You have to love the mind of a 2 year old boy.

Yesterday as I was getting the twins ready for their nap, or maybe it was up from the nap, I heard Alex say pee-pee. He had a run a couple of weeks ago where he decided he wasn’t potty trained anymore, so I’ve been more alert than usual for potty words. He was sitting in his bed, and I asked him if he needed to go, and he said, “No, my flying monkey pee-pee on my milk.” He has this toy from a Happy Meal Pop-Pop got for him:

I asked how his monkey was peeing on his milk. He held up the monkey and showed me. The monkey’s head was turned totally backwards so the wings and tail appeared to be in the front. The tail didn’t look like a tail from that angle. And sure enough, my son said, “See? There his penis, pee pee on my milk.”

Then there was the incident two weeks ago when we were headed into a store, and Avery and Alex were getting out of the back of the van. To do that, they have to sit down and hang their legs over the bumper before jumping down. Alex was first and Avery sat down behind him a little too quickly, accidentally kicking him in the back. As we were walking in to the store, with both of them holding on to Adam’s stroller like good little angels, Alex unmistakeably looked at Avery and said, “Aisy knuckle sandwich.” His usage was a little off - he was calling her a knuckle sandwich rather than offering to give her one, but I realized it’s definitely time to start watching what I say around them!

Apparently, there’s a learning curve to this game that I just never knew of until now. The twins LOVE the idea of playing hide and seek. But no matter how many times I try to explain or show them how to play, they just haven’t quite nailed the concept yet.

Today we were playing outside and took a walk down to their tree, which is at the far end of the yard. Someone mentioned the game and I decided to take another stab at it. I told them I could count and they should go and hide so they thought Mommy couldn’t see them (and all the while I am thinking in the back of my head that someday in a store I’d be cursing the day I ever taught them this dumb game because they’ll finally get it and make me have a panic attack by actually hiding.) Then Adam and I would try to find them. I covered my eyes with my hand and counted to ten. I opened my eyes. They were standing about 3 feet away from me with their hands over their eyes.

So I tried again. I told them to hide and gave them some ideas, like behind tree trunks. I did the eye cover and count again. I peeked while I counted and they did both run to the nearest tree and “hid” by standing directly next to the trunk on the side nearest to me. So I kept counting and turned around so at least they’d be behind me and I could pretend to look for them at another tree first. I called out the whole “Ready or not, here I come!” thing and as I turned around, Alex came running toward me. Avery stayed put at the tree but was in plain site giggling like crazy.

I thought maybe it would work better if Adam and I did the hiding. So the twins counted and I hid on the far side of a tree trunk from them. They got to 19, 20, 19, 20, 19, 20 and came running for me. With their hands over their eyes, of course. Strike three.

I decided to go back to them hiding. We played about four more rounds of the version where they stood next to a tree on my side of it and then came running at me as soon as I said “Ready or not, here I come!” They don’t get the game AT ALL, but they were laughing, happy, silly little things and we were having a blast, and that’s what matters most.

I’ve seen this on a couple of friends’ blogs and thought it’d be fun to post. Then I realized I haven’t read many of these “classics.” I really am a pretty well read person, but recently I just don’t get the time I wish I had for it. And I’m hard to please, too. Lots of times I’ll pick up a hyped book and think to myself that it’s not all that. Also, I’d argue that Night by Elie Wiesel belongs on the list. Anyway, here goes:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read. (I’m including any books I’ve started but haven’t finished. Has anyone I know ever finished Ulysses? Please speak up so I can bow at your feet …)
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE. **I can’t figure out how to do this. I am officially a blog-tard.)
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman Have read the first of the trilogy, but not the rest.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller6
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (started, couldn’t get into it)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – didn’t like it much
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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.

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.

