This time, I’m bringing a husband and two babies to meet my grandparents, who are in their 90s. My grandfather is 95. They are also meeting aunts, uncles and lots of cousins. They all have curious accents.

This will be the first time the guys have been on a plane. We have no idea how that’s going to go. Two ten month olds on a plane for six hours. Luckily, my parents are also coming on this trip. And they will be on the same plane. So if the boys start screaming, we are just going to hurl them and Gramma and Grampa and pretend we don’t know them.

Whee!

Have I mentioned our nanny is a photographer? Do you want to tell me to shut up already?

But do you see these photos? You SEE these little faces?

I’m mentioning it again because Xilia is running a special on photo shoots for the next few weeks. And I cannot recommend her enough. She is offering 50% off a basic shoot for family or babe photos. This would normally be $450. Until the end of May, she is only charging $225 in the Portland metro area.

I wasn’t planning on hiring a professional photographer to do a shoot for the boys. But never in a million years could I have ever hoped to get such wonderful shots myself.

Go check out xiliafaye.com. You can contact her here. She is magic.

I know they are getting bigger, but I am somehow surprised whenever they achieve new milestones. Or when they learn something new. Or when their babbles start taking on a conversational articulateness. I see them getting bigger, but my inside reaction is always, “They don’t stay this way forever?”

All of the photos below are by Xilia Faye.

It seems impossible, but they get cuter every day. They make my heart hurt, they are so gorgeous. This may sound like I am bragging how we made cute babies, but it is more like I can’t look at these faces enough. They have made me lose my mind, I love them so much.

Nine months!

You see this hair? It defies gravity. It’s like a halo of golden feathery down. There is no question who’s the father of this kid. Dave’s baby album is filled with photos just like this. The same spiky head.

Cascadian spends about 90 percent of his day smiling. All you have to do is look at him and he grins. It’s the most rewarding goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

He has my nose, I think. Poor kid.

In the past three months, we weaned the boys off breast milk. I started a full time job in a new industry, in a new role. A few weeks ago, we moved. So our lives are in total upheaval. But not really. It seems like a lot of things to happen in a short amount of time. There are moments of stress, or uncertainty, or doubt. I try not to dwell on them. They work themselves out. And it goes by so quickly.

As I’ve gone back to work, our wonderful nanny sends us these photos through the day. And she is so, so good. SO GOOD.

This face! This face! I could absorb this photo for the rest of my life, and it would never be enough.

Hi, handsome. Mind if I make fart noises on those cheeks?

They have started eating solid foods and holy cow, it’s like two little vortexes open up in our kitchen. They love food. They love everything we’ve given them. We let them pick up their own food and eat it themselves. I’ll help them with messy or small food, like peas or kernels of corn. We give them adult food right off our plate. We hope that they will be adventurous, happy eaters. Unlike their Mama, who is still sometimes a picker eater to this day.

The other rather large thing going on in our household is that we’ve added another family member. A furry one.

This is Chicken. She is a kitty.

The boys have been fascinated by her. Their eyes follow her around the room. Is she comes near them, they strain to reach out and touch her.

And Chicken the Kitty has been so, so good around the babies. She’s still a bit of a kitten, so she’s very playful and sometimes aggressive. But she is remarkably patient with the boys. It’s like she understands they aren’t fully formed humans yet. She allows them to pet her and she is not intimidated or nervous around them.

She has no tail. Or rather, a three inch tail with an odd curl on the end. We don’t know her origin. We adopted her from one of my coworkers, who got her from friends. We are thinking she might be a Pixie Bob. The tail, the markings, the personality all match.

Did I mention she has made herself right at home? And that she is not intimidated by the babies?

I wouldn’t think there was room between me and the babies as I was feeding them. But she finds her way in and plunks herself down, sitting in the boys’ laps.

This is a regular occurrence now. Me, baby and kitty. They boys pet and pull on her fur, and she purrs. If she’s feeling extra lovey, she reaches out with her paws and grabs my neck and licks my face. I have my hands full with babies and I can only sit there and cry and hope she doesn’t dig in. It’s sweet and terrifying at the same time.

