Monday, November 30, 2009

Reality

I need to come to face the reality that my house will never stay clean.

Plain and simple.

This morning, I swept and mopped the kitchen floor as the babies were finishing their formula. Afterwards, they had their breakfast of banana yogurt and toast. And when they were finished, there were pieces of toast and crumbs all over my clean, just mopped floor. BOO HOO!

I am obsessed with cleaning my kitchen floor. Not only am I obsessed with this because I have two vulnerable little monsters crawling all around the house, but because the floor is WHITE (who puts a WHITE floor in a kitchen?!?!) and it's one of the first rooms people see when they walk into our house. so it needs to be kept nice and clean. In my opinion, anyway. So, imagine my frustration when I clean it, and not even an hour later, it needs to be swept again. And though it may not need to be mopped again, it "bugs" me to leave it with just a sweeping and no mopping.

I simply need to face the fact that with two children and a husband, I will never have a clean house. I can try; I try really hard! But it seems I end up sweeping and mopping the floor...every. Single. Day. Ugh.

The kitchen floor isn't the only thing that doesn't stay clean. It seems that I pick up the babies toys 123905940547837485385793 BILLION times a day. Seriously. They play while they wait for their bottles. Then they play when they are done. And then they play after breakfast. And then they play when they wake up from their first nap. They play after their bottles again. They play after lunch, and after their second nap. They play alllll evening, until bath time and bed. And thus, I am picking up toys after their morning bottles; after their morning nap; after their afternoon nap; after an evening catnap if they take one; after baths and when they are in bed. I'm beginning to wonder if that is even worth it.

Oh well. Please, stop by and visit anyway! Ignore the path of toys you must walk through to our living room...our kitchen...our bathroom. It's our norm.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

First Table Food!

This weekend, we went to our friend's house, down the street from us, and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner and spent the night. It was the first time the twins' experienced real table food and it was a BLAST! Merasia wasn't into very much. It's weird. She was into solids when we first started them and she was 5-6 months old. She did well for a while. But just recently, she's starting not taking them very well. If she has 2 or 3 solid meals a day, she is up screaming in pain at night with a tummy ache. :-( So, I decided to just wait until they are 1 to do solids regularly, since they don't NEED solids at their age anyway. They do just fine with their 4 bottles a day with 8 oz. of formula, sleep fine, etc. And they will be 1 in a little over a month, so it's not that long to wait.

But, this was a special occasion of course, so we had to do it. We started with cranberry sauce while the turkey was finishing up, to keep them occupied. Merasia like it at first but then decided she wasn't into it very much.



Connor loved the cranberry sauce, and it only made him hungry for MORE!

Next on the menu was mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey, and biscuits. Merasia liked it at first, but then got bored and it seems like the little taste of turkey she did have worked fast and she was out cold in her very first turkey coma!




Connor LOVED his first taste of all of the Thanksgiving fixings, and would NOT stop eating! Even after his tray was clear and we stopped giving him food for fear he would get a belly ache and get sick, he still managed to find crumbs around his tray or on his bib for him to stuff in his mouth! I have no clue HOW he managed to eat as much as he did, but...he DID. Amazing.


Apparently my little man is quite the carnivore, just like his daddy! And to top it all off, the next morning, he had his first taste of pumpkin pie, and, to nobody's big surprise, he loved it. :-)

The next day, we set out to the mall for the twins' first meeting with none other than good ol' Santa Claus! I expected major meltdowns, tears, screaming...the whole nine yards. But, both babies took it fine, looked at "Santa" like they were thinking, "Who the heck are you?!" and sat on his lap for a few photos. Connor started fussing a little toward the end but was fine, and we got some adorable pictures.



Even my best friend's 3 month old adorable baby girl got in on the Santa fun!

Overall, it was a wonderful weekend, full of good food, amazing friends, and tons of family fun.

♥ ♥









Saturday, November 28, 2009

Christmas

Having children in our lives for Christmas this year makes the holiday season that much more exciting. I have been excited for Christmas in the past...every year as a child, and even as a teenager, but as an adult, there have been times where I didn't care for it as much.

