Some Pics

Money Man wearing his big brother's shoes...

Alex at Strawberry Reservoir with his buddy Aidan from school.

AJ at the pumpkin patch field trip.

Jax Man at the field trip too.

The twinsies just hangin' out with some hay and pumpkins.

This won't do justice to all of the months missed, but at least it's a snapshot of the here and now...

Two very grown-up three-year olds!

Happy Birthday to AJ and Jax!

First thing on the morning of their birthday: presents!Mastering the tricky third finger. The long-awaited pink Maglight flashlight!

Bubbles!

These candles are kinda tricky to blow out! (at Gma C's)A little spit should do the job.

AJ: Precocious, unique, curly hair, pink cheeks, smaller of the two (those cheeks fool ya), L.O.V.E.S. vaccuums (obsessed), loves pink, loves anything silky in texture, loves his big, pink fleece blankie, loves firetrucks, little bit shy, serious nature, always says, "ohhhh-kay...," prefers adults over kids, loves his "best friend, Jaxie."

Jackson: A tease, silly faces, makes us laugh, good ball-handler, dribbler, wants to be "in" on the action, wants to be big like Alex, good trampoline jumper, tender-hearted, great sharer, "I just love you SOOO much," also loves his "best friend, AJ."

Finally...snow!

Want a surefire way of guaranteeing NO snow all winter? Spend some good money on snowclothes for your kids! Works wonders!

We FINALLY got to pull out the duds... in March! The boys were in heaven!

Merry Christmas

Here are the three greatest Christmas presents a mom could ask for. Christmas was magic for these little boys this year.

From left to right, Jax, Alex, and AJ, after presents, Christmas morning.

Silly Boys

These boys of mine... They love dress-up as much as a girl! The next door neighbor girl came over to play with Alex one afternoon. AJ and Jax immediately had to try on her pink coat and pink shoes. Sillies.

A good moment...

I'm sitting here checking my e-mail, and my two little two-year-olds are chasing each other in a circle, just giggling and laughing and falling to the floor in exhausted heaps. It's so fun to watch these two interact and have so much fun together. They get so excited and want to say so much to each other that their little voices just escalate higher and higher into unintelligible gibberish. Then they look at each other and just bust up laughing. It's so fun! For all the bickering, toy-stealing and squabbling that comes with twins, it's moments like now that make me realize that this is a fun and unique blessing to have these little guys in our family. It still amazes me that there are TWO. I just love these special little guys. What a joy.

Boots!

These crazy kids insisted on wearing their boots. We're headed out to plant flowers, so boots it is!

AJ's attitude. Sooo him.Jackson being silly. Blurry, but I love that face.

Miscellaneous happenings...

This is a direct copy and paste from an e-mail I sent my missionary mother. Just thought I'd update for posterity....

How was your Easter? Our Easter bunny came on Saturday, and Sunday we went to Jen's baby's blessing. Then we went to our church. Then we put the kids to bed for naps, got 'em up, and went to Gma C's. It was quite the busy day.

We're all still stuffy and sick. Jackson isn't coughing nearly as much though, so that's good. I'm wiping snot noses dozens of times throughout the day, however. (including my own poor stuffy soul.)

Today on the way home from my workout, AJ pulled his usual, "No!!! No Home!!!!" in a high-pitched, girly squeal. So, instead, we drove uptown, called Daddy to meet us in front of his building, and we walked around temple square. Needless to say, the boys were in heaven. The sun was warm, the air was cool, and the flowers were obviously breathtakingly gorgeous. The boys loved all of the various fountains the best, of course. (And the Lays potato chips that Daddy brought them.) It was a fun little change of scenery.

On the way home AJ and Jackson both cried off and on for about twenty minutes. "want daddy! daddy! daddy!" Kinda funny.

Well, I have a whole load of pictures for you.

1,2,3: Remember that night I was talking to you, and I said, "Oh, how cute. The babies are at the piano, turning the pages, playing and laughing at each other." ? Well, here are some pictures from that. 4,5,6: These are the boys in their t-shirts that Daddy brought home from his business trip. They loved them. The blurry picture of AJ is compliments of our budding photo journalist, Alex. He is in LOVE with the digital camera. I deleted about 20 pictures that he took, but I'll include a few of his classics in this e-mail. 7: Silly Alex using his Easter basket for a hat. I thought it was pretty creative, because I never would have thought to put it on my head! 9: One of Alex's pictures that he took.
10: Another Alex picture. Not too bad, huh? Gotta love Jaxie's runny nose!

11, 12, 13, 14: More of Alex's pictures. Pretty funny, huh? He's quite the detail oriented kid. I especially love the one of the recycle garbage. Funny kid. 15: Alex being sweet to Jackson, for once!

