The sky is bright this morning, the light shown through my bedroom windows, I take out my earplugs to see if I hear the babies awake, no, all quiet. I expect it to be nearly eight, but when I look at the clock it’s 6:30. It feels good to have some time before the babies wake up, then I hear, “Mama” It’s my little boy. Fiona’s still sound asleep. “Do you want to watch one show or come up for breakfast?” I ask. “One show” says Jack. I turn on the T.V., we still have one more day rental of Zootopia, Jack is watching it for the third time.  We all watched it together in bed on fathers day, it’s actually a pretty good movie, I like it. “Did you leave the house today?” Alan asked me last night. “No” I said. “You haven’t left the house since Friday?”  I haven’t, today will be the first time, and in that space between Friday and today, I’ve had to clean up constantly. Yesterday it took me nine hours to finish the dishes. Staying at home with toddlers takes a lot more work, I clean, then Fiona spills a whole box of spaghetti, I ask her to help me pick it up, but in the meantime I need to run outside to the back yard to check on Jack, the dog runs in, the spaghetti gets broken and strewn all over the floor, it becomes a major mess really fast! And Jack and the sand box, finally he’s getting some major use out of it, but little miss won’t stay up there unless I stay up there. Fiona wants to be glued to my hip at almost all times. To combat this, I feed the babies yogurts and watermelon in the back yard, this keeps them occupied. I squirt out finger paints and lay out tons of paper, I set up their dream situation, water, stuff to make a mess with, this keeps them busy for thirty minutes or so, I work on the dishes and study my sign language. Then they start coming in the house and it’s time to spray them off with the hose. Then naptime, and today they go right to sleep.

               We had fun yesterday, I was supposed to have a sitter but she couldn’t come to work. I have no days off this week, only when the babies are at Early Start, school, but that’s not too much and one day is sign language class and one day is our parents group, but I’m taking advantage of it, the time with Jack and Fiona, time I will never get back again. I have a book, “Jennifer’s Walk” from when I was a little girl. I love the book; the little girl looks like me when I was a little girl. I told the babies how it was my book, that it was VERY special to me, (It has regular paper pages) “please don’t rip it” I tell them. I pretend as I’m reading it it’s a story about me when I’m a little girl. Jack loves it, he calls it “The Jenny Book” At the end of the story the mommy is waiting for her little girl with lemonade and cookies. I love that part, a wave of sadness flashed over me right then, missing my mom. She was there for me. I am here for Jack and Fiona, maybe even more than my mom was able to be there for me. But she did make cookies and sun tea, which I thought was so cool. Jack is really watching Zootopia, I brought him down a banana, cliff bar, and glass of milk. Fiona’s still sleeping. The sky is bright blue this morning, it might be a hot day. I hope it’s not too hot after school for a hike!