A rollercoaster of a post

You are going to be so jealous of me, and pity me so much, all within the space of a few measly paragraphs. Maybe less!

I gained either 25 or 35 pounds during my twin pregnancy, depending on whether you count the 10 pounds that I lost from barfing during the first trimester, and then regained.

A week after I gave birth to said twins, I stepped on the scale and learned that I had lost all of my pregnancy weight.

Since then, I've gained 10 pounds. Actually, I gained 10 pounds rather promptly after that. In spite of my learning that breastfeeding burns calories and helps you lose weight, and that breastmilk cures pinkeye, waxes your floors, buffs your hubcaps, and fellates your husband for you (ok, I made that last part up), it apparently doesn't burn enough calories that the new mother can consume two of her friend's homemade-but-professional-quality chocolate chip cookies....with each meal. I feel cheated.

So, once I realized that I was basically heavier four or five months postpartum than when I was four or five months pregnant, I set about to lose the weight, all by myself, without the assistance of any formal program.

Surely, my naturally sensible sensibilities would serve me well. I knew I had to get exercise. I knew I had to eat soundly, but that I shouldn't be too restrictive, lest I set myself up for failure. I should clearly factor reasonable treats into my eating plan.

M&M's Fun Packs, at 90 calories, are clearly reasonable treats, no? Ditto miniature Butterfingers, miniature Nestle's Crunches, and bags of pretzels. Oh, wait. Bags of pretzels aren't reasonable treats. But that's ok; I don't polish one off in one sitting too frequently. And it's important not to deprive yourself on special occasions--such as Sundays, for example, or when the local restaurant serves chocolate chip waffles as a special. What happened to my bag of Butterfingers? Who ate them all?

Do you see where this is heading?

Where this is heading is that I had a few hours to myself, and used it to clean out my closet. And realized how much stuff not only doesn't fit anymore, but REALLY doesn't fit.

I took a good long look at what I was doing, and I realized that, after 30 years of age and a twin pregnancy, I can't do this anymore. I am no longer the girl who can eat anything and get away with it.

So, last Thursday, I signed up for Weight Watchers, spontaneously. And, since then, I've lost two pounds. One of those pounds may be due to the enormous chunk of skin that one of my children gouged out of my nose mere moments after smiling and cooing and gazing lovingly into my eyes, but, hey, a pound is a pound.

The first few days were really hard. I'm allowed 19 points a day. A cup of tea with milk and sugar is two points. A regular bagel with butter is nine points. NINE. As surreal as the Fellini film upon which the musical of the same number is based. (You don't get the reference? 8 1/2, ok? The film is 8 1/2; the musical is Nine. There; now you can go to cocktail parties and be as faux-pretentious as me.)

Have I mentioned that I rank artificial sweeteners somewhere near the Olive Garden and unwanted dinner-hour telephone solicitations on the List of Things That I Don't Like?

But, I want my ass back, if only because I'm too cheap to go out and buy all new pants.

And, since I'm not a cheerleadery-meetings sort of person, I'm doing it alone, online, with only the other sarcastic, antisocial weight-denialists for company. So, to keep myself vaguely accountable, I will attempt to update you all on my progress. Wish me luck! And Happy Halloween!

Calm down

Knowing that I'm a churchgoing Catholic, and therefore an Official Spiritual Person, a friend once asked me whether I believed in the concept of soulmates--more specifically, whether I believed that there is one person out there for each of us. My answer was, no, not really. I think there are many people out there that each of us could be compatible with, and I think that a marriage that's as practical as it is romantic is more likely to succeed.

I do, however, think it's important to marry the right person. For me, one of the biggest indicators that my husband was the right person was that ours was a relationship in which the person that I was before I met him didn't get lost. How's that for a mouthful? I'll explain even further. So many of us have had relationships in which we've given things up--from little things, like our single-person routines, to big things, like our friendships, our beloved activities, or even our identities. The end of such a relationship is double-devastating; you've given up yourself for this other person, and then you lose even the other person. You're faced with the prospect of having to meet someone else, but, before you can do that, you must get your own life back on track.

