How fast they grow

Hubby got home early from work on this gorgeous day. Always a nice surprise.

So, we were doing our usual. Both slouched on the couch with our respective lap tops. The girls decided they wanted to take "puppy" (toy stuffed dog) outside to read him a story. A little bit later they come in and say "Daddy, can we get in the back of your truck?" to which daddy says "Not right now girls", mostly because he is too lazy to get up and open the tailgate. On a side note I have to say that one of the pluses of having twins is that I don't have to always have my eye on them to know where they are because I can always hear them chattering, and these days they chatter a lot. So we can hear that they are right outside the house but can't hear their whole conversation or what exactly they are doing. A little bit later we look out the window and see that they have managed to open the tailgate to the truck and climb in all by themselves, the little devils. This is not a little Nissan or Toyota pick up, this is a full size Ford F150. They are now having a picnic with puppy in the back of daddy's truck. They played out there for a good hour and a half . . . by themselves . . . in the back of that truck . . . insane! I practically had to beg them to come in for dinner.

At dinner they proceed to tell us that they were outside rehearsing for a show that they will do for us tomorrow. They then launch into a very detailed rundown of this show, which seems to include part of every major fairly tale, Barbie movie, and cartoon that they have ever seen. It was hilarious. Then I asked them about two other girls I saw them talking to. They tell me that those girls were twins too, and they had phones, and they had come from the park, and they showed them their phones, and, and, and . . . Hubby just looks at me with this glazed look and says "Did they just age like 10 years in the past 2 days?"

Sleep Deprived

You would think that now that my girls are not babies any more I should be getting a decent nights sleep these days. You would think. Sadly this is not necessarily the case. There are several reasons for this phenomenon that I shall outline below.

• First I have to accept that in one more way I am turning into my mother. As long as I can remember she has been a raging insomniac. While I am not raging yet, I am starting on the path. I find myself up until 12 or 1 in the morning whereas I used to hit the pillow already asleep at 10. Before the girls were born it was a common occurrence for me to be in bed an hour or sometimes 2 before the hubby, now it has totally flipped. Sometimes I think it is because I just love the solitude that I get when everyone else is asleep, but other times I miss being able to sleep so easily because I really love to sleep!

• I've found that there are actually a few good things about the hubby being gone. One of those things is that I get the whole king size bed to myself (sort of), which is heaven for several reasons. Frankly I cannot imagine how anyone can sleep on any bed smaller than a king, but that is because I have other issues too. You see the hubby is a cover hog. Yes, he is. He will deny this with his dying breath, but since I wake up several times a night I know the truth. But, on top of the fact that he is a cover hog he also has an accomplice. THE DOG! If I break down the bed into percentages here is how it works out: Hubby=55%, Dog=25%, Me, 20%. Add into this equation that once the dog lays down there is no moving him, which effectively traps the covers and you see that I definitely get the raw end of this deal. Heaven forbid I should want to change sleeping positions. It takes some major contortions to situate my legs around the dog, who is complete dead weight, and get the covers back over me.

• Last night was especially fun. For once I was actually ready to go to bed at about 11. So we get in bed and right when I am falling asleep hubby starts tossing and turning and says "I can't sleep." Thanks for waking me up to tell me that!

• A few hours later I had the added joy of being woken up by Savannah because she had wet the bed. Since she just started wearing panties to bed and this is the first accident I wasn't too upset, but it was just one more interruption.

Maybe tonight will be better. I can hope.

Beach Mermaids (and men)

Congrats Savannah

Woo-Hoo! Savannah is officially pull-up free. She has been wearing regular panties to bed and stayed dry this whole week. I am, of course, very excited. Both of the girls have been day trained for about a year and a half, but were still wearing pull ups to bed (maybe this had a lot to do with mommy being lazy and not wanting to wash and change sheets in the middle of the night). I pretty much figured it wouldn't bother me if they wore pull ups to bed forever, but last week Savannah woke up dry 5 days in a row so I told her she could wear her panties to bed and try it out and here we are. Now Sydney is going to take a little more work because she is on the top bunk and I think for her it is more about laziness than anything else. I don't even care, I am on the home stretch now, only one kid in pull ups at night will make me incredibly happy!

