I don’t know when I turned into such a girl. It’s late spring, and the warmer weather has brought out lots of interesting creepy crawly things. Caterpillars, ants, bees, spiders, and more are all over the place. And suddenly, I, the girl who played with worms for hours as a kid, can’t stand any of them. The twins are curious and want to know what everything is, and are willing to pick many of them up. I don’t want to turn them into wusses about bugs. The kids who wouldn’t come near the caterpillars in our butterfly life cycles unit when I was teaching drove me nuts, but I still find myself telling Alex and Avery not to touch anything. And I can tell they are getting sort of freaked out, because Avery does the same little shiver I do anytime a bee is near, and they both say “Oh no!” and show me every spider web in their clubhouse. For some reason I have it in my head that the little hairs on the caterpillars can hurt them, when I know I used to pick them up as a kid and don’t remember it hurting. Alex managed to sit in an anthill in our neighbor’s yard last week and was crawling in them, head to toe – the BIG ones. I’m so glad none bit him, but I had to strip him naked in the yard and swat them all off. Eeeew! I get skeeved out just thinking about it as I type this. I’ll be better when the lightning bugs come – they don’t creep me out, at least.

If you have $250 and are willing to become a customer of ING Direct, you have the opportunity to earn $275 on top of your deposit. It will take some work, but not too much. Here’s how it works.

First, open an account at ING Direct using one of the links at the bottom of this post. There are five links listed for the savings account, but choose only one. You must not currently be an ING Direct customer and you must provide an initial deposit of at least $250 in order to receive a $25 bonus for opening the account.

After your account is created and funded, you will eventually see a link at the bottom of your account information website. This feature might not be available immediately for new customers, but with time, the option will be present. Click on the “Earn $$$: Refer a Friend” graphic to receive the opportunity to refer 25 of your friends. Each successful referral will earn you $10. If you don’t have 25 friends, you can email me. I’ll post your referral links once mine expire so you can benefit from the power of the internet.

Use the following links when opening the Orange Savings Account with at least $250 (in addition to your $25 account opening bonus). Updated May 13, 2008.

OSA1: Deposit at least $250 with this link
OSA2: Deposit at least $250 with this link
OSA3: Deposit at least $250 with this link
OSA4: Deposit at least $250 with this link
OSA5: Deposit at least $250 with this link

If you do not have $250 to deposit initially, please use this link instead.

If you click one of the above links and see this message on the first page, then choose a different link and let me know via email or comment below which link number has expired.

We’re sorry, but the referral link within the email you received has expired and is no longer valid. We recommend that you contact the sender and ask them to re-send the referral email.

I’ll receive $10 for every successful account opening, and when you receive your referral links and give them out, you’ll receive $10 for each referral as well. Your referral links might not appear immediately after opening your account, but when they do, you should take advantage of them.

ING Direct is one of my favorite banks, despite their lagging interest rates. The current rate on savings accounts is 3.0% and the rate on checking accounts is tiered with a maximum of 3.40%. These rates are better than most brick and mortar banks you’ll find.  I’ve had my account with them since 2004!

The title says it all. Yesterday, I had had it by 9 am and had given myself a time out in the basement to cool off. Not that the twins accepted that – they stood at the gate at the top of the steps, ripped the lids off their Color Wonder markers, and threw them down the steps at me. Adam had bad night the night before and was up for the day at 6 am, and I was up late addressing announcements, so I was tired and grouchy. And Alex and Avery were in full whiny, cranky, disagree for the sake of disagreeing mode. He hit her in the head with the stick part of the Sweeping Sam broom on purpose – like chased her around the living room with it until he made contact with her skull, and she insisted on doing her high pitched shriek every time Adam was almost asleep. They sat in Adam’s swing and bouncy seat, climbed the toilet and desk, slammed the porch slider open and closed a million times, threw food… you name it. We were all very much on one another’s nerves. I think the twins have figured out that I can’t be as on top of them, discipline wise, when I am nursing the baby, so they act up from jealousy and just because they know they can get away with more. Honestly, yesterday was the worst I’ve had since Adam was born and it all around sucked! Days like that make me question myself as a mother because I know I lose patience when I shouldn’t, and then I feel guilty.

