I tend to remember our time pre-twins as “The Golden Years” and the time post-twins as “Feeling Nostalgic about The Golden Years.” Not that our past three (-and-a-half, almost!) years since Adam and Gianna were born haven’t been incredibly amazing or anything; it’s just those first years “just the three of us” were pretty special and I’m sure if you have more than one child you know exactly what I mean.
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Just before Noah was born we moved into this really nice, cute (code for “small”) apartment in New Hope, MN. It was funny because we had just gotten married and now we were going to have our first baby and my mom totally took the name of our new city as an omen that things were going to be just perfect for us — she even had us pose for pictures in front of the big water tower with the words “NEW HOPE” on it, she was so excited. Andy made Star Wars references that I still don’t “get”. (That memory makes me smile!)
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I really loved that apartment and I loved living in New Hope. We were still close enough to the city that it only took about 15 minutes to drive downtown, yet we were far enough out in the suburbs that houses had huge decks and big back yards. Our apartment was really nice and I was especially excited about the dishwasher and the cleanliness after having spent the past four years in either the dorm or crappy one-bedroom apartments, as well as falling-down-death-traps on campus rented out by slimeball landlords charging insane rent but refusing to get up to code.
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Anyway, we only lived there for about two weeks before Noah was born and it was such a great time. He fit into our lives so much more easily than I expected possible, and I loved being a mom. Andy would come home from work and I’d be trying (and usually failing) to make something edible for dinner while wearing Noah in his sling; sometimes we’d decide just to go out for dinner — Noah was so portable!
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We lived in that apartment for a little over two years, but then decided we needed a bigger place to live when we found out we were expecting twins! We looked at houses at first, but the market hadn’t turned yet and I was really frustrated that I couldn’t find anything I liked in our price range. I got panicky as I got further along, so when I was about 25 weeks pregnant with the twins we moved into a 3-bedroom townhome just down the block from our old apartment. We finally had our own yard (kind of) and I daydreamed about the days the following summer where I’d spend all day outside with two little babies on a blanket next to me as we watched their older brother play in the grass. (Ha! That never happened! I so underestimated the power of newborn twins…)
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So after the twins were born a few months after moving into our new home, I started feeling really guilty about my “lost” relationship with Noah. The twins were exhausting and I never had time to do the things I used to do with Noah, like read him a book before bed or take him grocery shopping. I was seemingly always nursing! Haha!
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Now, to the whole point I was trying to get at with this post –
One day Andy came home from work and I had had an especially tiring day. I started crying as soon as he came in the house and told him how guilty I felt for “abandoning” Noah. Next thing I knew, he was shoving me out the door behind Noah, saying, “I’ve got the twins; you go have some time with Noah.” I didn’t really know what to do (couldn’t go anywhere–twins were guaranteed to want to eat in about 44 minutes, if that) so we just got out Noah’s new tricycle he had gotten for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Levasseur and he pedaled up and down the driveway. I could hear the babies crying all the way across the parking lot even though the windows were closed (we always closed them around this time of night because Gianna’s colic was like clockwork and we didn’t want to disturb the neighborhood) and I could see Andy standing in the patio door watching us with a baby in both arms. But I just stayed with Noah and felt the stress all melt as I listened to him just chatting away.
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I love this video so much. At age 2.5, Noah had a seriously impressive vocabulary. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the babies crying in the background.