One year, in the very beginning of our relationship, Frank and I were homeless. Someone put us up in a hotel room for a few nights, and we had just enough money to get some cheap Chinese food for our Christmas dinner. No gifts, no family or friends to help us out and take us in, no beautiful, wholesome dinner. Just me, Frank, our hotel room, and white rice with Sesame chicken.

Our first Christmas in our first apartment together was nice. I got Frank two movies he had wanted for a while, and a ton of new tools that he wanted and needed badly! I loved that year.

Another year, I had to work Christmas morning, but was PSYCHED to get back home. It was a particularly good year for us financially, and I got Frank an awesome, nice, brand new Carhart jacket from Ebay. It was an exact replica of the one he had years before, and lost it in a fire, so I knew it would be so special for him to have another one. I raced home after work to open presents with him. It was another great year.

Last year, I was in the hospital for Christmas, on moderate bed rest for preterm labor. It sucked being in the hospital for Christmas, but at the same time, it was kind of nice. I could sit back, sleep, relax, and have everything brought to me at the push of a button to my nurse. ;-) It was my last time to relax for the rest of my life! (ha ha)

This year, I can spoil my babies. I have so many blessings to be thankful for this Christmas, and I can't wait to see the twins' eyes light up when they see the Christmas tree, I can't wait to catch them in the act of trying to tip the tree over or peek at their presents tightly wrapped underneath, I can't wait for them to see snow for the first time and to take them outside to play. I can't wait to get my shopping done for them. I can't wait to set out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, and then eat all the cookies and drink all the milk after the babies are in bed, and then to see their faces Christmas morning when they see, to their childish surprise, that Santa indeed ate all the cookies and drank all the milk they left for him. I can't wait to sneak around Christmas Eve and set out all the presents and stocking stuffers for them to see the next morning. Most of all, I can't wait to see them delight in opening their gifts Christmas morning, and to munch on their Monkey bread and juice for breakfast.

Christmas this year will be the best yet, and I know it will just keep getting better and better.




Butt Paste!

When it comes to diaper rash treatment, I've tried just about everything out there for my little angels' bottoms. Someone gave us a small tube of Boudreaux's Butt Paste at our baby shower, so I started off using that first. It worked fine, but I wasn't overly impressed, since I had never used anything else anyway. Fast forward 5-6 months later, when teething began and with it, nasty, horrible diarrhea, and my poor baby girl broke out in an AWFUL, red, raw rash that killed her hiney every time I had to wipe her during diaper changes. I had no more butt paste left, but had some cheap, Johnson + Johnson's diaper rash ointment, so I began using that on her poor little butt. To my surprise (and sympathy for Merasia), it didn't even ALMOST clear it up. Hubs and I immediately made a trip to Walmart to get some other stuff. I had a coupon for Balmex, so we got that. Twenty-four hours later, and the redness was gone, but the rawness and rash itself was still there, and still causing her pain. I gave it a couple more days, but after no difference, we set out to buy something else. This time, we tried Desitin. I figured it must be good, I saw it in online ads all the time and heard about it through the grapevine from other mothers. But, not only did this not clear up the rash, it didn't even make it look a tiny bit better. It looked just as worse, and the smell of this stuff was horrendous. Disgusting!

At this point, I was overly frustrated and felt awful for prolonging my poor daughter's rash by not getting something that would give her relief, so we bought another tube of Butt Paste. It seemed to work before, so I figured we had nothing to lose. We found it at a cheaper price at Walmart, as opposed to our local grocery stores. After one or two uses of this stuff, her rash was just about gone and looked considerably better. Better than it had looked since it began 2+ weeks earlier. FINALLY. She ha
d relief, and I felt better.

