Hey Red Riding Hood, Grandmother came to OUR house!

So, Gramma (LOLO) Laurel rode on the train all the way to our house after Christmas and we had some fun memories made. She got them these cute rubber duckies for the bath and every bath they line up these Christmas themed duckies that they LOVE!

Together, they sang, danced, laughed, hugged, and kissed. Gramma Laurel and Sydney had some bonding time at the mall, too!

 Grammy and Syd

 She really pooped them out                                  (Audrey)

                                                                          (Spencer)

 We tried to spell out how her trip to us made us feel!!!

 Thank you Grandma Laurel for ringing in the New Year 2013 with us! We love you!!

All in the Family

I love watching my daughter play with her cousins and unfortunately they haven't all been together in one location ever, but every place she has traveled to visit them she REALLY loves on them! She gets love back and every niece and nephew I have are so precious!


During the week of 4th of July I will have two of my nieces joining our household for a week of fun and excitement! There will be fireworks, giggles, popcorn, and probably American Girl movies. We will have a blast! 

****-In other news around the house - Spencer and Audrey have been walking since they turned 14 months and look like Frankenstein as they walk. It's adorable.****

Also, I am searching for the perfect tumbler fabric for the twins toddler quilts! I think I have found them and I even found the perfect way to do it. I just need the money and time. hmmm...Someday they will have a toddler quilt like their big sister.

When they walk will they go in two different directions?

I have really been enjoying the transition of infants to 1 year olds, but the twins are only crawling and walking with a walker or grown-up help. A & S are drinking Whole milk now and eat when we eat. They are sleeping better, too. When they crawl they go in two directions and I notice this most when I take Sydney to preschool (Gym&Learn). I stay at her school in the play area and lobby (which is out of her eyesight) because the location is 30 minutes away and I don't want to waste gas. I have the babies who get restless in their stroller so I let them out to play with toys. They keep me fit. I am always on the move so much so that I eat standing up without even realizing it at times. I don't mind being on the go and active, but it scares me to think about the inevitable walking twins.

Don't get me wrong though...I love the chaos in the house. I love seeing Audrey with a pair of pants around her shoulders as if its a scarf and even Spence sitting on his sister. That just happened. I love my whole family unit. When Travis comes home, we are so happy to see him. Sydney always runs up to him and gives Daddy a big hug and kiss.

Enjoying each day

Today, as I prepare for my time with my Mother who is arriving by train, I look at my house and am thankful I already cleaned up a bit. It still isn't perfect, but I am so blessed to have my three beautiful children who are playing in the living room together and enjoying their home stress free. Why do we get stressed about clutter? As long as we aren't hoarding or harming our children with dirty floors, toys can be strewn about the floor while they are awake and we can sit on their level and play with them instead of constantly cleaning. If I kept cleaning all day I could still find something new to clean or I could let my OCD behavior kick in and clean something more than once. Yikes.

I choose to enjoy my children today and I hope this is an everyday occurrence. I am not perfect, but the kids won't remember the mess. The kids will remember their childhood with their mom in it, involved and having fun with them. I realize that I am more positive in my communication with my three year old when I am just relaxing and playing with her.

Spencer

I feel bad that I let everyone still think that Spencer is only rolling. He started army crawling hmmmm... I think it was 3 weeks ago. He has his two front teeth and two bottoms. I have a strong feeling he will be wearing a spring green dress shirt w/ tie, vest, and dress pants for Easter this year! I'm so excited. I saw them on sale at Kmart and they have him written all over it. I am going to dress Audrey and Sydney alike instead of the twins because I think that is more fun to do. I try to coordinate colors that compliment with the twins (on special occasions). As Spencer is starting to get crawling down, Audrey is pulling herself up and standing up with only one hand holding on to a grown up. Spence doesn't let this get him down. He's our only boy, the youngest sibling and he has a great personality that I think will fit just perfect with his role. He will have another boy cousin coming along in June and then a boy second cousin in July! Exciting.

Sizing up the closets

Today I found out that my sister is having another boy! I'm so excited and happy that I have boy and girl clothes and gear to hand down so I knew I would have whatever she needed. My 3 year old upgraded to 3T clothes recently and I moved all of her smaller clothes to the spare room. Well, that spare room is now the twins room and their dresser is full of big kid clothes. I am constantly rearranging things in there and moving small clothes into boxes for the twins since I am not having anymore children. My boy is living in 9 month clothes, while Audrey can wear 3-6 months, and some six month clothes. She is itty bitty so I hold on to her clothes a little longer. I was so happy to hear that my sister needs boy clothes because I can get her sizes quicker than I can my little girl. Now, I have boxes of clothes packed for her, bumbo with tray, glider with ottoman, swing, bouncy seat, etc. We kept everything.

I am not sure what other mothers or fathers do when organizing clothes in a room, but I am the person who needs organization in my life to be calm in my own household. I need the house clean so I can relax. If the house is not clean, I am not a happy person. In the twins room I bought two cheap plastic rolling dressers that came with labels. I was going to label them, but moved things around so much that I stopped that process. There are four drawers in each dresser. I made the top drawer for socks and miscellaneous small items. The second drawer is for the next size up, and each drawer goes up a size after that. I have the changing table with two shelves attached. The top shelf is for my boy and his current size clothes. The bottom shelf is for the girl and her current clothes. My husband put a shelf up above the changing table for toiletries and other handy items like burp cloths. We kept them in the same crib until Audrey, who is smaller, started crawling on top of Spencer in the middle of the night. I woke up one morning seeing Audrey with her arm around him, and the next morning (literally) she was pinning him down and he was crying. Now, she is in the crib and he sleeps in a pack 'n play. There is less space in their room having to sleeping quarters, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

As soon as I found out I was having twins, I read books about raising twins, researched identical vs. fraternal, joined BabyBump to be a part of a community of moms-to-be with multiples. Everyone had a million questions. I even looked into cloth diapering and then realized that was a daunting task that I was scared to tackle. I know that all the reading and asking questions really helped me for becoming a mother of twins, but there are questions you don't even know you have until they smack you in the face. I wouldn't have thought about a play area before or having two children of different gender in different sizes of clothes. I knew most babies in multiple births would be born premature and might spend time in the NICU, but I didn't think that would be me. In my family, our babies like to bake longer than their due dates. I was five weeks early and my water broke. Can't help that. I just hope that even if you aren't a mother of twins, I hope you can get something out of this or share the blog with someone who might need help.

New Year with 1 runner, 1 crawler, and 1 roller

My three year old, Sydney, is a ball of energy. She loves learning and wants to be my helper with the twins as well as show me how big she is getting. Its a big fight for attention because my daughter, Audrey, is the older twin. She likes to crawl really fast and pull up on their play area so that she can stand and see what everyone else is up to. She was the first to roll over, first to get teeth, and first to crawl out of the two twins. She was also the smallest, weighing in at 4 lbs. 12 oz at birth on 4/5/11. Spencer is my youngest and is the only boy. He is the last to do everything, but he is all smiles during throughout the process. He catches up eventually with everything developmentally, but this has posed a problem when trying to keep the kids together. I saw through a friend on Facebook who has identical boy twins that a play area with primary colors and an activity wall will not only keep them safe and away from adult furniture, but their baby toys are separate from my older daughters toys. The twins play really well in there and Sydney is a great big sister who likes to play with them and let me know when little sis is pinning little bro.