But then we have days like today that are the polar opposite. I was able to go to bed a little earlier last night and Adam took a bottle from Don, and then this morning the twins slept until 8 and I was also able to get Adam to sleep til almost 8 as well. (Not like through the night, he’s still up every two hours at night, but 7 hours of non-consecutive sleep are still waaaay better than 4.) I decided this morning that we would take advantage of the nice weather and go to Green Meadows Petting Farm which is only about ten minutes from our house. Before Adam was born, I was afraid I’d never leave the house alone with all three, but we’ve done story time at the library successfully a few times, so I decided to give it a whirl. It ended up being AMAZING. Adam slept in the Bjorn the whole time we were there, and Alex and Avery had a blast petting pigs, a bull, and a zebra, chasing chickens, holding a duck, and feeding goats and sheep. There are lots of pics of all that in an album we setup. My kids have NO fear, apparently. Well except for milking cows, which they wouldn’t do, but I think they were weirded out by the guy who was supervising that, not the cow herself. Alex also greatly enjoyed the Purell dispenser stations. Too bad for him there aren’t public museums of just those. More than anything, it was just a really enjoyable day with lots of smiles and cooperation that made me feel like maybe I am doing alright with them. Then again, I did feed them Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies for lunch, but whatever. I thought the farm had a concession stand and it didn’t. Oh well.

They really are good kids. I’m so lucky. Alex is starting to talk in sentences and some of what he comes up with is just a riot. He was happy to tell Grandma Nancy his own version of the story of Daddy drilling his hand and getting a boo-boo a couple of weeks ago. He calls himself “Assa” these days and corrected Adam the other day for spitting up: “Adam, no pit muk (milk) Eeeew.” Avery’s favorite new words are “yestuhday” (anything that happened more than about 5 minutes ago in her world) and “maybe sumtin else” when you suggest something she doesn’t care for. Well, that or the shriek I spoke of above, depending on her mood. She likes to tell me things match, like if we wear the same color shirt. They both love their baby brother so much, and it makes me smile when I see them do caring things like rock his car seat and tell him not to cry when he’s upset. Avery accidentally fell on him today, I mean flattened him like a pancake, and I immediately had two crying babies on my hands. Adam stopped as soon as I picked him up, but she was sobbing. I asked her what hurt, and finally got out of her that nothing hurt – she was so upset because she thought she’d hurt baby Adam. And Adam is SUCH a sweet, easy baby. He gets pretty fussy for a couple of hours in early evening a few nights a week, and he screams bloody murder in the car seat, but other than that, he is a dream. He has been smiling for a couple of weeks, which just melts my heart. It seemed to take forever for the twins to smile, but Adam does it all the time when you talk to him. So cute. And even though he’s up often at night, he’s really good about going right back down after he eats and spends most of the night in his crib, from about 11 to 6 most nights.

All in all, there have been so many more good days than bad ones, and it helps to remember that and look forward to what’s to come.

Wow, it’s been a month already (well, it WAS a month last week). We both feel guilty that we haven’t had as much time to post lately. Don’t worry, we’ve been taking plenty of pictures (see the April and May galleries) and have lots more that need to be uploaded.

Last week Adam had his 1 month checkup appointment. All was well and he has gained weight as expected. He clocked in at 12 lbs 6 oz and 22 1/2″. Definitely still a big boy and has plenty of smiles to share. He seems to enjoy his floor gym and lets out little coos and noises when laying on it. He also has no trouble holding his head up and dishing out the occasional head butt. His strength scares me and Alex needs to look out once he’s mobile!

Here are a few pictures. Jen took the one on the rocking chair on his actual 1 month birthday. We’ll use the same chair for each milestone and try to put some signage up next month. An old co-worker of mine puts their son next to a bear so you can see the size contrast. We’ll have to start doing that too.

Jen’s been doing a good job with all 3 kids by herself.  We all (me and the 3 hoodlums) are all VERY lucky to have such a good mom/wife around the house that can deal with the daily stress associated with being a stay at home mom of 3 kids under 2!  I definitely don’t think I could have the patience to be here all day with the kids and not go completely nuts.

Since so many of ours friends have babies we figured we’d share this deal.  We did this last year or the year before that (before the twins).

Get a promotional certificate good for $20 off a future Amazon.com purchase when you spend $99 on select Pampers and Luvs products offered by Amazon.com between May 1 and May 31, 2008.

Expires Jun 1, 2008