Welcome to the new Sunday newsletter! In place of Self-Care Sundays, there is now Sunday Snapshots. The main goal of this weekly article is to (1) give a quick life update for the family members and friends that subscribe and (2) share a way I saw God in my life in the week prior, whether it be big or small, obvious or not.
It has officially been one week since I deactivated my Instagram, and two since I deactivated my Facebook. It has been so, so nice, and I honestly don’t know if I can ever go back. Maybe my opinion will change somewhere down the road, but for a now, I’m going to enjoy at least the summer without them.
I have lots of extended family members and a few friends that I know have loved seeing regular updates on my kids and the twins on my socials, because I’ve had a few text me, asking what happened to my accounts. I will send a link out for them to subscribe to this newsletter in place of following me on social media, but we’ll see.
This Week in Review
This week, the three older kids were with their other parents, so it was just me, Kevin, and the twins. I guess that’s still a lot of people, but it doesn’t feel like it when we’re a family of seven half the time!
The twins are growing so fast. They’re four months old as of Tuesday! Evelyn has learned how to grab toys herself — although her hand-eye coordination is still a work in progress — and it has been so fun to watch her explore some of the toys around their playmat. Meanwhile, Emersyn has gotten pretty good at singling out her thumb to suck on rather than her whole fist, and she’s fallen asleep that way several times.
Both girls are rolling and scooting ALL over the place. I’t’s only a matter of time before I’m going to need to section off a big play area for them. Right now, if I step away for even just a few minutes, it’s not uncommon to find one of or both of them several feet away from where I left them on their play mat, whether that’s under the kitchen table or by the back door.
This past week also marks four whole months of exclusively pumping! It has definitely been the toughest month yet. My supply took a huge dip just as I finally got used to running more regularly, so I had to make the tough decision to pretty much stop running in order to maintain my milk supply. It worked, and my supply went back up, but I’m pretty bummed that I had to give up running. It had been doing wonders for my mental health, and was helping me feel like my old self agin. I’ll just have to figure something else out.
The whole rollercoaster of my supply tanking, having to dip into my freezer stash, and bending over backwards to try and get my supply back, has all made me extra grateful for Kevin. I don’t think anyone fully understands how hard it is to exclusively pump — on my body, my mental health, my schedule — except for my husband.
He is living through this journey with me. He has seen how my whole entire life revolves around pumping. I often feel pretty isolated and misunderstood when it comes to pumping, because most people in my life just can’t comprehend why it’s such a big deal or how difficult it is. But Kevin sees what I go through every day to make it happen, and I’m so glad that I have at least one person in my life who just gets it.
Without the chaos of having all five kids here, I used some of my extra time this week to work on our patio. We recently acquired free patio furniture, so a space that was previously unused and honestly kind of an eye sore is now my favorite place in the house. There’s a cute rug, a little coffee table with a citronella candle and my ZZ plant that I’ve had since 2022, and I ordered some vintage-style bulb lights to hang later this week. We also have a little kid’s table with crayons and coloring books, alongside their train table. I’ve gone out there to study, catch my breath, pump, and have dinner with friends, and it has been so, so nice.
This next week will be a little weird because Eloisa (5yo) will be staying with her dad an extra week, so it will just be Kevin’s kids and the twins. Eloisa is, how do I put this… the loudest of the three big kids? The most dynamic? In a way, she’s like the glue that holds that little crew together, and without her, the house is a lot more quiet. I think because Kennedy and Thomas are still with each other even when they’re at their moms, that they really look forward to hanging out with Eloisa just to shake things up a bit. Especially Thomas, since he’s only a few months younger than her.
Even though I’ll miss Eloisa this upcoming week, I’ll try and make the most of it by spending a little extra one-on-one time with both Kennedy and Thomas. Kevin and I have made an effort to each do this ever since the twins were born, and I think it has helped all of them adjust a little bit better.
Thanking God in the Storm
For as long as I can remember, I have been scared of storms.
I still have vivid memories from when I couldn’t have even older than four or five, of lying in bed at night while a thunderstorm raged outside. I would lie completely still, petrified by fear. Sometimes, I would garner enough courage to begin a journey across the house towards my parents’ room, but all it would take was one flash of lightening before I would scurry back to my room. Some nights I made it to my parents’ room — and then I would promptly be sent back to my own room anyways — but most nights, I didn’t.