16: I love this picture. This is of all the boys just before bedtime. Everyone just had a bath, orange Triaminic, and teeth brushed. They love to sit on our bed and draw on their magnadoodles while watching a "kid show." They were all so tired and cute, I couldn't resist taking a picture. Just a moment in the life of us....mmmm... if only you could smell their yummy lotion!!

Best Buddies

The other day I took the brothers to their 18-month appointment. Since I'm a regular at the pediatrician's office, the gal at the front desk was chatting away and commenting on how big the twins were getting, etc. She asked, "How is Alex doing with his little brothers?"

I answered, "Well... he does pretty good, but he's just a typical big brother."

She said, "Like right now?"

I quickly turned around to see Alex with Jackson in a head lock, giving him a noogie. *sigh* Yep... like right now. sheesh!

But these boys do really have a great time together, and every morning they are all so excited to see each other. Today they were "snuggling" on the oversized chair in the living room. They barely fit, but they were having a great time. It was a nice little "moment."

Ahhh, poop, poison control, and other misc

Just to put your mind at ease from the start... No. My child did not eat poop, resulting in a call to poison control. Just FYI.

What a day! And it's only 12:45 p.m. And so I blog for therapy.

I just put all my bath toys in the dishwasher, and a load of laundry in the washer. I'm bleaching my light colors. Why? So that I can get the poop germs out of the toys and washcloths and the pee germs out of the bath towels. How did this happen, you ask? Well, let me tell ya.

It all started with a whining and crying Alex. (surprise, surprise) He started crying first thing this morning, and hasn't stopped yet. Granted, the poor kid has a nasty head cold, so I know he's miserable. But still! Males.

Anyway, I threw all three kids in the bath and all was going well. I was just getting Jackson out and drying him off when AJ stood up in the tub and said, "Poo. Poo. Poo." I looked over to see the lovely stuff floating around in the water.

Gross.

So, of course I had to put Jackson down (naked) in order to save Andrew from playing in the stuff like it was play-doh. I successfully got AJ out fairly poop free, got him dressed and went to find Jackson.

Then ensued the discovery of the pee soaked towel. (Thank you, Jackson, for not peeing on my carpet.) As I cleaned up and dressed Jackson, AJ got a hold of a full, newly-opened-this-morning, box of cereal (thank you, big brother Alex) and quickly dumped the entire contents out onto my bedroom floor. We then had major meltdowns as Mom vacuumed the floor instead of letting the 18-month old child use the vacuum.

*sigh*

All this happened as my husband tried to book a flight for me to visit my parents in Georgia. With all the distractions, we missed the steal-of-a-deal pricing by about 1/2 hour as all the flights proceeded to fill up.

Oh, and where does the Poison Control come in? Well, luckily that wasn't today. That was yesterday. Because, you see, this mother (who really is in the running for Mother-of-the-Year) left her little toddler (guess which one? yep, AJ) in the basement for no more than 30 seconds unsupervised. It was long enough for Alex to come running upstairs yelling, "Mommy! AJ is eating the washing machine soap!" Sure enough, the Tide with Bleach was all over the floor and all over his mouth. Hence, Poison Control. (I'm happy to let everyone know that a few drinks of milk or water are enough to dilute the small amount swallowed and all is well. But when he's 14 years old and failing all his classes, remind me that the Tide just might have caused some permanent brain damage. Only time will tell.)

And thus it is.

I'm ready for a nap. Ciao.

Happy Halloween

We had a great Halloween at our house. The kids are still bouncing off the walls, they're still behind on sleep, and Mom's still pilfering the "stash." Good stuff!

Gettin' cheaper by the minute...

I've been a huge fan of Huggies diapers since the day Alex was born. They've treated us well. We didn't go for the pricier "Supremes" because the plain ol' Huggies seemed to do the job. Then "the brothers" (what we call the twins) came along.

The Huggies premies? Totally leaked. Strike one.

The print on the diapers? Rubbed off and permanently stained all of our onesies. (You'd think a little concentrated bleach would work? oh no...) Strike two.

The little tab closures? Went from a nice stretchy fabric that sealed well, to a cheap un-stretchy plastic that made the diaper gape open and leak. Strike three.

(And see... I really was trying to give these diapers a chance. Three strikes, and you're still not out, Huggies.)

The nighttime capacity? Well, they mostly worked for the other boys, but little AJ must be my big race horse or something, because every morning he wakes up soaked through. Strike four.

And finally, the straw that breaks the camel's back happened today. Jackson was running around and I noticed a huge lump in his pant leg. Now Alex has a habit of stuffing his little lovey cloths down his pajamas and looking like a freak (shown in a previous picture, here):

So, my first thought was to ask him why he did it to Jackson. After an adamant, "I didn't do it, Mommy!" I took a closer look.

The diaper broke! Hello! Diapers shouldn't do that! Freak! All I could think about was the fact that I was SO GRATEFUL that he hadn't done a poop. Blech.

So, sorry Huggies. But this is the final strike. Strike FIVE. You're OUT.

Always trauma... but worth it!

Countless "pep talk" conversations, bribes, two suckers, threats, hugs, consolation and a Curious George movie later, we went from this long shaggy hair

to this nice short cut that hopefully won't grow long for another 4 months!These guys wanted a piece of the action too. So, Jackson ended up with a faux-hawk,And AJ's curls just got a trim. (I can't cut them off yet!!)Overall, it was a fairly painless process. I was a little worried about handling all of them by myself, in case we had major meltdowns, but they did well! AJ even had a 103 fever (I know... don't tell the haircutter! I couldn't reschedule, I'd been talking it up for too many days with Alex. The show had to go on!) and Alex had his typical haircut phobia panic attack. But all in all, not too bad! Unfortunately it was $43! Yikes! I know! Nuts! So, I guess I'm going to have to start figuring out this haircutting thing on my own. But really? I think it was totally worth it.

We've only just begun...

circa 1970's, Karen Carpenter..."We've only just begun..." to fight! And man-oh-man, it's getting great already!

Jackson, the little smarty pants, has learned how to push big-brother Alex's buttons. And push he does -- multiple times daily. His tactic of choice? A big, open mouthed, roar/scream. (can't think of any other way to describe the most annoying sound in the world!) Jackson will be sitting quietly, minding his own business until Alex walks in the room. Then, he walks up to him, and in Alex's face let's out the loudest "aaaaahhhhhggggggrrrr" sound ever. He does it over and over again.

Poor Alex, who's always been sensitive to noise, (ex., "Mom, stop driving on the freeway! It's too noisy!) absolutely goes bonkers! He reacts by whining, then he just goes for the all-0ut blow to Jackson's face. When that makes the annoying sound come even louder and more frequently, Alex just covers his ears and starts crying, "Make him stop! Make him stop!" (a few strategic blows to Jackson's head seem to work their way in there again.)

I feel so bad, because how do you tell an almost 15-month-old child who understands a dozen words to stop making that aggravating sound and leave his brother (and mother!) alone? Yah, ya don't. And my art of distraction that I was so good about with the first child? Well, I've totally lost the touch. I don't distract now, I just say, "Jackson, stop it right this instance!" As if he understands... ha. I even get the stern, mean voice, but that little stinker just looks at me and laughs. The nerve... *sigh*

So today, I'm loading the kiddos in the car, and Alex and Jackson are in there first. As I go back inside to get AJ, Jackson starts up with his I-know-this-really-bugs-Alex-and-gets-me-some-nice-reactions-and-attention scream. When I came back out, Alex said to me, near tears, "Mom, can we get rid of Jackson? I don't want him anymore." heh heh...

Yep, folks. I fear this is just the beginning of some fun fightin' years. Here we go...

Boys will be boys...

Well, I'm pretty sure that certain male characteristics are inborn. My boys have been true boys (in all senses) since the day they were born. The other day, Jackson did something that solidified this fact for me.

I was giving Jackson a bath. He's still in the baby tub, because the big tub freaks him out. So, he's lying back in the tub, kicking, splashing, talking, squealing, etc. He's quite loud, for those who know him, and he's always vocalizing and making a ruckus.

Well, all of a sudden, he stopped kicking and splashing, and he grew strangely silent. I looked at his face, and he had this little smirk on his face that grew to a giant, toothy grin. I looked at his whole body and, sure enough, some little bubbles came floating to the surface from his bottom.

Yep... the kid had just tooted. He knew it, and he knew that I knew it. He thought it was hilarious! I have to admit, I thought it was pretty funny too. Ah, boys... I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

Bouncing Baby Boys

We're getting all grown up. :)

They're officially "Toddlers"

My babes are walking. It's so dang cute. They officially toddle around with their little wobbly walk. I love this walk. It's so cute. Jackson is already growing out of the toddle and starting to cruise like a big boy. AJ is still in the tipsy stage. They sure love trying to keep up with their big brother. For the record: Jackson started walking about 3 weeks ago, and AJ started walking about 3 days ago. I'll get some video up here for Grandma in the next day or two.

Alex and I are headed off to Lagoon this afternoon. We're excited to ride the rides in the 95 degree heat! Woo hoo! Here's hoping he wants to go on more rides than just the carousel and the train... We'll see. Ciao!

When it rains...

Well, well... what a week. I guess when it rains, it pours.

It all started with an awful night on Sunday night (last week, the 15th). Andrew cried all night long. He didn't seem sick, he was just super upset for whatever reason. The poor kid probably got about 4 hours of sleep, compared to his usual 10 or 11. Mom and Dad got even less. Grrrr... This mama doesn't handle no sleep very well.

That night led to an ornery mom and an ornery Andrew on Monday morning - especially when AJ only took an hour morning nap. I honestly thought it would last about 3 hours. The babies were also off schedule, since AJ fell asleep for his morning nap at 8 a.m., about an hour after Jackson woke up for the morning. So, I figured we were doomed to a whole day of nap-taking. Once AJ woke up, I held Jackson off for his morning nap until lunch time. I figured by then that AJ would be ready to go back down again. Well, predictably so, Jackson was a tired mess by the time I got ready to put him down. I fed them both lunch (or tried... Jackson was so tired [or so I thought] that he didn't eat much) and put them down.

This is where it all becomes a blur...

Jackson started moaning after being down for about an hour. I'd go in there, and his eyes were closed, but he was crying. I don't think he even knew I was with him. Finally after about another 1/2 hour, he became quite upset, and I took him into my room and tried to see if he'd sleep next to me on my bed. He was quite agitated, but still had his eyes half-closed. Suddenly, yup you guessed it, he puked all over me, him, and my bed. YUCK. My very first thought was, "Oh great... how in the world am I going to handle two babies with stomach flu?" Andrew hadn't shown any signs of sickness besides his extreme fussiness and lack of sleep, but experience told me it was only a matter of time. A quick call was made to Daddy to "hurry and get home, there's puke everywhere!" and another call was made to Becky who angelically came running. I got everything cleaned up (while blessed AJ was finally sleeping a loooong nap) and Becky rocked a now feverish and miserable Jackson.

That night AJ woke up in the night and followed in his brother's yucky footsteps. Mark dealt with him while I put in my fourth load of puke laundry. (Sidenote - it was quite depressing to think that I'd done four loads of laundry and to see that the laundry baskets were still brimming with the regular laundry to wash... what a bugger.) Jackson woke up with problems on the other end, and once again, it was a long night. Luckily Mark was able to take Tuesday off, and we both just held feverish, fussy, clingy babies all day long. This whole time Alex was a trooper and on his best behavior in days. He did so well. I was just waiting for it to be his time however. Which leads me to Tuesday night....

Jackson went to bed with a 100 fever, and AJ 103. We loaded 'em up with ibuprofen and we all went to bed. At about 1 a.m., I hear Alex coughing. Poor kid didn't have the stomach flu, he had croup! He coughed, wheezed, and flipped out about his labored breathing until about 3 a.m. when I finally snuck into Jackson's room and got out the nebulizer and steroids that were stashed in there. It helped his breathing immensely but by then he was WIDE awake and wanted nothing to do with falling asleep. Luckily our feverish babes slept the whole night! yeah! Too bad the parents didn't.

Well, the flu hung on for a few days. On top of that, AJ got a horrible sinus infection (which he still is getting over). Jackson, of course, soon caught the cold, and we added that to our list of yuckies. Every night since, I've been up with someone at least twice a night. Our good sleeper, AJ, has been the worst sleeper ever. And then, of course, by Friday (or was it Thursday? like I said, all a blur...) I got the stomach flu. Oh joy! Luckily, I have an awesome family, and Aunt Wendy came and saved the day! She just jumped in and took great care of those babies and Alex while I spent the whole day in bed. sheesh.

Now it's the following Thursday, and last night was the first night that everyone slept thru the night in almost two weeks. Dare I say that we're finally kickin' these bugs? Maybe I ought not be so bold as to put in in black and white. The noses are still running green, the fussies are still hanging around, but I really think we're on the mend. My patience is about as long as a grain of rice, but that'll be my next project when I get a few nights of sleep under my belt. Ahhh...

So, thanks to all of you who helped, and thanks to my mommy for letting me cry over the phone one-too-many times. This motherhood can be good stuff sometimes, huh? The one thing that makes it all bearable? Those eternal cuddles from those sick babies. Too bad those only come with sickness, huh? Oh well, they sure were nice.

Picture of a picture

I'm in love with this sweet little, cheesy grin. This was one of my rewarding motherhood "moments." Love you boys!

First Haircuts

Andrew's shaggy-ness has prompted the dire need for haircuts for these boys. Thankfully my niece Jen came to the rescue. We set up shop in the garage, and away she clipped. AJ, in true form, sat very still and just sucked away on that lollipop. Jackson, also true to fashion, looked every which way and wondered who in the heck was touching his head. But, I'm happy with the outcome, and I really need to learn to do this myself. No patience. Anyway, here are the results!