Starting her early....

It was actually hot chocolate and not coffee...I'm not that insane to give a not quite two year old massive doses of caffeine.

Waiting

There are many different kinds of waiting.
There is waiting where you know the end date and you can anticipate (for good or bad) what will happen.
Then there is indefinite waiting. You know something is going to happen but you don't exactly know when and either you can't (or shouldn't) do anything to make it happen faster. This waiting can be for good or bad things...it goes either way. However, I find this kind of waiting to be hard for me. I've had several things lately where I have been just waiting (the indefinite kind). I have a tendency to hash and rehash things and to check over and over again and to let me imagination go. I'm just not good at waiting.

Sunday Update

Where are we at in life at the moment?
I have no idea....
This past week was interesting.
Doug passed his ENT appointment. I think there might have still been one area on the hearing test that he failed, but the rest was within normal limits and his ear drums looked good. We do still have to keep doing the nasal spray for the next few weeks, but should be done after that.
I finished giving the cat her antibiotic and now Dodge is free to hang out with the rest of the cats....if they would stop hissing at each other. It may take awhile. When Hogan was introduced to our household it took Perdido three months to even acknowledge his existence let alone condone to have anything to do with him.
Jim has been handed an opportunity in a strange way. At this point I am not sure how things will work out but so far it is turning out positive. I'm not sure what else to say about it right now.
Andy just went to the doctor because he and Doug were getting wound up and ran into each other. Andy's lip does not need stitches but apparently there is a higher rate of infection with teeth punctures so he is getting an antibiotic.
I'm sort of caught up and sort of behind on things. I just know that the semester is rapidly passing by. It's much more interesting to do thing for the house and my family than it is to do course work....

He's growing up...

I had signs today that Andy is definitely growing up. I already knew that he was pretty independent and could definitely fend for himself (he has a knack for finding things off the top shelf in seconds...hence the fingerpaint on the carpet a few days ago).

Today he and Doug were out back playing. I did a few things inside and then headed out to check on them. They had managed to fill half a trashcan with leaves and Andy was heading to find a trash bag while Doug hauled the trashcan toward the curb.

Then when dinner was finishing Josie decided that she would rather go straight to bed then finish her milk. Immediately after she said this Andy got up (on his own) and put her leftover milk in the fridge and went and got a wet washcloth to wipe her up (despite the fact that I was already there cleaning her).

Then after his shower with Daddy, I was still putting Josie in her jammies and Andy came shooting out of the bathroom. I thought he would be dripping all over the place but he had dried himself and was headed to get underwear and PJ's out of his drawer.

A moment....

How long is a moment?
It depends to some degree on the point of reference.
Yesterday it was the amount of time between when you see that your kids have markers out and they agree to only color on paper....and the amount of time that you come back to find that they now have managed to find the finger paints and have painted over the edge of the paper onto the carpet.

Beep

We have a beep somewhere in the house...
It is in the neighborhood of the kitchen but does not appear to be a timer or microwave or something like that. It goes off periodically during the day and I know that it goes off about 10:30 pm every night. It only goes off once each time that it beeps and it is definitely a beep and not the squeak of a smoke detector (which I have found the numerous ones the people in the house before us had stashed all over the place). I just can't quite find the beep....

Yellow

It is the time of year when the entire South is blanketed in a dusting of yellow. I wonder if perhaps I should wait to use the clothes line to dry my laundry...

Behind

That simple word sums up my life right now.
I'm behind in grading, behind in my assignments for my own classes, behind in getting things put away from being gone for the weekend, and behind in getting things sorted out. Many of the things in my life have deadlines at the moment...but they are not hard deadlines...they are the sort that if you miss it there is just more work later that really has to be done before you hit the hard immovable deadline.
Some days I wish my superpower was that I did not have to sleep.

Drama Queens (and Kings)

I have a bunch of drama queens and kings at my house. Every thing is just so dramatic if it doesn't go their way.
The ways we deal with it are to

• ignore it
• send them to their room until they get a better attitude (they decide when to come out...this is different than a Time Out)
• and in some cases you can't help but laugh at it....

Tonight Josie decided she was going to let milk dribble down her chin. She was reprimanded and got a really hurt look in her eyes. This as followed by crying and putting her forehead down on the table.
This would have been all the more convincing if she hadn't kept peeking to see if she was getting the desired reaction.

