baby sitter!

Here are Lucas and Matilda in their "Radio Flyer" wagon my father gave them for Christmas, in their very cluttered and 25% unfinished playroom. Duane wound up spending the rest of this evening pulling them around the house in it!

My mom said something the other day to me that still has me laughing. She asked me if Matilda and Lucas (17 months) knew their "ABC's" yet. Now, I was somewhat of a prodigy in our small family and according to most relatives knew my ABC's by age 2, and was reading by age 3. However I think that was my intellectual peak and its been downhill ever since!

I said "Mom, we are currently working on colors".

"But you should be teaching them ABC's, you knew yours by age 2".

"I know, but they are concentrating on their colors and I just don't have the time to do both. I do have an ABC book I read to them and I sing the song when I have time."

"You don't have to teach them! Thats what Sesame Street is for! I never taught you anything, I let Sesame street do it." And then with a slight panic in her voice- "THERE IS STILL SESAME STREET ISN'T THERE?!?!?!".

As if children all over the world may be suffering from illiteracy without it. Rest assured, there IS a Sesame Street, Virginia!

My mom did teach me a few things, but perhaps not ABC's. :-)

Last night we had a BABYSITTER. Can you believe this? After realizing that we only communicate for thirty minutes a day and that its usually about the content of diapers (blech) we decided to enlist the services of an area teenager who was eager to learn the trade of many teens before her. A neighbors daughter whose mom was equally eager for her daughter to sit for us (so she could come and help once we left, bless her heart!) came down with a friend last night, helped us put the babies in bed, then watched them for 1.5 hours while we went on a date. Unfortunately, we skipped lunch trying to plan how to best use our date. We were both completely famished and didn't speak at all while out because we were too busy stuffing huge gobs of food going into our mouthes and then ran out of time and didn't communicate until we came back home and then we talked about the content of Rowan's diaper. *smirk* But, the outing went well, and we paid well and left brownies out and put on a teen movie "Bring it On" so I do not think our local teen was frightened and will offer to sit for us again and perhaps next time we can talk about the content of Ewan's diaper instead. Heh. No seriously. We need more things to talk about and if any of your moms with more parenting experiences have good conversation starters that do not involve diapers, please leave them in my comment area. Maybe we can find one of those "date questionaires" like they use on those dating services and both fill them out but not present them until we are at the date location?

And today after grocery shopping I finally went to Goodwill and dropped off the clothing I will never get into again. Everyone says pregnancy changes your body, but no one tells you that you might be surprised by how weird that could be. My hips are the same size, so is my waist. Its my rib cage! None of my tailored blouses or fitted sweaters fit at all now. Here I was excited to get into my "skinny jeans" and didn't give a thought to my "skinny sweaters" until I went to wear one a few weeks back. Hmpfh. They are all so snug, and while I would like to smile smugly and say it is because of my new big bosoms, it is not. The bosoms are probably smaller even than before, no, it is actually the bones of my rib cage! They expanded and they show no signs of returning to their former size and I am impatient and since it just makes me feel insecure to keep trying on clothing that looks bad, I decided to share them with someone whose ribcage is small(er).

My sister is reading my blog at work and asked that I make sure the content is "work sensitive". She will have to tell me if "bosoms" is going to get her into trouble. As of yet, that word hasn't appeared in any of my spam, so I think only women above 70 still use that expression and since they are not marketed for products whose subject header might read: "Increase the size of your bosoms!" I am fairly work safe.

Tickles and giggles

Here is what all the twins look like on Saturday mornings. I know that technically Lucas and Tilly are getting a little grown up (*sniff*) for bottles, but, its the only way I can get 9 ounces of milk in them, so first thing in the morning, they still get a bottle. The rest of the day they take sippy cups. Tilly has with her "puppy" who goes everywhere she goes and who stinks and crunches when you touch him. *shudders* I sneak him away once a week for a bath, and then he is smelly and crunchie again within the hour. At bedtime when I kiss her goodnight, she now hands me puppy to also kiss goodnight. *shudders again* I got a whiff of him yesterday when I smooched him and nearly fainted. She also has a kitten she carries around. One arm clutching puppy, one arm clutching kitten. Cute! Two stinky toys! :-)




Lately we have been making an outing together as a family on weekends. We have attained "mini-celebrity" status and have to fight off probing questions from many an excited person. A few times we have had so many gathered around us that we have had to ask them to step away so we could get by and shop. If we try and ignore them, they grab our arms! One woman ran after us yelling in Macy's "Are they TRIPLETS!?!?" (my mom said "Poor little thing, I hope she had someone to help her home"). I have also been asked if they were "Quads" ("Yes, but this set was born a year premature"). They all mean so well, and when in a good spirit, I can laugh about it and as I told one clerk at Macys "We bring such joy to others" and smile while rolling my eyes. The truth is, everyone is happy when they see our babies, and no one has said anything mean to date. But, its a bit taxing on Duane and I to answer so many questions, and since Lucas and Matilda are observing our reactions, trying to always be perky and happy and not give an indication of annoyance which might lead them to believe our family situation is a bad thing. Its not a bad thing. Its a very very good thing. We have managed to slim our packing time from 1.5 hours to 20 minutes, too. At first the hardest part was actually loading babies and gear into the car, but we have that slimmed down and now outings are managable. I still have not braved an outing with two sets of twins so young y myself. I would need a quad stroller first!

This is a favorite new picture of Ewan and Rowan. I tickled them to get these silly smiles. They are such precious boys although Ewan is a nap fighter. He doesn't like his crib and would like to sleep in in "soothing motions glider" from now on, but, he is a fat little roly poly baby who will soon be busting out of his glider so we are transitioning him to the crib. He already looks like one of those "pig in a blankets" laying in his glider because its such a tight fit! Rowan likes the crib and likes to lay on his side SUCKING HIS THUMB. I suppose it was inevitable that we have a thumb sucker in our brood. Ewan takes to sucking his sometimes but prefers his paci still.
Both are sleeping through the night which means we are much more rested in this house!



I had a bit of a quandary about what to do about this blog over the past month. My husband- not realizing this was a private blog- gave the address out. As anyone who regularly reads knows, I mainly blog about our home and our children, but have on occasion vented about family problems. Kuddos to the person who spent several hours reading every page of my blog to find the three entries of 67 that were "offensive". (You have more free time than we do and need a more productive hobby). These entries were deleted (a mistake on my part).

I intially- in haste- wanted to delete the entire thing. I was mortified and angry at my husband. I am basically alone here at home 90% of the day, and my blog was made as anonymous as possible so I had a safe outlet to vent when I needed to, and connect when I needed to. I often joke that when I speak what Duane hears is "blah blah blah". Apparently this was more true than I realized because he has had my blog for months and looks at it daily and never read anything I said in venting. I think his face turned three shades of red when re realized it wasn't a "picture blog". Apparently he read "blah blah blah" and only looked at the pictures. I was hurt that he betrayed my privacy and hurt that someone else was hurt from reading my private entries. However, he apologized to me and the injured party. He told them that this was a private blog. What confuses me is that after they were offended they continued to read and injure themselves further. We were only responsible for the first post that hurt their feelings. If they kept digging, then they were feeling masochistic.

And when I went to delete it, I discovered a plethora of antidotes about Lucas and Tilly that I had not documented in their baby books. And stories I have not documented anywhere about family and friends. My father told me not to delete it, that as long as I spoke true things, I should keep it.

So, this is now a public blog and I have given the address to my family and friends- who I wish to have it. I suppose others may find it. But, I will not tip toe or coddle my reader.

If you choose to read my blog, here is what you should know:

1. This is MY blog. Its about our family and how we feel about what happens to us.
2. I will not use this as a passive aggressive vehicle to express negative emotions about *you*, but, I will write what I feel. If this offends you STOP READING IT.
3. I will not exaggerate or lie about anyone. I will only write the truth. The fact that its "my truth" is inherent.
4. You are welcome to start your own blog and write about "Your truth".

And to everyone else- thank you for being a supportive friend to us.

Christmas!

We had this family picture made about two weeks before Christmas. It took four adults and one photographer to get all the babies posed right. Family friend Tonya juggled little twins back and forth to help pose them, and sil Lavina made sure Matilda's dress and my hair looked right. We actually broke a sweat this was so stressful. But the resulting photograph for our efforts is lovely! My dads scan isn't so great...



My mother found some Christmas spirit and she and her sisters celebrated at my 87 year old Grandmas home for Christmas Eve. My grandma has the coziest home, and I was sad to not be there with them. Its a tiny little house that my grandfather purchased in the 1950's. My mother likes to scare my nephew by telling him all about how poor they were growing up. She doesn't quite grasp that to a 17 year old boy in this age, hearing that your grandma shared a full size bed with two of her three sisters and that they fought each night over whose feet the cat slept on (to prevent frostbite, no less) is as ridiculous as a distant relative of my moms telling her when they used to rub sticks together to create FIRE. Or me telling my own grandchildren one day that televisions used to be as large as kitchen stoves and just as heavy and how at one time we only had 13 channels on ours (gasp!). But, I digress. My grandmas house is full of Christmas Cheer. She has snoring santas, dancing Elvis dolls, a faux fireplace with a mantel she enjoys decorating, a small tree and a cement goose that wears her own holiday dress on her front porch. The house is literally a festival for young eyes and it makes me sad that my children missed it.

