Beans Family Update!

So the goal was to have a glorious return to the blogosphere, Ph.D. in hand, and a tenure track position secured at Ivy U (after negotiating a live-in nanny for the little beans).

Alas, the dissertation is still a few weeks from completion and my job search now involves repeatedly hitting the refresh button on my e-mail with the hope that some search committee chair will contact me to profusely apologize because my application accidentally slipped behind the radiator and they simply have to meet me immediately so they can shower me with grant money and book contracts. Yes, that is the stink of desperation that you smell. Just one more "bitch" about an academic job search. They generally don't bother to tell you if you are rejected and it is considered uncouth to check on the status of the search. So, basically there is a lot of waiting and wondering involved.

Despite the stresses of jobs and living arrangements the babies are doing excellent. We just passed the 24 week mark and Mrs. Beans is doing fantastic. Both babies are measuring "singleton" size and it is hard to believe that they will continue to grow (tip for dads of multiples, don't let your wife see footage of John and Kate plus 8 on TLC). Our evenings involve a routine of heating pads, ice cream, and the dreaded maternity fashion show as Mrs. Beans tries to determine what to wear to work the next morning. Frankly, I don't get it. We have a lot of nice maternity clothes that we purchases or that was given to us by friends and family, yet Mrs. Beans insists on trying to squeeze just one more "wear" out of every outfit. I swear I heard her jeans cry out for help the other night. Now, I think that she looks beautiful and I tell her this on a regular basis, but she is only reluctantly starting to wear her maternity outfits with any regularity.

Actually, I might need to start wearing her maternity clothes soon. I have come down with a classic case of couvades (sympathy pains) and put on 15 lbs. This came as a bit of a shock because I had lost a ton of weight while we were doing the "healthy lifestyle changes" while preparing for IVF. You know, cutting back on the crack and trying to limit my exposure radioactive materials. It turns out that husbands who go through ART are more likely to get sympathy pains (and this must be true because I read it on google). Did this happen to any other fathers out there? In any event, I am running again and preparing for some serious car carrier lifting.

Speaking of which, we registered for some baby shower items recently... holy crap! We had no intention of doing a shower, but fell for the "everybody else is doing it, so why not us" argument, and thank god we did. Now, we are neither frugal nor extravagant, but I don't think we had really thought about the extra costs of twins. Even if you are trying to shop wisely and gently used, the baby "start-up" costs are astronomical. As someone joked on another blog, "I hope that come out ready to mow some lawns." That's silly babies can't mow lawns... but they can launch their own brand from a sitcom full of cheesy puns (and co-starring Steve Guttenberg)...

He's a struggling musician. She's a bounty hunter with a sordid past . Together they are trying to raise twins as they travel across the country in search of hot gigs and cool cons!

Look for "Double Trouble" coming this fall to UPN!

We hope that all is well out there, and we will be updating more frequently as we hit the home stretch. Thanks for you patience and I am looking forward to catching up with the blogs.