I was not cut out for twins. I have craved quiet virtually my entire life. "Me time" is more important to me than it is to most. And I am far from the most patient person in the world. Throw a toddler (now preschooler) into the mix, and my sanity sailed out the window oh, long about the second they came from from the hospital.

It's no secret that the life I'm living now is really hard for me. Luci and Nicholas are high-needs babies each of whom records a minimum of 50 temper-tantrums a day.

But then there are moments like this one that occurred one night after dinner. And it made me stop and think, if only for a few seconds, that there are indeed bright spots in the days I share with these two.

Behold, the dancing duo.

I figured I better post the twins' 20-month update before they turn five-years-old and flog me with their kindergarten lunchboxes because um, hello, somehow I was able to post their older sister's toddler updates on time, right?

(Sigh.)

Over the past month or so, both Luci and Nicholas have become insanely social. When we're out for a walk, at the gym's daycare, or anywhere else in public, they are both yelling (yes, yelling), "Hi!!!!" to everyone they see, and "Bye!!!" when we're leaving. Waves usually accompany the yelling.

They have begun to play with eachother for brief periods of time, and while 90% of the time their play consists of one stealing a toy from the other and the wronged party screaming, seeing this gives me hope that perhaps a more normal household existence is somewhere in the not-so-distant future.

Both twins are wearing 18 month clothing now, although Luci still wears quite a few 12 month size pieces too. They're in size 4 diapers and size 4 shoes.

Luci

Current Likes: A shoe-free state of being, baby dolls

Current Dislikes: Not getting her way, most vegetables

Nicholas

Current Likes: Snack-stealing from other kids at the gym daycare, going "bye-bye car"

Current Dislikes: Having me out of his line of vision, face-washing

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In other news, my half-marathon training had been going swimmingly until I injured myself. I lost both a week of training and my mind in the process of healing. I blogged about it on my health and wellness blog. Click over and check it out if you're so inclined.

I am happy to announce the winner of the Yoplait "Nourish Your Inner Goddess" giveaway. She is...

It's an insanely busy week for me.

I have two new freelance projects rolling in, in addition to the two I'm currently working on AND my online classes.

I'm also getting used to the "summer schedule" around here, which involves a lot of shuttling children here, there, and everywhere-gym, camp, playdates, etc.-on different days than those on which these normally occur.

I have a bunch of blog topics all waiting as Drafts. One of these days, hopefully next week, I will get to them.

In the meantime, it's time for another giveaway!

A few months ago, on a recommendation from Stacey, I signed up for MyBlogSpark, which allows bloggers to review products and host giveaways. Cool, eh?

For my first giveaway, Yoplait provided me with two free coupons for Yoplait Greek yogurt, and a "Nourish Your Inner Goddess" gift pack via MyBlogSpark.

I never did get to try the yogurt. For some reason, it has yet to become available in my area. However, the description of the yogurt and the available flavors sound really great. We eat a lot of yogurt in my house, and when this shows up in my grocery store, I will certainly pick some up:

"With 12 grams of protein -- twice that found in leading yogurts-- new Yoplait Greek nourishes from the inside out. Available in four delicious flavors, Strawberry, Blueberry, Honey Vanilla and Plain, the brand´s newest offering has a unique thick and creamy texture with the unmatched taste expected of Yoplait."

However, while I didn't get to try the yogurt, I did receive the gift pack, and it's awesome.


The towel is huge and plush. It's the wrap-around kind, which secures with Velcro once you have it around you. In addition to the gift pack shown here, you'll also receive two coupons to try two cups of the yogurt for free. If you win, make sure you tell me how it tastes!

Here's how you can enter. You will receive one entry for each that you do. Also, please leave me a way to get in contact with you if I cannot do so via your blog.

1. Follow or subscribe to Interrupted Wanderlust (or tell me you already have).

2. Follow or subscribe to my health and wellness blog (or tell me you already have).

3. Leave me a comment that tells me how you like to relax and pamper yourself. I need ideas, people, as I am huge ball of mounting stress with no idea how to take care of my "inner goddess."