When I was a little girl my favorite Christmas decoration at my grandmas house was a small glittery gold bell with a piece of holly glued to it and a matching gold cord with a ball attached. For as long as I can remember, the ball on the end of the cord still had its plastic wrapping on it. When you pulled the string down from the bell, it would play a nice holiday melody and it continued to play until the cording was slowly pulled back inside the bell. The music sounded like the clanking of wind up Victorian music boxes. The bell was hung in the door frame of my grandmas kitchen and children under 4 feet tall couldn't reach it. My paw-paw and my father were delegated as the adults who lifted grandchildren up to the bell to pull the string. I know that sometimes my sister and I would be lifted up into the air 25 times to yank on that cord and listen to the music and watch mesmerized as the cord slowly withdrew from our grasp and back inside of the bell. My dad would smile at my sister and I, that something so simple gave us such joy. It was the first thing I looked for at my grandparents home every Christmas Eve. Eventually we were tall enough to reach the cord on our own, and similarly, lost interest in the bell. However as an adult, I now look for this bell every year at my grandmas, but for now it has been put away and no one remembers where.

I hope I can create some sort of magic for my own children at Christmas. Although, I don't know that I have to... it seems to me that holiday magic seeks out children on its own, and that its the children- who having discovered it- share this magic with adults at Christmas. I believe this is the reason why people say "Christmas is for children" when in truth Christmas is for everyone (it is a birth story, after all). Because children are best able to appreciate the glimmer of lights on a tree, candy cane shaped cookies, the story of Santa, and a little melody from a dime store glittered bell. When we as adults are around children during the holidays, we get a glimpse into our own Holiday pasts and see Christmas through our eyes as children again. I think this is why my dad gave Lucas a radio flyer wagon for Christmas. He has been as excited over the wagon as if it were his very own, and makes me believe there must of been a very special wagon in his childhood. Its nice that he and my sons will be able to share this memory together oneday. Matilda will probably sully their wagon with dollies and play pretties.

We had a small dinner here on Christmas Day. I have to say that at this age, Lucas and Matilda really don't grasp "Santa". But, they did enjoy having company and Matilda danced and sang, and Lucas tried to escape the playroom every chance he could. And I enjoyed having a big family to share our holiday with. My sister was here for the week, and the kids enjoyed her extended visit. We were not welcome at my husbands parents home for Christmas as usual, but it matters less and less when I realize that our family is each other, not the drama that is going on around us.

Hard to keep up!

I thought I would share some recent pictures of the babies.

I was trying to get a closeup of Tillys GREEN eyes. They are hazel "green brown" and unless she is in the sunlight, noone can see the green. She has lovely eyes and they will probably continue to darken and eventually be brown, so I wanted to capture them "green" while I could.



Lucas wanted in on the pictures, too. Notice he has a new hairdo? Duane says he looks like a Friar. Heh.



Rowan and Ewan have blue eyes still. Rowan has the prettiest shape to his face and always has a very gentle expression!




Here are a series of pictures we took trying out their Christmas outfits before we had their professional pictures taken.






Ewan and Rowan are very happy and nearly four months old! Colic is long gone, and they only get up once at night to eat now. They are so content. And Ewan squeals! Its the same high pitch shrill tone that Tilly is able to capture (I had a playdate at my house last week and three moms sat stunned into silence when she let out one of her infamous squeals!). I am a bit intimadated at the idea of having TWO babies who sound like gym whistles!



Lucas sure loves pacis! Here he is trying to stick FOUR in his mouth at once!

Sentimental time of year

This is from the home we sold- the empire fireplaces were gorgeous!

I just noticed it has been two weeks since I updated, which means it has also been two weeks since I visited my friends blogs. :-\

This is my very favorite time of year. I am a sap for all of the "made for t.v." Christmas movies, although granted, have less time this year to savor them as I have in years past. Instead I am savoring my moments with my family, and enjoying the little times of quiet and solitude as they become available.

