Ok, so I read a lot of blogs. One of the blogs I have been following since it’s beginning is Prop Insanity. It is just a great place to get ideas for photos and stuff like that. Well, every Monday they do a giveaway and I actually won this weeks giveaway! I never win these sorts of things. I get to pick an outfit of my choice from K Bella Bambino Designs. All of her items are handmade and absolutely adorable! I can’t wait until Ella is big enough to fit into her pretty new dress.
Holy crap, I won!
Written by Shae on February 21st, 2009Excitement
Written by Pat on February 17th, 2009For some people, excitement is jumping out of an airplane or driving a
race car. For others, it’s the opening of spring training. Then
there’s me. Nowadays, my life pretty much has two forms of excitement.
The first happens almost every time I change a diaper. For just a
moment after I rip the diaper open there’s a split second where
anything can happen. It’s like a game of diaper roulette (unless I can
already smell the danger, in which case I’ve already lost). Most of
the time it’s an innocent enough wet diaper, but every so often one of
the babies has a stinky surprise for me. I don’t know how they can
keep something that foul a secret, bit they find a way.
The second source of excitement occurs more often and is a lot more
dangerous. Every couple of nights we give the munchkins baths. One of
us gets in the tub to bathe them while the other takes care of getting
the little ones ready and bringing them into the bathroom. That’s the
exciting job. It’s about 15 steps from the changing table to the bath.
Normally this isn’t a big deal, but when you’re carrying a naked baby
chanting “Don’t pee. Don’t pee. Don’t pee!” it seems more like 15
miles. So far we’ve both made it without either baby making a mess,
but it’s been close a few times and it’s only a matter of time before
one of us isn’t so lucky. Sure, we could just carry the babies into
the bathroom and then take off their diapers, but what’s the fun in
that? Then we’d have to jump out of an airplane to get our excitement
fix.
I’m That Guy
Written by Pat on February 17th, 2009It started innocently enough with a couple of pictures on my desk. Shae gave me two frames for Christmas (one for each kid), and I picked out my favorite pic of each and took them into work. A few days later I finally gave in and changed my computer desktop to pics of the kids (again, one baby on each monitor). So far, things weren’t too bad. Sure I had a couple of pics on my desk and my background, but the frames were small and most of the time my desktops were covered up by applications.
I think I can blame everything that happened next on Shae. The problem is that she has taken tons of great pics of the babies and I couldn’t figure out which ones I wanted as my background. The only solution I could come up with was to pick a bunch of the pictures and then just set my desktop to randomly change images every 15 minutes or so. Of course, I still rarely saw my desktop because it was always hidden behind my applications. So I did the only thing I could: I changed my screen saver to use all of the baby pictures.
I’m not sure exactly how I got here, but now I’m that guy. If you walk into my office you’ll see a couple of pictures sitting on my desk, a screen saver that covers two monitors with images of the babies, more pics of the kids covering my desktop, and my “Exhausted! (Father Of Twins)” mug full of coffee. My phone background is Ella and LB, and my Facebook profile pic is me and Jack. I thought I was bad with Lunchbox, but a couple of snapshots on my phone don’t compare to this. I knew this would happen eventually, but I didn’t know it would only take four months. Well, I gotta go. I think I just found another picture that would look great as my screen saver. Or on my phone.
Checking Up
Written by Pat on February 15th, 2009On Wednesday, the babies had their four-month checkup. According to the doc, both babies are doing fine. Ella is quite the tall baby girl. She’s 25.5″ long and weighs 14 pounds, which puts her in the 90th percentile for height and right on average for weight. Jackson is 24″ and 15 pounds, which puts him right about average in both.
