Giving Myself A Little Credit

I think I have bad self esteem.

People always tell me that it's okay that I'm overwhelmed and blah, blah, blah, you have baby twins and you work full time, etc. I have mostly felt that this is lip service to make me feel better and also make me shut up so we can talk about something else. Twins are really common now. Lots of people have them and they make it work. Sure, twin parents have a higher divorce rate and twins are more likely to bring with them some different issues, but really, what is the difference? It's just another baby, right?

I admit that this is tougher than I ever thought it would be. It's also way more awesome than I thought it would be, so I try to sweep the feelings of exhaustion under the rug.

The other morning hubby and Ocean were sleeping, so it was just the Nut and I. We ate breakfast together. We took a shower together (she sat on the ledge and pretended to shave her legs, it was super adorable). She sat in the sink and watched me do my makeup. Yeah, I actually put on make up. We put our things in the car and went to the grocery store. She trailed me walking for awhile and got lots of compliments. I came home and we packed our picnic. It was so nice, and it was so easy.

In a regular day where I had to go to work and I had both of them what took me two easy hours to do would normally take 10 hours of craziness. I then realized that I am not being paid lip service, this is hard.

I don't take it back of course. I cannot imagine any kind of universe without Ocean and Ever, but those two hours showed me that I'm not the lazy, chubby, unmotivated loser that I think I am. It's okay if things take me a long time and they aren't perfect because fitting in a work day+2 babies isn't as easy as I thought it would be (that sounds kind of dumb now that I'm reading that, why did I think that would be so easy?). My house isn't clean, my ass isn't firm, my babies don't know sign language, my cooking to eating out ratio isn't phenomenal but IT'S OKAY. The trade off is that I have the two most gorgeous monkey's EVER. I'm not kidding about this. They are so much fun.

I feel so much guilt about working out when the babies are up because I have been gone from them for nearly nine hours, out of necessity for our livelihood, so I don't work out until they are asleep. That's 9:00 p.m. Who the hell wants to work out at 9 at night? It's normal to not want to do that. Not lazy, normal. I must stop comparing myself to my friends who are so in shape and their houses are so much cleaner because 9 times out of 10, if they're working they have a house cleaner or whatever or they are not working and get 9 extra hours 5 days a week (please don't take this as a SAHM vs. Work thing, it's just math, honestly, I know being a mom is a 24 hour gig for all of us!). I need to just worry about myself and what makes me feel whole, not what others are doing and how skinny they are and how in the hell did they afford that vacation/house/car or the ability to stay home. That is what they can do, I need to be my own standard, not others.

Two measly little hours have opened my eyes quite a bit. I need to quit making myself feel bad. Of course everyone has their opionions, but I don't really care about those. I am the one making ME feel bad. No one else is doing it. So I need to stop that. Easier said than done, but I think I can do it.

I ran 5 miles this morning guilt free (I use the term running loosely, it was a lot of walking). The night before last I planned to work out but was too tired and I was okay with it. Baby steps. My babies are so amazing right now, they are funny and they explore and are well adjusted and growing like weeds so I can't suck at parenting obviously. I got some really positive praise at work so I haven't totally effed that up either. Why have all these nice things happened in a few days, good luck? I actually think it might be due to the attitude change. Weird.

There is just nothing in the world like watching these two lovin' on each other. It's delicious.