Something has happened in my family that makes me sad. They have lost Christmas. Only one of my mothers sisters is "keeping Christmas" and its spirit of family and generosity. The others are all bogged down in family problems, health crises, and everyday mundane tasks and either can not or *will not* take the time to honor and appreciate what we have been blessed with- the family ties that we should be working to hold dear. By the same token, only one of Duanes sisters is keeping Christmas as well. Not to imply they aren't exchanging gifts. No! Everyone exchanged gifts and signs up for gift swaps, etc. I am not speaking about presents. I am speaking about the gathering together of loved ones to celebrate family and friendships. The warmth and cherishing the Christmas of yesteryear, while creating new memories for others to come to celebrate and remember fondly later on.

No one grasped this as much as my dear friend Eleanor Chapman.

Eleanor and her husband Gerald lived next door to my duplex apartment in the middle 90's. They were in their middle 80's, and she and I became friends when our dogs became friends. I began walking their small terrier, Lady, when I would walk my shihtzu Smitty, and afterwards she and her husband would invite me to dinner or to a long chat on her screened front porch. I was new to the town and the neighborhood, and appreciated being adopted by them as my surrogate family. I believe they appreciated my friendship in return, as I never tire of listening to an elderly persons stories of their youth, and enjoy looking at their photo albums and listening to them fondly relate about their children, grand children and great grandchildren.

Eleanor and I went to lunch usually about once a month. She had only learned to drive at the age of 80, and would joke that she was able to pass her drivers test because she made a promise to God to never exceed the speed limit. Nor did she! Cars passed us on the left and on the right, and she would smile and laugh and say "God told me 'Eleanor, you go one mile over the speed limit, and you are on your own!'" She took this warning to heart, and made sure to never come within 15 miles of the limit, incase she should accidentally pass it and be left without a co-pilot. After one of these loooong drives to lunch, we decided to get takeout and eat at her house with Gerald. When the order came through, she slapped my hand as I gave her the 2 cents over the dollar amount. She said "Thats alot of change!"

When we returned to her house, she showed me her jar of change. All year round, she would save every bit of quarters, dimes, nickels and even pennies left over from any expense and add it once a month to her Christmas Club at her bank. Having an entire 98 cents was alot of coin to add to her jar, and she forbade me to tell Gerald that I had offered her two cents instead.

She started wrapping her gifts in October. Everyone had multiple gifts in their large family, and all of them purchased on a senior citizens fixed income. She would ask me to come help her wrap and we would share stories about Christmas while she baked a cake or a pie in the kitchen. They had a forced air furnace that burned oil and her entire house smelled so delectably warm and toasty. My house never gets that warm!

But it wasn't her jar of change and her gifts that made me feel like she kept Christmas in her heart. It was the smile she would share with her husband pointing out the ornament their youngest son (then 45) had made as a child on their tree. Showing me the hand painted snowman their great granddaughter had made. Smiling at how beautiful her multi colored tree had "turned out" and expressing surprise that it was "even prettier than the year before!" and the fact that all of her grown sons and her daughter traveled across the globe to share Christmas with her and her husband. Every year. She cooked a huge feast in her small kitchen, and sons, daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren smashed so close together you would think they were vying for a seat at a 5 star restaurant just to get a plate of Eleanors food and visit with family. I loved visiting her late in the afternoon on Christmas Day and seeing the reminents of the mornings festivities- tattered gift wraps and ribbon lying about (she hated the pre-fab gift bags), cups of coffee and cocoa steaming on the furniture (without coasters!), and everyone commenting on what a lovely day it had been thus far. Brianna would bang on the piano and everyone would beg Eleanor to play.

I wasn't living next door to the Chapmans when her son called me in 1997 to tell me she had terminal cancer. Her daughter had flown out from California and her son from Ohio to stay with her until the end. Eleanor wanted to make sure everything was taken care of and tended to her own funeral preparations. She worried over where Gerald would go. And two days after the last day I visited her, she passed on quietly at home.

A couple months later, Gerald called me and asked if I could come by their home on my way through town. He said Eleanor had left something for me. Not sure what, I stopped by that week. It was a couple weeks before Christmas. And there on the table was a CHRISTMAS PRESENT. Wrapped in Eleanors clumsy way of tying off the bow, in right festive paper.

Gerald confided that she had spent her first month after her diagnoses Christmas shopping so that everyone would have a present from her that year even if she were not there to celebrate.

I nervously unwrapped my present and burst into tears and laughter when I saw it was a bottle of "Forever Crystal" perfume from the middle 80's. I have no clue where she found it. Shopping for over a dozen people with only coins from a large jar stored at your bank doesn't afford a person with much capital. It was the funniest tackiest gift anyone has ever gave me. And also the most loving. Because she really did adopt me into her family, and at a time when she knew she had very limited days left on this earth, she wanted me to have a special Christmas to. If the "thought is what counts" then hers was worth millions.

