July 26: On the road again…

Today’s routine was a bit out of the ordinary since I had to drive to two different face-to-face meetings today for work. I had to leave the house by 7:45 AM and not only that, but I actually had to get myself ready and look presentable (e.g., hair and makeup). So, I literally had almost NO time with the kids –

Highlights of the Morning:

• Red woke up in the middle of the night because she “lost” her two plastic measuring spoons in bed. Why do we let them bring toys into bed? Hmmm. Sounds like a topic I should poll our group on.
• they ate well because of Chocolate Tuesday
• Twin Husky wanted out of the high chair. He wants to move and explore in the AM
• Twin Crazy was in her high chair, COVERED with blueberry yogurt (self-feeding). Literally all over her hands, face, YUCK but so cute. I think she realized that I was very hesitant to be too close to her and she was in a very anxious mood towards me the rest of the AM.

Twin Crazy goes crazy over blueberry yogurt

• I was rushing – trying to help Hubby get things organized for his drop offs; I made a huge cup of coffee in the Tervis Tumbler
• Said goodbye to everyone — they each came over for a hug and a kiss, even Big Bro (melted my heart…. he is still innocent and will go out of his way to get a hug from mommy). Twin Crazy was still very anxious. I feel like i did not hug her enough this AM so I’ll need to focus on that tonight.
• I drove out to my meeting, got a big lost (thanks map quest) but realized it when I started driving by cows and the road dead-ended. I made the meeting in plenty of time.

Highlights of My Working Day:

• Business development meeting went extremely well. We are partnering to potentially bring a product to market and we had a very productive meeting. I was an active participant and feel good about my contributions. The Head of Marketing there is a woman and through small talk I found out that she is also a mother of twins. Instant connection. YES\!! And then the pictures came out (which I had in my bag for a separate meeting with another mother of four). I honestly have no problem “pimping out” my kids for business development/sales/client relationship building. I’m always talking about stories and using my situation as an icebreaker when appropriate.
• Grabbed lunch at In and Out Burger. Double cheeseburger, with fries, soda, AND a chocolate milkshake. It was outrageous.
• Drove to city to pick up a co-worker; drove to a different sub-rub for a different business development meeting. The client is also a mother of four. Her kids are older than mine and are spread farther apart, but still I need to pick her brain on how she manages and will obviously share the group. We organized the project, set up a plan, deliverable and timeline. We’ll be meeting with her again on Thursday. I need to craft an email to her that specifies the budget we have to work with and the deliverable promised to her. The budget is tight, but there are other projects like this in the pipeline so we want to invest in this one and position ourselves well for follow on work with her.
• After the meeting we drove back to my place. We quickly read through all materials and crafted the storyline for the white paper that we will be drafting. It feels like a good outline. The consultant will start fleshing out the content tomorrow for my review so we are prepared for Thursdays’s meeting. I used my new iPad to craft the outline and easily emailed it to both of our work emails. I sent out some emails confirming our work for the whitepaper and the fee.
• Tomorrow will be a big day because of the Executive Presentation for my last project. I need to go through that tonight and in the AM so that I’m well prepared. I will be doing the majority of the presenting.

What to do for dinner? I’m sitting at home now so I should start to organize that. I’m thinking steak or pork. Let me check the freezer. I can’t wait to see my kids tonight. I owe them a lot of hugs and kisses.

Dinner and Bedtime:

• I picked up Big Bro and then met Hubby at the ferry terminal. Big Bro decided to go with Hubby to house to start dinner. I went solo to pick up Red, Twin Crazy, and Twin Husky.
• Kids run to me during pickup and I absolutely love it. “Mama mama mama mama”. And then they get side-tracked with a rock or leaf or something. How cute.
• We played lots of tickling games tonight. Big Bro would sit on my ankles and tickle my feet. Same thing with Red.
• All ate well
• Twin Husky tumbled down four stairs — it was OK. He is pretty rough and the stairs have rugs. He was more scared than anything. He stopped crying after 20 sec.
• Twin Husky and Twin Crazy started fighting over an indoor tricycle which caused a lot of problems tonight
• Twin Husky was the first to start to meltdown so we started bedtime routine with the twins. Twin Crazy kept dumping her sippy cup milk on the rug — on purpose. She looked at me with an evil eye when I said “NO!!!! No milk for [Twin Crazy]!!!” She definitely got mad at me. She refused to listen to books and was stomping around. She has a temper.
• Big Bro was giving us a hard time with going pee-pee. I didn’t feel like playing his games so I left him on the bathroom floor “to sleep”. Hopefully he is in his bed by now, AFTER going pee. Otherwise we will certainly be woken up in the middle of the night because of his accident.