4. Post about this giveaway on your blog, and link back to this post.

I will use random.org to select a winner on Friday, June 18th.

Good luck!

The winner of the CafePress tshirt and tote bag is

Things have been a little more quiet over here than usual. I am finding it more difficult to blog as often as I want to with the quality of posts I want to write. I sometimes spend upwards of an hour writing a post, and with the insanity of my work schedule lately, well, that hasn't been happening as much as I wish it could.

BUT...

I have been blogging over here. My health and wellness blog for my health club has a growing readership, and exciting things might be happening with regard to the expansion and reach of the blog. I am hesitant to divulge too many details, less I jinx it, but it would really, really help me out if you would consider subscribing to the blog.

You can either "Follow" it through the Networked Blogs widget I have installed in the lower-right corner (just click the Follow button, and my posts will automatically show up in your Facebook news feed) or you can subscribe to the blog by clicking the Feedburner icon in the upper-right corner.

Also, please feel free to comment on my posts!

I've recently blogged about:

Why Kids Should Practice Yoga

Whether Nutritional Information Printed on Menus Will Change People's Restaurant Orders

And today's post, on Whether It's Possible to be Both Overweight and Healthy

And thank you SO much to those of you who have been reading and commenting. I really appreciate it.

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My tshirt and tote bag giveaway from CafePress ends tomorrow! Don't forget to enter if you haven't already. I received my shirt and bag earlier in the week, and the shirt is very comfortable and high-quality. If you run or know someone who does, I think you'll like it a lot.

Today was Isabella's last day of preschool. From September until today, every Tuesday and every Thursday (with the exception of holidays and school breaks; she never missed a day due to illness), she attended the semi-cooperative preschool inside the Unitarian Church with this important sign on the outside.

And here she is this morning, before school.

In many ways beyond appearance, she is a different kid now than the one she was in September.

She is so much more confident in social situations and in public. She can almost write her entire name legibly ("S" and "B" are her problem letters). Her drawings and paintings have progressed from scribbles and brush strokes to identifiable objects and shapes. She adapted to the rhythm and structure of preschool life beautifully, and her teacher called her a "Mary Poppins child-perfect in every way" at her mid-year parent-teacher conference. I had a good laugh over that one because, hello? Come live at my house, teacher lady, and I think you may have a slightly different opinion of my daughter.

She did have a few days of tears during the transition to her third and final "homeroom" back in March. The school has three separate, themed rooms and each class spends 1/3 of the school year in each room, although they are free to visit the other two rooms daily. Her final "homeroom" is designed to allow kids more free-play (there is a slide/climber, huge wooden blocks, and play mats) and Isabella was completely in love with the easels, play-doh, and art projects set up each morning in the other two rooms, so she cried a few times as I was leaving, but her teacher assured me each time that the tears lasted no more than 30 seconds after I had left.

She didn't experience separation anxiety, she didn't contract the bubonic plague, and she certainly wasn't bored. Sorry to disappoint you, grandma.

I am so incredibly proud of her and how well she did in school this year. She had a wonderful class of kids. No bullies. No problems whatsoever. She bonded with an adorable little boy and he became her best preschool buddy. She developed an affection for his daddy, but perhaps the affection was really for him. Her teacher and the assistant teachers were kind and nurturing. The parents I chatted with every Tuesday and Thursday morning at drop-off became my friends, and some became my running buddies. I met even more great parents through the two committees on which I served. In a lot of ways, I'm sad that her year has ended, which sounds ridiculous. The experience has been great for both of us.

And now it's summer vacation. Isabella is attending a two-week camp at her preschool beginning next week. She's taking swimming lessons at my health club beginning at the end of June. She has an animal camp at the children's science museum in July, and a royalty camp (which I was assured was about castles, coats of arms, and great feasts and not princesses and tiaras) in August. We are hoping to take a trip to Sesame Place (have you been there?) in August as well.

