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!

I was heading down the hall this morning – I forget what for – and I had one of those Oprah a-ha moments. I could hear the thump-thump of four little feet padding along behind me, giggling and following like little ducklings. It really is the best sound ever. And I realized for about the zillionth time how blessed I am to have these babies. They are so much fun these days. They are monkeys, climbing everywhere, exploring everything with no fear. You seriously cant turn your back for a second or they are up on a couch or chair, or someone smacks the other with a sippy cup, or they are using teamwork to accomplish some devilish goal. They love to help and follow directions. They are better at fetch than the dogs, because you can tell them WHAT to fetch – diaper, wipes, shoes, socks, bear, etc.- and they go to the room you say and actually bring the item back about 85% of the time. They answer questions with a “yuh” or a “no.” They understand sooooo much and are little sponges. Avery will grab a book and point at everything in it, wanting me to name each item. Alex runs up and gives hugs and cuddles out of nowhere, just because he likes to snuggle. He still has the best giggle ever, and has super ticklish feet to go with the laugh. I am absolutely in love with them.

To go with their little twin feet, their baby brother has been wiggling around in my belly for a couple of weeks now. I feel him every day now pretty much. Just little wiggles, and only if I am in certain positions, but it still never gets old. It makes me excited, like he is more real somehow. It makes me a little sad, too, knowing this is likely my last pregnancy, because seriously, 4 kids? I cannot even imagine. So I try to treasure each little thump and bump. This poor kid – he has no name and we have not even chosen any “maybes.” We are definitely open to suggestions. We found a crib we like, and planned to buy it on sale at Amazon, but when I went to buy it on the day the sale was supposed to end, it had mysteriously doubled in price. Amazon was no help, so now we are patiently waiting for it to go back on sale.

Thanks to him, I am now a minivan driving momma. Ugh, I hate the thought. I love the inside of our new Odyssey, and I just try not to think of how terribly dorky I look from the outside. The twins love it, especially the sliding doors. I am sure Don will take pictures of the new ride and post about it soon.

Poor Alex. He can’t catch a break. He finally got past the worst of his teething troubles, and now he’s got croup. It started Saturday night, when I went in to check on him before bed, like I usually do, and he was laying in his crib, wide awake and burning up but not crying. It was creepy how he was just laying there looking dazed. He had a fever over 102, and when Tylenol didn’t bring it down, I called the pediatrician in the middle of the night. It didn’t seem like anything other than the fever, so we didn’t go to an urgent care place. By Sunday night at bedtime, he had a runny nose and sounded so congested that he couldn’t sleep. We tried everything – bringing him into our bed, sleeping with him upright on my chest in the recliner, holding him… it didn’t matter. He slept in 45 minute increments at best all night. It was so scary listening to him unable to catch a breath, wheezing and coughing. It reminded me of the newborn days, and why I don’t miss them. A quick trip to the ped. got him diagnosed Monday morning, and he seems much better now. He’s whiny and fussy and wants to be held, but the stridor sound is gone when he breathes in. He’s totally hoarse, though. Nothing sounds as pathetic as a baby who’s trying to cry but can’t. Don is getting over a cold, Avery has a runny nose, and my throat has that tickle that tells me a cold is on the way. Hopefully we’ll all be on the mend soon.

The weather’s been nice enough the last few days for me to load the babies into their little red wagon and pull them through the neighborhood most days before lunch. They look so cute in their little hats, facing each other and checking out the ‘hood. Looks are deceiving, though. More than once, I’ve turned around to find that Alex is pulling on Avery’s chinstrap for her sun hat, or she has yanked his baseball cap off by the brim. Alex also likes to see where he’s going, so he has to be in the back seat or else he twists himself around and half out of the seatbelt to face forward. I’ve been putting toys in the wagon as well, so they have things to chew on and play with, but I’m finding that they aren’t using them for the intended purposes. As I’m walking, I’ll hear a telltale thunk behind me. When I turn and look, I see a trail halfway back down the road of toys, clothes, stuffed animals, and cheerios. It’s not so bad when they throw a rattle or something that makes noise when it hits, but binkies and hats and stuffed Peeps tend to fall silently. Yesterday I think I must have walked 2 miles on the 1 mile walk because I turned around so many times to pick things up. Today I just let them drop it all on the way down the road and I stopped and picked the things up as we came to them on the way back. Much faster that way. “Gretel” came home a few days ago wearing one pink sock…she had two on when we left the house. And yesterday, Don found her pink hat hanging from our mailbox. I guess some kind neighbor found it in the road and returned it.