She’s been with us for just under two weeks and it’s already pretty clear she and the boys are going to love growing up together.

I can’t thank Xilia enough for these photos. They are treasures.

I wasn’t doing anything tremendously amusing. Just making faces. For some reason right then, it was the funniest thing in the world.

Thanks, kid.

I realize this sounds exhausting and maybe a little silly. Isn’t moving a pain in the ass? Can’t we just settle in and stay in one place? Doesn’t moving around so much seem suspicious? Are we shiftless characters? On the run from the law?

So, yes, moving is a pain in the ass. That was one of the big reasons we spent so much time downsizing. We wanted to have less stuff to move. And we wanted to be able to fit into smaller places. It was more important to us to move lighter than settle down and collect a bunch of crap we didn’t need.

We have lived in five different neighborhoods in Portland, plus a year in Astoria. We always start out super excited to explore each area. And we always wonder, as we unpack boxes, if we will just be packing again in a year. Invariably, we get familiar with the drawbacks of the neighborhood, whatever they may be, and we get the itch to go someplace new. Luckily, a year is just about the right amount of time to forget how much of a pain in the ass it is to move.

This time, we are actually staying in the same neighborhood. We really like Westmoreland and Sellwood. We really love the location of our current apartment. And our current place is really cute. We could have stayed here and been fairly happy.

So why move? Why pack all the boxes, why schlep everything into a uhaul, why spend all the time patching walls and scrubbing floors, hoping to get our deposit back?

I’ve wondered this myself. Is it worth it? Are we being silly to not just be happy where we are?

Then I list off the reasons why we want to move.

1. New noisy neighbors.
2. This apartment gets incredibly hot in the summer.
3. Tiny kitchen, no dishwasher. We knew this going in, and we live with it. But, eh, it’s a pain in the ass. We aren’t trying to fool ourselves.
4. Sappy trees. Seriously. We park on the street, and at the height of summer, these trees would dump buckets of sticky syrup on our car. I recently learned it’s not actually sap, but aphid poop. APHID POOP covering the car.
5. Giant basement with a guest bedroom. This sounds like a good thing, but it’s actually conducive to collecting junk we don’t need.
6. Creaky floors. This started out being charming, then we had babies. Now they know when the floor creaks, we are somewhere in the house, not paying attention to them.
7. Busy street on a bus line. We’ve become cranky oldsters, shaking our fists at the assholes who speed down our street, or who blast through stop signs without even a tap on the brakes.
8. No pets. Again, we knew this going in, and we hesitated to take this place because of it. We really do want a cat or two.
9. We’d have to resign our lease for another year.

And that last one was the big reason we didn’t want to stay. We didn’t want to be locked in for another year. It felt…restrictive. It felt like they were taking away our freedoms. You don’t know us! You can’t tell us what to do! Like, renting the same place for a whole nother year! FU, landlords!

So, yeah. Moving again.

Because, ew, right? Humanity. You could sit for your entire ride and wonder what the hell kind of substances have been deposited on the seat, on the handles, on the windows, on the floors, on the ceilings, and worst, in the air you are breathing right that very instant. Bus aroma? Someone’s sneeze spray? Flu virus? Farts?

So you just sit, or stand, holding a rail, and you count down the seconds until you can get to a sink and some antibacterial soap.

I’m a new daily commuter on public transportation. I work downtown, so not having to drive in traffic and pay for parking is wonderful. The bus I take is full of other commuters and is generally pretty clean and fresh smelling. And while I am gaining familiarity with the same faces on the bus every day, I don’t trust them, or their hands, and where they may have been. I am certain everyone on the bus feels the same about me.

Last week, on the ride home, I found a seat on my busy rush hour bus. It was starting to get crowded, and people were standing in the aisles, getting squeezed with every new boarding. I noticed a young man get on the bus and press into the crowd. His clothes were clean and new, his hair was clipped short and tight, and he stood with his back to me in the aisle.

I would not have noticed him except something, something about him was off. An expression on his face, some little movement, some kind of hint that he was odd. This is a pretty standard experience on the bus, so I didn’t think anything of it.

As the bus started rolling, the young man had his hands on both ceiling railings on either side of the aisle. And despite the bus being crowded and not having a lot of room, he began to rhythmically sway back and forth as he stood next to my seat.

