94

Well, no matter how you count, we’re clearly in the third trimester now. I’ve read stories about women giving birth to twins that were fine at 28 weeks (although those kids will stay in the NICU for a pretty long time, and have some long-term risks), and almost none of terms that went longer than 38 weeks, so we’re somewhere between 102 days and 172 days left. If it’s the first, we’re nearly halfway there, which is pretty freaky.

My wife, the capsule for Project Gemini 2012, has had a rough few months. Double the hormones has really hit her hard, and as freaked out as I am about what actually having two new children will mean, I look forward to her not carrying this load alone.

New name

It took me a while, but I finally came up with a name I like for this thing. Project Gemini it is! (Sadly, projectgemini.wordpress.com is taken by an empty blog, so I’ve had to tweak it a bit.)

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Ugh

Some nights, I’m just in a pissy mood. This is one of them. I’m pretty sure I’m just tired. I’d like to spend at least ten or fifteen minutes just hanging out with my wife, though. Our next couple of months will be truly hectic, and then summer. And then?

9D

One of the drawbacks of doing infertility treatments is that you know right away when you’re expecting, and so you have longer to wait. I’m not known as a patient person, and waiting 280 days (so they tell you when you get started) is a daunting task. It gets a little shorter when you realize the first 14 days don’t count – heck, they can happen before you even meet your partner. And then they say twins come early – they almost certainly won’t let us get past 37 weeks or so, and the average length is 35.2 weeks for twins born in the US. Choosing a number in the middle there puts it at 36 weeks, or 252 days, not 280. Today is day 90, or 35.7% of the way there. Unless they come earlier. Or later.

Patience is not just a river in Egypt.

I may have messed something up there.

Day 87

Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick.

Sitting here at work, sorting through massive piles of paperwork. One of the biggest challenges I’ve had so far, other than just not freaking out in general, is staying focused on what I need to do today and not on what may or may not happen 4, 5, or 6 months from now.

Out of Order, comes chaos, and then a more fascinating order

It’s a sloppy definition of entropy, that all systems tend toward disorder. However, anyone who knows me is well aware of my predilection towards taking something that was in prime working order and, well, altering that state. It’s what led to my receiving the designation as an “Agent of Entropy” once upon a time, in what seems like a different life.

The concept of chaos was revisited upon my life last month when my wife and I learned that our second child wasn’t alone in her abdomen, and our family would jump from three to five in a hurry. That gets the mind going, and I wanted somewhere to set down some of my thoughts. I don’t know if anyone else will care, or even should care, but I’m going to put some ramblings here. Some of them will be about our impending arrivals. Some will be about work (I teach physics). Or life. Or our three year old. Or politics. Or sports. Or cheese.

Mmmm. Cheese.

Don’t get me started on cheese, brain. I need to use it for other things.

I have no idea how our two new little ones will change my life, but I can’t wait to find out. Adapting to chaotic surroundings is perhaps the thing I struggle with most in life, and now I get a chance to see my life turned completely upside-down. But nature is pretty clear about the process – everything gets mixed up, and out of that comes a new order. I’ll be older, wiser, busier, happier, sadder, and changed in some deeply fundamental way. That should terrify me, I know. And it does. But it will be so much more than I can envision, and isn’t that what life is, after all?  A journey into the unknown?

Meet the catalysts of change, hiding in their momma’s tummy, at what the doctors call 12 weeks: