would look. Its like they've always been part of our family. They are a part of us.
#2- I love to watch their daddy gush over them.  Brad can be so cute with them and it's fun to see, what a good daddy.
#3- *Sometimes* feeding them is the sweetest little bonding time for me and each of them. I'll just say that.
#4- For some reason I absolutely love the way they like their hands up by their face with their little fingers sticking up while they look around. They're already starting to grow out of the newborn hands by the eyes thing, but whenever they do it I love it, it reminds me of those first few days in the hospital with them when we were just in awe.
#5- I love when they smile, whenever they do it melts my heart.  June is quite the little smiler, and Lyla has been doing it more and more. A couple weeks ago she looked right at me and gave me the biggest smile. I love that.
#6- I love when they're stretching out to wake up, especially when they go flat like a board. Oh, and when they yawn.
#7- I love when they wrap their little fingers around one of mine, I love how my thumb is the size of their palms.
#8- They make the funniest faces and the funniest noises. They are just so sweet and so adorable.
#9- I love watching them look around at the world with their big eyes and wondering whats going on in their head.
#10- It is fun how they are a magnet to posative attention and I get to just stand by the magnet and think "yup, they're mine."  I'm already so proud of them even though all they can do is eat, poop, and be cute.

Being a mom is pretty awesome even right now, but I'm still looking forward to some of the joys of twins that will come in the future!

For example, their conversation at 6 weeks isn't nearly as advanced as those famous 18 month old twins, but they are starting to interact. :)

the little twinners

I take all these adorable pictures with my fancy camera, but I never have time to upload them to my computer. (for some reason they upload as a weird file and I have to convert each one individually...) I'd like someone to upload pics for me so I can then use them to show off my babies via the world wide web more frequently.  Anyways, it's much easier to use pictures from my phone..so this one was taken last week when I ran the girls over to Dr. Jed for another weigh-in:

They're so cute! I should quit running over to Dr. Jed al the time to have them weighed, but we're so close and it's fun.  They weighed 6 lbs 13 oz...both of them, what little twinners! My mother-in-law was over so we got them all dressed up. It was such a lovely, warm day so we went out for a walk and lunch afterwards. I might tell you more about that wonderfulness later if I upload some pictures, but I just have to say it really is fun to go out. Everyone gushing over your babies, telling you how great you look (you know, for having twins)- I could get used to that. Seriously, a walk in the warm sun was as good as sleep, which is completely priceless. Then it snowed...I want that 70's weather back, por favor.  On a more boring note, I had my 6 week appointment today, it felt weird going there not pregnant. My doctor told me I can now do whatever I feel up to (exercise etc), I did not mention to him I really just feel up to sleeping, and walking if it's warm enough outside. :) I have major spring fever.

We got Jimmered

I must tell you I really just don't care about sports. 4 years at BYU and I never even bought an allsports pass. Brad still married me even though he is an extreme sports fanatic, and he knew, I made sure. This year the combo of being in the Hagen family and becoming fascinated by the Jimmer completely changed me. The Hagens got these *amazing* season tickets for Jimmer's last year so we enjoyed a lot of awesome games with awesome seats- here we are at the SDSU game:

We were going to the games up until just before the babies came, by end sitting for that long w/o my feet up did become very uncomfortable- my back would ache and my feet would swell up and hurt. But I still wanted to go. We got a free meal, and I got to see the Jimmer. I actually enjoyed watching him. Plus, basketball makes way more sense than other sports. Jimmer completely changed me. My dad and brothers loved that I cared about basketball. It wasn't just me though, my mom and sisters were known to watch the games...home...alone. This was unheard of in our family before. That boy seriously converted a nation.

Brad made sure that Lyla and June jumped on the bandwagon, they are the cutest little Jimmer fans in the whole world!

Brad even left us to go watch their sweet 16 moment in New Orleans, it was a bit disappointing...but I think they still had a good time. I got the girls dressed up and we all missed daddy.

I must say it was a privilege to watch him play. I'm talking about basketball as a privilege. Weird.
Oh Jimmer, we had such good times.  Thanks for helping me understand how fun basketball can be!

All this being said, I still watched a lot of ESPN this month that I could have done without, and I did it while nursing. So, my new family tradition that I began last year still applies- please see here for a refresher. (Brad: please review!) :)

before babies

I know me and Brad are way more boring than the babies, but a few days before the babies came we took a few pictures I never shared. It makes me feel weird to look at these because it really was like another life. Every once in a while I look at the babies and it feels crazy to think that they're mine. They wouldn't be here without me and Brad. I'm completely responsible for them and have to take care of all their needs. Its weird you don't have to be a certified parent before you leave the hospital- you really don't know how to do anything. Even after a month I'm still just a rookie w/ 2 little guinea pigs...
Anyways, before the girls came we saw a lot of movies, ate at a lot of yummy restaurants, basically did whatever we wanted and really had no comprehension of what was about to hit us.
Here we are all naive and carefree just a couple days before their arrival:

Back then it was harder to blog with the big belly, but I didn't have to decide between things like recording my thoughts, showering, or taking a nap in my 1 1/2 hr window of me time... For some reason blogging is easier than a journal for me, and I can add a few of the millions of pictures I've been taking of the babes!

Here we are eating the yummiest meal at La Caille the week before their arrival: (Brad gave me a groupon thing for Christmas)

We went to my parent's place in Midway with the Hagens and saw the ice sculptures a few days before they were born too!

Oh, yeah- and we dined-in for valentines. I made an awesome meal, who knows if I'll ever make such awesome things again...

So we had some fun and now we're parents. The definition of fun is changing!