Summerschool 2: Popcorn & Scizzors

DAY 1: One day I had the brilliant (read: horrifically messy) idea of putting popcorn in the touch-table. No, not popcorn seeds, but actual popped popcorn! We put the popcorn popper in the touch-table, along with a big bowl, some spoons and scoopers and things, and ran that thing over and over until the touch-table was full of popped popcorn and Orville Redenbacher was well on his way to another purchase by our family. The kids couldn't have been more elated. They loved pouring in the seeds, scooping the popped corn away from the popper, scooping it into jars, eating it all the while. Yes, despite my efforts to reinforce the idea that the popcorn needs to stay inside the table, this activity made a huge mess. Popcorn everywhere. BUT, they had an absolute blast - and for several days. Summerschool that first day was super easy, and provided hours of entertainment. (sorry, no pics. Would have been fun to document the disaster though :)

2: The next summerschool I drew a few trees on construction paper and filled a jar-lid with Elmer's Glue. I showed them how to dip the popcorn in the glue and put it on the tree. I think I even sang the "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree" song at one point. The kids got it to varying degrees. Seville went so far as to draw her own tree. Trajan did pretty well with gluing the popcorn on, but ate most of his popcorns after dipping them in the glue, and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to convey to him that ed to work, that he could eat the other popcorns but the glue-dipped ones were for his tree. He continued to think of the glue as a dipping-sauce. Oswell showed little interest in gluing popcorn on his tree, but really wanted to draw with the markers and then wanted to play with the scissors, which I had gotten out to cut out some leaves and bugs and things for added fun.

Trajan's Tree

Oswell's Tree (lots of marker-drawing, not so many popcorns)

Seville's Tree, complete with rabbit-dwelling in the trunk next door

Seville added a Cardinal with a long tail to the "example tree"

3. Since the scissors had been such a hit, once Jared got fed up with the mess and threw out the popcorn, I just put all the kid-scissors in the touch-table along with a bunch of things to cut: construction paper, ribbons, yarn, junk mail, whatever. They spent tons of time over the next several days cutting things up. Not really related to popcorn in any way, but one thing led to another.

Summerschool 1: Birds, Eggs, Nests

Though I didn't necessarily intend to have "themes" to the weeks of summerschool, it's actually worked out that way so far (all two weeks!). It has just helped me to come up with ideas for simple things to do that tie together. This week was about birds, nests, and eggs.

When Jared was fiddling with the basketball hoop we discovered a Cardinal's nest in the trees lining our driveway. I saw a couple of birds repeatedly flying to and from a single spot, stood below it and heard cheeping. I got the ladder while the parents were away and sure enough! There were these tiny, featherless, little things opening their enormous mouths to the sky! (sorry sweeties, I'm not your mom).  So we've had fun watching the mom and dad take care of those babies.

I decided to use our resident birds as a jumping-off point for summerschool this week. Here's what we did:

DAY 1: Making birds: I cut out a basic bird shape out of poster board, 1 for each kid. I got my supply of feathers and gave each child a bottle of Elmer's glue to squeeze on their bird shape (and tried really hard not to micromanage their glue usage. They each have their own way of squirting it!). After they got the glue on (by which I mean all over the place), they could choose feathers to put all over their birds. Here are the finished products. I even found exactly 3 googly-eyes in my unboxed-so-far craft stuff.

DAY 2: Making nests: We went outside in the morning, each with a bowl (would have used paper bowls, if I'd had them, but I didn't. Instead we lined a regular bowl with wax paper. Paper bowls would be so much easier). The cardinals had flown the coop and evacuated the nest by then. I read online that they don't re-use their nests, so I took the liberty of taking it down, showing the kids how it was made, and talking about what birds would want for their nests. Then we all went around the yard and collected stuff for making bird nests and put it in our respective bowls (pine needles, sticks, grass, feathers, flowers in some cases). While we were out and about we saw a rabbit, some cool green beetles, and Seville caught a frog, so lots of good outdoorsy-stuff going on. When we were done collecting (and I could sweat no more, about to collapse of pregnant-heat-exhaustion) we went inside and glued the nests together. We basically liberally drizzled Elmers glue all around/on/through our nests and left them to dry. It took them a couple of days, but then I removed them from the wax paper and bowls, and we had little nests.

DAY 3: Making eggs: we made salt dough, and I taught them how to roll a little ball in their hands or on the table to make an egg. I had to make a lot of eggs for them, but they had fun. They also got to experiment with making snakes.

DAY 4: Painting the eggs we made yesterday

DAY 5: We pulled the nests out of their wax paper/bowls and put the eggs in. (We actually went to a park this day for our main event)

The Epiphany

(only 6 of 7 pictured here. That's me on the bottom left)

When I was a kid (one of 7 kids, I might add), my mom determined that there was no way she was hauling all of us to some summerschool/summercamp activity thing, especially at great financial expense. She saw the flier we brought home and the crafts on there and thought "well I can do THAT." And so she did. My memory (probably flawed, but still) is that every day during the summer, after we did our chores she would do "summerschool" with us, which amounted to a creative project, outing, or other fun event for us kids. She did everything from birdwatching to knitting to ceramics.  Though I'm not as craftily proficient as my mom, nor probably as ambitious, given that I am about to have 4 kids 5 and under, I had an epiphany recently.

My beautiful, beloved house I left behind

The backstory: Moving here (to Raleigh, N.C. from Portland, O.R.) has been really hard. One of the hardest things about it is that I feel like I've been robbed of my spring and summer. The last chance I have to bond with my boys before a new sister comes, the last chance to spend time with Seville before she is whisked off to a state-run education - gone under the pile of boxes and paper and endeavors to find doctors and mechanics and stores and put up shelves and safety locks. Just as life was getting barely easy enough to breath now and again, my spring became immediately consumed with preparations for moving across the country.

My new house.

Now that we're here, my time has been consumed with the desperate endeavor to set up a home before the baby comes, and to do this while taking care of my kids, not letting the house become unmanageable, and doing it all while increasingly pregnant. It did not start off well. It's not like I had 15 minutes of spare time before we moved, so I don't know why I thought I'd have it after.  As the saying goes, I couldn't seem to get beyond the urgent things to the important things. Especially being pregnant I am completely sapped of energy and my hips just won't let me walk as much as I need, bend over to put anything away, move a box, etc, so everything is slowgoing, and the progress I do make is excruciatingly inefficient.