I remember using this butt paste on a few children at a daycare I used to work at, and I thought it was gross and weird, and the name of it threw me off completely. But now, as a mother myself and after trying this stuff, I am in love. I am obsessed. I will never buy anything else again for diaper rash treatment. It's worth the extra dollar or two since it works so well. It doesn't smell, either! It has a "nice" scent. I can't explain the smell...but trust me when I say it doesn't smell like peppermint (Balmex) or a doctor's office (Desitin). It washes off my hand easily after use with just a wipe, which is wonderful, since I usually need to get it cleaned off my hand immediately after applying it if I am to get the diaper on my child quickly before he/she runs away from me. It cleans off of baby's butt ea
sily too, so after every diaper change, you can clean up and reapply a fresh coat. The only "flaw" in this diaper rash cream is that it will stain clothes if it touches them, so you can't just wipe your hand off on a towel or anything, but since I always have wipes nearby when I am changing diapers anyway, it's not a big deal to grab a wipe, clean off my hand, and throw it in the trash.


My only other complaint? I don't have an unlimited lifetime supply at my disposal!





Friday, November 27, 2009

A Little More About Me...

A Survey.

1. What is your current obsession? I'm not sure I can really say I am obsessed with anything right now. Maybe baby stuff, if you can count that. ;-)

2. What is your weirdest obsession? Cleaning my kitchen floor...Hubs always tells me I clean it too much...but really, with two little monsters running around ON the floor, is there really such a thing as cleaning the floor "too much?" It doesn't help that it is white linoleum, so every little stain or grain of dirt shows up...and it always seems that as SOON as I sweep and mop it, it's dirty again. So, I'm "obsessed" with cleaning my floor. It's the only floor with no carpet!

3. Recall a fond childhood memory? My dad used to take me fishing all the time. My parents divorced when I was really young, around 4 or 5 years old, so I cherished the weekends spent with my dad, whom I missed so much. Another good one is before my parents divorced. My mom used to work at McDonalds, which wasn't far from where we lived at the time. She would leave for work before I was up, but when I finally did get up and get dressed and stuff, my dad and I would walk down to McDonalds and have our free breakfast. I loved those mornings. :-)

4. What's for dinner? Tonight? I have no idea. Our freezer is a little bare until we get to the store to get some groceries...but there's a steak in the fridge that has been sitting for a couple days so I assume we will need to eat that before it goes bad.

5. What would you eat for your last meal? PIZZA and cheesecake. :-)

6. What’s the last thing you bought? Gas the other day. Exciting, huh?

7. What are you listening to right now? The washer in the other room, the television in the background, and my munchkins playing with each other.

8. What do you think of the person who tagged you? I wasn't tagged, I stole this survey from Madison's blog. :-)

9. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished, anywhere in the world, where would it be? Here in my hometown. I know, it's silly to say, if I had the chance to live anywhere in the world...but I just can't seem to leave this place.

10. If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go? Shopping. Although, it takes close to an hour to get to the nearest Walmart, so only an hour would be a waste.

11. Which language do you want to learn? Swedish

12. What’s your favorite quote (for now)? "Everything happens for a reason."

13.What is your favorite color? Pink

14. What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe? My LEI jeans and cute white t-shirt. Pretty sad, considering PRE-babies, I probably would have answered my cute "going out" party shirts or little black dress.

15. What is your dream job? Being a stay at home mom

16.What’s your favorite magazine? Cosmo, Parenting, Babytalk...

17. If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on? Christmas and birthday presents for the babies!!!!

18. Describe your personal style? I don't have a personal style anymore...LOL

19. What are you going to do after this? Play some more with the babies!

20.What are your favorite films? The Notebook ranks HIGH on my list!

21. What’s your favorite fruit? Strawberries

22.What inspires you? My children ♥ ♥ And a few special friends ;-)

23. Your favorite books? The Memory Keeper's Daughter

24. Do you collect anything? Not really.

25. Any advice that’s some from bitter experience? I'd rather not think about things that made me bitter once in my life. :-)

26. What makes you follow a blog? People I know, people I have something in common with (mothers of multiples, etc.), excellent writing...

I am Thankful For...

I am thankful for many things this holiday season. More than I have ever been thankful for before, I think. :-)

I am thankful for...my beautiful babies, who brighten my day, bring me up when I am down, and make my life complete.