Questions, questions, everywhere

Well Hubby is back after a month at sea so the girls are practically glued to his side. It is rather cute, but it can get annoying too. Not for me, mind you, but for Joey who can barely hit the bathroom without them in tow.

Today, they had to play in the living room right under his feet when he was trying to play video games. When they play there are lots of high pitched voices, songs, and various noises so he can barely hear his game to play. So he suggested we go to the Cinema Cafe and see a movie. Cinema Cafe is one of those movie theatres where you sit at tables sort of like a restaurant and you can order food and drinks during the movie. The food is not great and is a little expensive but the movie is cheap and the girls seem to enjoy it so it works out. Of course, the movie was just starting when he suggested it so we had to wait until the next showing to go which meant 2 hours of "is it time to go yet?" for us.

Finally we were on the way and the questions started. "What does this sticker say?, What does CPO mean?, What is that policeman doing?, How does the air get cold? (from the air conditioner), Then, how does the air get hot? (from the heater), Can we roll down our windows?, Are we there yet?, Can we have popcorn at the movie?, Is it still spring?, When will it be summer?, When will it be fall?, and on and on and on.

Stubby

Yes, I know this picture is dark. All the better to see her stubby little inch long whiskers. This is what happens when 5 year olds have scissors. Thank goodness we don't have any fish, because I've heard a story about one of my husbands cousins cutting a pet fish in half when she was little. At least no animals were harmed at the hands of my girls.

Little Mommy's

Here the mommy's are "reading" a story to their Shamu stuffed animal. No, they can't actually read yet, but they love to make up their own stories. And believe me their stories are highly entertaining.

Cleaning the bed, that's right, the BED

In my ideal world I would clean my entire house once a year, however reality constantly interferes. Today the girls and I tackled Sydney's bed. Now I may have mentioned that my kids are pack rats. Sydney is the queen of the pack rats. She has at least 5 purses and 2 backpacks strung around the house full to bursting with a variety of items. But her bed on the top bunk is a veritable "nest". Since I can't see up there on a daily basis I have to supervise the cleaning of it at least once a month. Today the cleaning was prompted by a missing Angelina Ballerina doll (which, by the way, was found on this very bed).

Let me give you a small taste of what I found on this bed, and this is by no means a complete list. I found lip balms, bracelets, necklaces, belts, brushes, combs, used and unused tissues, various stuffed animals, nail polish, a trash can, a mini Barbie Mariposa doll, 5 pillows, 5 blankets, books, play hair styling items, an assortment of hair tiebacks, coins, a sweater, colored pencils, notepads, hats and mittens. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but that is a sample. Every time we do this little exercise in futility I give her a lecture about how I don't want all this junk on her bed. She says "Okay mommy" so sweetly and then the next time I find the same thing. These are the joys of motherhood.

School Registration Paperwork

My babies are starting school in the fall. So, after the orientation the other night I have like 10 pages of forms to fill out . . . TIMES 2. I started filling it all out today. Yes, it is still 3 1/2 months till school starts but since they were "suggesting" so strongly that we get this done early I figured I better get on it. The real reason is that I know that if I put it off too long I will forget about it and procrastinate until I am having to deal with all the other psycho's who waited until the last minute. The worst part has to be that like 3 of the forms are duplications, so not only do I fill everything out times 2 (and it is 12 pages, I just counted), but some of them are like times 3. Then on the last page it asks about my husbands job and, of course, since I am the worst Navy wife ever I know two of the seven answers. Just hope I don't get carpel tunnel! Can't wait to see what I will have to do once school starts.

Then I started going over the guidelines on what they should know and what they were going to learn in Kindergarten. Remember, they already pretty much said that most of the kids were way behind for starting kindergarten. They make it seem way worse than it is. I mean I never went to Kindergarten and I was fine, in fact a I was a fairly good student. Another thing that made me feel better was that one of my friends said that her daughter started Kindergarten knowing only a few letters and she still did great and my girls know almost all their letters and I've been working with them on writing already so they should be fine. I am rather impressed that they should be writing full sentences by the end of the year (spelling doesn't count yet). We'll see about that.

This Dog Can Tell Time!

He is staring at me like this right now because he knows it is almost 8 o'clock and that is when he gets fed his dinner. Some days, lets make that most days, he is the bane of my existence.

As soon as I set foot out of bed in the morning he wants to be fed. To ensure that I don't forget (as if I could) he follows me around at a prance making little clik-clak noises with his claws on our hardwood floors at no further a distance than 10 inches at all times until I do feed him.

While the girls eat breakfast he paces behind their chairs because he knows that sooner or later something will fall due to the fact that they are the messiest eaters in the world (see previous post). If anyone should make the mistake of leaving food unattended for more than 5 seconds anywhere that he can reach it that is too damn bad because it will be his.

At lunch it is the same scenario. I feed him a "snack" at about 3 o'clock because then he will eat that and go outside at my insistence for a little bit while the girls usually have a snack and this saves my floor from the pacing a little bit. He usually starts giving me "the look" (as seen above) and dogging my heels at about 2 o'clock.

Dinner is usually the same scenario, unless the hubby is home and then he will sit 3 feet from him and drool while watching us eat dinner. I started feeding him his dinner at 8 o'clock for purely selfish reasons. We used to feed him around our dinner time, but there is usually too much going on and having him right on my heels and tripping over him and two 5 year olds in the kitchen while trying to make dinner wasn't working for me. Gee, I wonder why? So I started off feeding him after I got the girls to bed when things were calm but once again couldn't stand him being my shadow while trying to get pj's, supervising tooth brushing, and making sure everyone has gone to the potty so it got changed again. It got moved to when I start to get the girls ready for bed because then he will go outside for a bit to do his business and not pester me to distraction.

Talk about training your humans, he is a master.

So what redeeming qualities does he have you may ask. He is just so darn cute. He is very mellow and allows the girls to do a myriad of things to him, including, but not limited to: tucking his ears in his collar, dressing him up with necklaces, veils, and sunglasses, pretend walking him on his leash in a circle around our house, teasing him with food, and using him as a foot rest. He is a good vacuum for the things dropped by my messy eaters. And mostly because he snuggles with me in bed when the hubby is gone.

Peas in a Pod

I don't know what they were doing, but this was so cute of them crouched exactly the same way at the beach yesterday.

Beach Tranquility

We've had a few nice days thrown in there lately between the tornado warnings and thunder storms. Every chance I get I have been getting over to the beach. Part of the reason I have been going so much is because I realize that later in the summer when it really gets hot I am not going to want to go because it will be too miserable. The other reason I have been going so often is that it is just so soothing to me.

We live just a few blocks from the bay and a fairly nice beach so we have been able to walk over. The girls always want to drive so they were asking me the other day "Why do we have to walk?" and I surprised myself by saying that I enjoyed the walk, and I actually meant it. It is short enough that I don't get crazed and annoyed with them for dawdling so, but long enough that we get to look at all the yards on the way and look at the flowers and birds and squirrels. Then when we get to the beach I can sit on my butt and read to my hearts content with the sound of gentle waves in the background while the girls amuse themselves with collecting shells, playing in the water or building sand castles. They are old enough now that I don't have to be constantly chasing them around and they can entertain themselves mostly.

The best part though is that I can tell it makes my whole day better. I find I have more patience and am a little easier going. The beach seems to give me some tranquility that I haven't felt for a long time, maybe since I had kids.

My Little Bakers

This is a picture I snapped right before the "explosion" mentioned in the Kitchen Conversation post yesterday.

Kindergarten Orientation

Tonight was the Kindergarten Orientation at the school the girls will be attending in the fall. It was just dumb luck that I even found out about it because I would never have thought they would do an orientation 3 1/2 months before school starts. I just happened to find out because I called to see if they required a lead test since the Doctor that gave the girls their shots said that some schools required it so I should ask. When I was asking about this (which they don't require and seemed to think I was crazy for even asking) the lady mentioned the orientation. Of course, hubby is out to sea so I asked if this was strictly a parent thing or if the kids would be allowed and she said that was for parents, but if I couldn't find a sitter the kids were welcome to attend. So I was a little nervous about being the only parent there with kids, but it turns out that no one got the memo about no kids because probably half the people there had their kids with them, along with both parents and several siblings.

To start with the first several speakers (the principal, school nurse, and office manager?) were so soft spoken I could barely hear them. Hellooooo, you work at an elementary school, I would think you would know how to address a crowd. The principal gave her little spiel about working together for the kids, then the office manager pretty much went over everything on the handouts we were given upon arrival. Then the nurse gave us all a refresher course on shot requirements which I feel like you would have to be a dummy not to know about and if you were said dummy you probably were not going to be at this orientation 3 1/2 months prior to school starting, but whatever.

Next up was one of the kindergarten teachers. She knew how speak up! Her whole presentation focused on scaring everyone because "Kindergarten is not what it used to be" she just came out and said that kindergarten is now like first grade was when we were in school. She kept pushing and pushing how it was sooo academic oriented now. She then went through a lot of stuff they would use and do in the classroom, which was kind of interesting.

After they finished up I went up to ask about their policy on twins. They said that they took the parents wishes into consideration and tried to honor them if they could, but that they would prefer them separated and they even separated any cousins and such that attended. For anyone that doesn't have multiples you need to know that this is a hotbed issue. I, myself, am of the opinion that twins should not get special treatment regarding classroom placement, but they shouldn't be discriminated against either. Basically I feel they should put their names in the computer with everyone else's and randomly place them, if they get together fine, if not fine. A lot of multiple moms think their multiples should be placed in the same classroom because they have such a bond and it is cruel to "tear them apart". Most teachers that I've heard of feel that multiples should be separated so that they can find their own "voice" and not always be seen as part of a set and always measured against their twin or in some cases be confused with their twin. Plus a lot of teachers have seen twins be disruptive to the classroom because they feel too comfortable with their twin present and don't take learning seriously when they have their built in playmate from birth there to engage. I have already been prepping the girls and telling them that they might be in separate classrooms when they start school and they seem fine with it, but we will see how it works out when the time comes.

They also told us that there would be an open house about a week before school starts so we could meet our kids teachers and the kids could meet them and see the classes. So as far as I can tell, besides scaring us about how behind our kids probably already are because kindergarten is so academic, and pushing early registration to avoid the crowds at the local doctors office, the point of this little meet and greet was to tell us what our kids "should" know so that we will work our asses off this summer to whip the 5 year olds into shape. Fun.

Kitchen Conversation

This morning while I was making breakfast S & S were playing with their pretend kitchen in the next room. This is the conversation I overheard:

Syd: Oh no, when we add the lemons it will explode!
Sav: Run away! (they run)
Syd: 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1
Sav: Nothing happened.
Syd: Yes it did. (As she says this she runs over to the kitchen counter and sweeps off a bunch of plates and food with her arm.)
Syd: Kerpow!!!

Hope this isn't what they really think cooking is like. Although, they have seen me cursing because I wasn't paying attention and the milk boiled over for the noodles I was making more times than I care to count. So maybe they do think the kitchen is hazardous duty.

Now they are having a food fight with their pretend food. Yikes!

Notice to the Media

Could someone please tell the media to quit using the following two phrases when discussing celebrity children:

1. genetic lottery winner

2. poopie-pantsed tykes

because really, besides the second being a little more graphic than anything I want to read in celebrity gossip they are both just demeaning and rude. Yes, their parents are beautiful and rich and seem to have the perfect lives, but these kids are people too and just hearing these degrading labels thrown about in every other article saddens me. I admit to reading the celebrity gossip and enjoy it to a certain extent, however, it feels like a line is being crossed when the paparazzi and celebrity writers start preying on innocent children. So could you just lay of the rude monikers already?

Messy Eaters

I'm sincerely convinced that my children might be the messiest 5 year old eaters on earth.

Seriously.

Today at lunch alone we had 3 spilled drinks, much food was fed to the dog "by accident" and mommy had to scream many times. To make matters worse the 3 spilled drinks weren't even regular cups. They are too big for sippy cups but I got some of those tumblers from Tupperware with the lids that you can put straws into. They aren't leak proof, but in most cases if they get tipped over it is just a few drips versus a whole puddle with a regular cup, however, both of my little sweethearts managed to tip their cups over so forcefully that the lids popped off. Savannah even managed to do it twice.

Recently we purchased a new dining room table set and even though we got the fabric protection warranty I had my husband cover the chairs that the girls use with plastic because they are so horribly messy.

My sister-in-law came to visit me over spring break and brought my 2 1/2 year old niece and she is not as messy as my girls, in fact she is very well mannered and an extremely neat eater. I mean aren't kids supposed to be over the messy phase by now? I feel like a total failure on the whole manners and etiquette front. AGGHHH!

The Dedicated Veterinarian Assistant

Happy Mother's Day to me. Since the hubby was out to sea I was lucky that he at least got to call me today, so that was a nice surprise. I also heard from my mother and we had a nice long chat about pretty much everything under the sun. We talked about my dads health (seems a little better), her plans for putting in a drip system to water the numerous plants surrounding her house, I told her a funny story about S & S, and she told me about her latest cat health issues.

Yes, you read it right, cat health issues. My mother has 3 extremely neurotic house cats, plus a stray tomcat she started leaving food outside for recently. She tried to tell me that the tomcat wasn't hers really but she was just feeding him once in a while so he wouldn't starve, but I had to call her on that little delusion because she had named him. I explained to her that you cannot name a cat and then try to say that it is not yours. As for the neurotic cats here is the breakdown: Sammy is possibly bulimic, Max has potty issues, and Chelsea has some sort of kidney or liver thing that makes her not want to eat.

Chelsea is the one that is seriously sick, although she is still pretty spry, and my mom is constantly trying to get her to eat. She eats a special high protein food that is kept refrigerated and is brought out at the slightest provocation to try and temp her to eat and when she is being really difficult my mom even drains juice from cans of tuna and "dopes" up the food with that. Anyway, mom said that lately she had been having an even harder time than usual getting Chelsea to eat and so she had asked the Vet. assistant when she went in to get some more food if she could think of any other tricks to get her to eat. Turns out that another brand had recently started making a high protein food and this woman suggested she try that. As they were talking the vet assistant said "we tasted them and this one tastes much better than the brand you use". To clarify, we are not talking about hard, dry, cat food, this is the canned, moist stuff. My mom said she didn't really hear the rest of the conversation she had with the woman because she was just flabbergasted by what she had said about tasting the cat food. EEEEEWWWWW!

That is one dedicated veterinarians assistant.

Are we there yet (kids version)

I think every mom and dad in the history of the world dreads the question "Are we there yet?" being yelled from the backseat of their vehicle. Not because the question is so hard to answer, after all it is always "NO!" because by the time you actually get there they have finally given up asking "Are we there yet?" after having asked 5 trillion times, but you dread hearing it because you know it is just the beginning of the end. I have to say that so far my girls haven't been too bad about this even though we have driven half way across the country a few times and really I give most of the credit for surviving these trips to the DVD player we have in our van. Truly, I cannot imagine how parents ever survived without bouncy seats for babies and DVD players for the car for any age. But on to my story.

The other day we packed up to take a trip to Wal-Mart which is approximately 2 miles from our house. Regardless of the fact that it is so close, getting ready to go is a huge undertaking for my two little pack rats. They feel they must pack a drink, a snack, writing instruments, a note pad and at least one doll type toy before we can go. On this particular day Sydney had chosen a small baby doll to bring and Savannah had decided not to bring anything (wonder of wonders). So we get going and are on our way. Halfway there I hear Savannah using her dolly voice (those with girls know that dolls must speak in a high voice using the octave nearest that to breaking glass). She is having the dolly say "Are we there yet?", to which Sydney replies in her mommy voice "Not yet dear", after which she asks again "Are we there yet?" and Sydney again replies "Not yet dear". This continued the rest of the way to the store which was partially annoying and partially so funny I had to call my mom right then to tell her what they were doing and have a good laugh about it.

After the shopping

These are my beauties trying on their new summer dresses. No I don't usually dress them exactly alike, however, they both wanted this dress.

Stereo Computers

My kids are very strange. Being twins they obviously do a lot of stuff together. I try really hard to help them be their own person so they can have a sense of "self" and not just be "the twins" and blah, blah, blah, psychobabble blah. Of course, they have their differences like all children but they are twins and have that special thing/bond/connection that twins have so regardless of how I try to give them their own space they just end up right next to each other again. Take today for instance.

We have an old desktop computer that we set up for the girls to use. We have links set up on there for PBS Kids and Sprout and Nick Jr., Disney, etc. that they can use and they have all their little games in a basket on the desk. It cracks me up every time I see them playing games and changing discs and stuff because it is so normal for them and I can still remember having one of those old Commodore computers and there was no worldwide web when I was in high school! I know, I'm dating myself, but anyway back to my point. So Savannah decided she wanted to play on the computer with one of the discs and she wanted to do her game all on her own without Sydney's help. I felt sorry for Sydney so I set her up on my laptop computer at the dining room table on one of the websites with games since I had already wasted enough time on the Internet this morning. After a little while Savannah wants to go to the website too, okay fine.

A little bit later I'm in the living room folding laundry (that is already wrinkled like crazy because I forgot it in the dryer for like 2 days) and I hear them counting "1, 2, 3, go!" and then a minute later again "1, 2, 3, go!" So I start listening to what they were up to. Turns out they had gotten to the same web page (Disney's Higglytown Hero's for those of you who are interested) and were in this story type game where it tells a little bit of a story then they get to choose an item that goes in the next part, then it tells a little bit more story and they get to choose another item and so on. They were talking to each other and deciding which item to choose, then counting "1, 2, 3, go" and choosing that item at the same time so the story would go at the same time on both computers in stereo. They trip me out!

I mowed my very first lawn today

Today I mowed my very own lawn for the first time. I know, it is pretty amazing that a 30 something wife and mother would either never have done this or admit to never have done this. Let me explain. As a teenager I never mowed the lawn because my family lived in a condo where we had people paid to do this little chore for us. After I married, my husband handled it or we lived in a place where this service was provided.

Last year we finally grew up and bought our own home. Since then my Navy husband has been able to handle the lawn between short deployments. That all ended today. He's been gone 2 1/2 weeks and it was starting to look pretty shabby. Add to this that there is a good chance of rain in our neck of the woods for about the next week and I finally had to break down and do it. He had made me practice starting the lawnmower several weeks ago in preperation for this so at least I wasn't totally clueless, however, when I went to do this on my own it wouldn't work. Finally, after like 15 tries yanking on that thing I realized that I had forgotten to hold onto the handle thingy (very technical talk here) which you have to hold down before it will start as a safety feature.

Once I got it started I have to admit it was sort of relaxing. Who knew? I sort of zoned out into a meditative state or something. It was something about the vibrations in the handle as you push it and the sound (vvvvrrrrmmmmm) that puts you into a trance. Anyway it was good practice for the big deployment coming up in September.