Phew

I totally missed the memo that Reader was going away... So I panicked for a couple days before I realized I could still save everything and import it elsewhere.  I know I don't post much (ever), but I still read everyone else's blogs!

Anyway.

The kiddos are two now!  Yikes!  They've been total monsters lately - not listening, whining, fighting with each other All The Time.  It's been super duper fun.  When they're not being monsters, though, they are pretty amazing.  It's so neat to be able to have semi-coherent conversations with them!  They are turning into actual people!  So weird.  I love the ridiculous words they have for things... For example: Hair elastics="monies" (rhymes with ponies) and Chair="sat down" (e.g. "That's MY sat down!!!").  I also enjoy when they try to get each other in trouble by saying "H dooooo!!!" or "G dooooooo!"  Guessing that came from us saying "Ok, what did G do?" 

We had some professional pics taken for their birthday.  I think they came out pretty great. :)

Traveling

Guess who's almost two!!

We're taking the plunge and flying with the kiddos in a couple weeks. My step sister lives in TX, so we thought it might be fun to bring H & G to meet her and their new cousin. My dad and step mom are going to fly out from CT to meet us there. Plus, we figured we should do this before their second birthday... Otherwise it would cost twice as much.

The trip itself should be fun, but we're pretty terrified to fly with two not quite 2 year olds. We have portable dvd players, books, our phones, and plenty of stuff for them to play with. But they are not big fans of sitting still for more than a couple minutes at a time. H especially... If she doesn't want to be held, she will definitely let us know by screaming and flailing. Super fun. Hopefully we are seated next to very understanding and kid friendly people!!!

Any tips on flying with toddlers??

... And the obligatory pictures. For the record, they have their own cribs. She just sneaks into his nearly every night once she thinks we won't notice.

Craft Exchange!

I received some awesome ornaments from N over at Two Hot Mamas!  Totally brings back memories of making these same type of crafts when I was a kid.  I love them.  There was a super cute xmas tree that didn't quite make it in one piece, but I think I can fix it.  In the meantime, though, the others are front and center on our tree.  Thank you so much!  This was my first year participating in this exchange and I'm glad I did.  Lots of fun and I have a couple new blogs to read now.

Happy holidays, everyone!

- S

Xmas and stuff

The tree is all decorated!  We have it gated off in what we refer to as "The Christmas Room" - mainly because housing the tree every year is the only thing the room is ever used for.  G was scared of the tree at first and refused to come in the room until I picked him up and slowly brought him closer to he could "pet" the tree.  Now he and the tree are BFFs.  H, of course, wanted to pull all the lights off immediately.  I'm scared to see what will happen the next time they go in there, now that all the ornaments are on!

Now to make this all sad...

Last month, I lost my 9 year old doberman, Phoenix, to cancer...  I knew it was coming, but that didn't make it any less heartbreaking.  He was my first dog, my first baby.  I do know that it was for the best... but I'm so sad he didn't make it to Christmas.  I can't even describe how much I miss him.

Best dog ever.

Stationery card

Patterned Pretty Holiday Card

Turn your family photos into holiday cards this season.

View the entire collection of cards.

Here I am!!!

Small Obsessions' post today reminded me that since I also signed up for the gift exchange, I should probably post something here since it's been forever and ever... and ever.  And ever.  Dramatic enough?  I read everyone's blogs regularly, but always seem to forget I have my own.

H & G are great.  Growing tons and learning new things every day.  They're starting to talk more and are just so much fun to be around.  They're finally at a stage where I'm really glad we have twins - built in playmate!  Not that I wasn't glad to have twins before now, but it was definitely... challenging at times.  Sometimes it seems like time is going by a little too fast, though.  They are turning into actual kids!  Do I have to stop calling them babies soon?  I really don't want to.  Maybe when they turn 2.  Or when they start high school.

They were frogs for Halloween this year.  We probably spent way too much on their costumes *again* but the cuteness was totally worth it!  And like last year, they'll have awesome hats to wear all winter.  Some pumpkin patch pics:

Thanksgiving is going to be ruined, yet again, by J's lovely employer.  Can I just say that I hate Black Friday?  Hate hate hate hate HATE.  Yay for being in retail management. *rolls eyes*  It's just sad that my favorite holiday seems to get worse and worse every year because her company has to open at some absurd time of night ON Thanksgiving.  I mean really?  It's not even Black Friday anymore.  It's just... Thanksgiving.  But a much crappier version where J is going to have to spend most of the day attempting to get some sleep so she can go to work at 7pm.  Awesome.

In other news, the babies - H, G and E (the roomie's kiddo) were apparently super stoked that Obama was reelected.  Before you watch this video, though, I must warn you:  You will never be able to get this song out of your head.

That's pretty much it.  Goodnight!

One!

They're one!!  And yes, it's been like 6 months since I posted.  I rock... There's way too much to say, so instead, here are a bunch of pictures of H & G.  Or as we've been calling them lately: The Squashies.

I threw my very first party for their birthday and I think it turned out pretty well.  The roomie's baby was there too and we had a big party for the three of them.

We bought some awesome new car seats that fit three across!  So we tried them out and brought the babies to the zoo for the first time.  They really liked the train ride and the elephants.