In September, she starts attending the same preschool four afternoons a week. She's enrolled in their program for four-year-olds, which is designed to prepare students for kindergarten while still focusing on learning through play. I think she is going to love it. I will be on the preschool's board in the fall, co-chairing the Publicity committee.

One year from September, she'll get on a bus and head to kindergarten.

How is that even possible?

I always like to follow up one of my regularly occurring bitchfests with a post that contains a bit more levity, so today I am super-excited to announce a giveaway.

CafePress recently contacted me and offered the opportunity to give away a t-shirt and a tote bag of my choice to one of you lovely people. CafePress offers unique and personalized gifts for friends and family.

It took me awhile to settle on a design that I liked simply because there were so many to choose from. I would have loved to create a unique design of my own using their easy-to-use designer tool, but I am ridiculously short on time these days, so I opted to go with something that I loved and that I hope you will enjoy too.

I know quite a few of you are runners or aspiring runners, so I am giving away a shirt and tote bag in this design:


Here's how you can enter to win your own t-shirt and tote bag. Please leave me a comment that tells me which of these you've done and I will give you one entry for each. Also, please leave me a way to get in contact with you if I cannot do so via your blog.

1. Follow or subscribe to Interrupted Wanderlust (or tell me you already have).

2. Follow or subscribe to my health and wellness blog (or tell me you already have).

3. Leave me a comment that tells me why you love to run.

4. Post about this giveaway on your blog, and link back to this post.

I will use random.org to select a winner on Friday, June 11th.

Good luck!

Are you ready for the latest installment of the "You-Suck-as-a-Mother Chronicles," currently being written by almost every single member of my family?

(As a refresher, you might want to quickly scan my most recent post on this topic, in which I blew up at my aunt for three+ years of undermining me and my parenting decisions.)

My mother's 60th birthday party was on Saturday. The party was held at my grandma's. When my mom comes into town, she stays with Undermining Aunt, because I don't yet have a pull-out sofa for her to sleep on.

On Saturday morning she arrived early, so I could go for a run before we picked up my sister at the airport. When I got back home, I gave the kids baths. My mom was downstairs getting the twins ready. I was bathing Isabella, when we had the following conversation.

"Grammie gave me a really yummy treat while you were gone."

"That's nice, honey. What was it?"

"It was these little balls. They were all different colors-red, green, blue. They tasted like chocolate. I think it was cereal."

"Oh."

I was livid. Because despite the fact that my family has known for the past 3.5 years about the food choices I make for Isabella (and now for the twins), they continue to give me a great, big, giant F-You at every opportunity, by giving Isabella and sometimes L&N things behind my back of which I do not approve.

As many of you who read here regularly know, I feed my kids mainly organic foods. We don't do dessert except for special occasions. We limit food dyes as much as possible, we choose real over processed. We do very little traditionally defined "kids food." They drink milk and water as beverages 99% of the time. None of this is ambiguous. None of this is a secret.

My family knows this and they don't care, choosing instead to sneak Isabella sweets and other crap food behind my back because they feel I am "denying my children their childhoods" by trying to do something crazy like keep their bodies healthy and their teeth from falling out.

I went downstairs and began to prepare a snack for the babies. I calmly asked my mom if she had given Isabella a snack while I was running. She said no. I then said, "Really?" and she said, "Oh, I gave her a rice cake." I said, "Is that all?" She said yes.

Then I told her about the mysterious and colorful "cereal" that Isabella had mentioned in the bathtub.

"Oh, that was from (Undermining Aunt). It's organic! And gluten-free! (She clearly thought using these buzz words would garner my approval). I don't know what it is, but it was a free sample she got in the mail."

And I asked her why she had lied and said she didn't give her anything, and why she then gave her this Fruity Pebbles-sounding snack that apparently even she couldn't identify without telling me, and then lying to cover it up.

Big exasperated and angry sigh from mamacita. "Because I knew you wouldn't approve."

Then why the HELL would you do it?

I didn't say this to her, however. Instead, I very calmly and firmly told her to please stop giving Isabella foods of which she knows I will not approve. To please stop sneaking her "forbidden" foods behind my back. To stop undermining my role as a mother.