The bottle sits in a medicine cabinet at my mothers. Next to it is her half empty bottle of "Emerald" perfume which I asked for. One I occasionally open to remember her, and one I like to pull out and giggle about when I am feeling sentimental and wanting to keep Christmas in my heart.

Decorating

Thats the only picture I have on the computer of my celluloid santa collection on the Lincoln's Buffet. That primitive piece now belongs to my mother as we didn't have a niche for it here that displayed it well. This home is so bright and traditional that it looked chunky- where as before I always managed to find one little spot where I could have a country type vignette. At Christmas I love folksy things!

This past weekend we put up the outside lights and the big tree indoors. As well as lined up my entire collection of Santas on the mantle. I will have to take a picture of my tree to share, I am proud of it! But, I don't know if I will show you the lights or not...

I believe that Christmas decorating outdoors is primarily for Children- and the bits of the child that survived to adulthood in each of us. And I so remember sitting in the backseat of my parents car and driving around to look at lights each Christmas. Even the car itself was Christmasy- an old Pontiac with plush burgundy velvet seats! The outside was speckled with rust and my mom called her car "Freckles". She wouldn't trade it in because it was such a cozy ride! Each year we would venture out to popular neighborhoods in search of the BEST lights. My dad would carry a pen sized flashlight and put it on his nose and say he looked like Rudolph driving a Pontiac. My dad was such a dork. Remember the word "Dork"?

The BEST lights were the TACKY ones. Neon Orange thrown onto a tree, green on a shrub, multi colored blinking lights on a porch railing. The tackier the light display, the more "ooohs" and "aaahs" it garnered from my sister and I. We would ask my mom and dad to please oh please make several passes by those homes. And those classy all white numbers that shimmered in the "best" neighborhoods and cul de sacs? YUCK. Booooring.

We would end up driving through the neighborhoods populated by senior citizens (and their glorious older decorations), save one lone ritzy neighborhood where every year the home owner paid someone to decorate a 40 foot pine in the yard with multi colored strands.

So, I am the owner of a Tacky Christmas House. Our tall shrubs (like mini-trees) are strung with solid green and overtop that solid gold. The midsize shrubs have blue lights, and the ground covering has white lights. I am excited about a tree on the porch that I am putting multi colored blinkers on.

By the time I am through I am probably going to make neighbors wince at the spectacle we are creating. But, I also hope to make children in the backseats of their parents cars say "ah".

Babies update:

Ewan and Rowan have officially gave up their midnight bottle. They take their bottles at 8-9 p.m., then sleep until 3 a.m. YIPPEE! This is really giving my husband extra rest since before he would sit up to midnight with colicy ole Ewan (who is less colicy, too!) because the only way I would get any daily rest was to sleep from 8-midnight in ear plugs. I still go to bed about 9- but he can go to sleep earlier now too since the ear plugs aren't necessary to get decent slumber now.

I am getting a larger chunk of sleep in one resting, but less sleep overall since giving up the midnight bottle has made them very fussy and agitated from about 5-6 to 7. I LIKE sleeping until 7. *sighs*. I like the little bit of chill in the air, and snuggling back down into the blankets as Duane leaves for work and knowing I can sprawl out for an hour. Hmpfh. But, on the whole I am much more rested now- it might not be the sleep I like, but its good sleep. An added bonus is on weekend morning we take turns letting the other one sleep until about 8.

Rowan has become the projectile refluxer. He is like a little pukey timebomb. He gets this look in his eye then spews 6 ounces. ACK! I have started feeding him a little less at once and then returning to his bottle after Ewans and that seems to be helping.

They both smile all the time and Ewan tries to hard to talk that he gets exasperated with us, and then lets out a big heap of a "hmpfh" at us and sighs.

As far as Lucas and Matilda- we have given up documenting her vocabulary. She is off the charts developmentally there. She learns a new word or two daily. She knows what animals say, she expresses empathy, she tells you what episode of Mickey is her favorite- "Doctor Daisy", etc, etc, etc. Lucas... I just don't know. I ask him to say something and she over talks him. Today he ran past us as I was playing with a See and Say with Tilly and as I said "What does a cow say?" He yells out "Mooooooooo" as he dashes by. I hadn't heard him say that before and excitedly tried to get him to repeat it. I then asked him to tell me again and he growled at me. However he understands language. loves to play with his sister and his parents, so I need to stop comparing him to Tilly and just let him be Lucas.

Babies Special Pumpkin