Here's J, the roomie, and my dad and step mom at the zoo:

Not sure if anyone actually reads this, but if you do, I have a question:  G has always been pretty clingy, but it's starting to get out of control.  He's fine when I'm sitting on the ground and playing with him, but if I so much as stand up to reach something, he loses it.  If I walk across the room, he follows me screaming hysterically.  What's weird/frustrating is that if I completely leave the room and he can't see me at all, he calms down and goes back to playing.  But the moment I'm back in sight, he flips out again.  He's totally fine when I drop them off at day care, so I don't really know why he'd be having separation anxiety (if that's what it is).  He's such a sweetheart and I love cuddling with him, but I can't hold him ALL THE TIME.  Help???

In other news, I finally got a new job (same company) and I LOVE it!  It's stressful and really challenging, but it's awesome.  If I hadn't mentioned it, the previous one was awwwwwwwwwwwwful.  Oh and I also got a new car!  No more maneuvering car seats in and out of a coupe for this lady.  Yay!

9 Months (and some pictures)

Happy 9 months to H & G today!!  Kind of hard to believe...

Christmas was pretty good.  They didn't enjoy unwrapping their gifts at all, which was so very disappointing, but they did like everything once it was away from the tree and in their room.  I think they were just overwhelmed by the whole experience.  They got tons of new toys, including one of these things which is AWESOME!!!!  Thanks to J's parents for that one.  H & G love it!

***

As an extra special Xmas treat, the roomie's baby mama brought his daughter over for a little while!  Things are going slightly better on that front, but definitely still not ideal.  It was the first time H & G got to meet baby E... She and G really hit it off (well, as much as 9 month olds can!).  Oh and she happened to be wearing the same red and white argyle tights as H!  And as G's tie!!  Hoping for lots more playdates for the three of them.

Happy [almost] 2012 to everyone!  2011 was a pretty great year.

***By the way... The weird mushrooms and trees on the wall came with the house.  We did not paint them!  There is also a sun on the ceiling and (I shit you not) a "portrait" of what I can only assume is meant to be God around one of the windows (we covered that one up with bookcases).  We plan to paint over all the weird crap eventually, but since it's in the library/spare bedroom, we usually just close the door and ignore it.

-S

Crawling!

I was Sky.ping with my dad and step-mom the other day while J was at work...  I had the laptop on the kitchen floor so they could see the babies, and guess who decided he reeeeeeeeeally wanted to play with the laptop!  I don't think my dad fully grasped the fact that he was seeing his grandson crawl for the first time ever, but that's okay.  At least I had my phone handy and got it on video!  J was a little sad she wasn't here to see it, but she was still so excited for little Gman and showed the video to everyone at work.

H hasn't learned to crawl-crawl yet, but she still manages to slither faster than G can crawl.  Silly girl.

Now that they're mobile, they are everywhere.  They love the dogs and follow them all over the house.  This is their favorite place to hang out whenever the dogs are outside:

-S

Catching Up

I feel like it's been decades since I've posted something of substance.  The card (below) doesn't really count, since I only did it for the Shu.tterfly credit!

Babies are great.  They are approaching eight months old and are becoming so much more interactive!  H is definitely the happy one now, which is crazy, since I thought she would be the death of me just a few short months ago.  G is either super happy or super sad/angry.  No in between.  He's become very clingy, while H has become pretty independent.  I'm sure there will be more personality-swaps to come, though!

H has mastered the army crawl and can pretty much get herself wherever she wants to go.  Up until recently, she would just roll from point A to point B, but once she discovered that she could pull herself and scoot forward on her tummy, she decided she liked that better.  G, on the other hand, is stuck at the on-his-hands-and-knees-and-rocking-back-and-forth step of the learning to crawl process.  He rocks and rocks and rocks and then dramatically flops down and tries to "swim".  It's almost like he thinks that the rocking will wind him up and that when he flops down, he'll go shooting forward.  He gets so frustrated, but I'm not sure how to help him.  He'll get it eventually.  I hope.

We ordered them some super cute Halloween costumes/hats from E.tsy.  We felt we could justify spending $50 on a cow costume by telling ourselves that H will be able to wear the hat for a couple years!  We'll see about that, but at least she looked adorable.  G was a giraffe.  I couldn't find a giraffe print outfit for him that didn't have pink bows on it, so we settled for dressing him in a yellow shirt and brown pants.  We brought them in for a Halloween photo shoot, but we're still waiting to see the proofs.  Of course, we diiiiiiiiiiid take some pictures on our own.

H's cow costume didn't get here in time for pumpkin picking, so she was a monkey for that.  G was a little overwhelmed by all the activity at the pumpkin patch, so he looked rather forlorn in all the pictures.  Poor guy. :)

I decided the babies needed some sort of play area in the living room, where the dogs couldn't eat their toys.  They have a huge bedroom, but I hate sitting in their room with them for hours on end.  Too isolated.  So I bought some of those interlocking foam square things and a play yard and made them the BEST THING EVER.  Seriously.  They will spend about an hour at a time in there, playing with all their toys and "talking" to each other.  We have to put blankets over the sides so they don't see us, because as soon as they see us, they realize they're not being held ("PICK ME UP IMMEDIATELY OR THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!")... But other than that, it's awesome.  Gives us time to do silly things like eating breakfast and doing laundry!  Plus, it's fun to just sit in there and play with them without feeling like you're all alone in the corner of the house.

Ta da!

It's about twice as big as it looks... Plenty of room to "crawl" around.  They just like to hang out in the corner. 

I should probably try to sleep.  J is working an overnight shift tonight.  I'm having flashbacks of when this was EVERY night!  Ahhhhh!  Stupid retail.

-S