What else is new? Alex has one top tooth fully through and the second one has the tiniest little bit through and seems to be bugging him tonight, so it must be on the move. Avery has been drooling and gnawing on her fingers, so she can’t be far behind. Alex is cruising along furniture and managed to climb one basement step yesterday. He was pretty impressed with himself over that. Avery is a speedy crawler now and her favorite new trick is that she can go from laying to sitting, so she’s always sitting up in the crib when I go to get her from naps now. It’s funny, she learned how to do that within weeks of learning to crawl, but it took Alex months because he just started to do it too. So now the only thing he can do that she can’t is pull up to standing, and she waves hello but he doesn’t.

Don was away for his work’s annual convention in Kansas City last weekend. I was so glad to see him Sunday when he got home. Pop and Grandma and Aunt Jen all came to visit the twins and help out, but we seem to be smack in the middle of stranger anxiety. Alex warmed up eventually, but Avery just was clingy and cried anytime I left the room. It was hard and made me appreciate all over again how amazing Don is as a dad. I feel like I need to try harder to have the babies be with people other than Don and me much more often.

The twins turned 8 months old yesterday. Do you know that’s 2/3 of a year? It seems nowhere near that long, but it also seems like forever somehow.

Things are as busy as ever in our house. Avery’s bottom two teeth are through and almost as big as Alex’s. They love using them and their gums to gnaw on table food. Soft veggies like carrots, green beans, peas, and potatoes have been a hit, as have pasta, chicken and rice soup, goldfish crackers, and pretty much anything else I can chop up into small enough pieces. Avery is a daintier and slower eater, while Alex is of the belief that the more he can shove into his mouth at once, the better off he is. He loves to steal things from Avery’s tray since she’s so much pokier. Unfortunately, I have to be careful what I give them because we think Alex may be allergic to milk, which is an ingredient in more than I ever realized. I had him at the doctor last week to see if she had any ideas why he was so whiny all the time, and why his reflux wasn’t improving. She suggested the possible allergy and now he’s on special hypoallergenic formula and we have an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist next week. She said we’d see improvement within a couple of days if the formula / dairy was the problem, and while he’s not as fussy, he is still leaving a slime trail like a slug wherever he goes. Our carpets are trashed, his clothes are changed about 3 times per day, and this new formula reeks. We’re sticking with it for another few days and then I am going to switch back to see if things worsen, which would help to confirm the allergy.

Alex has also been waking at night again. Sometimes I think it’s just a habit, but other times I think he may be having night terrors. It’s the strangest thing – he “wakes” in utter panic with loud screams and hysterical crying, but doesn’t want his binky or teething tablets or anything else that usually calms him. Even if Don or I pick him up, he keeps crying, and even though his eyes are open, you can tell he’s not really there. It’s scary for us and I hope it’s just a phase. It takes anywhere from 5 minutes to over an hour to get him back down and peaceful, if not asleep, in his crib. I did some reading online and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it if it is truly night terrors other than hope it passes quickly. It breaks our heart to see him so upset.