I am thankful for...my amazing, hard working husband who busts his you-know-what every day so I can stay home and be a mama, and to provide for his family and give us everything we need and then some.

I am thankful for...God blessing us with children! We tried so hard to get pregnant, and 3 years, 3 miscarriages, and 2 rounds of Clomid later, we were finally blessed with our twins! GOD IS GREAT!

I am thankful for...my true friends who have never "stabbed me in the back" and accept me for me and are always there when I really need them.

I am thankful for...my adopted family. They took me in when I had nowhere to go so I wouldn't be a foster child forever, and helped me through some of the most difficult times in my life.

I am thankful for...my birth mom. Many people wouldn't understand how I could be thankful for her, after everything she did to me. But, how can I NOT be thankful for her? She gave me LIFE. She is responsible for putting me on this earth, and semi-raising me, and despite everything she did to me for 6 years of my life, we had a great mother-daughter bond, and I can't NOT be thankful for that.

I am thankful for...a roof over my head. There are so many people in this world who are homeless and it's so sad to see. I never take for granted the fact that I am lucky enough to have a roof over my head and a warm place to sleep every day and night.

I am thankful for...French Vanilla coffee creamer. It makes my mornings a little bit easier...not to mention, sweeter. ;-)

I am thankful for...food on my table. Need I say more?

I am thankful for...my health, and the health of my friends and family.

I am thankful for...the beauty of nature. Sunsets, snow falls, rainbows...

This year, there is so much to be thankful for, and really, my list could go on and on, but this post would be much too long if I continued!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥


Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Thanksgiving and Other News!

We have had a busy few weeks, full of wonderful smiles and new, exciting, and oh-so-adorable accomplishments!

Connor still isn't sitting up or pulling up quite yet, but he is getting close! We just have to keep reminding ourselves that he is a month or so behind on development since they were born a month early. It's hard to remember that when he is so advanced for his "age" in other departments. He is creeping allllll over the place, getting into everything, but he is such a good boy! He smiles and laughs allll the time, eats well, and sleeps beautifully through the night and for nap times. He is an absolute joy in every sense of the word. He just started reaching for people when he wants you to take him or pick him up. He did it to my mom the other night and did it to Frank last night. It's adorable. And he tries to give kisses, and it's the funniest thing! He also cut his 5th tooth a few weeks ago and the 6th one is close too!

Merasia is SO CLOSE to WALKING! She started pulling herself up a few weeks ago, and lately she has been testing the waters and pulling herself up, holding on with only one hand, and a few times, she has even let go completely and stood holding on to nothing for a few seconds! She took a few steps while holding on to her walker last night, and will cruise around people and furniture all the time. It won't be long, I'm sure! The only issue is that she has some small black and blues on her butt from pulling up and then falling hard on the floor or falling on toys. Poor girl! Sometimes she will crawl to me to pick her up. I love that. It really makes me feel like a mama then, to have your baby love you so much to WANT you...it's hard to explain but as they get older, like the age they are now, it's a big reality check that I am their mama and they LOVE me and WANT me. Better enjoy it and soak it up before the teen years hit!! ;-) Anyway, she has 4 teeth and loves to laugh and smile. She crawls once in a while, but she knows she can get places faster if she just drops to her belly and creeps. And she just learned how to clap! It's the most cutest thing I have ever seen! Every time you look at her and say "yaaaay!" she starts smiling and clapping! She claps at the weirdest times and even claps when she is upset and crying sometimes. Silly girl! She naps pretty well also, and sleeps well at night, most of the time. She used to sleep beautifully through the night right along with Connor when they were about 6.5 or 7 months, and then she started teething. After she cut 4 teeth though, I figured she would go back to sleeping through the night, but it's not as good as it used to be. She will usually go right back to sleep with her paci replaced and her seahorse turned on when she does wake up though, but sometimes we give her a little tough love and let her be when she wakes and cries or fusses, and eventually, she puts herself back to sleep, and last night and the night before, she has slept beautifully all night, so maybe she is getting back on track. I still can't complain compared to some babies, though, so I will take what I can get. :-)

We are working on weaning off of bottles and on to sippy cups! We started this a month or so ago, using some cheap sippy cups from Walmart with silicone nipples. They did very well with those! They don't do as well with the Playtex hard sippy cups with the valves in them, but they do well with the Nuby silicone nippled sippies and the Take and Toss sippies. At first, they didn't like the Take and Toss cups, but we tried it again tonight, and Connor ate all 8 oz. from it and Merasia did 3 or 4 oz. and then I had to put the rest in her other sippy that she is more used to, but hey, it's a start! They normally have 4 bottles a day, and two of those are with sippies. We give them bottles for their first feeding of the day because they are usually more hungry then since they haven't eaten all night, and we give them bottles at their last feeding because it's comforting for bed time. We plan on making the day before their first birthday as their last day with any bottles. We will see! I think it will be fine, though. :-)

Merasia has given us a couple of scares as far as choking goes. One day she somehow found a candy wrapper on the floor and got it in her mouth. She started choking and I patted her back to help her, and she seemed fine and was breathing and stuff, so I tried to give her her bottle. She refused it so I knew something was wrong. I took the bottle away and she started crying and screaming, and Frank could see in her mouth and saw the wrapper in the back of her throat and quickly got his finger in her mouth to get it out, thank GOD! It was so scary but she was fine after. Then, the other day, the leg on our table broke and there was a bolt on the floor from it that we didn't see in time. She got it and I could see her chewing something but I was making dinner and thought she had gotten a piece of cheese off the floor or something. I went to give her her bottle, and she started choking, coughing, and gagging, so I quickly picked her up and patted her on the back and she spit it up, thank GOD again! Those moments were SO scary! It just goes to show how much you REALLY have to be careful about what is on the floor and things that they can get a hold of. I know we have many more of those moments in our future as parents, though. Somehow, children manage to find things you didn't even know were there!

We will be celebrating the twins' first Thanksgiving this weekend, and we can't wait. We are having dinner with our friends and this will be the first time the twins' will experience real table food instead of finger foods and pureed stuff. I can't wait to see how they react and what they like and don't like!

I know I say it all the time, but I have to say it again...I cannot believe my babies will be one in such a short time. It blows my mind and doesn't seem possible! I am trying to savor each and every moment, as it is going by all too fast. ♥


Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Our First Halloween!






Connor and Merasia had their first Halloween this weekend! Of course they won't remember it and had no idea what their silly costumes were about, but it was fun for us and we made wonderful memories and adorable photos. Connor was a lion and Merasia was a spider. Here are a few photos from Halloween:













We met up with our friends, Terry and Jenn, and their 2.5 month old daughter, Cloey, who was an adorable pumpkin! We walked around town with the babies and of course got some yummy candy! (I am thoroughly enjoying this, by the way.)

By the end of the night, they were exhausted and we spent the night at our friend's house and the babies passed out and slept soundly all night.

The twins are almost 10 months old!! This is WAY too crazy for me! I absolutely cannot believe it. I know I say this every month, probably more than once a month, but I can't express it enough.

Connor is creeping everywhere still. He goes so fast! He tries to crawl but it hasn't happened yet. And really, he doesn't need to, with hos easily and fast he gets around with just creeping. He has a fun personality and is always smiling, talking, laughing, and just plain adorable.

Merasia is doing a lot! She started sitting up by herself about a month ago.










She also started pulling herself up a few weeks ago! I put her down for a nap one day and she started trying to pull up and within a few minutes, she accomplished it! Now she pulls up on everyone and everything she can get her chubby little hands on!

















Soon we will be celebrating the twins' first Thanksgiving, and we are wholeheartedly looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner, when the twins will experience their first taste of "real" table food!! I can't wait to see them try turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie! YUM YUM!

It's hard to believe that they will be 1 in two months. I have started thinking about their birthday party but it's so overwhelming! We'll see how it goes as the months continue on...