Discounts

Whenever we have gone shopping for children's clothing, or at least new children's clothing I have either hit the clearance racks at large chain stores or gone to Osh Kosh B'gosh. The chain stores sometimes have good deals; although it can feel like there must be lots of children out there the same size as yours because you sometimes see every size but the one you need.
Why have we gone to Osh Kosh...well we can shop at an outlet and they gave a discount for multiples...
Note the past tense of "gave."
Today we went to purchase new jeans for Doug & Andy since they have recently ripped out the knees on several pairs. I took my jeans to the counter and the clerk rang them up. I said, oh yeah...I have twins may I please have the multiples discount. She said they don't give it any more.
I ended up just leaving. I don't like to be rude, but I had exclusively shopped there because of their multiples discount. Without the discount I can find my clothes cheaper elsewhere.

Abducted by aliens

We are at Nana and Pop's and as I walked out from the bedroom today my first thought was that Andy had just vanished and left his clothes behind. There was a pile of all of the clothes and his shoes and no child.

Turns out he decided he wanted to wear a different shirt, pants, and underwear and so he changed. I just have to watch my crew because they will spontaneously shed clothing at the blink of an eye.

A little hint here....

You know how I said we had a lot going on this week....
Well sometimes I would love a little hint from God about why things are placed in our path.
We weren't looking for another animal. We don't really need another animal. If I were even remotely thinking about an animal it would probably be a dog and not a cat.

We have another cat.
Her name is Dodge.
She dodged the bullet in the dodge as Jim said.
On Monday while Jim was at work she crawled up in the engine of his Dodge truck. He took her to the vet after he found her and was thinking she looked pretty tore up. Then it turned out to not be as bad as originally thought and she survived. She came home yesterday and is very friendly.
When God puts something in your way you have to take it on. So we have another cat. I'm just waiting for the why....

Life's always interesting

It feels like it has been an interesting week around here.
The kids pooled their money and made their first purchase out of their piggy banks. We have new Planet Heroes in our arsenal.
Unfortunately while we were counting money from the banks Doug and Andy went to get something from the kitchen and bonked heads. Andy managed to catch it on his check in just the wrong spot so he actually has a black eye at the moment.
It's also been interesting food week here. Jim had a recipe he wanted to try which turned out to have a shared ingredient with a recipe that I wanted to try....so last night we had Cracker Jack soup. The kids mainly liked the chicken that we had added. It would make a great appetizer or lunch soup.
I know there's other stuff, but I am suffering from several nights of interrupted sleep due to children and I can't think.

Potty Training Update

So where are we at? We're there.
Here are all of the things we tried:
Sitting on the potty, cheering as we flush, stickers, check marks small toys you can only play with while sitting on the potty, telling stories while we sat, singing songs while we sat, potty chair, potty seat, no potty seat, diapers, pull-ups, cloth training pants, running around naked outside, running around naked inside, drinking lots of liquids, outright bribery,....I'm sure there is something that I am missing.
What finally worked?
Wearing regular underwear and getting mean. Yep...the consequences of having an accident included having to clean up after yourself.
We endured about two weeks of off and on accidents and now we are there.
I'm thrilled!
I'm so thrilled that with just Josie in diapers (and hopefully not for much longer...we'll work on her this Spring as we get closer to two) I even got rid of the diaper pail. I'm also thrilled because it pretty much happened that not only did we obtain success during the times we are up, but we also stay dry during nap time and night time.
Potty training was one of my New Year's goal so that is one checked off.

Errands....

Have you ever had a day where you just didn't want to do what you really should be doing and so you ran errands all day long just to have an excuse to not do what you probably should get done.

Yeah...that was today.

Science In Action

Fixing a car
Playing at the water table
Josie spent a long (long long) time playing at the water table
Working a crane.
Building with pipes.

I have no pictures with all three children in them. Every time I went to click a shot with all three...one of them would move to do something that was out of the frame.

Science Fun

I'll have to get the pictures off the camera later, but we made a sort of spontaneous trip to a hands-on science center an hour away from us. I say "sort of" because Jim went on a field trip there with students on Friday and since it was rainy today we decided an outing might be fun and would get some energy out for the kids.
Every section that we were in at the time was the section that the kids did not want to leave. While there were some things the boys couldn't do there was plenty that they could do. So we played and experimented and looked and touched and all the good things that make science fun. (Josie even tried to taste the water in the water play area....I don't think she took in too much and it smelled chlorinated so hopefully we will not get sick.)
We went to the IMAX theater and saw a movie about the coral reefs. Andy thought it was cool. Doug was ok until the great white shark came on, and Josie was upset when they started showing things that didn't look fish like (which was pretty early on in the show...she actually took a bit of a nap for most of the show).
Then we went to a huge mall to grab some dinner before heading home. We forgot to bring cash to buy tokens for the carousel so we'll have to go back some other time. The kids enjoyed the escalators and the elevator with the glass side. We have escalators in our town but the boys were too young to remember the glass sided elevator where we used to live and I don't think they had been on an escalator before (our mall is only one story). So it was a fun day.
Josie was asleep before we left the city, Andy fell asleep somewhere about 20-30 miles out from our town, and Doug faked sleep so that he would get carried into the house (yeah...I know that trick because I used to do it).