After some tearful expressions of frustration and trying to figure out what to do, Jared and I came up with a new plan to try: I would make sure kids were kept more-or-less alive (fed and dressed and stuff), but I would not clean anything up really. We bought a bunch of paper plates and I got to work. My plan was to spend every morning (the few minutes I have after food and clothing is dealt with) doing “summerschool"  with the kids. During naps, in the afternoon, I would spend some time with Seville, and some time moving in. When Jared gets home he makes dinner, cleans the kitchen, and helps get the kids to bed. This allows me to focus on a few “important” things during the day, leaving a few of the “urgent” things to him.

The change in all of our happiness since this started is marked, and such a blessed relief. After a week and a half, everything is better! Seville is enthusiastic about finding out her chore each day (!) so we can do summerschool. The boys run upstairs to get dressed so they can participate.  I have a daily sense of peace about how I spend my time and that my kids aren’t being short-changed and sacrificed on the altar of my busy life. Jared is a rockstar and my hero. We can’t go on like this forever, I expect, but for now, it is life-changing.

I’ve decided to [try to] blog my summerschools, so that other people can get ideas for things to do, and see what we’re up to. I haven’t done well at photo-documenting so far, and maybe never will, but it’s worth documenting anyway, if only so I can feel good about my efforts during my down moments.

A Random picture of my happy kids, for good measure

Since I’ve rambled on here for a while already, I’ll save my first summerschool documentation for another post. Let this one serve as encouragement for any other bewildered, stressed, anxiety-ridden mom who wants to provide more things for her children than she possibly can, as a single human being.  My advice so far: find a way to work something "important" into your daily routine. I know that may be basically impossible for some people. It sure seemed so for me, and would be without Jared's support. Unfortunately, I cannot endorse the idea of stealing my awesome husband, but I hope you have one that can help, or the resources to find another way.

Weekend O' Airplanes and Sickness

We had planned to try to spend the weekend at North Carolina's famous beaches, but I was too sick to go so we stayed "home." We did muster ourselves out the door for an hour or so on Saturday to take the kids to Observation Park - a park at the airport with an airport theme. It's pretty cute. There's an observation deck to watch planes taking off and landing. You're right next to it so you get to hear their jets in all their glory too. They play a feed from the radio tower, so you get to hear what air traffic control is saying while you watch. They also have a play area and big sandbox, and a tiny runway for kids to run around on. I think it's pretty cool, especially for those like me, for whom all things airplane invokes a childhood sense of jubilation and excitement.  Here's a video of Oswell pretending to be a plane on the play-runway. You can see the real runway in the background:

I only regret we didn't manage to get a video of the boys reacting to a plane taking off. It was pretty cute - they got super excited every time. They have both been obsessed with planes  - especially since we went for a ride in Grandpa's plane just before we moved. They think every small plane is Grandpa's plane, and that's what they say when they see one: "Gampa's pane!" :)  I couldn't even get Trajan to leave the observation deck and go to the playstructure at the park. He just wanted to watch planes, even though the wait between take-offs was often 10 minutes or something. He would just patiently stand there saying, "nother pane?"

After we got home, the boys went and found their little toy wind-up planes I got them recently, and proceeded to "fly" around the house - to the dinner table, up the stairs, back and forth in the living room.

I'm pretty sure today  marks the second Father's Day in a row that I've been too sick to do anything for Jared. Which means he's getting hosed, and I feel bad. I've been so sick the last couple of days that I can only get out of bed for short periods of time. My laryngitis has been so bad that I literally had to whisper for about 24 hours - it actually made more sound than trying to talk, which seemed to just shut my throat up completely. When I woke up Saturday morning I couldn't breathe and was so panicked. Jared told me to calm down, take a puff of Oswell's ventilator. It eventually subsided, but I've never experienced my throat being closed like that - it was scary. Now I know how asthmatic kids feel, I guess.

Hopefully we'll manage the beach trip next week. In the meantime, we're just hanging out in a holding pattern (no pun intended) waiting for our house to close so we can move in. Just under 2 weeks now!

Life in Raleigh: Week 2

We are definitely enjoying the sunshine and nice weather in Raleigh. Here's a picture from the other day. It looks positively Ferris Buehler-ish to me (every day is like that here, it seems). The pic is taken from the balcony of the townhouse we're renting for the month. We're subletting it, but it's been fun to see what the other owners are like. It appears the requirements for living in this little townhouse community are 1) Be around 30, give or take a few years, 2) Be single and good-looking, 3) Own a dog (if female, own a small, annoying dog. If male, own a medium to large sized dog.)

Today we took the kids to the pool, and I felt totally out of place among the young singles sunning themselves there (they don't actually go IN the pool, of course). There were no other people there with things like spouses, kids, thy-cellulite, minivans, pool toys, etc. I wanted to declare, "You good-looking people may smugly look on at this frumpy housewife with 3 kids and a big pregnant belly, but I AM YOUR FUTURE!" Of course, I'm probably not actually their future. Jared points out that we probably personify the opposite of everything they believe in. They're probably saying to themselves, "dude, I'm NEVER going to have all those kids and get frumpy like that."  In fairness, all the young single people sunning themselves were very nice (the ones who spoke to us were, anyway). And then I felt bad for assuming they were all smugly judging us for our over-abundance of children, floaty toys and strollers. Maybe they even enjoyed having a bunch of two-year-olds whining over the sounds of their top-40 radio stations. Who wouldn't?

As for housing, on Monday, we officially went forward with buying the house. I spent every spare moment until 5pm on the day our contingency period ended (much to Jared's dismay) looking at alternatives, trying to satisfy myself that this was really our best option. And I think it is. Not exactly my style, but it's a great house and the ward looks to be really wonderful as well. We had some trouble wiring our earnest money, and didn't get it in by the 5pm deadline, but everything is going forward anyway without a hitch. So on June 29, we'll be the owners of a house in Raleigh!

Trajan and Seville playing at the park. Wearing shorts.

The next hurdle was registering Seville for Kindergarten, which involved making an irrevocable personal ranking of the 15-20 schools in my "choice" area, with no ability to tour the schools (except a couple), no idea which one they will send my child to, no information on how they decide, and no time to do decent research without losing my child's place in line.  It's the worst, most confusing system ever. I'd talk more about it, but the thought makes me tired. Here's me on the news whining about it though. Someday maybe I'll elaborate. Suffice it to say, for now, that I am reassuring myself with the fact that we have pretty good odds of getting into a school that is not too terribly far away and seems pretty decent to me. They have a strong parent-community, they're part of the global-schools network, and I think they're probably a great little school. Fortunately for me, most parents seem to look heavily at test scores (I couldn't care less. What do test scores tell you? Either that this school is full of white, privileged kids, or that the teachers "teach to the test," or that the school is academically rigorous - none of which are things I think are appropriate priorities for Kindergarten/early-education). Anyway, this one school gets bad test scores, but has a lot of other great things going for it. If I'm lucky, we'll get in. If not, heaven help us.

