The Random Thoughts and Questions of a Soon-to-be Mother of Irish Twins

my older 2 kids are now 12 & 10 yrs old. we just had our 3rd baby in june. all their birthday dates are: june 15, june 30, & july 25. my brother & i are i guess “irish twins”. i am older then him by a year & 2 days. we had to share birthday parties ALL THE TIME growing up. since my 2nd birthday. now, while i don’t remember those early birthdays… i do remember the ones later on & it was not much fun. for one… you can usually only invite a few people since he will be inviting a few as well plus family. something to think about later on… but with my kids i swore i would never put their parties together. no matter how convenient it would be for US. for them i wanted their own day. we have never done a joint party & im glad. i love seeing them have fun on their own special day. PLUS… i never like to put people in a bind? meaning i hate asking someone to have to buy TWO presents for my joint party. another reason i wouldn’t ever do one. while they may have separate friends… there is still the family to consider on that. & people feel obligated to buy for both when attending a joint party. okay, i said what i wanted on that. i think you will do great! my older two kids were 2 yrs apart & i loved having them close like that. they get along still so amazingly. its possible for that to work out. people ask me all the time how they get along so good. if we end up having another it will be because of my older two kids relationship. i want my youngest to have a sibling close like they did. we’ll see…

OMG. I can totally and completely relate to EVERYTHING you just said. We had our first little boy at the end of May this year… much to our surprise, I’m pregnant again, less than 5 months later… cue: MAJOR FREAK OUT. Definitely NOT what we expected and I’m struggling with all the same concerns/fears you are. Its GOING to be hard.. its GOING to be trying… and its GOING to be exhausting (to say the least)… but in the end? Its GOING to be so. much. fun. I can’t wait to find out what Baby #2 is and see how this lifelong friendship and bond develops between our two babies. Best of luck to you!

There will be tough times but I know you are going to ROCK this! I’m hoping or day I get to meet you Hugs from Conroe, Texas

I’ve been following your wonderful photography, and precious daughter , for about a year now. This post surely struck chords for me. 8 years ago I began my journey of 4 children in 5 years. My oldest son will be 8 at the end of this month, oldest daughter is 6, her irish twin brother is 5 and our youngest daughter will be 3 in December. (Yes, just typing that is exhausting!) I had a newborn, 2, 3 and just-tunred-5 year old. I wish I had some stellar advice to throw your way, but I can’t remember much of the early years! It’s like labor; you forget all the bad because of all the good. Even when the good may only last a split second and the bad makes you lay awake in bed at night wondering how you could have done today different and making a list of how you’ll change tomorrow. We’re moms. We just do it! Besides, what’s better than photographing 1 beautiful baby? Photographing 2! 4 is a little tricky. You should see my Christmas cards each year. I go with the humor route. Like I intended the girls to be pulling each other’s hair and the youngest boy to be crying and the oldest pouting with his arms crossed, all while our 50lb boxer dashes through the madness… people dig it. And their laughter makes me feel better about not having it all together. ha! Know this- blogging will be more difficult. Photos will dwindle. Dishes don’t matter. Mia WILL feel just as loved in 6 months as she does now. Laundry is futile. (don’t waste your time matching socks. 1 basket for each fam member. besides, unmatched socks are hip these days.) There will be days that you look as rough as you feel- don’t leave the house. It will make you feel worse. If you can, get up 30 minutes before the girls (once Daisy has somewhat figured out a routine), drink mad coffee and sit. Just sit. You’ll think you can save sitting for after bedtime, but after bedtime you’ll be picking up the 56,000 toys that you already put away at naptime, acheing to blog and edit and drink beer, but yesterday’s dinner dishes are still in the sink (use paper as much as possible. trust.), Daisy’s poop explosion outfit is still on the washing machine, and you still haven’t found your keys. It really doesn’t matter that you slide into home base with arms and legs everywhere if you’re scoring the winning run, right? No one will notice the flail, but you. Forgive yourself and move on. Now, doesn’t this all sound fun??! Best part? It totally is. And when you’re ready to throw in the chips, think of me. I’m totally screwing up FOUR kids. Daily. And diaper debt has prevented me from opening a therapy fund for each of them. Best wishes and massive amounts of Foldgers to you(starbucks won’t make the cut. you can thank your 2nd daughter’s digestive system for that.). I look forward to reading all about it! Oh, and the girls will fight. Like nutjobs. The sooner you get to the point of letting them go ’till there’s blood, the better. Just sayin’.

You are a great mother and I can tell through your pictures that your love will allow you to make it and conquer all your fears! You are a natural and it will just come to you and all these worries you have will seem so silly in the end!!! Keep your head up and Good Luck!

My silence is broken! I happened upon your blog a few months back and don’t remember how I surfed over but really liked your pregnany book idea. I had just found out I am pregnant with my third baby and loved the idea of doing something special for the third time around. When I saw this post, though, I just had to comment! My son and daughter are a year and a half apart – so not quite Irish twins, but people have been asking since they were about 8 months and just over 2 if they are twins. Somehow they didn’t notice that one was able to walk and talk and the other wasn’t – but maybe since they are boy/girl and the girl was slightly smaller they just assumed they were boy/girl twins? Anyway, I always laugh. It still happens all.the.time and now they are 3 and almost 2. We actually planned to have them close together so it wasn’t as much as a shock, but I could echo (and now answer) almost each of your thoughts above. But that would be really really long. So I’ll just say this: yes, there will be some hard times where patience is required. You’ve learned the art of focusing with your photography, so for a while your main focus will be your two baby girls! But as they get a little older, things WILL get easier. In fact, at the ages my kids are now it is WONDERFUL because they are such great little playmates! Friends that have kids spaced farther apart just don’t seem to have the luxury of having their kids be little playmates the way I have seen my kids, so that is a treat And don’t double up on too much before you know you need to. We had two cribs, but then found that our daughter co-slept in our bed the first year and by that time we put her brother in a toddler bed so didn’t really need two to begin with (good thing both cribs were hand-me-downs!) Instead of getting another high chair we put our son in a booster seat and he loved it! We also do cloth diapers while at home to save on that expensive (and be kinder to the environment). Pictures of the two of them together IS challenging when one wants to run off – I think the best solution I found was, when baby was a few months old, we put them in a bucket together or a wagon and then they did okay. Let them learn to share as much as possible. Your older daughter is to little to be jealous but once the baby starts crawling and getting into her things – that’s when the trouble begins Well, I think this is long enough. I might also add that I, myself, have an identical twin sister. We are the oldest of 8 kids total – 6 girls, 2 boys. Our next sister is 13 months younger than us. It was wonderful growing up close in age to our siblings! There will certainly be sisterly love and times of challenge…but you will have fun! Just gear up to relax and enjoy the ride that first year…and then it will get easier Enjoy! And Good Luck!

(ps-we are hoping to move to Austin in the near future – we are sick of Seattle rain!)