My grammar addictions

Hi, my name is Susan...and I have an addiction to informal grammar punctuation.
I will admit it. I love the ellipsis (those three little dots that create a grand pause or suggest an omission) and the aside put in parentheses.


Yes I am aware that I have used them both already in this post.

Pacifiers

I love 'em...I hate them....
When Doug and Andy were born they spent a few days in the NICU. There, they were automatically given pacifiers and bottles regardless of the fact that they were only a week early, they were good size, and it specifically said that I was going to breastfeed. At the time I was unhappy that they had been given the pacifier so early, but it worked out in the end because they did just fine. Shortly after that they came out with the research about pacifier use causing babies to sleep lighter and therefore be less likely to fall prey to SIDS. When they were about 15 months we started weaning them off day time use of the pacifiers. At the time they had already bit through several of their pacifiers. Then when they were about 19 months they both got colds with stuffy noses. They couldn't breath and suck on a pacifier at the same time. So we picked up the few remaining pacifiers and just never toook them out again.

Josie...where do I begin.
She was in the well-baby nursery. I actually asked them for a pacifier while we were still in the hospital because I realized that she was using me as one.
When she was an infant she did not seem terribly attached to the pacifier. Now that she is older she seems much more attached then the boys ever did. She has only had one or maybe two pacifiers that we've had to throw away. We have tried weaning her off daytime use but she asks for one and she definitely loves them during nap or sleep times. She has had colds, but has always managed to still be able to manage the pacifier.
I've tried talking her into leaving them for Santa, sending them to her aunt who is having a baby soon for Valentine's day, and perhaps leaving them for the Easter Bunny...but she says no.
I know that she is not quite two and at least our current pediatrician has not said anything about it. Our old dentist said that we didn't need to worry about teeth because only strong tongue thrust and finger sucking would make a difference. Still I'll be most interested to see how we finally break her of the habit.

Holiday Reflection

Holidays are interesting around here. Doug & Andy are just getting to the point where they sort of "get it" on most holidays. Since this its really the first year for this they seem to sort of get stuck on each holiday that goes past.
First it was Halloween. Lots of fun kid things associated with Halloween. Therefore Andy and Doug (mostly Doug) are still talking about Halloween and when it will come again and what they will do for it.
Thanksgiving was sort of a non-event for us this year because the kids were sick, so it passed without much notice around our house.
Next, came Christmas. There was lots of preparation and activities and family time and of course gifts. So the boys started talking about both Christmas and Halloween.
They liked the chocolate associated with Valentine's day.
The next holiday is St. Patrick day so I will be interested to see what they think about it.

They have also decided that there needs to be a new holiday. Unfortunately they are lobbying for a Sponge Bob day. Hmmmm...I see perhaps a square yellow cake and Crabby Patties? I'm not terribly fond of Sponge Bob but I'm a willing participant in my children's creativity. We have not picked a date yet.

God's Time

This morning if you had looked out my window you would have thought that it was Fall. The sky was gray and cloudy, the temperature was mild, and you could see a slight breeze causing leaves to fall from the trees.
Having children (or even just events in life in general) can be a reminder that we are not on our own time. For as much as I can plan and scheme, I don't always get to follow through on what I thought I would be doing. Today Doug and Andy each had a low fever. So no preschool and I have children at home. Suddenly everything shifts and I reorient myself. I am on God's time...not my own.
Fortunately I know that, like those trees, the leaves are falling not because I am going to sleep to be dormant for a season, but because I have to make way for new growth.

A week of reflection

I was planning to do a week of reflections on things within my life. However, I just reflected on the fact that I suddenly discovered that I had been wearing my shirt backwards all day.


I'm not quite sure what that says about me....

