Last week Adam told me the weather would be nice for my birthday.

“My birthday is on the weather channel?” I asked.

Well, I guess if it’s there I can no longer ignore it. I’m turning 40.

The first thing I did was to call my mother and apologize. For the present I got her on her 40th birthday. It was a sweatshirt with the catchy slogan “over 40 and feeling foxy” on the back. I now understand why she never wore it in public.

Everyone came together to make me feel incredibly special today. I was continually surprised and humbled.

I was greeted with cards and presents in the morning. Adam let the kids pick out their own cards for me. All were hilarious, Jack picked out a Grave Digger Monster Truck card for me, but Ben’s pick was the best…

I was also presented with a brand new iPad. And there is MORE! I got the Vibram Five Finger shoes I’ve been wanting. I guess there is no excuse not to start exercising again now.

Our afternoon sitter Angelica came a few hours early to give me some time to myself. She even picked up cupcakes for me on her way over. Adam came home early from work and brought sushi for dinner.

But the biggest surprise of the evening came at dinner.

I was talking to Jack about his favorite book, “Happy Birthday to You” by Dr. Seuss. He makes us read it to him EVERY night and he has the thing memorized.

I jokingly asked him if the birthday bird was coming to visit me today. He said no, that’s silly. We don’t live in Katroo. But he was mistaken because not 10 minutes later…

The older boys were so excited that they ran back to their rooms to put on their own costumes. Smart little kids that they are, they realized it was not, in fact, big bird in our living room.

Big Bird was actually sent to me from 5 very special friends in my life. We have been tight ever since high school and even though we are spread across the states in Alaska, New York, Atlanta, Denver, Chicago and Florida, we continue to stay close. Thank you Heather, Holly, Gina, Jessica and Kate. Now I can’t wait until YOU ALL turn 40!

But wait! The party isn’t over yet! The celebration continues into the weekend. My girlfriend Pam told me to dress up, she’ll pick me up at 7pm on Friday night. No other information was forthcoming.

Sunday night Adam is taking me to Alinea, a restaurant so disturbingly expensive you’d have to turn 40 just to visit it.

As my evening came to a close tonight, I couldn’t help but reflect a bit. My thoughts drifted back a decade. To my 30th birthday. Sitting on the balcony of my newly rented Shanghai apartment. I had moved there the month before and didn’t know a soul in that city. I remember finding an inner peace that night. I realized I had been dating half my life and still hadn’t found prince charming. I made a pact with myself. If he never showed up, I could learn to live with that. After all, I was a fresh implant in a city I had always dreamed of inhabiting. I had a good job, the world of possibilities in front of me.

Shortly after I stopped being so desperate, as soon as I gave up the hope, prince charming arrived. In Jamaica of all places.

The next decade took me on a journey greater than my wildest dreams. Okay, they were more like nesting dreams. But they still exceeded anything I could have imagined. I won the trifecta. Most single girls in their 30s dream of a good husband, a couple of healthy kids, and no money worries. I exceeded the mark on all three.

Which makes turning 40 not such a bad thing.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Should I make them use forks?

Kids do so many things wrong sometimes it’s hard to focus on what they do right. Or hard to know which bad thing you should try to correct.

The other morning Jack pushed his naked behind in Sam’s face and asked him to “smack my butt.” So wrong on so many levels.

So was Ben’s comment later that day that he was going to “poop on my head”.

Should I break them up?

No Jack, you can not grab my boobs when we strip down for the bath and shower.

No Ben, it’s not okay to tell someone you are going to “cut them dead”. Where did you even get that anyway?

And don’t get me started on how I need to work more on stopping Ben from unrolling the entire roll of toilet paper every time he goes potty. Or how I need to get him to understand that it’s NOT OKAY to throw a hissy fit every time he doesn’t get his way.

And how Jack needs to clean up his potty mouth. For about three years now every 2nd or 3rd word is poop, booty butt, or buttcakes. He’s like the Spongebob of sailor mouths.

Then there are other things that are less obvious.

My bruiser right now is Ben, but Sam has such an iron grip I think he’s eventually going to give Ben some competition. But for now, it seems Jack is always crying for Ben to get off him, even though I know half the time he instigates it. Last month I caught Ben trying to hug Aaron by straddling him and laying his entire body on top him.

What do you have in store for me?