The only issue with the babies is with Jack’s head. He somehow ends up facing to his left whenever he sleeps, and his head is starting to get flat on one side. The doctor told us we need to prop him up so he sleeps facing to the right so that it evens out. If we can’t get him to stop sleeping on that side of his head he might have to start wearing a special “helmet” to help his head develop properly. Needless to say we’re doing everything we can to keep our boy out of a helmet. Of course, that’s easier said than done. For whatever reason Jack really wants to face to his left. We’ve gone into check on him in the middle of the night and found him propped facing to his right and somehow still looking the other way. I makes my neck hurt just looking at him. He’s getting better about not always facing left, so we’re hopeful we can avoid something like this (thanks to Shae for her awesome photoshop skills):
One thing we learned from our visit is that drooling is a developmental step. The doc was asking things like “are they tracking you with their eyes?” (yes), “do they go cross-eyed anymore?” (no), “are they drooling?” (yes…wait, what?). Apparently huge strings of spit coming out of the babies’ mouths is a good thing. Smiling, rolling over, crawling, etc. are the things I considered developmental steps. But drooling? Who knew? I guess instead of yelling “GROSS!!!” and passing the kids off to Shae I should have been giving them gold stars. It’s a little late now, but great work kids! Way to get spit everywhere. You’re really growing up fast. Yay.
That’s about it for our visit to the doc (other than another round of vaccinations which are no fun at all to watch), but of course a day after the kiddos visited the doctor they both came down with colds. They are not happy babies. They have sniffles and coughs and are crying a lot. They’re starting to get a little bit better, but it’s still frustrating that there’s nothing we can really do other than wipe their nose.
One last note on the babies: they’ve reached a stage in life where they actually want attention now. It used to be as long as we fed them and occasionally played with them they were fine. Now they have hissyfits if they get bored laying on the couch. Great. Now in addition to feeding, changing, and bathing them I have to actually pay attention to them too? This whole baby thing is turning out to be a lot of work.
Since Shae’s “People” has shattered our previous record of 3 comments, I thought I’d add a couple of questions/comments that somehow got left off of her list.
- I actually mentioned this one in the comments to Shae’s post, but I can’t believe Shae forgot to mention people who argue with us when we tell them our babies aren’t identical. They’re a boy and a girl, and they don’t even look much like each other at all. One of these days I’m going to pull down some diapers and show one of these people just how un-identical my kids are. Even if we had two boys or two girls, why would you argue with a parent about whether their kids are identical twins?
- Right after people ask the standard “are they twins?” and “a boy and a girl?” (or the similar “boys? girls?”), if they don’t follow up with “are they identical” they almost always go “Oh! That’s perfect! How lucky!”. This one always bothers me. What if we had two boys? Would these people just give a polite fake-smile and say something like “Oh…great” while secretly feeling sorry for us? This actually got a little awkward at the doctor’s office after our appointment on Wednesday. There was another couple there with a set of twin boys. Another mom was kind of talking to them and then saw us and did the “You have twins too? A boy and a girl? That’s perfect…” and trailing off when she remembered the other twin parents had two boys. I almost expected her to follow up with “But two boys is great too”, but instead she just kind of stopped talking and started paying attention to her kid.
Buy Handmade
Written by Shae on February 10th, 2009
So, I am a huge fan of handmade items. As most of you know, I tend to make a lot of things for our house and as gifts. Someday I will try and sell my tables, but until then, I like shopping for those one of a kind, handmade items. I guess my goal with this blog post is to make people aware of all the amazing items out there. I have included a list of some my favorites. Since I have the little ones, many of the items are for babies or kids, but I have tried to include some adult items too.
Knotty Baby Wear. These are a must have if you have babies or toddlers, or need a baby shower gift. These are perfect for keeping little legs warm and protecting crawling knees. I have a couple pairs of the commercial brand ones, and I think the Knotty ones are far superior. They have much better colors, and are wayyyy cheaper. If I ever start doing children’s photography, these will make an appearance in my photos.
Kelly Rae Roberts. She is an amazing artist. Her work is fun and whimsical. The pieces she sells are small enough that they can fit into any room. They are also very well priced. As a new mom, price is a big deal.
Jim Jenkins Designs. If you knew me while I was growing up, you would know that I won Best of Show every year for my woodworking. One of my favorite items that actually won a Best of Show and a Best of Class at the state fair was my jewelry box. It still sits on my dresser. I like looking for interesting boxes and I came across these. They are too expensive for me to buy, but I can really appreciate the beauty and all the hard work he puts into each box. Some day I would love to buy one for Ella.
Larissa’s Treasures. This shop actually belongs to a girl I grew up with. She make beautiful jewelry that is well priced.
Tiny Art… This person makes some really cute jewelery. She also makes other things, but I like the necklaces. They remind me of being in the classroom.