Lenten Update

How am I doing on my Lenten activity of not having unfinished projects?
It depends on how you define project....
I think I have been more on top of laundry and perhaps dishes lately.
I have (mostly) not worked on any of the things that I listed on the original post....however I do feel like I have made some progress. Jim and the kids did a huge amount of yard work while I was at a conference on Saturday and then I also got some more leaves cleaned up that had been bothering me (and yes I realize that it is Spring and the leaves stopped falling a long time ago).
I admitted that I really don't have time to manage a garage sale and so the huge pile that was in the workroom has been mostly donated. I need to figure out where the last little bit is headed and write it down and get it out of here. That opens up the workroom immensely and makes it easier to get at boxes to unpack.
I also have been doing a lot of school work lately. I still feel behind but I am making progress and I have been a little more realistic about setting a single reasonable goal during a day and then feeling good about getting it (and perhaps a little bit more) done. This is really huge for me because I always over-estimate how much I can get done...or underestimate how long it's going to take for me to do something...I'm not sure which it really is but it results in me always feeling behind and disappointed. So realistic time planning is a big improvement.

Red balloon

As I was walking to my car after teaching class yesterday I saw a red balloon. I park at our church and I could see the balloon floating in the sky up above and behind the roof of the church. The balloon was a shiny red heart.
It sort of swirled around lazily a few times; catching the sun as it did. Then it slowly started to drift higher and travel a farther distance. The sky was clear except for the balloon and a subtle half moon.
It was very beautiful and graceful to see and caused me some reflection. At first I was thinking about how free the balloon was. There was nothing to tie it down. It could flit and float high up in the sky.
However, I then realized that the balloon wasn't really all that free. Yes, it wasn't tied down but it was at the mercy of the breeze. It would go different ways depending on how high or low it was, what the currents were, and eventually it would lose gas and be caught. I realized that a balloon tied to a wrist could still float and swirl, but was taken different directions with a purpose.
Perhaps it was because I saw the balloon above the church, but it felt like a metaphor for life. We can flit and float thinking that we are in charge... but we are really at the mercy of the wind, and eventually something will bring us down to earth. If we are tied to God then we still have some freedom, but our journey is with purpose and God takes us where he wants us to go. Eventually something may bring us down to earth, but we are still with God and we will not get caught up or run over when we come down.

Basket Lunches

I still do gimmicky lunches with the kids lately. The last couple of days it has been eating food in a basket. We have some of those plastic baskets like they serve food in at fried fish or chicken places.
So I have been putting a paper towel in the bottom of the basket and serving the kids lunch. Yesterday it was chicken nuggets, banana, and cheezit crackers. Today it was pizza rolls (or peanut butter sandwich for my one who doesn't "like" pizza) and a custard cup with fruit in it. I'll have to keep thinking about things that can easily go in a basket. Nothing too sticky or juicy.

Kids socks

I think the only thing I hate worse than trying to match up children's socks after doing the laundry is trying to decide whether they still fit or not.

My children are rangers....

If you are familiar with Fantasy characters (of the D&D or online game variety) then I think my children are rangers. They have very high foraging skills. I have no fears of them starving because they will find food somewhere.
Saturday we bought muffins at Sam's club. I had hoped for the all chocolate muffin pack but they only had mixed variety left. So I thought we would start by eating some of the other flavors and savor the chocolate ones. My children had other ideas. Andy and Doug have helped themselves to almost all of the chocolate muffins.

Hmmm...

In the midst of working on my digital story (about being the parent of twins) for one of my classes, the preschool called me. They are doing registration and class lists for next year. Their question, "Do you want the boys in the same class next year or are you open to having them in different classes?"
Hmmm....lots of ways I could answer this. I also realize that many twin parents are very passionate about keeping their children together. I also realize that some children behave differently at school than they do at home.
My answer...it doesn't matter.
Doug & Andy are so different and I realize they are very strong willed and independent. Andy may have his clingy moments, but I think they will be just fine separated. So I told them it was their choice.

What a weekend....

I've had a busy weekend. I think I got a bunch of stuff done on Friday, but I don't honestly remember because it feels like it was so long ago.
Saturday Jim went to a Lay Speaker Training for church so the kids and I went to a story time at a local bookstore for Dr. Suess's birthday, I cleaned out too small clothes from their dressers, we went shopping, and we loaded the back of the truck with donations for the church yard sale for their mission trip. We also did haircuts in the evening.
This morning we woke up to snow. So church was canceled and the donation items are in the back of the truck but that's a step closer than they were. Now to get a bunch of other things (like grading and laundry) done today. We did take some time to play in the snow. We sort of took it in small doses because my kids are not used to the cold and the snow was very wet and the wind bitingly cold. Josie didn't want to go in and kept saying "my playing, my playing." The snowman was originally as tall as Josie, but after each time that he got knocked down he got shorter and shorter.