Oswell running around at the park.
That's sunlight on him, people!

Seville came to the school with me to tour it. It got her super amped up for Kindergarten, and since then she's bee practicing writing "words I might need for Kindergarten" and reading her new Bob books that I bought her at Costco the other day. It's very cute to see. Almost a shame Kindergarten doesn't start for 2 more months, but I'm glad for selfish reasons. It's all full-day Kindergarten in Wake County, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be lonely with my little friend gone all day :-(  She really is such a delight to have around.

Life in Raleigh: Day 2

Well, we are here and alive! There was one very long day of travel across the country that stressed me out to no end in advance of the trip. But by 1:00am Raleigh, N.C. time we were here alive and well, 1 bag and 2 naps short, but otherwise unscathed. In fact, I had literally laid awake nights worrying about going through security with my kids. I don’t trust my health or that of my unborn fetus to those backscatter-radiation-emitting-cancer-machines they have installed at PDX now (neither do several of the security personnel, btw.)(and I know many people reading this will think I’m kooky-crazy and overprotective, but whatever. Go through yourself, then, if it doesn’t worry you). I’ve traveled enough in the past few months to know that if you decline, which you’re allowed to do, they give you a thorough pat-down. Anyway, if I'M not going in the cancer-thingy, I’m CERTAINLY not sending my kids into it, and I can NOT imagine subjecting my child to a pat-down. I can’t even begin to extrapolate on how inappropriate I think it is to pat down a 5 year old girl, and how confusing it would be to try and help her understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate crotch-groping (and don’t tell me they don’t touch your crotch. I’ve done many times: they do). I read the TSA guidelines on children, which included language to try and convince you they were going to try and avoid pat-downs, but they still say that anyone who declines the radiation-thingy is subject to a thorough pat-down, no matter their age. So here I was, fully prepared to have a show-down with security. We arrived at the airport really early just in case. And I was honestly prepared not to get on the plane, if need be.  

To PDX’s credit, they were very nice and accommodating. When we got up to security they wrangled us all together and we all went through the metal-detector, me and Jared holding the boys, Seville on her own... and THAT WAS IT! No discussions, no pat downs, no insistence on radiation-thingies, just that. I can’t tell you how relieved I was. Jared couldn’t have cared less, I think, except I think he was not looking forward to being the guy with the wife who was arguing with security about them touching her kids’ privates.  I mean, in retrospect, it seems obvious that this is how families with young children should be handled, but given the TSA rules and the stories you hear about old ladies being asked to remove diapers and whatnot, there was no way to know.

So, greatly relieved and with security behind us, the rest of the trip was mostly what you’d expect: Trying to keep kids entertained in a very very small space without irritating neighbors, trying to convince boys to nap (they didn’t), trying to find ways to feed people on airplane snacks and airport food (the carry-on we accidentally left on the plane during our layover had our snacks in it) (we got it back the next day). I have to share the thing we did for entertainment in case you ever travel with kids, something I got from my friend Kate:  I went to the dollar store and bought 8-10 little toys or activities for each child, put each one in a paper bag and stapled it shut. So once each hour we could get out a new “prize” and they could see what was inside.  We had coloring books, toy cars, stamp sets, pinwheels (that will twirl if you hold them up the airplane air vent, by the way), card games, puzzles, all kinds of dumb little toys that would entertain them for a few minutes at a time. We did this on our trip to Tennessee for my brother-in-law’s wedding last summer, and it worked out really well. We didn’t need to use them quite as much this time, since the kids were more interested in movies and interactive iphone games than 9 months ago, but still... parents take note.

We are renting a van at the moment, and starting to search for one to buy. Jared’s car hasn’t arrived yet - I don’t think it will for several more days. We are also in the process of buying a house, but it won’t close for 3 weeks, so we are staying in a townhome near the airport here. It’s fully furnished, and comes complete with 3 kids’ beds and a playroom full of toys. There’s even a pool across the way, that I might be able to take the kids to if I encase them completely in life-preserving paraphernalia. Maybe. It’s a great situation, in any case. We discovered that the temporary housing offered for families in our situation by companies really doesn’t accommodate kids very well, and is exorbitantly expensive - about the same as a nice hotel (we would have to pay for it ourselves). Jared found this place on Craigslist - some guy from Virginia owns it for visiting with his kids, but they are staying with him at his more permanent residence for the summer so he’s renting it out. We totally scored, and I’m so grateful.  The only downside is that it is 3 stories with nice, high ceilings but lots of stairs, which are already pretty hard on me this pregnant. But given everything else, it’s pretty amazingly perfect for us for now.

Tomorrow is the inspection on the house we’re buying, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ll admit to having some reservations about this purchase. It’s not the location or style I would have imagined myself in, but it may just be the best we can do for now. It’s actually a really fantastic home and property. Maybe just a little too big and nice for my immediate comfort level, if that makes any sense. There’s part of me that doesn’t like the idea of moving to a big house in the suburbs - I’d much rather live close-in in a modest house with “character” and “charm.” But our family is definitely growing to larger-than-average, which makes it harder to fit into a smaller house, and the areas I most love are, of course, quite expensive, so we’ll see what comes of things. I’ve ruled out the possibility of renting for a year and moving again - having just watched 15,000lbs of my stuff get packed up and hauled away, I can’t imagine that the difficulty and hassle of doing that myself in a year would be worth whatever extra mojo I could muster in finding a different house, so it’s now or never.  I have until Monday next week to be certain, so I’ll keep you posted.

It’s definitely HOT here! I’m not used to it at all, and so far I’m both delighted and apprehensive. At some moments I have totally loved that we can go outside without sweaters and see sunshine all day. Other times I just want to collapse in an air-conditioned room. It will probably take me some time to adjust, but overall I think I will really like being in a sunnier climate, if not the first hot, muggy, pregnant summer :)

We have treated the last couple of days like vacation, as much as we can, so the kids will have fun. We took them to a park and swimming yesterday. Today we went to the local children’s museum. The hot-dog-stand lady outside the museum asked me, “are these all your kids?” and then she asked, “are you gonna be done after the next one?” These are the types of things I hear that moms of many kids get asked, but it was a first for me. I guess 4 kids magically transports you into the realm of “weird lady with lots of kids” nowadays. Nobody batted an eye at 3. Now I feel like a walking commercial for birth control. Maybe I should come up with a snappy comeback: "Anything else you'd like to know about my personal life, my bedroom habits, or my reproductive health?" But I'm sure nobody means anything when they ask insensitive questions like that.

My camera is dead and it seems the cord maybe didn’t make it with us, so I can’t take any pictures for now. Not that pictures of our temporary townhouse would be very interesting.  Here are pictures of the house we are buying, if all goes through as planned. They are not good pictures at all, taken by the homeowner I assume (selling by owner), but you sort of get the idea. The best is the purple calla lily wallpaper in the "master font". Oh yeah baby.

Backpacking 2011

And YOU thought backpacking couldn't be done with a 4-year-old, a 1-year old, and a 1-year old! Well, pshaw! It can. Of course, you need a few llamas to pack your stuff in, so you can carry the kids, but there you go.

A couple of weekends ago we got together with some friends, rented some llamas, and hit the backcountry near Sisters, Oregon. We had 100lbs available for our entire family of 5(!), so we got the bathroom scale out, set it on the deck, and started weighing gear, tossing out any little item we didn't think was absolutely necessary.  Food was 25lbs. The tent was 30. That left about 45 for the rest of our gear and clothes, and we barely eeked in at 98lbs before buying one more child's sleeping bag, which weighed 2 lbs (how's that for exactness!).

The hike was not bad at all. Mostly relatively flat and only 2 miles or so. If Seville hadn't been so exhausted from getting no sleep the night before (we stayed in a motel; she didn't go to sleep until we did) she would have been able to hike the whole way - she did on the way back. As it was we carried her in a pack part of the way. Each of us had one baby on the front in a Becko or Ergo, and either a 30lb 4-year old or a 30lb backpack on the back. My one regret is that the backpack was merely a daypack, and killed my shoulders. We should have brought a real backpack, but we didn't anticipate having so much extra weight (mostly snacks, water, and random leftovers, but they added up!)

The hike was through a burnt-out area of the forest, which was actually really cool because not only was it surreal looking, we had great views and lots of wildflowers growing all over the place (one of my favorite things!). The camping area next to the lake did have green trees, so we had plenty of shade and lush forest to camp in.

I expected the lake to be some freezing glacier run-off type thing, but it was actually warm and lovely. Totally swimmable.

Seaside

Went to the beach a few weekends ago. The boys marveled at the vast expanse of sand and Trajan crawled farther than I've ever seen him. It was a super cute, fun day.

My Birthday Wish: Innocent Bystander for a Day

I wrote this post a couple of months ago, but didn't post it because I thought it was maybe an overshare. But I feel like the more I edit myself online the less interesting this blog becomes. I hate boring more than I hate embarrassing, so there you go.

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I really want a day off. It's my birthday in T minus 9 minutes (as of typing this sentence) and all I keep fantasizing about is a day off. I don't mean a day "away" from my kids or a day in the Bahamas or anything. Having my kids with me would be great, if I could just... not have to do anything. But it's a fantasy. I know that no matter how hard Jared tries to give me some rest or relief, he does not have boobs, he does not have superhuman abilities to be several places at once, he cannot, without duct-tape, quiet the sounds of my children calling for me (or the sound in my head, even, if they were elsewhere, which is duct-tape proof), and he does not have the title, "Mommy." And so, no matter how good a Daddy he is, he can't become Mommy for a day, leaving me to be an innocent bystander.

There comes a point, in a mother's foray into motherhood, that she realizes what she got herself into. Having a baby is kind of like planning to run a marathon with little to no training whatsoever. You know you're about to run a marathon. You know there are things about it that will suck. You know you will be unprepared and your body and mind will be in pain and you know you might break down at some point. But you also realize it's a big, fun adventure, and you'll get to push yourself to your limits, test your mettle, and accomplish something really awesome while you're at it. But a Marathon is 26 miles, and that's exactly how far you brace yourself to run. And... you all know the feeling more or less... when the finish line is in view, somehow you have only exactly the number of steps left in you to make it there, afterwhich you will collapse, dehydrated and toenail-less, into a panting heap of quivering muscles. I think having a baby (or two) is a little bit like this. You brace yourself for the onslaught, but when the finish line - and the end of your stamina - approaches, you realize that you will not actually get to stop then. That you not only have to keep going, but that you n.e.v.e.r. get to stop running. ever. in your life. You are now doing this every moment, of every day, permanently stuck doing this painful thing you don't even know if you can physically do for the next 10 minutes.

This is the point where you curl up into the fetal position and have a good cry. It's the point where you wonder what you were thinking, get angry at the world and all your friends with kids for not warning you about this, start wishing you'd be involved in a horrible accident and be forced to go to the hospital for a while just to get a break (yes. It's sick. I'm just sayin'). This is also the point where you start to have an inkling of understanding the level of gratitude you should have for your own mother (which thought you immediately banish from your mind, lest you feel even more guilty than you already do, if that is possible).

Perhaps I overstate this. After all, it could just be me and my sick and selfish self that experiences this level of dismay over the realities of motherhood. Admittedly, I struggled with postpartum depression after my first. And my second and third, well, they arrived at the same time, so that's a whole different ball of wax. I think having twins requires you to be somewhat crazy, so if it doesn't drive you there of its own accord, you will pre-emptively adopt it as a coping mechanism. There's just something about the absolute, relentless, never-ending, constant need that is incredible. You never finish one urgent thing but that there is another urgent thing. I read a twins-how-to-book before I had the babies that talked about this in terms of those whac-a-mole arcade games you find at Chuck E Cheese and stuff. You stand there with your knees bent, poised, aiming, ready, muscles twitching in anticipatory heightened awareness, trying to whack every mole that pops up its head as fast as you can for however many minutes. Having twins is like a constant, relentless game of whac-a-mole. You don't even get to sleep without being on duty. Of course, I know this really won't mean much to you, the reader, because I read this book before I had twins, but didn't really get it until several months into it. In fact, the twins were both sick recently, and I had twins for 9 months before I understood what it was like to have two sick babies at the same time. Unfathomable. Like nothing I could have imagined (and I already HAD twins, so you'd think I could imagine). So it's ok, I know you don't know what I'm talking about (excepting Amy, Chelsea, Tara, Tamara, Lauren, Natalie, of course). Just send sympathy flowers my way. Or birthday ones. Whichever cause moves you the most. Waa.

Ok, so now I'm filling this post with pictures of my cute kids because I feel like I'm being kind of a whiner, even if a tongue-in-cheek one. I don't mean to whine, but what's the value in super-glossing everything? Life is awesome and crappy at the same time. There. And as for the awesome, I will confess that having twins is a lot like having your cake and eating it too. I just get so much delight from just LOOKING at a cute baby doing cute things, especially my own cute baby doing cute things. But the minute you pick up the baby to cuddle and kiss it (which you inevitably want to do while observing it being cute) you can't see it anymore. In fact, with Seville, I used to kiss her in front of the mirror so I could watch her giggle. Anyway, with twins, you can cuddle and kiss a cute baby and watch a cute baby SIMULTANEOUSLY! It's the awesomest thing. Not to mention watching two babies being cute WITH each other. Two babies is seriously some of the cutest cuteness you can ever experience (my brother's kids excepted, of course, who are triplets. No competing there, on any count).

So, yeah, I like twins. And my life. Really, I do. I will adjust sometime. Or maybe the sun will come out and that will help. Or maybe I have a Nanny Godmother out there somewhere who's waiting for me to cry on an animated garden bench for her to come (my bedroom, the kitchen, my car, and the bathroom, were perhaps all the wrong places for Fairy God-Nannies). My fairytale is surely just getting going.

Five.... Four... Three... Two...

ONE! They made it. Perhaps as significant, I made it.

The Cake... and The Competition

We celebrated with extended family over the weekend. Having done enough parties with Seville now to have learned that parties are funner for kids when they're age appropriate, I came up with a plan that was completely centered around them. We did it between naps, at 2 in the afternoon, so they'd be happy and energetic. We had cake first. We played a couple of games they were sure to love.

Game 1: We had a "Dance Contest" where each adult had to hold a child and dance with them to the music my dad played on the piano (he mixed it up between western, ragtime, classical, waltz-ey, etc). The babies/toddlers LOVED it! The two nephews who are too old to be held to dance were the judges panel, and they doled out treats as prizes for each dance section, making sure to give a prize to each child. They did a great job.

Game 2: Then we had a blanket toss, starting with the youngest and going to oldest. Even my 9-year-old nephew got a chance to be tossed, his gangly arms and legs flailing around almost knocking our glasses off. It was super fun for all.

Then we opened one present (they loved it, so there was no need to get out the others and overwhelm them.)  Then they went down for a nap. Super simple, and very successful. They had a great time.

We had a private family party the next night, with just Mom, Dad, and Big Sister. There was more time to eat cake and open (most of) the rest of the presents. Good times all around.

You really notice, now that they're exactly one, that they're not really one yet. Everyone's been to enough one-year-old birthday parties to know roughly how a one-year-old acts and what they can and can't do. It was marked, the difference between these boys and other one-year-olds. They're really 10-month-olds. And so sweet. I'm tempted, though, to have a second birthday party, when they reach their gestational first birthday. We'll see how I'm feeling in May, but I bet you I'll do it :)

Here are the rest of the pictures:

The 5 Kinds of Mommy Pictures

Every so often I need a recent photo of myself for something. A family newsletter, a facebook profile that is remotely honest, a family calendar. It never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is to find a picture of myself that isn't a complete embarrassment. Talking to some other moms I know and looking at the photos of myself from the past year or so, I am starting to put together why this is. First of all, husbands, for some reason, are not as trigger happy with the camera shutter as moms are. I can't think of a time that my husband has been like, "what a precious moment! wait. hold it there a moment, you adorable wife and children, while I fetch the camera and preserve this delightful scene for posterity!" I am almost always behind the camera, and by the time it occurs to me that this could be a good photo op of ME, specifically ask my husband to take a picture of me, spend a minute negotiating about whether it's a waste of time or worth the effort, he will get the camera and humor me but by then I've lost my sense of humor, and somehow cameras have a way of capturing that (okay, I might be exaggerating this scene a little, but still). Anyway, mommy pictures almost always fit into one of 5 categories, and I'm posting them here with examples, to embarrass myself once and for all.

The "I Am Looking At My Child and I Have 15 Chins"

The "I'm Trying to Hold and Arrange All My Children, But They're Pulling My Hair/Earrings/Shirt and I Am Trying to Adjust Myself Between Shots But Of Course That's When The Shot Was Taken. Yay."

The "I'm So Tired And Wearing No Makeup And This Could Have Been a Good/Fun Picture, But Honestly, Do You Think I Want People To See Me Like This?"

The "Snort-Laugh" (no explanation necessary)

The "I'm Mid-Sentence/Bite/Sniffle and I Look Like a Stroke-Survivor"

 

Unfortunately, my fear is that if 99% of pictures of myself look like this, maybe I just look like this 99% of the time. Perhaps it is time to come to terms with the fact that I will inevitably decline in hotness as I age, even as my husband gets hotter every day (curse the inverse-gender-age-to-hotness-cultural-bias!).  I may have 15 chins when I look down (which probably IS 99% of the time), but I have inner-awesomeness, and my super-hot-only-getting-hotter-as-he-ages-and-gets-more-rustic-wrinkles-and-distinguished-gray-hairs husband, fortunately, seems to appreciate that.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Sugar-Free: By request, I'm starting this update by blogging about my no-sugar-experiment. two weeks ago I decided to quit eating sugar. I mean totally. I check the labels of anything and don't eat it if there's any kind of sugar added. This means I can't eat most crackers, sauces, spreads, prepared foods, canned goods, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how many things have sugar in them, that you wouldn't think would have sugar. Bread! Meat! Cheese! No wonder the American consumption of fructose has gone up 1000x in the last 40 years.  So anyway, I've had to make all my food from scratch (which is good to do anyway, but who has the time on a regular basis?) and forego my regular infusion of chocolate and sweets. In fact, this is part of why I started this. I need sweets after every meal. I get intense cravings. And, come on, who doesn't crave chocolate at regular intervals throughout the day, but I felt like it was getting out of control. Perhaps a result of my breastfeeding two babies, but I figured my body can't need all that sugar. I'm pretty much exclusively breastfeeding 35lbs of baby, which amounts to something like 140 oz of milk a day, and yet my "baby weight" persists, determined as ever to hang on. So I thought maybe it was my love handles asking for the sugar, not my boobs. It was worth a shot to see if it made a difference.

This was not the only reason. Jared recently gave up sugar for a month when the babies were born. He read an interview with Steve Nash that he had given up sugar and was more energetic and even-keeled and athletic because of it. Jared cut it out and did become more energetic, even-keeled, etc. He also lost 10 lbs right away (he was also playing soccer 3x/week, which couldn't have hurt).  The other big reason is that I'm a little freaked out by the prevalence of cancer in young people close to me. My husband. My sister. Other friends. Who knows what the reason is for so much cancer these days, but the American sugar intake has risen at roughly the same rate as the American cancer rate (I think, anyway), so it's on my list of suspicious possible culprits, along with pesticides, chemicals in our water, preservatives and other unnatural things we eat, additives in childhood vaccines, contaminants in plastic bowls and cups, air and water pollution, cell phone waves, too much corn in our diets, hormones in our beef, and secret government conspiracies (obviously, I think some of these ideas are more feasible than others). And I wanted to see if I could even do it - a feat which Jared seriously doubted was within the realm of my own power and self-discipline.

It's been a good experiment, and was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, for a few reasons. Reason #1: Trader Joe's sugar-free chocolate covered almonds. They use inulin as a sweetener, a natural vegetable fiber (don't eat too many of these at once. trust me on this.).  #2: Medjool dates. So sweet and delicious. #3: A few great recipes for treats that use alternative sweeteners. I made really great breakfast granola using pureed raisins as the main sweet ingredient. Apple crisp using stevia and agave. And chocolate fudge balls using honey. There were more that I didn't even try, but I plan to get around to.

So it's been good. Do I feel better, more energetic, more emotionally stable, skinnier? Meh. I really WANTED my life, energy, digestive health, emotionality, physique, immune system and everything else to improve, but so far there's really no noticeable difference. But I feel better about eating less sugar regardless. This has been a good chance to get some treats and sweets into my repertoire that don't use so much cane sugar, so that's good. I plan to continue using as little sugar as possible. Except not over Thanksgiving. All things be damned at Thanksgiving.

Other exciting events in the Engstrom lives:

-Trajan (aliases: The Trajanator. Toot-aloo. Li'l Traj. Brickley. Brickles. Happy.) sleeps like crazy and spends his rare awake time smiling and laughing and charming everyone in the room. He's super interested in anything he can get his hands on to play with. He's not that interested in rolling or bouncing or standing, but loves people and toys. He wants to know how the world works and is very involved in figuring it out. He did roll over once, purportedly, but hasn't repeated the experiment. He doesn't eat much, compared to his brother, and has the figure and feel of a baby monkey - the one who clings effortlessly to his mother's fur, and weightlessly rides her wherever she goes. As far as I can tell, there is not an ounce of "babyfat" on his body, much like his sister Seville was. He's photogenic and charismatic, and a clear favorite of his bigger sister, who always wants to play with him.

-Oswell (aliases: Ozalicious. Noodle-Roo. Oz. Ozzie. LuvvieBunns. Squeaky.) is more like a luscious little Roly Poly Snuggly Buddha-bellied baby. He weighs 12 oz more than Trajan (despite the same height and head circumference, and smaller birth weight). He is making us concerned that he will eat us out of house and home.  It seems that my body has tapped out at its current milk supply and it's not enough for him. Though I have some great milk-producing supplements, they cause me quite a bit of personal discomfort, so I'm not sure I can torture myself to keep taking them to the level that would produce to Oswell's demand. Though I have all the obligatory feelings of inadequacy as a mother, I remind myself that your average mom starts supplementing with solid food when her baby weighs, oh, say, 12-15 lbs or so. So there is no shame in being unable to sustain 35 lbs of baby from breast alone (right?). We are starting to give him extra formula bottles now and again, and he is sleeping a little better.  Oswell is really into rolling over, bouncing, and all things "my-cool-new-body." Where Trajan wants to know how the world works, Oswell wants to know how he himself works, and he's certainly getting it down. He rolls over the instant you put him in bed and then cries to be turned back over again. It's a long and tedious exercise getting him to sleep, but he's very cute about it so all is forgiven.

-Seville (aliases: Savilla la Maravilla (pronounced in perfect Spanish of course: saveeya la madaveeya. translation: Seville the Marvelous), Sweetheart, The Big Sister. She used to be called The Poopsmith when she was a baby, but she doesn't want us to call her that now). Seville is in preschool now, doing big girl stuff. She has accepted purple into her catalog of colors she likes (so she has two now. pink and purple). She loves to play with her brothers, even though all they do is smile at her. She says funny things all the time, and as every parent, I wish I wrote them all down. Some favorites that I remember:

"Mommy, sometime, when the moon is up, we should buy the moon a present. We should buy it some stars. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots [...] of stars!" She also told me I could make it come down by playing it music, and then we could release the stars from their ribbons. I should hire her to write my songs.

"my face starts to look like a raisin whenever I poop" (sorry, Seville, to preserve that for posterity, but it was too funny).

"I don't wanna die..." which commenced in a conversation about dying and how your body stays here but your spirit goes to heaven. And no, you're not going to die anytime soon, but when you do, there will be lots of people in heaven who will be so excited to see you they'll put their arms around you and give you a big hug... "but... would they have arms?"

Putting two and two together one day, Seville informed me that peanut butter is made out of pee, nuts, and butter.

Pictures from this Fall:

2010 Fall

6 Months

Bedtime Stories

That's right. They're officially 6 months old! Which means they're more like 4 month-olds, being 2 months premature. They're not the size of 4 month-olds, mind you - they're already busting out of all those cute fall clothes I bought in 3-6 month size (aargh!). Unlike Seville, they are little chunk-a-lunks, growing like weeds. But developmentally, they're more like 4 month-olds, which means they're starting to play with toys, chew on stuff, Oswell can roll over, and they're starting to get picky about where and when they sleep. Which means I'm officially on house-arrest until they drop a nap or two or seven. I'll catch you guys on the flip side - wish me luck as I descend into the depths of isolation and reclusiveness. If I start to act weird it's because I've forgotten how to socially interact with adult human beings, so I hope you'll cut me a little slack and still be my friend.

Sleeping Arrangements

Anyway, you'd think we'd take more pictures, given how cute multiple babies are, but cameras inconveniently require hands to operate (stupid camera-makers), and so there's actually not a lot of photography going on around here. Here are a few recent-ish pictures though.

Boys n' Grandma

And by the way, as long as we're talking about hands, or the lack thereof, I am in bewilderment over ANY piece of baby equipment that requires two hands to operate! Seriously Graco???!!  What are they thinking? I have a number of things (car seats, swings, baby carriers) that have these weird snap/lock/release/lever/clasp thingies that require BOTH HANDS!! Honestly, I just want to slap those designers, if not do something more severe that I shouldn't print here lest it be interpreted as a "threat." Especially since some of them seem to be designed as "safety" measures (so... you think that it's safer to dangle the baby precariously  by a combination of my teeth and my left knee while balancing on one foot in order to free up both hands to undo your clasp instead of just having single-handed operation? yeah, that's just brilliant.) Anyway, if any of you work for a baby-gear company, would you please hand them a real, crying baby and say, "here, now try." Cuz apparently the empty warehouses in Bangladesh which are full of nothing but able-bodied adults do not convey the ridiculousness of what they are asking parents to accomplish with their fancy 5-star rated piece of equipment that's purportedly making parents' lives easier (as if!).

First Day of (Pre) School

Jared's New Look

As for Seville, she started pre-school a couple of weeks ago. I was really nervous about her letting me leave her somewhere without me. After all, I can't even leave her at church nursery without her getting all clingy and momma's girl on me, and she knows those people. But as with most things, I was more nervous about it than she was. We spent lots of time preparing her in advance and talking about what was going to happen, even going so far as to role-play her first day of school, complete with me peacefully leaving with a kiss and then coming back to get her at the end. Much to my surprise and delight, our plan worked! I took her to her classroom, explored it a bit with her, and then got up the guts to say I had to leave and could I have a kiss goodbye. She kissed me and that was that! Then I paced the floors at my house for 2 hours. Amazingly, her teacher did not call me frantic to come get her, she did not cry for me for 2 hours, she did not get hit by a bus or fall and break anything. When I went to pick her up she was happy and told me about her day. Go figure. (and by the way, I know you're wondering how on earth I am planning to get Seville to preschool and back twice a week. SO WAS I! My saint of a neighbor, whose twin boys are Seville's age and in her class, and with whom I had arranged to carpool, said that her stomach turned thinking about me loading all our kids and taking them to school, even for my "share," and she'll just do the driving. Hallelujah! Did I mention she's a saint? yeah.)

Letting It All Go

The other morning I was getting dressed for an extended family event, and not having showered in a couple of days (as is often the case), and having worn the same shirt all week (as is also often the case: once you get baby vomit down both shoulders by 10am, why change only ruin every shirt in the closet by nightfall? Besides, I only have 2 nursing shirts, and I need so much constant, easy access to my equipment that I see no point in wearing anything else most of the time), anyway, I was pretty sure that I stank to an unsociable degree. I asked Jared about it, and he came to give me a test hug. After a few moments of hugging and whiffs at different angles, he concluded, in an encouraging tone, "well, this side isn't that bad," and we moved toward the door to leave.

A moment later I paused though. As I thought about the fact that I had decided it was good enough if only one side of me smelled like rancid yogurt and B.O. and I could just hug people on the other side, I stopped, put my head in my hands on the counter, and laughed a pathetic, tired chuckle.  Is it really come to this? My criteria for getting out of the house is if I can find a spot on my body that is not so stinky that you'd notice?

A lot of things all go to pot when you have twins. Actually, I don't think this phenomenon is unique to twins. You hear this frequently about having subsequent children - that you are all persnickety with your first but by the time you get to your fourth or fifth you kinda figure nature will take care of itself. You'll almost go so far as to allow natural selection to do its business in your house if it has to. First babies always get the most careful and attentive care. A pacifier which falls out of the mouth will be promptly whisked away to a sanitizing station, complete with patented "Pacifier Wash" that you can buy from First Years for $11.95 (regular soap is not good enough for a first baby. First parents get suckered into all kinds of silly stuff. Case in point: "baby wash cloths." What, like regular washcloths don't work on babies?). Somewhere along the line with more children your standards loosen. With twins this is especially true, and at this point, when one kid drops a pacifier - unless there is a verifiable smear of dog poop on it - it's getting wiped on my jeans and popped back in there (ok, ok, I admit that's not entirely accurate. Women who just had babies don't get to wear jeans. We have to wear those soft knit stretchy pants, like "goucho pants." You know the ones I mean. Or maybe even yoga pants, which distract onlookers from our enormous hips by making them think that we did something akin to yoga this morning.)

Anyway, I was thinking about my loosening standards as I took a shower this morning (yes, the first in many days). When Seville was a baby, if I attempted a shower she came with me. She would sit in her new fancy bouncer on the bathroom floor just outside the shower door so I could hear her every sniffle and squeak. If she happened to be napping, I'd bring in the baby monitor and turn it on full blast so she wouldn't be drowned out by the roar of the running water. Several times during her babyhood I dashed across the house, dripping water and soapy froth onto our expensive rug, possibly ruining it forever, to attend to a whimper. This is how much I couldn't stand to have her try to communicate something to me only to be ignored. This morning, on the other hand, I got in the shower, fussing babies and all. I could hear them in the living room, over the rushing water, making all their exclamations of protest, and I sat there coldly thinking to myself, "hold on there, little guys, just need to finish shaving my legs!" (Shaving legs is a luxury I wouldn't ever have let Seville cry for. Of course, considering how long it had been since I last shaved my legs, this was no small task, and since I can't fit the mower in the shower with me, it was going to require several passes and enough razors that I should have just bought stock in Schick.) Much to my relief, Jared came home mid-shower and relieved the twins of their distress.  And actually, it's not that I'm really that callous. In fact, that's the reason it had been so long since I'd had a decent shower to begin with. There's nothing worse than trying to enjoy a shower knowing you've got a crying baby somewhere out there - the anxiety! But still, there are things that I really have relaxed about.

I think knowing how different the boys are, regardless of what I do, helps a lot. With Seville I very carefully followed particular parenting approaches and routines. I'm doing that to some extent with these guys too, but I realize that strict adherence to The Gospel of Whatever Baby Book is not going to make everything perfect. In fact, one of our babies (Trajan) is easily overwhelmed and requires an awful lot of finesse to get to sleep as the day goes on. Oswell, on the other hand, will cuddle up and drop off pretty much anytime, anywhere. I have used this as evidence in my discussions with Jared that my own insomniac tendencies may not be, as he believes, just a product of my own bad habits. I believe, of course, that my body has an inherently more difficult time falling asleep, and that a lifetime of that problem has affected my nocturnal routines. He has long argued that I just have really bad sleep habits - and I'll concede that I do have some, but not that they are the root of the problem, a position which I have evidence for finally in our boys (thanks Trajan and Oswell. I love to win.)

As for my loosening parenting standards, there are so far approximately... let's see...about ONE single thing the twins have gotten that Seville didn't: a birth announcement. I always regretted that I didn't get around to sending one when she was born. So this time I vowed I would do it - especially given the cuteness of twin pictures (I've decided that multiple babies are exponentially cute when viewed together. The way earthquake magnitudes go up by powers. So like if one baby is about a seven on the cuteness scale, two of those would be 7²=49. My babies are both tens (of course) and so they're cuteness equation is 10²=100. You'll all agree, I'm sure, that two cute babies together are about 10x cuter than any one single baby, right? Right? I'm not just trying to act all like we're all that, either. My brother has triplets, and since any relative of mine is also a ten (of course), his kids are 10³=1000. See? Way better than our score.). So given the extra cuteness potential of our pictures, I just had to send out baby announcements this time. It took me long enough to pull it off, but they're finally gone. For the record, I mostly managed to send them to addresses I had handy, and if I had to track yours down, you probably didn't get one. If you wanted one but I missed you, and if you're still speaking to me, let me know and I'd be glad to send one your way.

Babies in Bulk

The boys are 4 months old now. 4 and a half, actually, though their "corrected" age is closer to 2 1/2 months, so we've had double the amount of "little baby infant time." Which is both a blessing and a curse, I'm sure you realize.

It's been a while since we've updated here, and there is too much and too little to say at the same time. We feed and change babies, put them various places around our living room to keep them happy to mix it up now and again. But other than feeding, changing, rocking, pumping, washing bottles, washing clothes, there's not much else that happens around here.  We took them to Costco the other day, put the carseats on a flat cart and went around the store that way, adding our purchases to the cart with them. At the checkout line the guy behind us said, "which aisle'd you get those on?" We all joked about how you can buy anything in bulk at Costco, and these come in a 2-pack, etc. It was the highlight of our week. Actually, almost any adult conversation is the highlight of my week, but I think that isn't much different from other young mothers.

I'm doing pretty ok with the whole twin situation. I was telling a friend today that I've adjusted to having twins probably better than I adjusted to having my first baby. I think with twins you expect that your life will be sucked right out from under you and that you'll need nannies, prozac, and therapy to get you through. And so when you miraculously survive on less than that, you feel really good about yourself. When you have one baby (girls, you can back me up on this), you imagine all the blissful baby moments at home: You will hold and rock this baby, nurse it effortlessly to sleep, and while it is slumbering peacefully all afternoon you will do sewing projects and start scrapbooking and paint your bathroom and plant 27 varieties of tomatoes in your garden and you'll work out every day and be just as tiny as you were pre-pregnancy within 3 weeks and you'll start cooking organic meals and your husband will come home every night to a tidy home and a warm dinner and he'll kiss you and scoop up your darling little blessing and cuddle it while you leisurely eat your delicious cooking, after which you'll put the little pumpkin to bed and then you and hubby will spend a quiet evening together watching a movie, cuddling, and going to bed before the sun rises another blissful day of New Motherhood.

So when you find yourself robbed of your body, your time, your sleep, your hair, your food, when you wake up 50 times a night to a baby who wants to suck violently on your scabbed and raw nipples and have to function the next day heaving around that extra 30 pounds and spend the rest of your day elbow deep in poop and laundry and spit up during those spare moments between trying to feed and/or settle a baby who is completely unpredictable and upset whenever you don't immediately read its mind and attend to its every whim and you're starving but can't find a minute to eat a half a grapefruit until 5:00 in the evening (this happened to me. I'm not exaggerating), and then when your also-tired husband comes home from work to find you haggard and weary heating up leftover hotdogs in the microwave for a dinner you can barely bring yourself to swallow, despite the fact that you're ravenous, and then you spend your evening disagreeing on whether to let the baby "cry it out" or not and your husband eventually collapses into bed and falls asleep before you have any "quality time" only to start the night over again... for SOME reason... I don't know why... this is difficult for a new mom. So, yeah, twins has been a piece of cake in that respect. I never imagined I would have a life. I don't. It's all good.

Meanwhile the boys are growing like weeds (something Seville never managed. She still weighs about as much as your average 12-month old). They have officially started to laugh and "talk" to us. They do everything different from each other. You know all those things your baby did that you thought was a result of your parenting style and choices? Wrong! Those had nothing to do with you. Babies just each have their own way of doing things. Think their pacifier preferences are because of how you handled it? no. Think they slept well because of your careful parenting planning? no way. These guys have been treated identically, and they are completely different.  They need different things, they respond to different things, they like different things. It's impossible not to compare twins to each other. I know. You are always told that babies develop at their own pace and in different ways, but holy cow when it's right in front of you you can't help but compare.

Brickley is much more observant, alert and wakeful. He was the first to smile, the first to laugh. He can hold his head up pretty well and generally seems to have better physical control than Oswell. He's really charismatic and will interact with and smile at anyone on command.

Oswell is sleepier and more cuddly and baby-ish. He probably sleeps more because he's growing faster. He's a big juicy baby with jowls dangling to his shoulders and a cute little knob of a chin poking out of his luscious little face. Despite the fact that he sleeps more and doesn't hold his huge noggin up well yet, he's more of a talker and his sounds are more developed than Brickley's so far. It's so cute to see him smile, like his tiny face muscles have to lift his huge cheeks to pull it off.

Seville is starting to adjust and she loves her little babies. She's very proud of her Big Sister role and sometimes gets mad if I help a baby before she does (she's good at popping pacifiers back in mouths, which is good because there is much pacifier popping going on around here.) She also wears ballerina clothes on a daily basis. She loves to help mommy and has started to get a little devious. Today we put a popsicle in the freezer for her to save for after dinner, to which she protested loudly and with much crying. She ran into the kitchen and yelled at daddy to "go away!"  When he asked her why she wanted him to leave she said because he might see her getting the popsicle out of the freezer. We both laughed so hard. Nice try, honey. You're getting there. We eventually set a timer for the popsicle and it all worked out.

More pics of our summer:

Summer 2010