Now, over twenty years later, my fear of thunderstorms has nearly faded, but not altogether.
It was a hot and humid late June afternoon when the sky darkened so quickly, the streetlights came on. I poked my head out of the front door, and was met with a sea of swirling, black clouds above me, threatening to break at any moment.
“It sounds like a tornado out here!” my neighbor called out. He had evidently also stepped outside to assess the situation.
He wasn’t wrong. The wind was howling and the trees were swaying violently to and fro.
“Yeah…” I trailed off, “I’m going to go back inside.”
I locked my front door and immediately pulled up the weather app on my phone.
‘Severe thunderstorm warning for Forsyth County, in effect until 7:00pm.’
I could feel myself start to panic, and, as if on cue, both twins started to cry.
There could be no more running to my parents’ room. Now, I was the parent.
The back door began to rattle as the wind increased in ferocity. Rain began to pour down, pinging loudly off of the patio’s tin roof. My mind began to race with what-ifs.
What if a tree falls on the house?
What if this turns out to be a tornado?
What if the windows shatter?
Suddenly, the thought of my twins being in different rooms, on opposite sides of the house, where I couldn’t see them both at the same time, filled me with dread. They were already crying, so nap time clearly wasn’t happening anyways.
I recalled reading somewhere that in the event of a severe thunderstorm or tornado, the safest place to be was a central room with no windows, so I dragged two baby bounces to the kitchen and ran upstairs to grab the twins.
Once we were all situated in the kitchen, it was almost easy to forget the storm that was now well under way outside. None of the windows were visible from the kitchen, so there was nothing to see, and I turned on the oven fan to block the noise of the rain. The occasional clap of thunder was the only indication of anything going on.
But then a loud crash! came from outside, and the lights went out.
Then they flickered back on. Then off again. Then on one more time, until they finally went out for good.
The deafening silence that followed was almost more unnerving than the darkness itself.
At first, the power outage had me concerned.
What if all of my frozen breastmilk thaws and is ruined?
I should avoid opening the fridge, but what about the milk that’s in there that I’ll need to feed the babies?
It was about to be the girls’ bedtime. How am I going to get them to bed without their sound machines? Without light?
I couldn’t help but let out a dry laugh. My husband had been messaging me earlier in the day while I was at work, telling me how good the twins had been for him that morning. I responded sarcastically, joking that my evening likely wouldn’t go as smoothly once I came home and he went to work. Little did I know.
But then, my mindset shifted, and in the midst of an inconvenient situation, I suddenly found myself thankful.
Thank God that most of my frozen milk was actually at my mom’s house, which had a generator, and not in my freezer. None of it would be ruined.
Thank God I happened to have not one, but two portable sound machines, fully charged and ready for bedtime.
Thank God that I happened to have made dinner as soon as I got home earlier in the day, even though the twins were screaming and I usually tend to them first. If I hadn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have been able to make dinner.
Thank God that I happened to have almost one hundred battery operated candles, leftover from my wedding. Once the sun set, I was still able to see around my house because of those candles.
These were all small things. Some might even say they were merely coincidences. But as a wise mentor once taught me, there are no such thing as coincidences.
When things are going the way we want them to in life, it can be easy to have a grateful heart. When we’re in the storm, however, it can be hard to find those little tender mercies to be grateful for. It can be all too easy to focus on the what-ifs, the should-have-beens, the unanswered prayers. But gratitude is like a muscle: the more you practice it, the stronger it gets.
The more you search for things to be grateful for, the more reasons you will find to be grateful.
The more you look for ways you’ve seen God’s hand in your life, the more you will see His hand in your life.
I am grateful for a God that helps me to never feel alone during the storms, literally or figuratively.
Thank you all for reading! To those of you who decided to stick around, thank you, and to those of you who are new here, welcome. To help get you started, consider checking out these articles below:
Here’s what a typical day-in-the-life looks like for us right now:
Our most recent family adventure:
The most recent update on the twins:
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Step by Step Parenting 