The Longest of Weeks

Even the good weeks with twins are long.  

This past week was not particularly good.  It was especially long.  Like El-Oh-En-Gee LONG.

Maybe we were spoiled with the nice weather from a couple weeks ago, but I got used to taking them out of the house twice a day: errand in the morning, walk and/or park in the afternoon, or just going outside on the deck to eat a snack and crawl around for a bit, and then BAM!  Hi!  You live in the Midwest!  Mother Nature decided to remind us of that this week with cold (but probably closer to normal) temperatures and some March snow.  Yay!  I don't care if this happens every year, March snow is always a disappointment.  Not that I can't take them out of the house just because it snowed (hello, I grew up in Minnesota), but that automatically took away our walk/park option.  And they were used to going outside and decided that it was their New Most Favorite Thing Ever so they now  constantly look longingly at the patio door, and reach for the handle hopefully.

Though we were actually shut-ins here for the better part of Monday and Tuesday because Caden decided to get pink-eye, so he was super contagious like omg don't let him around other people srsly.  (I would like to report, for the record, that neither Tyson, I, nor Brooklyn, aka the one who shares the same pacifiers and sippy cups and slobbers on all the same toys as him, have gotten pink-eye.  I mean, I tried to keep their things separate for the first day or so, but try telling a 13-month old that, "No, you can't drink out of the green cup because yours is the red cup even though they otherwise look exactly the same and I usually let you drink out of whatever darn cup you want because there is only so much I can police but Caden is sick and highly contagious with germs today so don't even touch it!" It...doesn't work very well.)

Then Tyson has a paper deadline this coming week, before Easter, and he basically becomes a hibernating-one-track-mind-shut-in-typing-typing-typing-maniac before a paper is due.  I mean, even more than he usually is.  So...he's not exactly a help right now.  Or not much, anyway. We will all breathe a sigh of relief when this paper is done.  (But wait! Then he has to write his thesis in a time span of less than a month.  Nvm.)

And these two have been pretty clingy lately.  I've spent about five times longer putting together items to distract them than they've actually spent distracted.  I get them interested in an activity, after at least ten minutes of one or the other or both (pushing and shoving) on my lap, and sneak away to get approximately 3.5 dishes unloaded from the dishwasher before I see a little head peering around the corner.  Or, more accurately, hearing the whines as someone crawls along to discover where I am.

Oh, and then Brooklyn decided to start cutting two more teeth.

But!

Looking here, I guess we had more fun than I thought.



(Fingerpainting has made a comeback.)




(A rare moment of peek-a-boo with Dada.)


(Lots of walking practice.)



(Apparently pants were optional around here.)








(Grand tour of our local libraries this week, just to get out of the freaking house.  For free.)

Even through the longest of weeks...the dishes might not be clean, the laundry might not be folded, dinner might be more on the quick-and-easy side of things, mommy's patience might have left two days ago, Tyson and I might not have had a real conversation (him trying to explain his paper to me doesn't count)but...the kids are all right.

Twins One Year Photos

Some of my favorites from Caden and Brooklyn's one-year photo shoots...

(Yes, shoots.  Plural. The first one didn't go so well (besides the cake smash part), so our wonderful photographer offered to come to our home to get some more shots in.  I'm so glad we did!)


(The following sequence is fantastic...)






"Caden bit my finger!"




(Goofballs!  The both of 'em!)




 

 

 

 

(Super Caden.)




"Ta-da!"


(...or not.)








(What...is...this?)



(I'll try some...)





Frosting lips.  Oh yes.  That's as good a note to end on as any.

Post Weekend

Tulips!  Day one vs. day two:

 

(Brought to me by Tyson.  With a little assistance from my possibly over-aggressive hinting that: Hey! It's spring!  That means it's time for tulips.  I like tulips!  They're my favorite!  I saw tulips at the store just down the street today!  Did you get me any tulips yet?  Just...go buy some tulips.)

To keep with our tulip-y spring theme, we went to a family spring EGG-stravaganza omg!!! this weekend.  It was...okay.  Might have been more fun if these two were a little older, and there were lines for EVERYTHING.  Plus I forgot how pushy people are when their precious snowflake children are involved, and there were a lot of parents who jumped in front of us for activities, prodding their kids forward to things we were clearly waiting for.  And they call this current generation of children entitled!  Gee, how can that be?!?

But looking back at pictures, I think Caden and Brooklyn had some fun anyway.


(Most of the pictures I took of these two with Tyson looked like this, because Caden kept dropping his blue Easter egg.  Gravity!)


 

Caden: What are my idiot parents doing to me now?  This is stupid and slightly terrifying. Brooklyn: Is there a...person...in there?

We went outside for the Easter egg hunt.  Though I would use the term "hunt" loosely, since the eggs were just scattered all over the wide-open spread of artificial turf.