Tis the season, right? We’ve had a few hellacious weeks in this house for the twins. It started on Jan. 23rd with Avery getting a fever that quickly went to 103-104 even with alternating Tylenol and Motrin every 3 hours. Her first visit to the dr. that Saturday morning revealed nothing, and by Monday it finally broke and seemed both kids just had colds. Alex never got the fever, though. But by Weds., Avery’s fever was back and I had her back at the pediatrician’s, where she was diagnosed with a double ear infection and given a strong antibiotic. We thought we were on the road to recovery and happy kids again. Ha! A week later on Thursday, Alex woke up at 8 pm puking all over his crib, the walls, the carpet… Don was such a trooper and cleaned it all while Avery and I supervised helping Alex to aim for the toilet or trash can each time he got sick. Avery learned a new sentence that night: “Agus pook,” (her version of Alex puke.) 4 hours, 5 changes of pajamas, and many vomiting and dry heaving episodes later, we got him to sleep in our bed. He was fine Friday and then puked once Saturday morning in the hall - too early to have given him milk, I guess. I’m still trying to hunt down a lingering smell somewhere int he hall or bathroom - so gross. Not one to be outdone, Avery did the stomach bug thing Saturday night, only she went from 11 pm to 3 am and wasn’t nearly as cooperative about sleeping once the throwing up was done. She’s been a super cranky girl - crying and having tantrums all the time, saying NO even to her favorite things like holding Beary Bear and watching Mickey Mouse. She was clearly exhausted for days on end, as were we all. All I heard for days was “Mommy, hold” over and over, which I don’t mind doing but she wanted me to stand and hold her non-stop, which kills my back these days. Finally, today, almost 3 weeks later, I had my happy babies back with good appetites and smiles and giggles. I’m praying it continues because I think we were all at the end of our ropes with exhaustion and frustration.

As mentioned before, we introduced the potty around here right before Christmas, just as a fun thing. “Hey, look, you can sit on this chair and be naked!” Both kids love it, which is a plus, but Alex seems to have actually gotten the hang of the darn thing. He doesn’t tell me when he needs to go, but about 90% of the time he sits, he produces something, so that’s at least once a day at this point that he pees or poops on it, usually more.

This morning while I was getting Avery dressed, he sat on the potty in his diaper and pulled at it like he wanted it off, so I took it off. The kid sat there and peed a little, jumped up and looked and pointed into the bowl and yelled “YAY!” and then sat back down and peed some more, like a full bladder’s worth. I was thrilled with that, but then he sat on Avery’s potty and pooped too! Not just a little one like he’s done before, but like an actual normal diaperful of poop. He peed again after his nap, and then before bed he pooped a little more. It’s amazing. He loves to carry the little bowl part into the bathroom and dump it in the big toilet, wave bye-bye, and flush it away. Who knew excrement could be so exciting?

He’s thrilled to pieces with himself, and I am too, but I am so afraid of messing it up. I don’t want him to lose interest. I don’t know whether I should just keep going as we are, putting him on there when I think of it, which is usually after naps and one or two other times a day, or try to put him on there hourly and actually try to train him. I’ve read that they should be able to tell you they need to go, and take down their own pants, and he doesn’t do either of those things, he just knows how to push those muscles and make it happen once he’s on there I think. He’s only 18 1/2 months old… it’s so early. I never thought he’d have a clue yet. And what if he does train, but then regresses once the new baby comes? Am I ready to look for a bathroom in every public place and wrangle three kids into a stall so he can go? (Will I ever be ready for that? Scary thought!) We visited our friends Bill and Shannon last weekend, and Don had to take their 3 year old to pee behind a convenience store dumpster because the bathroom was broken. Another time, Shannon had to take him behind a tree at the playground because no bathrooms were around. Are we ready for those things? Is there a book of directions on when and where it’s okay to let kids pee in public due to lack of lavatory facilities?

Avery is very happy for him but totally perplexed about how he’s making it all appear in there. I thought girls were supposed to be earlier and faster to learn than boys?!? No matter what I am just happy that he’s cooperative and successful at all. I don’t want to push him but the thought of not having three in diapers is sooooooo heavenly!

Our basement looks like Geoffrey the Giraffe threw up. You know, the one who doesn’t want to grow up, he’s a Toys R Us kid?

We’ve got a play kitchen with food and dishes, puzzles, new books, a Magnadoodle, a bouncy inchworm thing they can ride on, Little People and their accessories, a remote control car that Alex likes to drive off the end table, and so much more. The kitchen was left by Santa, and both kids were all over it as soon as they came downstairs Christmas morning, opening doors and drawers and mixing and stirring and cooking up a storm. I’m soooo glad they like it so much. I actually got to make breakfast in peace and go to the bathroom alone, with nobody asking me “Peepee? Poopy? Wipey?” because they were so entranced by the kitchen. Yay!