With Ty, I always felt like, devastated though I'd be if our relationship ended, I would still be myself. I'd still be the same celebrity gossip-loving, bad music-listening, semicolon-overusing person. Even though I've given up some things in the course of our relationship--even some things I used to think were big things--I've either learned that they really had very little to do with who I am, or I've given them up, willingly, for our greater good.

What am I getting at? Sorry about the crappy transition--do you see what time I'm posting this? What I'm getting at is that I don't remember the date of my last post. Having children has completely changed my ability to blog. I'll admit it--I thought, briefly, about stopping, and even discussed it with C.S. And the conclusion I've come to is that writing, in any form, is very important to me, and this blog, in particular, is very much a part of who I am. I love reading my comments. I look forward to Wordgirl's newest blog designs. I get a kick out of people finding Tink's blog by Googling "arabella tits" or whatever. In describing to a friend the feeling I had after giving birth, I explained it as a feeling similar to the feeling I had after meeting up with blog friends in Savannah. I just can't give it up.

What I can do is stop focusing on my dwindling site statistics and stop apologizing for my long absences. So, even if it's been awhile since my last post, please know that, at the crack of dawn some morning, I will finish feeding my boys and lie awake, in bed, restless, thinking of writing, until I ultimately give in and post before returning to bed, bleary-eyed but happy.

As I tell my children, Mommy always comes back.

An open letter to people who advised me to have children

Dear People,

I knew this wouldn't be all peaches, unicorns, and rainbows. I expected sleepless nights. I expected my home to become infested by myriad weird, child-clinging bacteria. I expected urine all over my favorite furniture. I expected spit-up on my J. Crew suit. I even expected to outgrow said J. Crew suit (though not quite to this extent, but, hey, whatever). Even the twice-daily Mixing of the Vats of Formula, the Wriggling on the Changing Table, the Struggling to Get Sheets on the Mini-Crib Mattress, the Great Post-Bath Oatmeal Bowl Upset, the constant Lugging of Huge, Heavy Piles of Shit Everywhere We Go, the Delirium Resulting from Exposure to Too Much Electronic-Toy Bach, the Brilliance of the Infant Pain Relieving Medication Containing Red Dye, and the Screaming When I Will Not Provide the Baby With His Own Cup of Steaming Hot Tea are not entirely outside the realm of the unprecedented.

But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, warned me about The Endless, Endless Kicking of the Breasts and Genitals.

And this is information that would have proved useful. As in, condom-coupled-with-spermicide-and-the-sponge-and-the-Pill useful.

Biting of the breasts was one thing; that went with the breastfeeding territory. I signed on for that. But I never imagined, in a million years, that I would be signing on for bright mornings of picking up my sweet, smiling infant son from his crib, lovingly enduring his misguided affection as he gouges me in the eye, gurgles, and blows raspberries in my face, and then kissing the top of his sweet, baby-scented head and carrying him over to the changing table, singing all the while, prior to him serving five rapid-succession swift, efficient kicks to my C-section scar.

Then, of course, I finish changing his watery, poopy diaper (while he wriggles to and fro, trying to shove the Desitin and the dirty diaper in his mouth simultaneously), deposit him into his bouncy seat, and pick up his brother, patting myself on the back for the fact that his brother has only been crying for three minutes while I changed the other baby. The second baby, upset at not being in someone's arms, is equally upset at being in someone's arms, and promptly flings his fist against my breasts, head-butts my chin, and kicks me in the C-section scar, all within a four-second time span.

I might also add that this is when the phone starts to ring--both landline and cell--and the doorbell buzzer buzzes, typically for the delivery of someone else's package, except the carrier is too lazy actually to read the name on the bell and match it to the package.

Need I add that I'm unshowered and unbreakfasted? And that one phone call was about an extremely significant issue and one phone call was about an insignificant issue, and I'm not sure which one pissed me off more?

Sincerely,
Arabella