Cite Fuzz. I LOVE her monkey hats. I wish they were a little less expensive since I have two munchkins that would like them. I think they may get them for their first birthday. She also makes other cute hats, but the monkey ones are my favorites.
Mad About Colour. More wonderful hats for newborns. At this point, I don’t really have a need for these, but I think they are adorable. If you know anyone having a baby, this would be a great shower gift. They look great in photos too.
Hannah’s Tutus. LOVE these. Ella will be getting one for her first birthday outfit. I think they make little girls look so sweet. I also like that they can grow with the girl. I have so many outfits that Ella only wore once before growing out of. These tutus will last awhile.
I hope you like my selections. I think it is important to support peoples passions. When I come across other great items, I will post them here.
People
Written by Shae on February 4th, 2009I have a question for all of you who had just one baby at a time, or have ever been shopping with someone who has just one baby in a stroller. Do you (or they) get stopped by every single old lady so they can make comments about you or your baby? I have been to the store before and seen women with single strollers and everyone just walks right by. This is not the case with twins and my two double strollers. It seems like I get stopped by everyone so they can put in their own two cents. I have decided to share with you some of the comments I have received from these women.
The most common comment I get is, “Wow you must have your hands full.” So, of course I say yes, but what if I just say no?
I get this one a lot too, “Are they both boys?” Ummm, One is wearing a pink dress with a bow in her hair. So, yes they are both boys and I am just trying to turn one into a tranny.
I was taken aback by this one, “Those aren’t twins. Twins can only be the same sex.” Huh, I think they need to go back to high school health class.
Here is another one I get a lot, “Oh a boy and a girl, now you can stop.” What if we really wanted to have more kids. I am thinking of telling the next old lady that says that that I want to have 7 more and see what she says. I even heard someone say something about overpopulating the planet under her breath.
Here is my favorite, “Oh, they are feisty! You won’t have any trouble losing that baby weight.” Ummm… I weigh the exact same now as I did the day I got prego.
Another question along those same lines that I have gotten is, “How fat did you get?” I told her I didn’t get fat, I got pregnant.
Now don’t get me wrong, I also get a ton of oooohs and aaaahs, and people saying how beautiful they are and stuff like that, but it is the rude ones that really stick in my mind and make me wonder if singletons get the same type of comments.
Pretty Slow
Written by Pat on February 4th, 2009Sorry for the lack of updates, but there hasn’t been much excitement to report. Basically, everyone is doing fine. We’ve kind of settled into a routine, and even though it’s exhausting everything is going pretty smoothly. I get up bright and early and go to work, Shae deals with babies all day, and then we get a few hours of shared baby time before going to bed and then starting the whole thing over again. We’ve actually been able to put the babies to bed between 8 and 9 most nights lately so we even get an hour or two of rest, which really helps.
The babies are doing the whole eat, cry, and poop thing. They are still growing, and their personalities keep developing every day. It’s great coming home from work and having both of them look at me and smile. They are very into what’s going on, and love staring at the TV (especially Jack). They’re even starting to interact with each other a little bit, and pretty soon I think they’ll be having their own little “conversations” constantly. They’ll be 4 months old on Saturday, but it’s still hard to fully believe that I have two kids. The little ones have a doctor’s appointment on the 11th so we should have another update on how they’re doing after that. All I know is that if Jack is still below average weight then I don’t know how heavy baby boys are supposed to be. He’s quite the little porker.
Other than the babies, there really isn’t much else going on. Lunchbox is doing fine, but I’m sure he’d disagree and argue that he needs more attention and walks. He was able to fit in two walks, a trip to OB, and some play time at the dog park over the weekend, so things could be worse for the Box. The babies seem about due to poop on someone, so I’m sure there will be some fun to report one of these days.
Silly Humans (From The Desk Of Lunchbox Lorigan)
Written by Lunchbox on January 22nd, 2009OK so my human parents finally gave be permission to write my own blog post. This past weekend they threw me in the back of the car and we all headed off to Mission Trails park. Ever since the human babies were born, my parents have not had as much time to go hiking and exploring with me. Well, on Saturday they decided it was too nice of a day to stay inside. It was 80 degrees in the middle of January. This is my favorite temperature because I love dragging my bed into the sun and soakin’ up the rays. Anyway, back to my story. Since I was coming along and I tend to be a little demanding, there was no room for the stroller in the back of their car. The humans had to strap that thing to the roof of the car. It looked pretty silly. After they put the stroller on the roof, my human daddy had to lift me into the back of the car because I am a demanding dog and I don’t like doing things myself. Off to the park we went.
