Baby Bliss

My dear husband told me the other day that I needed to stop wishing for disaster to happen just so I could blog about it. This conversation brought me back to last summer, when David was just 11 months old. We were vacationing in Hatteras, North Carolina on the beach and I had decided I wanted to "scrapbook the summer". I was keeping my eye out for interesting photo opps and my poor baby became the object of my scrapbooking obsession when he fell face first into the sand. Instead of comforting my screaming son (screaming seems to be a theme for him), I was snapping pictures as fast as I could. I fondly remember my husband being quite furious at me for that. I did get some cute shots of David's anguished face covered in sand - never quite got them into a scrapbook. Waste.

Anyway, back to real time...It currently looks like a toy store detonated in our house. I walked into the living room this morning to find David sitting in the midst of the rubble, having rounded up all the Hot Wheels stash. We had Anthony's 5 year old birthday party last night.

The party was held at a mini golf course complete with the accents of water features everywhere. The babies were beside themselves with excitement over the prospect of both water and rocks being an option for them. Dave supervised David for a bit while I played birthday party security. I seriously came back and found that my son had entirely removed a border of rocks from around a feature and thrown them all into the nearest stream! You could see the emptiness of where the (pretty large) rocks had neatly rounded out the edge of the 18th hole. When questioned, my husband retorted with some sort of a "boys and fathers bond over throwing rocks into water" answer...

As demolition twin was busy finding things that could be thrown into water features, mother twin was running around trying to make sure the party was going smoothly. She walked around the tables doing her own checks, making sure napkins were not left on the ground. I even caught her picking individual pieces of confetti up out of the grass. She must have spend a good half hour on that task - boy, did she put a dent in our clean up work!

All in all it was good birthday experience. The normal stuff: too many kids, too much pizza, green faces from the cake frosting, way too many toys... I think my favorite moment was when my mother tried to round up the sugar smashed children from their random tag game to play an organized round or two of "duck, duck, goose". It started traditionally enough, one kid was the "duck" and he walked around the circle to determine whom he would "goose". The whole thing quickly turned bad when about 4 other kids stood up to try to be the duck all at once. My mom was ballsy, I will give her that.

We spent the morning sorting new toys. Then we pulled out "Super Mario Smash Brothers". Darling Husband got him that one. It's amazing how everyone just settles into video games. A few months ago, Dave decided he wanted to play the newest Zelda game. He hadn't played a video game in probably years, for some reason he got the game and wanted to beat it. He had our three kids absolutely mesmerized for (I'm embarrassed to say) hours! They loved to just stare at the screen as Dave went through the world's, reading the character's lines out loud to them. The babies favorite part was when the monkeys were on the screen - they would jump up and scream "monkeys! monkeys!" Anthony just continued to try to give Uncle Dave "tips": "Uncle Dave, this guy is really hard, you have to hit him just right" or "I think you're going the wrong way Uncle Dave" - always so helpful :)

So, "Super Mario Smash Brothers" was a great hit in our house this morning. Ava was beside herself when a controller wasn't handed out to her. She kept trying to take Anthony's until we found an old xbox controller to give her. I swear she thought she was really playing with that thing! I wish you could have seen how serious her face was during the matches. When he came in 2nd and Uncle Dave came in 1st, Anthony explained that he won because he had more points (2 vs. 1). We let him have that one - a brilliant deduction, we thought.

At least the babies are finally feeling better. I'm happy to report that the worst is behind us!

Life is Good

Although I didn't really have that perspective at 3am this morning! I woke up at that hour to hysteria coming through Little Dave's monitor. With stealth, I rushed in to quickly administer Motrin and Dimetapp and to console my poor, sick little guy.

He had me close to tears as he gave me his sob story consisting of continued screaming, burying his fevered head in my lap, bunching up in a tiny ball and rocking back and forth. I held him, whispered prayers over my sweet boy, and quietly hoped upon hope that I wasn't going get puked on. Hooray - no puke today!

Suddenly, after about 20 steady minutes of this, he sat up and with full enthusiastic, energy and spouted off an entire scene from Dora the Explorer. Something about finding water and getting tools from the backpack to get there... I was slightly amused, a little more relieved that he seemed to be feeling better, but mostly exhausted. I put the child back to bed.

Husband extraodinare let me sleep in this morning to get his snuggle time with babies as they all watched "Kid Nation". By the time I woke up (10am! - my husband is the best) the darlings had started feeling better and entertained themselves for a while. I had some coffee, checked my email, and let the kids veg out in front of their favorite tv shows. David definitely got in some good study time for his next monologue.