Ah! I thought. He’s high. The swaying was not a move you would see from a functioning adult. It was quick and persistent, like a child rocking themselves, or like a high suburban kid on the bus. He did it for a while. It wasn’t particularly disruptive, but it was enough for me to shift away as much as I could, and to wish his ass wasn’t in my face.

Then. He stopped rocking. He unhooked one of his hands from the railing. And he shoved his hand down the front of his pants.

Okay. So I’m not a guy, but I can guess that there is an unspoken masculine art, developed over a lifetime, on how to subtly attend to the kibble and bits. That’s not what this guy was doing. There was nothing subtle about this. He was digging. He was going for the gold. He reached way deep down in there. His back was to me, but there was no question what he was doing. It was more than shifting. There had to be scratching also. I shudder to think what else.

And he did it for a long time! Forever! Again, I knew something could not be correct with this guy, because no one in their right mind so obviously and thoroughly and fastidiously shifts their junk around in a public place.

I could not squeeze into my seat any further without being in my seatmate’s lap. And then I’d be the weird one.

Forever. Forever is how long this guy had his hand down his pants. The ride was a blur. It seemed like blocks went by. I wished my eye had floated elsewhere, so that I might not have noticed, so that I might not have been keenly aware of how long this young man kept his hand down the front of his trousers.

He eventually withdrew his hand. And casually, he reached up, and grabbed the railing that hung from the ceiling.

And there. That is why you should always wash your hands after you get off the bus.

Through the course of the day, she sends me photos of the guys. There are times I feel like I might just burst because THE CUTENESS.

All photos by Xilia. I’m telling you, seeing these little faces gets me through the day.

I’m no different. I have opinions. The other day, I casually mentioned to Dave, “I’m not trying to be judgmental or anything,” I said, “But every one of our neighbors’ cars has duct tape on them somewhere. Three different cars.” I don’t have an inherent problem with duct tape. It’s the great solutionizer. But if you’ve got three cars that all need duct tape, you’ve got some kind of talent for creating problems for yourself.

“Yeah, that’s judgey.” Dave said.

I thought about this. “I prefer to think of it as observational.”

See, I can relate this type of thing to my husband. He is required to listen to my opinions. I can relate this type of thing on my blog. You are welcome to read it. I observed the trashy upkeep of my neighbors’ cars. Because our neighbors are loud and inconsiderate, I was looking for more reasons to be irritated with them. Duct tape. Perfect.

So I have opinions. I’m fairly certain other people do too. Occasionally, I disagree with other peoples’ opinions. I’m fairly certain other people disagree with mine. Except those people are wrong. They just might not know it.

And that is where I choose to stop. I was realizing, during the months I was staying home with the boys, that my world was shrinking. It was shrinking down to the size of my house. It was shrinking down to the size of my computer connected to the internet.

Too often, I found myself getting irritated at someone or something, just for the sake of getting irritated. I found myself seeking out things that would probably annoy me. I would read headlines, or follow links to stories, just to be able to roll my eyes and smugly ask “What are those idiots up to?”

I’ve never been passionate enough to engage in discussions. It’s clearly a fruitless endeavor to tell someone on the internet that they are wrong. And ultimately, I really didn’t care that deeply. I floated around, reading what interested me, and stoked a low grade smolder over all the stupid people in the world.

All the spent I time indulging this nasty habit, I should have just punched myself in the face. Why is being irritated a form of entertainment?

I had an epiphany on the bus ride home about a week ago. On an otherwise quiet bus, a woman was complaining about someone stealing rocks from her yard. Evidently a neighbor had entered her yard and stole her rocks. She went on and on about it. On and on. Who does he think he is? How would he like it if I went into his yard and stole something? I can’t believe he just came and took my rocks…On and on. I felt bad for whomever this woman was talking to. I heard murmurs of sympathy and support.

So this lady was super pissed about the rocks in her yard. But I can tell you she was fricken thrilled to be so outraged. Oh! The injury! The insult! The wrath! The gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes! This woman could not be happier to be so angry.

