Nanny, CHECK!

We've locked in our nanny! Angela signed a contract with us today and we're GOOD TO GO!!!! She is incredibly sweet, college educated (in childhood development), well-experienced and very excited to help us with the girls! We spent a long time looking for the right person and I think she's going to be PERFECT!!! Plus, she's an ameture baker; a woman already after my heart! When we visited her today, she was making the coolest Barbie cake for a little girl. How fun will it be for her to make the girls first birthday cake!?

More Showers and Baby Bellies

I probably mentioned before that our good friends, Greg and Diana, are also expecting. They are due on June 1st and having a little boy (our friends Kathryn and Tom are due on April 30th with a little boy too). Today we attended their baby shower and got to ohh and ahhh over all the cute boy gifts they received. It was a fun shower with a Sock Monkey Theme.

Diana's looking great and we're excited to meet her little guy. Check out our big bellies!

A DC Tradition -- Cherry Blossoms

This week marks the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. It's sooo pretty! I walked down to the tidal basin at lunch to savor the beauty! Here's some history on the festival; we can't wait to take the girls next year!

The National Cherry Blossom Festival annually commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to the city of Washington, honoring the lasting friendship between the United States and Japan and celebrating the continued close relationship between our two cultures.

In a simple ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two trees from Japan on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park. In 1915, the United States Government reciprocated with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. A group of American school children reenacted the initial planting in 1927 and the first "festival” was held in 1935, sponsored by civic groups in the Nation’s Capital.

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson accepted 3,800 more trees in 1965. In 1981, the cycle of giving came full circle. Japanese horticulturists were given cuttings from our trees to replace some cherry trees in Japan which had been destroyed in a flood.

Life Savers!

There are two items that I would not have been able to live without during this pregnancy -- worldwide protien shakes and antacid tablets.

Life Saver #1 -- Protien Shakes. As you may remember from early on, I read that when carrying twins protien consumption is essential for development and one should have 80-100 grams a day! To give you perspective, eggs have 7 grams, 8oz of milk has 8 grams, chicken breast (size of a deck of cards) has about 25. There's no way I would be able to eat that much protien in a day! Therefore, I found the perfect substitute -- protien shakes with 35 grams! I have one for breakfast every day! They don't taste bad; they are pretty sweet like chocolate milk. They have only 2 grams of carb (so low in sugar) and 160 calories.

Life Saver #2 -- Antacid tables (AKA Tums!). A very common side effect of pregnancy is indigestion or heartburn. I've never had heartburn in my life before getting pregnant. I have no idea what triggers it, but it often sets in at night, when I lie down. I have a little "candy" jar next to my bed filled with "assorted fruit flavored" tums. They have 425mg of calicum too, so with my prenatal vitamin, calcium supplement, dairy consumption and tums, the babies should definitely have strong bones!

There you have it. Just a quick post to pay tribute to the little things that help me out every day!