After a break for breakfast and to get halfway dressed, we came back down for round 2 of gifts here, when Don and I finally opened our gifts too. Highlights included matching Crocs shoes for Don and Avery

a new drill for Don, and an awesome diaper bag and hotsling for 3.0 and me. Avery and Alex took a teamwork approach to opening gifts and wanted to play with every single thing before they could be coaxed into opening the next package. We didn’t even open stockings until the 26th, it was taking so long! Then it was a mad dash from here to Grandma Pam’s for lots of kisses and smiles, then to Pop-pop’s for lunch and presents. Well, it was going to be presents first, but someone said something about eating and Alex made a beeline for the kitchen, so everyone took a food break. A&A loved everything Grandma picked for them, especially the wooden tool puzzle and velcro wooden food and metal pots and pans for their kitchen. Alex still seemed to want to get into my dad’s cabinet with Franklin Mint model cars, though. Smart boy!

After that, we headed to my Uncle Gene’s for more presents and food, and once again, as soon as someone said it was time to eat, my children were first in line. It’s unreal how much these two love to eat - they certainly get it honestly considering how much I like to eat, but still… Whoever says toddlers are picky eaters has not met these twins! Great Grandma gave them awesome Radio Flyer tricycles that Don can put together for the spring, with handles an adult can use to push or steer. My babies are so big all of a sudden! They also got a Little People garage that they are loving thanks to engineering and assembly courtesy of Daddy and their cousin BJ.

Overall, I was amazed at how they held up all day with two short naps in the car for Alex and one even shorter one for Avery. We left my aunt & uncle’s just past bedtime - like 7:20 - and I would have bet money they’d be asleep within minutes and zonked all the way home. Instead, Avery paid quite an homage to the stream of consciousness style the whole way home. We were treated to just over and hour of “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, skajfc hqioueya ckjnei Poohy Poohy Poohy sfivnw elau ;.zfmeu Mommy, Mommy, Mommy kfcj qhalifeu Beary, Beary, Shoey, Shoey kjclfeiuo oituari Butt-Butt, Butt-Butt” from her, with a little whining and crying from both thrown in for variety. But they went right to sleep once in their cribs, and Avery slept til 8:20 and Alex was out until 9 am the next morning! They both took a rock solid nap for a couple of hours right at noon, too. The day had definitely worn them out. Don and I were beat, too. The traveling is hard, but it’s worth it to see the twins put the joy back into Christmas for so many people when you’ve been so used to that jaded, grinchy feeling that seems to inevitably invade the holidays as you get older.

We’ll end with some more gratuitous cute pics from the day. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!!

We’ve suspected for a few months that Avery knew a few colors. It started at My Gym when she could bring me balls that were the color I asked for, or give me letters in the tub that were the color I asked for. Sometimes it seemed like a fluke, but most of the time she was correct too often for it to be random luck. In the last few weeks, with increasing accuracy, you can ask her the color of something and she’ll name it correctly. Geen (green) and boo (blue) are the ones she’s best at, but yeh-yo (yellow) is making fast progress too. She can say pink and purple, too, but doesn’t seem to use them correctly - she tends to default to green or blue when she doesn’t know the answer. Scares me how smart these kids are sometimes!

Not in it…ON it… this morning.

I ordered Baby Bjorn ones from Amazon and they came yesterday, so we opened the boxes this morning and the kids were having fun playing with them, sitting on them, using the little bowl part for hats, etc. I decided to let them be diaper free and sit on them for a few minutes, but they were far more into the stand up - sit down - run around game. Avery is a pee bandit - she goes anytime she’s naked, so I took her into the bedroom to get a diaper on. Alex came running down the hall a few minutes later and stood in their door saying “Uh-oh, Uh-oh!” Here’s the rest of our conversation.

Me: What?
Him: Butt-butt. (and grabbing his penis) Uh-oh.
Me: (thinking he pooped somewhere…lovely) Show me where.
Him: Uh-oh, butt butt. (takes my hand and leads me back to the potties)
Him: (pointing) Pee pee.

Sure enough, there’s a puddle right in front of the potty, and the outside of it was all wet. At least he knows what it’s for, I guess. I’m not remotely trying to train them yet, just thought I’d like them to get used to potties, play with them, etc. Buying diapers for 3 kids is going to be a fortune, so the sooner the better. But I can already see that trying to train 2 at a time is going to be very interesting!