Response to Sandy's "Little White Pill"

Doug-

So it turns out that after giving me crap for buying ice cream on my Tylenol run the other night, Sandy actually likes the ice cream treats more than I do and has probably eaten more of them than I have. Funny how that worked out.....

Anyway, yesterday we hit some garage sales looking for baby stuff and didn't find anything we liked. However, I found something even better:

Here it is all set up in the twinkies' room. The Jeff Gordon car is much faster than the Jimmy Johnson car (which means I beat Sandy every time we race).

It's going to be so cool to have kids.

Pictures from Sonoma Vacation

Doug-

Above is a slideshow from our vacation trip to Sonoma, Tahoe and Great Basin National Park. We took the trip roughly the last week of July, first week of August and the main reason for taking the trip was to allow me to try and do an Ironman-distance triathlon in Sonoma County, the "Vineman" (http://www.vineman.com/triathlon.htm). We drove from Durango to Oakland, CA over the course of two days (with an overnight in beautiful Kingman, AZ) and spent two nights there with my old law school friends Matt and Ruth-Ann and their 19 month old son Jonah (http://jonahbaer.blogspot.com/). We had a good time talking about Jonah and the twinkies with Matt and Ruth-Ann and then we drove up to Guerneville, CA where we rented a townhome for a week. Sandy's brother Scott, his wife Molly and their 18 month old daughter Audrey joined us a day later and we had a great week hanging out with them, going to the beach, visiting vineyards and taking naps. The day of the triathlon dawned sunny and clear, which was great for the swim, but not so great when it shot up to 97 degrees by the end of the bike (the beginning of the run). I made it through a little more than half of the run (15 miles) before eventually succumbing to the heat and I ended up spending about 5 hours in the medical tent afterwards trying to re-hydrate, eventually taking an IV (no small thing considering my fear of needles). It was a bummer.

Anyway, two days after the triathlon we drove to Lake Tahoe (with a stop in Sacramento for Sandy to visit IKEA and for me to get Chipotle) and spent two nights at Emerald Bay camping, hiking, biking and napping (well, Sandy did most of the napping). Then we spent a day driving around the lake and across U.S. Hwy. 50 in Nevada (a fascinating drive, to say the least) to Great Basin National Park, the least visited National Park in the U.S. system in Baker, NV (pop. 65, http://www.greatbasinheritage.org/baker.htm). We spent two nights in a 1950's era Baker, NV motel room (http://www.greatbasinpark.com/whisperingelms.htm), visited the Park and toured the great cave system they have at GBNP. We had dinner at this really cool little cafe and coffee shop (http://www.silverjackinn.com/index.html) and then bought ice at the general store (http://www.greatbasinpark.com/td.htm), thus supporting all three businesses in Baker. Baker was a riot, and then we made the drive back to Durango to see the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics.

Anyway, if you want to see larger versions of the photos, you can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/gilpinsk.

The Little White Pill

Sandy here:

So, last night I needed some regular strength Tylenol. We had some extra strength, but the doctor had told me to take regular strength (it was to combat some lasting effects of that ocular migraine). Well, I'm a rule follower and a bit hormonal (pregnant woman hormonal? I know, you heard it here first), so there was only one option. Doug had to leave the comfort of our house at 8:30 at night to go get some. I had always thought the first "late night pregnancy run" he would have to do would be something more exciting.

And Doug? He got himself some ice cream.

We Are All Made of Stars

Sandy here:

Last night I was in the shower (I LOVE night showers) when I suddenly noticed that when I closed my eyes I started seeing these bright yellow jagged things off to the side of my vision (they were moving a bit). They looked something like these:

http://www.perret-optic.ch/optometrie/symptomes_diagnostiques/symptomes/symptomes_image/opto_migraine_ophtalmic.gif

Minus the whole clock thing. When I opened my eyes they were still there, just not as bright. It was very bizarre and I imagined that it must be similar to what could happen to people who trip on acid. It only lasted for about 15 minutes, but then my vision was somewhat blurry--almost like I needed glasses. I was pretty calm throughout the whole thing, although Doug was much more worried. Long story short: It went away, I talked to the doctor's office this morning who said I probably had an ocular (or opthalmic) migraine. They said it's really nothing to worry about unless it happens again. I suppose in retrospect it was kind of fun to have a "freebie."

Responses

Doug-

So you get a lot of interesting responses when you tell people you are having twins, especially when you're talking to a guy that has just recently gone through (or is going through) the young child experience himself. Most of them just laugh, or if you are Sandy's brother Scott, you say something like this:

"You guys are screwed."

Which was echoed almost word for word by our friend Matt, who said:

"You guys are fu**ed."

Maybe so, but the opposing theory, posited by my boss and a few others, is that if you're going to have two kids anyway, it may be easier to just do it all at once. After all, you only have one pregnancy, one late night feeding period, one diaper period, one potty training period, etc... Sure, those periods are harder, but they can't be twice as hard can they? There have to be some synergies.

All I know is that when we were looking for day care options a few weeks ago, it actually was a bit of an eye-opener when I realized that, yes, of course, we were going to have to actually pay for two kids, not one. Believe it or not, this hadn't really occurred to me.

Just wait until they're 18 ("Wait, what do you mean by tuition for both kids").

Here is our first experiment with photo posting. Sandy and I took a little trip to Sonoma County, CA last month and bought a bottle of champagne to open when the babies show up. The winery was the Iron Horse winery, which holds special meaning to me since every year I ride in the "Iron Horse Bicycle Classic," a bike ride/race from Durango to Silverton. Here's the pregnant lady with the booze.

No Commercials!

Sandy here:

So this morning I was getting my early dose of calcium, sitting on the couch watching CNN when the following commercial came on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKBj35HB6mo

It's never good to start out your morning crying into your Puffins.

I blame the Twinkies.

First Post

Doug -

Okay, Sandy and I are going to try this blogging thing. We're going to post mainly about the babies, but we'll also post some stuff about other things going on in our lives as we think about them.

So a short preface for those of you new to the news. Sandy is now 16 weeks pregnant with our twin rugrats, or to those of us that are already familiar with them, the "Twinkies." We know the twins are identical, but we don't know if they are boys or girls (yet). Our due date (40 weeks) is technically February 13, 2008, but we are told by those in the know that twins "always come early," so the probable due date is more like January 25, 2008. We have already had a bunch of doctor's appointments, a ton of ultrasounds (they like to watch twins pretty closely) and we are already making room in the house for new arrivals.

Anyway, we will fill in some details and get some pictures up and various other things in the next few weeks. In the meantime, keep checking in and we'll try to make it as entertaining as possible.