And Jack has started to get a manipulative edge that I’m not sure if I should leave alone or correct. On the one hand, I love it because it shows how clever he is. That he can get a toy off Ben without just grabbing it and making him cry shows a certain level of sophistication. “Ben, can I help you with that? Ben, do you want me to hold that for you?” 

The other side of me thinks I should point out to Ben that he’s just been snookered.

It makes me look at my two, innocent little twins and think, “What kind of hell are you going to put me through in the next few years?”

[The day after I wrote this Ben, doing Jack’s bidding, peed on me while I was sitting on the couch breast feeding]

It’s funny how everyone says one twin looks like Jack, the other Ben. But they don’t always pick the same twin!

Like our friend Morgan said, “They are all different. They are all Calisoffs, but they are all different.”

So, here are pictures of all the kids at 6 months old. To settle it once and for all … maybe…

I’m now thinking maybe it was Ben who was switched at the hospital?

It took me some time to realize why I was extra tired this week.

I thought maybe it was Sam’s new habit of feeding between 3 and 4, then getting up for the morning by 4:30am. Or maybe it was because most nights this week Ben has called out and woken us up around 1 or 2am. Or maybe we just weren’t going to bed early enough? By the time the kids go to sleep Adam and I spend about an hour together if we are lucky. I’d hate to be unconscious during that precious time.

Last night I fell asleep before Ben when I tucked him in. This morning after dropping Adam at work I decided to stop at Whole Foods. When I turned around, both twins were asleep. I quickly locked my doors, reclined the seat and took a quick nap too.

Somehow Adam and I stumbled upon the antibiotics I was using to clear my mastitis. He read the side of the bottle.

“Augmentin?” He said. “That stuff will knock you out. That’s the stuff she [our doctor] gives me when I have a sinus infection. You’ll have diarrhea in a few days too.”

Now I know why every decision I’ve made this week is fraught with tentativeness. When you are so tired, everything seems like such an effort.

The Twins with our long time Cleaner, Patricia

Oh well, I just have to make it the 10 day cycle. At least I don’t have a runny stomach. Augmentin never messed with the a girl who lived in China for years. It will give you bowels of steel.

Sometimes I’m amazed how much we manage to get out and about now that we’ve become such a large family. That we can still live somewhat of a normal life. I know other people are surprised. I watch their faces, people who hold doors open for us in awe, like watching clowns exiting a tiny car.

Meli Cafe

This morning we managed to make it to breakfast at our favorite breakfast spot, Meli Cafe.

Adam alternated between sitting and eating and standing up jiggling a baby to sleep, Sam was strapped to him the entire time. He also was feeding another baby at one point, then Japo took over. Ben and Jack ate okay, and if I ignored the poopy jokes I could say that Jack almost behaved well. Ben treated his eggs like playdoh and as a result had his chair turned backwards twice to sit in a time out. Aaron was an angel, no crying and playing nicely in his car seat the entire time. He was definitely switched at the hospital at birth.

In truth there is probably nothing normal about it. Couples without kids shrink away in horror. I’m sure we do more for birth control than any Planned Parenthood ever could. But still, going to breakfast on the weekends is something Adam and I did even before kids, so  it makes it all seem normal, even if it’s just the patina of normal.

I woke this morning with a bout of mastitis. My right breast was lumpy and sore. A hot shower and long pumping session did nothing to relieve the pain. I remember my friend Jennie telling me she tried to eradicate mastitis herself. She ended up with only one producing boob, which made her quite lopsided. I know breast feeding is going to make me saggy, but lopsided and saggy is too much!

So I called the doctor right away and got a prescription for antibiotics. I’m already feeling a bit better tonight.

This year we kept Thanksgiving small, just my mother and Adam’s mother and her husband. Five adults and four children.

Swinging at Oz Park

It freed us up to play in the park on this glorious morning. We ended up serendipitously meeting our friends the Bransfields. They also have 4 kids and together decided to picnic lunch. We were quite a show of force with our two families and five strollers between us. The only place open was McDonalds, the kids were in heaven.

I’d love to paint a Norman Rockwell picture of our dinner, but the truth is that Jack and Ben were little terrors. We spend most of the evening telling them to sit down and eat. But otherwise I’d say the evening was a success.

We cooked the turkey on the barbecue to free up the oven. Which we filled with stuffing, corn pudding, sweet potatoes roasted with a bit of honey and olive oil, roasted brussel sprouts. Mom whipped up a cranberry relish the day before. Adam’s mom brought apple pie.

We have so much to be Thankful for!