They fed their entire lunch to Mr. Bojangles under the table, fought over some books, and got sent to nap time fully re-medicated. And there they are now - my sleeping angels. Sleep tight my sweet ones, feel better.

Sick babies :(

David and Ava have fevers. They started yesterday. I was hoping the virus would have passed by today - nope, still warm. They're so sweet and pathetic! I just love snuggling up in a warm sandwich of sick babies - just content to cuddle and watch repeating episodes of Dora and the Wiggles.

Since I won't be able to take them anywhere again tomorrow (gotta get the virus out of their systems first!), I guess I'm gonna have to come up with some fun indoor activities. We have this book called "The Toddler's Busy Book" (365 Creative Games & Activities to Keep Your 1 1/2 to 3 year old Busy). Some of the suggestions in this book are hilarious!

Last sick day we spent holding orange races - oh yes we did! The book suggested covering oranges in paper towels, drawing faces on the paper towels, and then rolling the oranges down a long hallway as a "race". Okay, the babies did not understand this one at all. They wanted the paper towels off the oranges, they wanted to eat the oranges, they were horrified as I tried to take the oranges away from them and roll them down the hallway screaming "look at it go! - yay!" They weren't buying my enthusiasm.

The hit was moving kitchen chairs into the living room. I never realized that something so ordinary in an in ordinary setting could be so exciting. I really did nothing more than move three or four chairs into the living room. They climbed on top of them, under them, around them - it was a magical hour (yes, I said hour!) as they entertained themselves. I'm thinking we'll do that one again tomorrow for sure...

2 two-year olds is never a good idea...

This is my life... two-year olds, torture! I shouldn't say that really, except when I teach a whole class of them at church (oh God, is it my turn again??) This age is so INTERESTING, I should say. They're old enough to understand what you're saying, big enough to perform small tasks, but smart enough to realize that they have some control in this whole process. How did these little people figure out they have their own opinions? I didn't teach them that!!

By my title, I'm sure you've figured out, I have 2 two-year olds. The fun part of the story is that they are not both mine! My brother's wife and I got pregnant within weeks of each other, way back in 2004. We had our babies 3 weeks (to the day) apart and lived, literaly, across the country from each other. We didn't get see each other until little Dave and Ava were 5 months old - when our world's were rocked - my brother was killed in Iraq. He had been deployed with the US Army for just 6 weeks, he was days past his 25th birthday. We all decided to move to Virginia and buy a house together...and so begins our adventures!

The babies don't know they're not twins - people comment on the "twins" constantly. I smile nicely - it's too much to explain the whole thing to total strangers. I do get angry glares when asked a specific question regarding the pregnancy of twins or something to that affect and I have to give the honest truth, "oh, they're not twins, they're cousins!". Whatever.

And now they're two - they love each other - I keep telling myself that :) They do! They do. They do. Ava is the younger "twin" and my niece. She's the little mother of David. Loves to "help" him. It's cute to watch her take something away from him because he's doing it wrong and then try to show him. He just screams and won't take the item back from her out of principle! She then tries to hug him and knocks him over, more screaming - you would think he was being tortured. She'll usually finally end with just throwing the thing at him, such perfect aim..., more screaming.

Little Dave (I'll usually refer to him as David since my husband is also Dave) is more of a loner. He's happy to just play with his Hot Wheels in peace. He's a total daredevil, loves to climb, jump, run. I've found him outside by himself on about 3 occasions (yeah, he figured out how to open the front door - good times). He loves to be outside. He also has this unbelievably amazing talent to memorize full scenes from tv shows. He does full scenes of Wiggles and Dora the Explorer - those are his favorites. (If you see Swiper, yell "swiper"!)

My (late) brother and sister-in-law also have a now 5 year old. Anthony is good times and is learning how to be a good leader. While being picked up from school he'll sometimes report that he "forgot to be a good leader" today while lamenting the loss of a smiley face and sweet treat :( So adorable.

To complete our house description, I'll lay it all out for you. We own a 5 bedroom house in a cute little neighborhood with a pool at the end of our street. It's our family of 6 living here: me, Dave (amazing husband extroadanaire), Tiffany (sister-in-law), Anthony, David, Ava - oh, and Mr. Bojangles the Boston Bulldog vacuum cleaner!

Subscribe to this blog and we'll be sure to keep you posted on all our good times :)