She got angry. Told me that we needed to have this conversation later. Said that is was over and done and that she wouldn't do it again. She did not want to talk about it. But she was clearly pissed at me for catching her in a lie, and for denying her what she believes is her god-given right to do with her grandchildren as she sees fit without regard for the way their parents are choosing to raise them.

Two hours later, I was putting the kids down for their naps. My mom put Luci in for her nap. I put Nico down for his. I went into Isabella's room and tucked her in and came downstairs. I heard my mom go into Isabella's room after closing Luci's door. Several minutes later, after my mom had come back downstairs, Isabella was calling me, something she does often during "naptime" to request water, a bathroom trip, or to get out of her room. I went up, opened her door, and saw her sitting up in bed eating something. I asked what she had, and she said that my mom had brought her crackers to eat, again, brought over from Undermining Aunt's house.

It had happened again, not two hours later, after she had told me she would stop sneaking Isabella food.

And this time, I was done. I had had it.

I went downstairs and we had it out. I asked her why she chose to again slip Isabella food behind my back (she had no real answer). I told her that she was sending horribly damaging messages to Isabella that it's okay to hide things from her parents and that she doesn't need to follow her parents' rules. That it's okay to disrespect her parents' authority because another adult, and one that she loves very much, says it's okay. That she was undermining everything about the way I'm raising Isabella to try and make good nutritional choices. This wasn't about the crackers. This was about her flagrantly lying to me not even two hours after she told me she wouldn't do it again.

She told me I was "damaging my kids" by restricting their foods. That "she is their grandmother" and has rights too. And that I should just send her an email instead of discussing this with her in person. She was pissed at me for having been caught again. I told her that trying to hide things from me was pointless, because Isabella always tells me everything anyway.

I finished by telling her the same things I've been telling her for almost four years now. She doesn't have to like my decisions. Doesn't even have to respect them. But she does have to abide by them and not undermine them.

And then she left. And when the kids woke up, I packed them up and went to my grandma's house for my mom's party.

Um, happy birthday?

There is a small part of me that just wants to give this up when my kids are around their relatives. To just let my family do whatever they want with my kids, feed them piles of crap food, sneak them treats every time they visit. My family has done a lot for me and for the kids, and they absolutely adore them (perhaps a little too much).

And yet I can't, because acquiescing is not in my blood. It's not how I'm wired. I don't compromise my beliefs. I hold these beliefs, after all, for a very good reason. And what good is having standards and principles if you compromise them when challenged?

But I am at a complete loss here. Nothing I seem to say or do to hammer home the point that the undermining must end seems to work. My grandma, Undermining Aunt, and my mom have this incredible sense of entitlement where my children are concerned. In their eyes, I am doing a horrible job raising them (this, mind you, they infer in practically the same breath with which they tell what a special, well-mannered, sensitive, and intelligent daughter I have..,which clearly has nothing at all to do with me) and believe it is up to them to "save" my children from a life of deprivation.

Any and all suggestions are appreciated because seriously, I am up against it here, and much as I love them for the close relationship we all have, I am about one more incident away from packing up my kids and the hubs and moving out of driving distance.

Of course, the weekend's happenings were not without humor. Undermining Aunt has been chomping at the bit to have me drop off Isabella at her house for the day. (As if.) This topic comes up time and time again, and now my mom is even in on the crusade, bringing it up this weekend, and then asking me, "Do you have any concerns about this?" (quite obviously in response to the fact that I haven't taken Isabella over to Undermining Aunt's house yet). Not wanting to get into it, I said no.

But of course, it will be a cold day in hell before this happens.
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Because in addition to being a complainer, I am also a giver, I will leave you with this recommendation for a blog you should be reading.

Check out Spoonfed, which is written by my new friend, Chris. If you're at all interested in helping your kids to make smart choices about food, damaging them beyond measure, or denying them their childhoods by reserving sweets for special occasions (as I am), I think you'll like it.