Once we got the the park and the humans unloaded the stroller and got the babies strapped in, Erica showed up. I got sooo excited! My tail was wagging so much. While they were getting things loaded into that monster stroller, the little human girl started screaming. I tried to sniff her to see if it was her diaper, but that wasn’t it. I then licked her face to see if she had recently eaten, but there were no milk leftovers so I had to go tell the human she was hungry and they need to stick a bottle in her mouth so she would stop barking. After she got her bottle, we headed to the trail.
Now, I just have to say, my human dad got mom an accessory kit for her new camera lens for an early birthday present, so do you know what she did the entire hike? Yeah, she kept taking pictures. I swear, we would walk about 10 feet and then we had to stop so she could take a picture of a leaf or a rock or some other annoying thing that made me stop. She also had this need to take a million pictures of me with me feet up on stuff. She says I need to pose for a book she is working on, but all I heard was, “blah, blah, blah, Paws Up.” At least I got lots of treats every time I did it. Anyway, the walk was pretty mellow after that. The highlight of the walk was when the humans let me off my leash and I ran around all crazy. I made the humans chase me around to try and catch me. I finally let them catch me because I didn’t want them to get in trouble by a ranger. After more photos and a stroller on the roof, we headed home for the day.
I thought my good luck ended when we got home, but I was wrong. We got to go back to the park on Monday since it was apparently a holiday, what ever that is. OK, so we go through the whole loading the car spectacle again, and again I have to laugh at the stroller on the roof. We got to the park and Erica was there again. I was soooo excited. I got to see her so much last weekend!
Usually when we go to the park, the humans take me on a trail that makes a nice loop. It is pretty easy and only has one little hill. The trail is almost like a dirt road. Nice and wide. The humans say it is perfect for the monster stroller. This time we did the loop backwards so my human mom didn’t have to push the stroller up the hill. This is where the real adventure started.
The hike started off like a normal little hike. We should have known something was up when we saw the orange plastic fence. Well, I think it was orange since I can’t exactly see colors. The fence was blocking our normal path. The path that we were rerouted on was a narrow single track path. At this point, I would think that most humans who have great big strollers that don’t fit on single track paths would turn around. Nope, not my humans. They just made sure the sun shades were down so the branches didn’t hit the small ones. I hung back with Erica and kind of laughed at the scene that was before me. I thought it was going to be the funniest thing, but I was wrong. The funniest thing came next.
We got to a point on this narrow little path that started going down hill. This was not the normal down hill that we are used to. This was STEEP! Not just steep, but rocky and steep. Now again, most people would have turned around. Not my humans. Mom thought this would be a good time to switch lenses on her camera. she was right. Like always. This monster stroller does not have a hand brake on it so when the humans started down this narrow, steep, rocky path, it was HILARIOUS! The first thing mom asked was if the babies were strapped in good. Dad went down the hill first with the camera and to catch the stroller if mom lost control. OK, so we all started down the hill and things were going pretty good. Good thing it was really rocky because the front wheel kept getting stuck and slowed the monster down. At one point human mom stopped in a very awkward position and yelled down at human dad that she might need some help. He was like, “Lets just trade places, I can push it down just fine.” Mom gave a little chuckle and then put the brake on and they traded places. At this point Mom ran down the hill with the camera. Dad let off the brake and tried going down the hill. He yelled down to Mom that he too might need some help. I was totally laughing at this. Mom had to run back up the hill and grab the front of the stroller and put her weight against it and they got it down the hill. The little humans were jostled but they made it. I thought I smelled something funny when we got down the hill and it turns out that the ride literally scared the shit out of the human boy. We all laughed. At the bottom of the hill Mom took a picture of the two paths and the detour sign so you can see the two paths next to each other.
The rest of the walk was pretty easy. They kept stopping to take more annoying pictures of me, but I at least got to climb a tree and that was pretty fun. It was like I was a cat. I like cats. They poop and I like to eat it. It makes the humans mad, but I can’t help myself. Sorry! Puppy-ADD, or PADD, took over. Back to the story. More pictures of leaves, and dirt. At the end of the hike we had a choice of two trails. The one on the left went up to the pavement and the one on the right went by more stupid leaves and dirt. We picked the leaves and dirt. Guess what this path had? Stairs. The stairs where made of railroad ties and logs so things were not exactly evenly spaced. The humans made it down the first set pretty easily. When they had to go up the last set the spacing was just wrong and they ended up having to carry it. I was torn on what to think. Part of me was happy because it was so funny, but I knew this was the end of the trail and we would have to go home. I have to say, it was better then a walk around the block. I guess the humans are glad they had a 4-wheel drive stroller, or I should say 3-wheel drive.
The humans posted photos from our trips over in their gallery.
Turning 30
Written by Pat on January 20th, 2009I turned 30 on Thursday, which I guess means it’s time to look back on the last decade. I spent the first night of my 20’s in a dorm room bed as sick as I ever remember being, puking my brains out. I spent the last night of my 20’s sitting on my couch holding Ella while Jack puked all over the place. Somewhere between those two nights of puke I graduated from college, got a job, moved to San Diego, got married, bought a house, got a dog, bought a business (and closed it), and had a couple of kids. Two-thirds of those events happened in the past two years, so I guess I sort of crammed everything in right at the end. I have a feeling almost all of my accomplishments in the next decade will start with either “Ella did this” or “Jack did that”. Call it a hunch.
Thursday (my actual b-day) was pretty quiet. Shae made me my now-traditional birthday tacos for dinner, and a two-crust lemon pie for dessert. After that, it was just a quiet night of movie watching at home. The real fun happened on Friday.
Thanks to Chris’ sister Kat, we had a babysitter for the night and could actually go out on a date. Shae and I dropped off the babies and headed off to dinner. Now, when I say “dropped off the babies” what I really mean is carried in babies (and all their stuff), setup the Pack-N-Play, and spent about 15 minutes going over every possible baby scenario with Kat. After we were done with baby boot camp, we headed down to Seaport Village for a quiet dinner for two. It was very nice for the two of us to get out for a nice dinner and not have to deal with the twins. I love my babies, but it is definitely nice to get a break every so often.
After dinner, it was off to the Comedy Palace to have a few laughs. We met up with Chris, Patty, and Erica at the “Palace”, ordered a few drinks (2-drink-minimum), and enjoyed the show. Most of the comics were the same as the last time we went (a couple of months ago), but the majority had new material this time. I had a great time, and I think everyone else did too.
After the show was over, it was off to pick up the munchkins. We got to Chris’ house and found the babies bathed, changed, and asleep in their pajamas. Nice. We should do this babysitting thing more often. After driving home and putting the babies down it was time to head to bed and call it a birthday. Now it’s time to see what the next decade has to offer. So far, it’s had a lot of poop.
Rockabye Baby
Written by Pat on January 20th, 2009Well, there’s been a lot going on lately so I thought I’d give a couple of quick updates. Shae already wrote up an update on the babies, so I thought I’d give an update on the rest of the household. Shae and I are tired (especially Shae), but we’re doing fine. Now that The Learning Garden is closed, Shae is home full time with the kids and is definitely staying busy.
My dad and Dorothy came down to San Diego last weekend for a visit. It was a pretty laid back weekend, but there was lots of baby holding and some good visiting. My dad and I were able to sneak out to Rocky’s for a burger on Sunday morning, so that was nice. I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to have another Rocky’s burger until the babies were 21. Other than that, not a lot to report. Like I said, lots of baby holding and lots of visiting. Oh, and yet another visit without anyone hurting themselves climbing up or down the guest room stairs.
Everyone always talks about how things change once you have kids, but I didn’t truly understand how much until recently. It really hit me when I found myself writing an email to iTunes customer support about a week ago. The reason for my email: three of the tracks from”Rockabye Baby: AC/DC” didn’t download properly. That’s right, my lullaby renditions of “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”, “Highway To Hell”, and “You Shook Me All Night Long” wouldn’t play. How can my babies get to sleep without AC/DC lullabies? I’m not sure how the support person kept a straight face long enough to reply to me, but sure enough the next day I had new copies of the songs and the babies could rock out to the full album.
That’s about it for the update. I also found time to turn 30 and take a couple of hikes in the last week, but those will get their own posts.