There it goes (& there they grow)

Having allowed the news of twin boys sink in, the initial fear has been replaced by a still-present fear that is substantially subsumed by an overarching sense of excitement. I've accepted the simple fact that I will fail many, many times but I'm also keenly aware that, having tried to live my life to the fullest, I have a set of experiences on which I can draw and hopefully provide good guidance. In my first post, I also seemed to forget that another person, my wife, would be intimately involved in this. I wager she, too, can have a positive influence. So yes, we'll fail, but we'll try hard while doing so.

Now, on to some updates.

1) I'm going to try to expand this blog a bit. I'm hoping to update at least once a week as a simple way to keep family and friends apprised of our news, and I'm also hoping to find other parents (especially new dads) who share similar points of view.

2) We're at week 24 and some change. We just had an appointment on 2/8 and we found out that Timothy is 1 lbs, 9 oz and Raiden is 1 lbs, 8 oz. Note that Amanda insists on calling the guy on the right Raiden and the one on the left Timothy. She doesn't claim that she can discern their personalities in utero and she’s completely willing to reassign names once we meet the boys. That said, I have begun to think of the boys in these same terms. Both have moved into a "head down" position and we were told that they're not likely to turn again. Here are a few scans of the twins from 2/4:

3) Amanda is getting to the miserable stage. One of her more memorable recent quotes was something along the lines of “I know I’m privileged and I do feel honored that we get the chance to have children, but oh god Raiden needs to get the hell out of my ribs! This HURTS!” Nothing can be done for this pain, sadly; the only thing that sort of helps is a nice bath. We still have three months to go and I feel terrible about the degree of pain she’s going to have to suffer through. She knows it’ll be well worth it in the end, but the path to that end isn’t a fun one. Here’s Amanda’s belly as of 1/28:

4) We keep buying baby clothes. We need to stop so as to direct our funds somewhere a little more productive…but some of it’s so darn cute! Here’s a recent example:

That's enough for now. I'll include some baby shower invitation scans and some general plans for that event in the next update.