Allie in the South of Spain

Let me start this post by saying: Babies need an incredible amount of stuff. It's amazing really. And yes, I understand that they don't ACTUALLY need all of the things that we have created a necessity for as parents but a lot of these items do make my life a heck of a lot easier, so they are now my must-haves (like my double boppy pillow!!!!!). It isn't true that you need two of everything with twins, however. We make do with one of a lot of stuff like a play mat, or a rocking seat. Some we were able to have only one of until recently like a crib (now they are bigger and moving a lot so they sleep separately). But it just seems as if the bigger the girls get, the more crap they need. Today is officially the day that Jose and I lost our living room to the babies. We have surrendered, hoisted a white flag and become resigned to the fact that it is really no longer our space. You have to understand that our apartment (like most throughout Europe) isn't large. We have ab...

Last Friday we made it back to Spain without any major problems. The only issue we had was being the last people off the plane in Madrid and being left on the tarmac for a while in the heat and sun while a bus came took a load of passengers to the terminal and came back for us. At least we got some cool pictures outside the plane. As exhausted as we were, we had our niece Eva's baptism the next day in the afternoon. I may have mentioned this before but baptisms tend to be a pretty big deal here in Spain. It was nice to see all of Jose's family again and I know they liked seeing the girls. We went to the mass and then all had dinner together. Since then we have been working on unpacking our suitcases (we brought back four!!) and getting our lives reorganized. The girls are on a different schedule so we are trying to adjust but more on that in their six month update. You can check out other nursery posts here and here .  We bought a few new things for their nurser...

Yesterday morning I celebrated my baby shower with a small brunch. My friend Cristina helped organize it and we had it in her association's club house. Baby showers are not common here in Spain, mostly people will give gifts after the baby arrives and the big celebration tends to be the baptism. I really appreciated all of my Spanish friends who embraced this tradition and I think they enjoyed themselves along with my American friends. The cake. It says welcome Vera and Laura We served brunch food (like bagels, muffins, small sandwiches, juice, coffee and of course cake). It is events like this that I am thankful for Costco. Not only can you buy in bulk but they have all kinds of foods that you can't find anywhere else (like bagels). We played two games as well. One was done in small groups. I gave each group a list of names of children from TV series. They had to name the series and they got an extra point if they could remember the surname of the family. I used series...

It's been a while since I last updated about how things are going with the twins so I wanted to take advantage today to share both that and our progress with their nursery. First of all, as of now I am in the 30th week of pregnancy. Word from my doctor is that these twins will most likely arrive (probably will be planned) between week 37 and 38, so really not that much longer to go. This is both exciting and terrifying.  We have been going to the doctor every two weeks to track how the girls are growing and we went yesterday for what will end up being one of our last appointments because things looked so good we won't be back for 5 weeks. Which puts us almost at the end...unless of course I go into labor or have some other kind of emergency before (which I am hoping won't happen). Yesterday Vera (who has always been a bit bigger) weighed in at 1.6 kilos which is about 3.5 lbs. Laura is more petite and weighs 1.3 kilos or about 3 lbs. They are both good sized babies for b...

The holiday season has just wrapped up here in Spain. It goes a bit longer than in the U.S. which tends to end at the New Year because here on the 6th of January the three Wisemen bring gifts to all the children. This is a bigger deal to most than Santa although our girls will be able to experience both since I love Santa! There is always a big parade on th 5th of January where the three Kings throw gifts and candy to kids but more on that later. Over our Christmas break we were pretty busy. First we started on the nursery, taking out the furniture that was already there to make room for two cribs and all that seems to come with expecting twins. Jose painted the room a mint green color but it's still quite a work in process (we are waiting for our curtains and the rest of the furniture). I also started washing all their clothes, blankets, sheets, etc. We went back to the doctor (we are going every two weeks at this point) and things looked good except I failed my one ho...

FINALLY!!!! We have finally finished our bedroom. It was the last of all our projects in our apartment that we wanted to accomplish and now it is DONE! I had been holding off for a long time with hanging anything on the walls because I wasn't sure what I wanted exactly. It took one more weekend of motivation and another trip to IKEA, my Mecca, for us to finally complete our bedroom.  Here is how it all started. No furniture, no paint, recently moved in. After the paint then came the contentious construction of our wardrobes (definitely a marriage test if there ever was one). And our bed: We later added a few night stands, curtains, lamps a headboard and a dresser (for some reason I cannot find any pictures of these steps, whoops). Most recently it has been art on the walls and a chair. The final product: So there you have it (though not exactly all the angles). Done for now and no more projects on the horizon. Enjoy these other before and after...