 

Which was fine by us-all these two wanted to do was put the same handful of eggs in, and take them back out of their basket anyway.  Over and over and over again...




Woah!  The same yellow egg I just put in my basket a second ago!  Amazing!

 

Better put it back in the basket for safekeeping.

 

(And take it back out, and put it back in, etc., etc., etc...)






Other than that, we had a pretty lazy weekend.

Watched some basketball...



Read some books...


(Shown: Blue Hat, Green Hat, one of Brooklyn's favorites.  And mine and Tyson's.  Silly turkey!)

And just hung around looking cute...



Oh, and remember how this post started with tulips?

Well, this is today (hint, look out the window):


 Happy spring!


Thirteen Months




(Oh the faces these two make.)  (And Caden's eyebrows.  The eyebrows!)

Eat.  Three meals a day (7 am, 11 am, 5 pm) and 1-2 snacks (3 pm and sometimes one in the am).  These two continue to eat pretty much the same as Tyson and I.  Caden in particular will eat anything and everything, and I haven't seen him turn away food unless he is full. Brooklyn is only slightly more particular.  I can tell more what her "favorites" are (cheese, blueberries, bananas,  eggs,  pasta, any kind of meat), and sometimes she has a vendetta against veggies for a  few days.  She otherwise eats just fine, and neither one could be described as "picky"!

Sleep.  Bedtime at 7 pm, sleep for about 11-12 hours.  Naps at 9 am and 1 pm, though starting to switch to one nap starting at noon.  Turning one has definitely helped these two with their sleep!  Brooklyn in particular is a champion sleeper, and regularly sleeps for a straight twelve hour stretch through the night.  Caden is more prone to waking once or twice, but usually settles down quickly, and will also sleep through the night.  They are getting much better at putting theselves back to sleep when they wake up-I've watched each of them on the baby monitor seemingly wide awake, sitting or standing up in their cribs, but the next time I check they are laying down, fast asleep.  They were taking two naps until this past week.  Caden seems to be more inclined to nap twice a day (it's about a 50/50 chance if he'll go down in the morning or not), but Brooklyn is definitely moving to one nap.  If Caden sleeps in the morning, I put her in her crib for some "quiet time", which she actually does really well with.  Four out of the past five days, though, both have gone down for a nap at noon and slept for a good 1.5-2 hours.

Play.  These two continue to be very active.  They bounce from one thing to the next and nothing holds their attention for long.  With the warmer weather their favorite thing is to be outside, and they love going bye-bye.  In fact, I have to refrain from saying "bye-bye" in front of them until right before we need to leave, or they immediately begin looking for their shoes and socks, and hand them to me to put on their feet, before crawling and pointing at the door.  They are RELENTLESS about going out the door once they are ready with their shoes and jackets on.  I made the mistake of saying "bye-bye" about ten minutes too soon the other day, so we just left early and drove around for a bit.  They like leaving the house in general, and it's actually really easy to take them to Target or the grocery store because they love looking at everything and seeing all the people.  We leave a couple of books in the car for them to look at while we drive, and they immediately grab for them, almost before they are even seated in their car seats.  It's interesting to see their little minds and memories working and latching onto routines.

Brooklyn is becoming much more vocal, and in the past week has been constantly babbling strings of syllables that sound almost like words...but not quite.  If you ask her what sound a cow makes she will happily say "Mmmmmmmm".  They don't otherwise say much for actual words yet, sometimes "mama" and "dada", and they will try to mimic words if they are in the right mood.

Caden continues to enjoy putting objects in containers, and taking them back out.  He's actually become quite the helper with laundry, and will sit on the floor handing me items from the laundry basket while I put them away.  He's fascinated with the shape-sorter and the mailbox on their toy "house", and takes things in and out of it all day long.

Both of them also enjoy rolling balls on our kitchen floor (one of the only hard surfaces in our apartment), and will also play "catch" by rolling or throwing a ball back and forth-they're pretty good at it, too!  They are also getting better at walking, and will walk across an entire room if encouraged.  Hopefully they figure this walking-on-their-own thing out very soon, since otherwise their preferred method of transportation is to be steered around the room while holding onto mine and Tyson's fingers.  This works okay (if somewhat exhausting and cutting off the circulation-ing) when Tyson is around, but less well when only one of us is home...








(Proof that Caden indeed has hair.)








Twins: 1 Photo-taking Mom: 0

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This wee lad and lassie are wearin' a bit o' the green(ish) to celebrate.  These were the best photos I could get as proof:


Uh, guys?  My camera is over here.


I know Caden is looking at the TV, but...Brooklyn?


 Seriously, what are you even looking at?

This is how 95% of the photos turned out:


And this one is probably my favorite:


Though that's probably the only one where Brooklyn actually looked at the camera.  She otherwise went back to ignoring me.


Yeesh.  Taking all these pictures is exhausting work.



Jeez, mom, move.  You're blocking the TV.