I had a few thoughts on this, as I listened to her. Primarily, I wanted her to shut up, which is the most polite thing you can do on the goddamned bus. But with the same disdain I have for dumdums on the internet, I wondered how she has so much time and energy to work herself into such a froth. This is it for her. This is what is important.

I resolved right then to be extra careful about getting worked up. About everything. I’ve had some lovely reminders from some positive people in my life. It’s so easy not to bitch. Really, it is. It’s so, so easy not to pass it along. Sure, there’s some outrageous shit going on in the world. I’ve had annoying shit happen to me personally. Instead of seeking out reasons to be irritated, I am redoubling my efforts to remember how goddamned lucky I am. I’m going to be a beaming ray of sunshine.

And if my neighbors continue to wake us up with loud parties in the middle of the night, on a Wednesday (a Wednesday!) perhaps I’ll wrap their entire car with duct tape.

Not to sound like a ridiculous cheesy cheeseball, but I was in a new city, I had just gotten a job, I had just moved into my own apartment and it felt like the world was full of possibility.

Everything I wanted then, I now have.

I am a lucky, lucky shit.

I mean, a job away from home. I was sort of, maybe, perhaps, thinking about going back to work, but I figured it was going to take me a long time to find a job that would suit our purposes.

I wanted a job that I would enjoy, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense for me to leave the boys. We are doing just fine on one salary, but I’d need a job that paid enough to afford daycare. I wanted to work with cool people, at a cool company, where I’d be able to use my brain and talk to adults and maybe not change poopy diapers.

I figured it would be months before I got a job that fulfilled all these qualifications. But I was not in a hurry. I’m a new mom, after all. I like my babies, and thinking about working outside the home made me feel conflicted. I want to spend time with my boys, especially as they get more goddamned adorable every day. But at the same time, it’s wintertime in Portland, and it’s hard to get out when you have twins. I was starting to feel a bit stir crazy. I casually started to look for a job, reasoning that I would have some time to sort out my mixed emotions about being away from home.

It took two days. TWO DAYS. Two days to get a job.

I could just leave the story there, and let you draw your own conclusions, that I must be super awesome to get a job so quickly. Or I bribed someone. Or drugged someone. Or slept with someone. Wouldn’t it be exciting if any of those thing were true? Oh, the intrigue! I must be sexy wildcat in bed!

The real story is that the seeds for this job were planted almost a year ago. I had a little help from some great friends, Twitter played a part, and in a round about way, this blog even helped a little too.

The past few weeks have been a frenzy of activity. We needed to get childcare in the span of three weeks. We are naive fools and on a whim, called a few daycares in our area. Ha ha, jackasses, they said. Waiting lists for daycare are months long, and with twins? They will be in college before two spots open up at the same time.

So we called a nanny agency. We interviewed a couple candidates. We hired the one with bright red hair who spoke German and knew how to juggle. She’s already spent a couple days with our boys and she is wonderful.

So I got a job. I start today. I am super excited. And also, I am porcelain fragile. I have two baby boys, and I will not be seeing them for nine hours a day. Their little faces! Their fuzzy heads! Their clammy little fingers, their dribbly little mouths, and their big blue eyes. I will only see them for a short time in the morning, and a short time before they go to bed at night.

I’m a rational person. I’m not prone to hysterics. I’m not fond of drama. So I realize that millions of parents work away from home and spend their days apart from their young children. And those kids are fine. Those parents are fine. Those families are fine.

But like any mom or dad that has gone through this, there is a raw and primal charge of emotion that won’t be soothed by the knowledge that others have gone through this and survived. The babies will wake up and look for me. Will they think I abandoned them? Will they think the red headed lady is their mom? Will I miss all their important moments? Their first crawls? Their first words?

I think of being away from them, and it is the napes of their necks that I think about. Behind their ears, where their skin is so soft, where I put my nose and inhale their baby essence. Will they remember me?

I can barely stand it.

I am so, so thankful that our nanny is a wonderful photographer. She is better with her phone than I am with my damn “regular” camera. She has already captured images that have taken my breath away. She has promised many photos throughout the day.

All the images below are by Xilia Faye.

Little boys! I love you, little boys! I will see you when I get home.