I blame them for my absence here in two ways-- first, they keep me busy. Like, eyes open, Go! Go! Go! until eyes shut, Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! And secondly, they are getting older... which makes sharing some things feel wrong. Or awkward... or at the very least, their age and awareness of the blog makes me pause. Even Wyatt, only six, will often say something that makes me laugh and then ask, "Are you going to put that on the blog?"
I thought this afternoon, as I swam Carly & Wyatt around the pool, the twins off together in the lazy river, that maybe I should quit the blog.
Pause.
Gasp.
I honestly can't believe that thought crossed my mind. I have been blogging for nine years this month. (First post here for fun!) It has been such a huge part of my life, such a huge part of my identity, that I banished the thought of canceling the blog pretty quickly.
Instead I decided that I am going to try to persevere. We are in the thick of our first full summer in our new hometown with no family around to help give us breaks with the kids, and more chores and to-do's than ever now that we own our first home. So I'm going to give myself a little grace as summer wraps up, and plan on jumping into more frequent blogging come fall when the boys all start school again.
One of the main reasons I don't want to give up blogging is that many of the blogs I followed when the twins were little ended up quitting as their children grew, and I have missed having those older twin parents to look up to.
That said, one of the things I wanted to blog about (and wish more people had blogged about before me) was that I told the twins, shortly after their ninth birthday, about sex. It started innocently enough-- one of them was using the hose extension on the vacuum and sucking his shorts up. I warned him not to do that in case the vacuum *ahem* caught something else along with the shorts. Ha!
His twin brother said, "Just do it near your balls! They don't do anything! What are those for anyway, mom?" I said, "Well, they are what holds your DNA for when you have babies." Pants-vacuuming-brother stopped vacuuming his pants and continued cleaning his bedroom. Then his twin, who was sweeping the bathroom, paused, looked at me and asked, "How does the dad's DNA get to the baby? Wait! How did dad's DNA get in YOU?!?"
That was it.
I had sensed this time was coming, and figured it'd be within the next year or so, but I certainly didn't feel prepared in that moment. But I knew that was my opportunity to talk to the twins about it. (Josh had Wyatt and Carly at the grocery store, so we had privacy, which was nice.) I feel like I laid a really good foundation for future discussions, assuring the boys that we will feel awkward, and at times we will feel embarrassed, but that doesn't matter. I promised them that they could talk to me about anything and that I'd always answer their questions.
I ended the night feeling proud of my boys, and proud of myself. Afterwards, though, I was a little sad that I felt I couldn't share this milestone parenting moment on social media. Sex is such a taboo subject... but after much thought, I decided that I would share a bit about how it came up and the age of our boys when we had the talk, because I sure wish I had known more about what other families had experienced before I went through it myself.
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So give me the rest of August to make memories with my kids. Then I promise I'll be back here with lots of stories to share!
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