He’s also turned into a champion crawler and is loving his independence. We used to see the devilish glint in Avery’s eyes and think she was going to be the source of all our trouble, but Alex is holding his own. He has this great skill with finding the one thing in a room that you don’t want him to touch… the laptop computer, our touch lamp in the bedroom, the diaper can and trashcan, anything in the hall bathroom… They say this is the age when separation anxiety begins, but he has no trepidation about crawling out of my site. I ask him to follow me down the hall and he starts to, but then hangs a right into the bathroom to bang on the tub. And when I am changing Avery’s diaper, he slips out of the nursery and into our bedroom to bang on the lamp. One really cute thing he does is to stop at every new surface and touch it, from carpet to pergo to area rug, sort of like he’s testing to make sure it’s safe. I am VERY careful to keep the new stair gate closed at all times. The little bugger has gotten very fast!

Avery has turned into the happiest little baby. She always has a grin for us and babbles “mamama” and “dadada” nonstop. She has no apparent interest in getting mobile. If we sit her somewhere, as long as we stay within her eyesight, she’ll just play with whatever’s around or swing and wave her arms like a fool if nothing is around to play with. On her belly, she can spin in circles or scoot backwards, but there is nothing close to forward movement, so if I give her something to play with, I have to put her with her feet against a wall or she’s backed away from the toy about 2 minutes later and flapping her arms like a bird, trying to will herself forward to reach it again. She still hates naps. She takes them 2 or 3 times a day, but they are always short and I barely have time to eat or shower before I hear her in their room, babbling away.

Both babies have figured out how to push down the bumpers and peer out like little jailbirds to see what’s going on in the room. Alex likes to drop his binkies out through the slats. I guess he hasn’t figured out that they don’t come back when he does that. The other day, he fell asleep waiting for something interesting to happen.

Time to end the post – someone is awake and needs to be reminded it’s bedtime!

Avery’s had a very busy week! She’s definitely a tough little girl, too. Her bottom two teeth can definitely be felt just below the gums, sharp and ready to break through if they haven’t already. They are right at that point where it’s hard to tell. She’s also been really congested and wakes up with this terrible glob under her nose every morning that takes about 10 minutes to completely suck out. She sounds like she’s snoring when she drinks a bottle and I feel awful for her. She has an amazing talent for blowing snot bubbles – so gross. Since she’s been fighting this cold for over two weeks, I finally took her to the dr. today and found out her left ear is definitely infected, and possibly the right one too. She’s on amoxicillin for that and hopefully it’ll clear up soon. I hope she’s not inherited my crummy immune system. I know I had a ton of ear infections as a kid and had to get tubes in my ears. Through it all, though, she’s been as happy as ever. She smiles and giggles and doesn’t act like she’s sick or in pain – such a little trooper. Much different than her brother, who is whining during the day and waking often at night. I think he has a top tooth coming in now. It’s so funny to me how opposite these twins are – teething gives Alex fits, while Avery has sailed through without a complaint. But if Alex falls over from sitting and thunks his head on something, he doesn’t miss a beat, and if she does the same thing, she cries like there’s no tomorrow. Strange…

Avery has also started to very clearly say “Da-da.” She says it ALL THE TIME, much to Momma’s dismay. I know she hasn’t associated it with Don yet, though he insists she’s talking about him. I’ll remind him of that when she’s calling it next time she has a dirty diaper, or on one of her 5 am wake-up days. We have some really cute video of it that we just need to edit down to a reasonable file size before we post it.

And finally, a clear shot of Alex’s bottom teeth. They are much bigger now – this was taken a week or so ago. They are sharp, too. The little turkey viper accidentally bit me at dinner tonight and it hurt!

