African King and Queen

Gone are the days when we would blog and blog, and share so much about our growth, travels, adventures,  and our journey through life. But, these days we have soooooooooooooooooo much going on. What a bad excuse! Duh! Work, Kids, and dealing with the pandemic.

Inspite of everything going on, we honestly have a lot to be grateful for, although it has been very challenging for us a  new ( maybe not so new ) parents. Honestly, these toddlers are kicking our butt! They've kicked it, and continue to kick it. Each time we talk to friends who we assume have experience at parenting, "oh it gets better", seriously? When? How long?

From the moment we wake up in the morning, till we take the last dive onto our beds, it's non-stop. By 9pm, we are depleted of oxygen and vigor, but we keep going.  Amidst this lethargy, they spare us no mercy, and still find a way to sneak into our beds at night. Their cute pleas, and made up nightmares all enhance their bargain into our bedroom at night. This happens at least four times a week. In their adult life, we will pay them back. Oh yeah we will.

Time does fly. Not too long ago, we would make our vowels and plan on having children. We were so certain it would happen within a twinkle of an eye, but as nature would have it, it took a while, but the twins finally arrived at God's time. We've scrambled with our new titles as twin parents. A job we could not refuse, and gladly accept with open arms.  We just like to wine about it. Yup! It's therapeutic.

We had no in-service, no orientation.  Its one of those selflessjobs that everyone says "its so rewarding" , but we struggled at.  Fast forward 4 years,  we are gradually ironing out the creases, as we see them meet their milestones, and cause havoc on our walls, spill water on the carpets, intentionally micturate on themselves so they could have a long dragging laugh. And there's more, but we'll save our sanity and focus on enjoying them, as we await the rewards.

It certainly rewarding (yawing already). By Fall 2021, we would incur no more daycare costs (we hope). These kids are not cheap, and their demands are least to say autocratic and totalitarian. They seem to get along very well. Each with their own traits of some blend of our personalities and theirs. Their fascination with technology, they were born swiping, their desire to make fun of our accents, and intentionally make "a big deal out of seeing bugs", all enriches our gradual experience as new parents.

By now, at age four, we have build some mental, emotionally and physical calluses as new parents. We jokingly ask each other when we will have more, and the answer is, you guessed it, NO. At least for now, because we cant rule out miracles and the second coming of Christ, so we will leave everything to the universe.

We will be bloggin more.  We have sooooo much to share. We miss this. We still kept up with our Instagram page though. Next post will have photos, promise, promose.


Love and Peace
Lilian, Dennis, and the Twins

This is exciting to write about.
It feels good to write about our growth and challenges, and how we overcome and remain positive. It's exciting to know that what we write here will be read by you and our growing family. Lilian and I have so much to be grateful for, and we promise that our unintentional  absence from our blog is excusable.

It hasn't been our intent to  keep our blessings to ourselves, however on a night like this,  when it is half past midnight, and when we've tried all the tricks in the books to calm our two beautiful babies have been unsuccessful, insomnia niched in excitement gradually sets writing about our novice parenthood experiences the only alternative.

It all started during the last quarter of 2015,  when we found out that our prayers were answered, so we prayed more and kept praying towards our due date. The emotions were beyond euphoric, we had prayed for so long and talked so much about how eager we were at becoming parents. At times, we had been slightly discouraged, but deep down, we knew we served a Living God who wouldn't fail us. In an awkward wait felt good to be able to limit others from continually asking, "When are you having children"?  Honestly, it was one of the toughest questions we've had to deal with. 

I was at home when Lilian called from work and told me the good news,  I was ecstatic, so much so that I sent her a video of my silliness at home; dancing, screaming and goofing of as usual. What a feeling!!!  Our lives changed from that very moment, our thoughts, our perceptions on life and family took an interesting turn. We smiled more, walked shoulder high, with more swagger than the usual, became closer, because deep down in our heart, it felt so good knowing we would soon be parents.

I enjoyed the transformation in Lilian so much, she touched her belly often, and I caught her in-front of the mirror more, and more as she loved her body transformation; also she meticulously watched every matter she digested. As her body transformed, her skin glowed and her teeth whitened and she gained a new silly giggle and silliness; however, she gradually got tired more, and attempted to eat more in the midst of nausea and constipation, which was tough to deal with. Most impressively, she kept on, worked 5 days or so every week, and I often wondered how she got through her days at work with such a workload.

I haven't taken that many pictures and videos as much as I did during this process, I took pictures and videos, daily as I anticipated each day with more poise than before. We tracked each second with What to Expect App  and wrote down some remarkable memories. We found the app very helpful, as  we got daily and weekly notifications of growth, expectations and and recorded our appointments with our OB/GYN team meticulously. In the midst of our excitement and enthusiasm, it was clear to us that becoming parents would be challenging, transformational as demanding, so we leaned more to positive thinking and knew that our family would be supportive as well, most importantly we believed God would be on our side.

A month passed, and two and three, and we finally decided to let the cat out of the of the bag, we couldn't hide Lilian's bump any longer. For three months we both avoided social gatherings as much as possible and enjoyed the high suspiciousness that lingered in the hearts of our parents. At times we got close to being caught, but we used denial as a successful tool.

On thanksgiving 2015, we shared the great news with our family, and the joy, happiness and thrill is still pulsatile in our thoughts. We sang and danced and cheered, shed some tears of joy, hugged and prayed to God for an answered prayer, and most importantly, prayed for our "seed" and the love we share to grow endlessly.

We took a trip to California, and spent some time with our friends and hid our secret well, but suspiciously. In December, 2015, we came to accept that it was impossible to hide, so sent postcards to our close friends and family to share our joy with them. We kept another secret though. Secret we shared with our family on Christmas- "we're expecting twins !" 

Planning a wedding is exciting, however, it could be a challenging ordeal. With all the excitement comes many perceptions and expectations. Feel free to add or share your perspectives on this matter. In no specific order: