Grunt 'n' Squeak

Happy Halloween!

It's that time of year again, when we come up with grandiose ideas for what the kids should be for Halloween, and fully commit ourselves to insane amounts of work and money for a holiday our kids don't understand or care about yet, all for the gratification of taking cute pictures and listening to others tell us that they look adorable.  Without further ado, here they are, the best Oompa Loompa's ever, and we hope you all have a fun Halloween!

 

 

 

 

Two Years Ago

Two years ago today I couldn't see my feet.  I could hardly walk, I could barely breath, and I was scared shitless.  

Two years ago today we picked my mom up from the airport, and we went to the Olive Garden for dinner, for one last pre-baby hurrah.  I didn't eat much, I was too scared.  Scared in general, scared of surgery, scared I'd get sick during or after surgery, scared of being a mom, scared of surgery, scared of my kids, and whether when push came to shove I'd be able to step up to the plate and be the kind of mom I wanted to be, scared of surgery.

Two years ago today I was frantically trying to put my house back together, the best I could given my physical limitations, after having the carpet in the entire house replaced the day before.  This was not poor planning on our part, it was a warranty job, and in one of my only glorious attempt to "nest", I wanted it done before the babies were born.  My second attempt to "nest" was taking the dogs to Petsmart to be groomed before the babies came.  I think Amy is still sporting scars from that seemingly innocent trip through the store, and my absolute burning hatred for the idiot who decided it was a good idea to put the entrance to grooming in the back of the store found a whole new reason to flare that day.  I don't think the dogs have been groomed at Petsmart since.  

Two years ago today I was feeling my babies movements inside of me for the last time.  I was in absolute elation that we had made it safely to the pre-determined delivery date, with no pre-term labor or complications.  I was in awe that after all the frustration and hell we'd been through to create these babies, after all the times my body had failed me, hadn't been the right size, the right shape, done the right things, when it really mattered, my broken and imperfect body had finally done something right, and carried my babies to term.  I'd brought them this far, and it was now someone else's turn to hold them for a while.  

Two years ago tomorrow I watched Amy suit up in a flattering white hospital jump-suit while she made fun of my monumental cankles.  I saw the disappointment in my mom's eyes as the nurse was telling her that she was sorry, there was just not enough room to have an extra person in the operating room to see the boys be born, and in the very next breath, ask my permission to have a nursing student stand in to watch the surgery.  I was still scared shitless.  I wanted very much to get off the table and go home to watch videos in my pajamas and balance my cereal bowl on my belly, but instead I used my deep breathing techniques from my childbirth class to keep from having an anxiety attack. 

Two years ago tomorrow, Amy almost missed seeing her kids be born because of a stupid nurse, but made it in time to take the most spectacularly grotesque and fascinating pictures I have ever seen.  I survived the surgery and stopped being scared as I heard first one tiny baby cry out, and a minute or two later, a second distinctly different baby cry.  I heard our camera shutter clicking away, and felt Amy hold her breath twice, in what I later came to realize was that painful eternity between the time when you first see your baby, and then you hear that first scream. 

Two years ago tomorrow, Benjamin came into the world a whopping 7lbs, 2 oz, and Grayson followed one minute behind, at 6lbs, 5 oz.  After saying hello to me, they were promptly whisked away to the nursery, and I didn't see them again for hours, though Amy came in to give me updates as often as she could tear herself away. 

Two years ago tomorrow, I had my heart stolen by two tiny little men.  I watched my partner kick into mom mode, and I gained a new found respect for her ability to instantly devote her entire being to these two helpless babies, and at the same time she selflessly nursed me through a pretty brutal recovery. 

Two years ago tomorrow I had no idea that Benjamin would be such a mama's boy, and that Grayson would have such an inquisitive nature, but I did know instantly that these little guys had arrived with their own distinct personalities, and that they already had their own ideas about how things would go, despite any preparations on my part.  I can't believe it's gone so fast, though I knew in my heart that it would.  Happy Birthday my little men, I can't wait to see what kind of people you are two years from now!

 

 

ps, there are fun new pics of their second birthday party on the right there...

Sorting it out

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, catching a quiet moment, watching Grayson sort his broccoli and boca burger from one section of his plate to another.  The one thing he is decidedly not going to do is eat the stuff.  I knew he wouldn't, but I offer it anyway, hopeful that this week his toddler taste buds have forgotten that last week they had already brought down a negative ruling on broccoli.  Benjamin has at least eaten his rice before copying his brother with the boca/broccoli sorting.   I'm wondering how both of my children are still managing to grow like weeds when they never seem to eat anything, but something must be going down, because they haven't withered up and floated away yet.  The best I can do is put it in front of them, and try not to take it personally when they refuse to eat it (which they do, and I sometimes do take it personally.)

In the last few months Grayson has picked up a gaggle of new words, my favorites of which are "blankie," "cheese," and "mama."  Yes, he finally says mama.  Both he and Benjamin have kicked the monkey off their backs, and are binky-free toddlers, though to keep the peace I took it away from Grayson before I took it from Ben, just in case there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, it wouldn't be happening in stereo.  Surprisingly with both of them, after making it through one night and one nap sans binky, each of them stepped up to the podium as graduates of the cold turkey method, and tossed their soothing rubber nipples into the rosy past of their infancy. (Okay, so I chucked them all into the trash, and "out of sight, out of mind "seems to apply effectively to my little men, even to something once so indispensable as the binky.  Wonder how that might apply to their attachments to me?)

Turns out that even I'm really not indispensable.  I took a vacation a couple weeks ago, all by myself, with no kids, no wife, no family.  Just me.  It was exciting, it was blissful, it was quiet, it was productive, and when I got back to my kids after five days away, I was ready to be a mom again.  This was the first solo vacation I had ever taken, and I highly recommend everyone trying it at least once.  I have found that I could really go for making the solo vacation an annual event, much to Amy's chagrin, I'm sure.  During the time away, I often found myself thinking "hmmm, what should I do?' and knowing that ultimately the answer was "whatever I want" would make me unreasonably giddy.  Granted, by the end of the trip I missed my family dearly, but getting away alone once in a while would be nice.  And the boys survived quite dandily with my mom there to take care of them in my stead.  (Thanks mom, you are a life-saver!)

Getting back to the grind was easy, and seeing that my boys hadn't changed monumentally while I was gone made me feel a little better about the whole thing.  Benjamin still says "hi" to every stranger we pass, with accompanying wave, unless spoken directly to, then he buries his head into me and hides.  Grayson still sorts all of his toys into piles that only makes sense to him, and the very special ones he will put into any empty bag, basket, or bucket he can find.  He'll then carry said container all over the house, and come unglued if one of his new treasures doesn't fit right into the bag, or if Ben comes along and messes with his stuff.  Both of them love to sit under the apple tree, munching away at whatever fruit is within arms reach, even if the bugs or the birds have been there before them.  

Here we are, only one week away from celebrating their second birthday, and I feel like I am only beginning to get a glimpse into the brains of these amazing little creatures.  It's easy to get caught up in the daily occurrences of picking up sippy cups thrown to the floor for the one millionth time, and changing the seven millionth diaper, and I forget that there is still so much I don't know about what's going on in those little heads.  A few days ago Grayson was sitting on the kitchen floor, drinking a juice box.  When he finished it with just a few big gulps, he gets up off the floor, walks to the trash, stealthily opens up the cupboard (the one with child lock that he's learned to breach with surprising ease,) throws the empty box in the garbage, closes the cupboard, and goes off to play.  All without any prefaced coaching or suggestions on my part. I watched the whole thing happen, but had to take a double take when he walked away.  Did my baby just do something so grown-up with such nonchalance?  It was weird, and brought a little tear to my eye.  Maybe, oh maybe, we have someone in the family who will care enough for cleanliness and order to clean up after himself!  Then I tripped over one of his six bags of assorted toys and remembered that we have a long way to go.

What's that smell?

Ok, in my house, that answer to that burning and urgent question could be most anything, but right now it's me, and my dripping gym clothes that I'm too tired to peel off.  Or if you open the fridge, there's definitely something odoriferous, and when I find it, it will certainly be a liquefied version of some former solid (or perhaps a solidified version of something once liquid), but again, I'm too tired to look for it.

I've been going to the gym for the last six weeks desperate for a change in routine, for a boost in energy, and mostly, to be able to hand my children off to someone else for an hour or two.  It has been going surprisingly well as far as the kids go.  This is their only exposure to a daycare type situation, and today was the first day that they had to come get me to say that one of my kids needs me.  Thankfully they waited until I was 45 minutes into a spinning class, so I couldn't be irritated that I'd be missing my workout.  If I could bribe my kids to act up at a specific time, I'd ask them to save me from spinning class at 45 minutes.  That's when my reserves are failing, and I'm spending more time watching the second hand on the clock tick by than paying attention to whatever the instructor is doing.   Poor Ben was crying inconsolably, and wasn't calming down, so I needed to come save him.  That kid seems to need a lot of saving lately, which genuinely stinks.

I awoke at 6 am today, for once to a relatively silent house instead of a crying child.  Most mornings I awake to a crying child (Ben), and usually it's not quite as early as 6 am.  I thought I'd get out of bed and tackle the mountain of clean laundry that we've been tripping over in the hallway for weeks, and start sorting and folding it.  And lucky me, there was a re-broadcast of an Indigo Girls interview that I wanted to hear on Satellite radio starting at just the same time.  So I got out of bed, went in the bathroom to pee, and got out of the bathroom just in time to hear Ben start screaming like a stuck pig (I've realized that's the part of his cry that is most annoying, he sounds just like a wounded little piglet with a blow horn.)  I couldn't help it, I started to cry.  I was going to have a quiet hour to myself, and get something done, and it all went out the window.  Luckily Amy was still home getting ready for work, and when she saw my pathetic state, took over soothing the little monster for an hour, delaying her work day. 

It seems that lately Ben is stuck in a permanently agitated state, and his mood only swings from irritated and annoyed to grade A tantrum that won't be stopped by anyone or anything.  Consequently I I find my own mood varying on a similar scale.  The sources of his tantrums and fits are usually hard to pin down, and the only thing I can think that might be the underlying cause for most of his behavior are his two-year molars.  They are trying to come up, but I can tell it's going to be a long, slow process.  Damn you baby teeth, damn you!!!!  Or it could just be that he's nearing two, and they don't call it "terrible" for nuthin'.

Grayson, the little stinker, is not so innocent when it comes to keeping me on my toes either.  Yesterday, I'd put them down for a nap rather early (yet again, Ben was upset over having to share toys, and the state of affairs in the middle east) and I'd left them to their own devices in their cribs a little longer than I probably should have after they woke up.  When I went in to get them, Grayson had unzipped his zip-front pj's down to his knee, and had his diaper open and hanging out the front.  I could tell he'd probably peed a little with his diaper down, but his bed was dry, and his clothes needed to be changed anyway.  I didn't think much of it until I got finished changing him, and had Ben on the changing table.  That's when Grayson started trying to hand me something off the floor.  It was his own poop.  Seems he'd made himself a little present, opened his diaper, got it out, threw it on the floor in front of his crib, and was just trying to help me clean up a little by handing it to me later when I didn't notice it right away.  Gross kiddo, truly gross.  Lucky me, it had all landed on his blanket, which he'd also thrown out of the crib, and clean up was minor.  But still, oh so gross, and here I am sharing his antics with you.  Yum. 

I can't wait for next week, Amy is off work, and we are going away.  We are taking the boys to the beach to go camping, and hopefully the only thing we will smell is salty air and good food. 

Preggie preggie everywhere...

Now lest you all get in a dither over our secret baby-making efforts, let me just start by saying that no, there are no pregnant bellies at our house.  No way, no chance, no current efforts toward such an end.  But it does seem that we are surrounded on all sides by pregnant friends and family, and one can't help but feel a little tug in the uterine regions, especially since we hope to be walking that road again at some point. 

I am a little jealous of all these growing families, and at the same time, I am thrilled beyond belief for them.  Pregnancy was good to me, and not just because I had a healthy, relatively problem-free pregnancy with the boys.  The selfish attention whore in me loved being the focus of generosity and concern.  I liked that people called me just to genuinely ask how I was feeling, and strangers wanted all the details.  I liked feeling like a super woman, carrying twins, and working nearly full time practically to the week they were born, and knowing that for once my body was working for me, instead of against me.  I liked that Amy went out of her way to make sure I was comfortable, and had everything I needed at my fingertips.  Who wouldn't love that?  Ok, so I've blissfully forgotten about the excruciating pain in my stretching pelvis, the swelling, the inability to breath, sleep, eat, walk, reach my feet, or go less than 15 seconds without running to the bathroom to pee.  But I dealt with all of that as it came, because I liked the rest of it so much. 

The best part was feeling like it was Christmas Eve every day for 8 months.  The anticipation of knowing that something really great was coming my way, but I didn't know exactly what, was magical to me.  I knew I was having two little boys, but what would they look like, how would they act, what kind of mom would I be, how would I be a different person having known them?  I got equally excited knowing I got the share these little creatures with those whom I love, sort of like knowing on Christmas Eve that you have the perfect present for someone, and you can't wait for them to open it.  

I remember how great that was, and I hope that Amy and I get to experience that again soon.  In all reality, there is just no way I could see having another baby on the way, when I have two cute boys running out of control at my feet.  I had a brief and very rare moment this week when I got to leave the house with just one child.  Grayson was napping well, and Amy was home, but Ben was awake and bored when he should have been asleep.  I had errands to run, and I left Grayson home to sleep, and only took Ben with me.  I only had one child to buckle into the seat.  I didn't have to heft an entire double stroller out of the car and buckle two kids into it just to run quickly into the store for a second.  Ben caught up on the state of affairs of U2 in an old Rolling Stone left behind in the waiting room of the oil-change place while I thumbed through back issues of People.  One set of hands for one child, and no tag-team running in opposite directions, or synchronized public fits, culminating in two bawling children being hauled off foot-ball style under each of my arms.  It was a blessed hour, where I could focus just on Ben, and we could enjoy ourselves and being with each other.  Thinking of that one strange hour on our own, I can't for the life of me figure out why I'd be so hungry to have another.  Freakin' biology...

For now, I'll celebrate that I get two sets of slobbery kisses, two full-faced grins over little joys, and I get to sleep through the night about two-thirds of the time.  I will keep my eyes open for the chance to spend one-on-one time with each of my children, and I will read up on potty training, so in six or seven years when the boys finally notice and care that it's a little disgusting to be walking around with steamy britches, we can start thinking about adding a third child to the mix.  And if you are one of our preggies out there, will you please let me hold your baby and coo like an idiot when he gets here?

Another funk

Gosh, it seems lately I only come running here to post when I'm in a funk of some sort, and I've run out of people to talk to.  So here I am, venting to whom ever is unfortunate enough to be reading this. 

This funk is the grand culmination of too much alone time, and simultaneously, not enough alone time.  Amy's workload recently shifted from busy as hell with an employee to help out, to busy as hell with no employee.  The no employee is a good thing, and it's resulted in a nice chunk of change in the bank that we feel blessed to have.  But it also means long long hours on her part.  Her children desperately miss her, as they now only see her on weekends.  Her wife misses her too, and I miss adult conversation, and I miss having a break from having to take care of the kids all by myself.

The good thing that has happened since this new change is that I (re)joined the gym, and they have daycare on site.  Free with membership.  The two hours a day that I'm allowed to drop my kids off is worth the cost of the membership five times over, and I'm working out regularly again.  My butt and my psyche both seriously need this gym time.  The sad thing is that all this alone time, and time with the kids, is driving me up the wall, and lo and behold, what's on the walls?  Cabinets full of snack food.  And it's there I gravitate, especially in the afternoons.  So all my hard work at the gym is resulting in absolutely zero weight loss.  A sad sad fact considering I've gained more weight in the past year than most normal people can in a lifetime of trying really hard to get really really fat.  Gotta love the PCOS shit.  The only bright side I can see to this fucking disease is that while I'm dying of heart disease and diabetes, I certainly won't be suffering from osteoporosis. 

I'm really impressed with how easily the boys have integrated into the kids club at the gym.  They've never been in a daycare type setup before, and I was really nervous leaving them for the first time.  I shouldn't have been.  They loved it right from the beginning.  There are slides and play structures, and new and interesting children for Ben to steal toys from.  Grayson has been batting his eyelashes at all the little girls, and inevitably when I go tromping back in there, smelly and dripping, my little charmer is sitting in the lap of some swooning girl-child, handing out his allotment of hugs and kisses that he never seems to have on hand for me.  I couldn't be more overjoyed that they've made this little outing so easy for me, becaue they are happy to get there, and they don't mind leaving when I come pick them up.  Now if only they were potty trained, I'd have the best kids on the planet!  Oh, wait, I do have the best kids on the planet, and I'd have the best job on the planet, if I could only re-negotiate the hours a bit.

What's new this time 'round?

Here we are at Grandma and Grandpa's again.  We have come to Utah for the third time in as many months (or so it feels) and who knew I would drive across the Great Basin so much, with my toddlers, just for some grandma time?  Grandma's are the best, are they not?  When I was young, my Grandma Beth was the best grandma a kid could have.  Now that I'm a mom, I've come to respect my own mom as the best grandma a kid could have.  Boy are they lucky kids, to have both of their grandmas. 

In fact, we are here again to celebrate Amy's mom's birthday.  It's her 60th, and we couldn't be happier to have made the trip.  We are getting all the people from all the different aspects of her life: work, church, family, friends, to hopefully surprise her and eat some cake.  She must know that something is up, but we will all go on pretending that no one has spilled the beans, and that when Amy asked her what her favorite cake flavor was, it was just out of pure curiosity.  I pick up the cake on order for tomorrow's shindig, and decorate the party room while Amy whisks her away for dinner with the boys.  There is only one giant hitch in the plan, and that's sick children.

Two days ago, while Ben was left briefly on Grandpa watch while I went to order cake, his breakfast and lunch started making uninvited reappearances, much to the chagrin of a very confused and upset toddler.  This had nothing to do with my dad, but I wondered if perhaps Ben had just gotten so upset at my leaving him, he cried until he made himself sick.  I should have known we wouldn't be so lucky, and that I wasn't that special.  He continued to throw up through to the next morning.  By yesterday evening he was back to his normal self, ready to eat again, and kept his one-way system moving in the right direction.  I thought we were in the clear with one day of relatively happy children (though there has been much nose-wiping, damn colds) and then this afternoon, the stomach bug reared its ugly head in the other child.  I'm hoping the healing time is as quick as it was in Ben, and Grayson will be ready to party like it's 1999 by tomorrow night, for Grandma Porter's surprise party.  If not, thank goodness we have a grandma back-up who will love on him at home.    And let's all knock on wood that the same stomach bug doesn't make the rounds through me.

It is fascinating to see how my children, conceived at the same time, born on the same day, and raised identically, can be such different people.  And nothing emphasizes the differences more than watching them handle illness.  Ben is my wonder child, whiny full of spunk, needy and strong-willed.  If his tummy hurts, you will know it.  If he's going to throw up, you will know it.  If he didn't like that being-sick-business, you will know it.  He cried, he wanted to be held, and reassured, every moment he felt not-quite-right.  Grayson, on the other hand, plays it cool in most scenarios.  I wasn't aware that he wasn't feeling well until I was cleaning up after the mess.  And even after that, I wouldn't have believed he was the one that was sick, except my mother has no dogs, and the children were strapped to their booster seats to eat lunch.  There was no denying who's seat the puke originated from.  He wants to play, he wants to climb, he wants to wiggle out of my arms, and he's not going to let a little 24 hour flu hold him back.  Just clean him up and send him back into the trenches, those toys aren't going to play with themselves! What gives him away is his restless sleep, and that part breaks my heart a little.  

So now, the challenge for Grandma Kathy is to teach them something new, quick, before they come home from this trip with nothing more noteworthy than their first realio, trulio vomit-fest.  

18 Months

My little squirts turned 18 months old today.  I'm sure I've said this about every phase, but holy crap, I can't believe they are already 18 months old. 

They are still shining through with their own personalities, Ben being the sensitive screeching child, and Grayson being the adventuring wiggly child.  They are their own little yin and yang that complement each other nicely, except when they simply conflict, as do all children.  They are good at creating their own entertainment, like head-butting each other as hard as they can while sitting in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart.  It's all fun and games until someone puts your eye out, or cracks your skull open.

My little man Ben loves to copy everything we say.  Not the words, so much as the intonation.  I ask him to say "mama" and he follows with any two-syllabled combination of letters, except M-A-M-A.  But he's got the tone right.  He crawled up in the rocking chair today to read himself a book.  He turned all the pages carefully one by one, and made animal sounds for each animal on the page.  Sometimes his animal sounds and the animal actually coincided correctly.  The tiger says 'roar', as does the lion, the bird, and the dolphin.  The doggy says oof oof, and so does the horse.  Only the cat says meow, except coming from Ben, there is no 'm', so really it's 'eow'.  I can tell that language is coming, it's just taking some time.  He likes playing catch with the balls, and playing in his new sandbox.

Grayson is not so much a talker as he is a doer.  He is my little man that is into everything all of the time.  There is no keeping him still or holding him back, unless I turn on his shows.  As soon as Baby Einstien comes on he stops dead in his tracks and glues his eyes to the tv.  He doesn't give up kisses or cuddles easily, but I've taught him to make the most of his long eyelashes by giving me "butterfly kisses", which make us both giggle.  I was showing him a book that had little butterflies in the pictures, and when I pointed and said butterfly, I looked at him and he was batting his eyelashes.  Today after I changed his diaper before dinner I just left his pants off and let him run around in his socks and onesie shirt, with the snaps around his bottom to keep the shirt on.  I was making food in the kitchen, and he comes wandering in.  Each step he took caused a funny knocking racket, and he was looking rather paunchy around the middle.  So I unsnapped his onesie and out fell handfulls of megablocks and little plastic shape-sorter pieces.

The boys have a new-found interest in leaving the house.  We got a sandbox for them as soon as they showed up in the toy store again for the season, and they now know there is something fun in the backyard.  They also like it when I let them walk themselves out the door to get in the car, rather than being carried.  So now I have to be careful when I yell either "you want to go for a ride" or "Let's go outside!" because both the dogs and the babies come running to see what's up.  The babies mope hopelessly at the back door when the dogs get to go outside, and the dogs mope hopelessly at the front door when the babies get to go for a ride.  I can ask the boys to sit down, so I can put there shoes on, and tell them dinner is ready, and they come running.  Amy joked the other day that the boys are finally as smart as the dogs, and it's funny because it's true.  

I love you little guys, we are so lucky to be your moms!

Double Speak

Here I go with some more witty (or not) banter on a subject about which I know surprisingly little: twin talk.  And I don't really mean "do they have their own language?" kind of twin talk, I mean talk about twins.

I'm a mom of twins, so I can tell you how much work it is to change twice the diapers, give twice the baths, feed two mouths, and teach two toddlers, well, everything.  And while you maybe can imagine how our household does or does not run because there are two babies at once, it is surprisingly different from having just one child at a time.  Or so I suppose, based on the comments and questions I've fielded from mothers of singletons.  What I can't really speak on is twin development.  And I'm becoming more concerned that it's a subject I should have looked into a while ago.

My approach with my children thus far regarding their twin-dom has always been to just treat them as siblings that happen to be the same age.  They aren't identical, and I don't have any overwhelming desire to dress them the same or give them cute rhyming names like Budd and Judd.  Once in a while they dress alike because I'm saving myself time on deciding what they should wear by only deciding once.  The other kid by default wears the same thing.  But if they don't match, who cares?  I don't usually call them "the twins", I interact with each based on his own strengths and weaknesses, and I let them do their own thing. In a few short years no one will be able to tell they are twins anyway, what with their differently proportioned features.  I've even had people ask me how far apart my children are, expecting me to say months, not one minute.  And I'm inclined to lie to them anyway, since their curiosity about me being a mama-whore who can't wait ten minutes to get preggers after the first is born is something that really isn't any of their business.  Next time I get that question, I'm going to say 6 months, and watch their little hampsters spin as they start doing the math in their head.

So, back to the twins.  I've been noticing that the boys seem a tad bit delayed in some of their major developmental milestones.  Talking is the big one that I worry about right now.  Keep in mind, everything that I've worried about in the past has eventually worked itself out.  They aren't rolling around on the floor still, they walk and babble, and track things with their eyes, and interact.  It's just that on the bell-curve of "normal" they tend to fall on the slacker side.  I've written this off as a factor of their y-chromosome since the beginning.  With careful nurturing, it's a physical handicap they should be able to overcome.  But perhaps I should be looking deeper at the special relationship between twins.  Maybe they are just modeling their behavior after each other, because they spend so much time interacting with just each other, and not many other children.  You don't learn to walk very quickly if you are copying your brother, who also doesn't walk yet.  I've tried play groups, and moms clubs, but nothing seems to have stuck as far as long-term interraction with other children. 

My boys are content with each other.  I use it as an excuse to let them work out life together, because clearly, they are happy without me hounding them all the time.  But is this the reason they don't talk?  That they walked late? Is there something about twins that I should know, a different way to stimulate them, to get them to see beyond each other?  Am I just being lazy?  It's that last one isn't it, because everything else in my life is generally done sorta half-assed. 

Right now it probably doesn't matter so much, but should I be out there reading everything I can on twin development?  What happens when they start school, and I have to decide things like "same class or different?" I just want to know, is there some bastion of knowledge out there on fraternal twins that holds a secret that I, as a parent of twins, ought to know?  Or is it all just psycho-babble, and the boys will be fine?  Tune in next time for another exciting episode of "Twins Ripped Apart by Their Mother's Inept Parenting."

In all seriousness, if you are a twin, or have experience with twins (especially ones older than mine) I'd like to hear your feedback.  If you don't have any experience with twins, but feel inclined to give me an opinion, I'll listen to that too. And if you don't care one way or another about twins, leave me a recipe for a vegetarian meal that toddlers will eat, because frankly, my kitchen is getting boring, and we are sick of mac n' cheese.  

17 months

My babies turned 17 months old yesterday, and I forgot.  I guess that is why we all eventually stop counting in months and turn to years.  Turning 30 was brutal enough, how'd you like to say that you just turned 364 months old?  Just too many months to mark it all. 

We just got home from another trip to Grandma's house, wherein I am reminded that when left to my own devices with my children, I frequently fail to make the grade.  In December we went to Grandma's with Crawlers and came home with Walkers.  This trip we went to Grandma's with finger feeders, and came home with children now skilled with cutlery.  We were brave enough to take them to the fancy schmancy Chuck-a-Rama Buffet where the use of tableware is particularly prolific, and strangers complimented our prodigy yunguns on their mad fork skills.  Thanks Grandma! :)  Now I'm thinking in another year I'll drop them off for an extended stay with Grandma where they go in diaper-wearers, and come home in underoos. 

I drove out to Salt Lake with the boys by myself again, and 10 days later Amy flew out to meet us.  She claims they started babbling way more in those 10 days she was away from them, and she's right.  They are trying harder to form words and making sounds that if you aren't listening closely could be real conversation.  Dog and possibly Grandpa seem to have been their first real words, though neither is as of yet articulated enough for the untrained, un-mama ear to recognize. 

We also got to spend time with the boys cousins, which at times was utter chaos.  It's the first time they have all been together since the wee rolley-polley stage when they didn't get very far, and no one cared if you stole their toys, because fingers and carpet lint were just as fascinating.  Getting me and my sisters together, there was much pushing, crying, pulling, stealing, and stomping.  And the kids were even worse!  But we did have moments of quiet when kids were napping, or Grandpa was babysitting, when we did get together to talk and it was really nice being with both my sisters and mom at the same time.  We also got all my cousins together for the first time in ages for a lunch that was equally chaotic, but very nice. 

So as busy as I am as a mom, and as much as I have to handle with the two squirts I've already got, I'm finding myself thinking more and more about when we will be ready to have the next one.  It took us about a year from the time we decided to start trying to have kids before I got pregnant with the boys, and then another 8 months after that before the boys were born, and I don't expect the next one to come any faster really.  So if we started thinking seriously right now about having another one, the boys would be closer to 3 or older before a sibling makes an appearance.  Seems old enough, right?  Now if only the economy hadn't tanked, if I had health insurance, if Amy had insurance that covered pregnancy, if I had a job, if we had any leverage.   It's moments like this when I really wish we had the ability to have one of those "oops, we're pregnant" incidences and we figured out how to handle it along the way.  And it's moments like this when I'm really glad that we can't have any oops pregnancies, so we can get some ducks in a row. 

In the mean time, I'm going to go spin aimlessly in circles over and over again with Ben and his giant grin, until he falls down laughing or runs into the furniture and starts crying.  Gotta love that kid.