Well, two teeth, actually. The beginnings of them anyway. Don and I have been saying for a couple of weeks that Alex was really close to getting his first tooth. He had all the classic signs – drooling, fussiness, waking at night, grabbing his mouth and crying, etc. And every day, we’d try to look and see, but he has this little trick of covering his gums with his tongue anytime we try get a peek. We’d feel around and never felt a lump or anything. So yesterday, we went to the doctor for flu booster shots and I wanted to ask if we were giving him too much Motrin because he’d been getting it every night about an hour after bedtime for a week or so. Teething tablets helped during the day, but pain really seemed to be getting him at night. The doctor came in and checked him for an ear infection and made sure nothing else was wrong, and told us to try Tylenol instead since it was less irritating to the stomach. What really surprised me was that she looked in his mouth and said it would be “awhile” before he actually got a tooth. I was dreading weeks longer of his fussiness. Imagine my surprise when I caught a glimpse of something on his gums today. I felt with my fingers, and not only is there one jagged little edge on his bottom gum, but two jagged little edges poking through. He seems to be getting both central bottom teeth at once! I don’t know if we’re supposed to count today then as his first tooth or wait til it grows in a bit more. He certainly didn’t seem to be in as much pain as he has been – I think it must be awful to feel something pushing up through your skin like that. And now that it’s partly through, he’s feeling better. And I guess that doctor and I have different understandings of the word “awhile.” At any rate, it’s exciting and bittersweet at the same time. Between that and the crawling, I feel like he’s growing up an awful lot in the last couple of days and sometimes I just want him to slow down so I have my baby longer!

We’re finding that we get more than a little frustrated with our pediatricians’ office pretty regularly. There are 4 or 5 different doctors we’ve seen, and they seem to have differing opinions on everything we ask. It makes it hard to feel like we’re making the best choices for the babies when they don’t seem to have a consensus, and often their advice differs from what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. For example, at the 6 month appointment, I asked about adding baby foods with meat, and dairy products like yogurt to their meals. The doctor we had that day said no meat til 9 months, and no milk or dairy at all til 1 year. Everything else I’ve read says 7 or 8 months is fine for both. And I wouldn’t mind so much if they just were ultra-conservative about everything, but a different doctor really encouraged us to start cereal and fruits at 4 months instead of 6 to help Alex’s reflux and Avery’s constipation. One put Alex on Zantac 3 times a day for his reflux and told us to call if it wasn’t working so we could adjust the dose. But when I called to get it adjusted, another doctor told me he was on the max dose for his weight and switched him to Prevacid once a day. She said to mix it with applesauce. Don picked it up and all the directions say in bold print, “Mix ONLY with water.” At $50 for our monthly copay, I want to be sure we’re not making it ineffective by doing what the doctor said. And he’s been puking more again, so I really wonder if they have a clue. Though he also has a fever tonight, probably (hopefully) from the flu shot, so I figure I need to wait til the fever breaks to see if that and the puking are related or not. My friend Katie just had a little girl a week ago, and one of the doctors told her to avoid kissing her because of it being cold & flu season. How can you tell a new mom not to kiss her baby?!? But there are only 3 pediatricians’ offices in Mt. Airy, and one isn’t taking new patients with our insurance, so if we leave this practice, it seems like we only have the one other choice. Maybe I’ll have to do some more research for surrounding areas. Before the babies came, I wouldn’t have thought twice about having their doctor be in Columbia or Frederick, but now that I see how often we go, and how hard it can be to get there, and sometimes how quickly we need to go, it sure is nice having them 10 minutes away. The price of living in Mayberry, I suppose… In the end, we make our own decisions, but we’re new at this and I like feeling like I have the doctor’s expertise on my side, and more often than not, I feel like I question their judgements.

At any rate, I’ll post a pic of Alex’s toothy grin soon, I hope!

You have to love it when it’s 70 degrees in Maryland in January.  Al Gore is probably right about global warming, and most of the time I think it’s a  huge concern, but sometimes it works out in our favor.  We took the twins to the new local park for their first playground adventure today.  Avery and I sat on a swing together waiting for the baby swings to open up.  It was really crowded, but didn’t take too long for us to get two next to eachother.  I was glad to see that the babies fit in the seats without falling through.  Alex looked worried, as usual, but both seemed to like the people-watching.  We only stayed for about 15 minutes, but I think by the time spring and real warm weather rolls around, they’ll be ready to really have fun there.