I Am A Horrible Mother

That's the truth of it, and because of it, I'm sure my kids are going to get beat up at school all the time.

We went to music class today, and in walked these adorable fraternal twin girls, in red heart covered skirts, pink shirts, tights and black dress shoes. It was at that point I realized it was Valentine's Day. I looked over at my boys in their green and blue shirts, jeans, not a speck of red (or pink) on them.

These poor boys are going to be those kids in elementary school wearing the paper shamrocks pinned to their shirts by teachers so they don't get pinched on St. Patrick's Day.

I sure hope that before it really counts, I can start relating to dates and days to months. Right now my brain works like this, WAP (Mon.), OT/EI (Tues.), Aquarium (Wed.), Music Class (Thurs.), Farmer's Market (Fri..), repeat, or I do the how many more days until Scott is home for the weekend countdown.

Maybe I should keep a stack of holiday stickers in the glove compartment to be safe.

Fun in the Sun

We are so lucky to live here. First of all, it's been near 80 for the past week, and then there's all the fun activities we have at our disposal. We went to the Wild Animal Park on Monday, we've been going almost every week now, and we have our little pattern. We go run around Condor Ridge (thanks Jen for the suggestion!), we spend some time walking out to the Elephant Outlook, we hit the petting zoo, the ducks, the meerkats and depending on time, we may go see the gorillas. I think we need to add something new to our repertoire because while I was looking at this... The boys were more interested in this...
While we were at the Park, we ran into fellow twin and NICU mom's Lindsay and Jen. Lindsay and I had a play date scheduled for our boys on Wednesday, so we just said a quick hello and goodbye.

Wednesday had us at the Aquarium, another one of our weekly haunts, with Lindsay and her identical twin boys, Tyler and Dylan. Our four boys had tons of fun, playing with the plastic sea stars, lobsters and shrimp, but the highlight of the day was most definitely the puddle of water. I tried to get some pictures of all four boys, playing together, but trying to get the faces of four toddlers running in four different directions is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. At least they are all in the frame, almost. Tyler and Dylan are just a couple of weeks older than us, born at 29 weeks. We met Lindsay and Jamie before all of our boys were born during our tour of the hospital. Lindsay just wrote about this chance meeting in her blog. I said the same thing to Scott, hand slapping my forehead, "We should have gotten their phone number!" I thought at the time that we had missed an opportunity to make friends with someone else with twins, someone who would be able to relate to what we were going through!
Little did we know that two short months later we would all meet again. Scott remembers far better than I, as I was doped up on Magnesium Sulfate, the worst drug ever. Mag Sulfate leaves you, or left me, totally oblivious to everything. I felt like I was drunker than drunk. While I was on hospital bed rest, I'd stare up at the ceiling and everything would move. I couldn't focus on anything, I couldn't read, I could barely watch television. I know I talked to a ton of people on the phone, and had lots of visitors, but those conversations are just fuzzy and distant memories.

I digress...So, after the sudden arrival of Axel and Outlaw, I was promptly put back on Mag Sulfate, my first visit with my boys was while I was drugged and stupid. We also ran into Lindsay and Jamie when I was drugged and stupid. I remember Jamie coming over and talking to Scott, I remember smiling and nodding, I remember asking Scott, "who was that?" I remember a few days later, not so drugged and not so stupid, having a conversation with Lindsay and Jamie. They were so kind, they offered a hand of support when we needed it the most. They were NICU veterans by this time (two weeks ahead of us), they gave us suggestions, offered their experience as guide, their hands in support, even as they were going through their own struggle.
I don't think you can begin to understand what a difference it makes to have someone reach out to you when you are drowning in a sea of the unknown. And now, all of that struggle for life behind us, it is beyond wonderful to see our four boys running (even when they are supposed to be holding their Mommy's hands), laughing, screaming, playing, and being little boys. It's hard to believe that a little more than two years ago, all of those things were just distant hopes and dreams.

There's Something About Mary

Our Early Intervention teacher made us a bunch of laminated pictures of the family. I've been showing the boys pictures of everyone and naming them. We've had a strong emphasis on those family members joining us for February Sweeps.

Both boys have become quite adept at picking out the correct family member when asked. It's really not a fluke when they are right 95% of the time, so I'm convinced that they really do recognize the clan.

Last night, I showed the boys a picture, and asked, "Who is this?" and RYAN, my silent Ryan, said "mar" and Evan looked at him and said "Mae-Mae". I did not call blog about this immediately last night because, with babies learning to speak, it could all be a lucky coincidence of consonant/ vowel combinations.

So tonight, another test, and tonight another "Mae-Mae" from Evan.

Driven to Distraction

Scatterbrains, that is really the only way to describe myself these days. Formerly, I was this ultra organized, extreme multi-tasker extraodinaire. These days, I can't seem to keep a single thought in my head, I leave one room to do something, and get three steps away and can't for the life of me remember what I was doing, or I'll start one thing, and get side tracked on to another, never to finish the first thing, or I'll forget to take my ATM card out of the machine, and then forget I had even gone to the bank when the nice person from the bank called to tell me I'd forgotten my card. That being said, this post, like so many others may jump from topic to topic randomly. Welcome to what it is like in my brain.

Our second round of February visitors arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Great-Grammie Abby and Nana (Cindy). Grammie hasn't seen the boys since June, and for Cindy it's been since Christmas. We had some fun activities planned for their visit, but most importantly, we planned time when we did nothing but play. We played so hard that the boys had to be rousted out of deep sleep after 3 hour naps.

It has been spectacularly beautiful here, we've had weather in the high 70's all week. It was especially beautiful in La Jolla at the Aquarium. We love this place. I think we go once every 10 days or so, sometimes more often. The boys love to play with the fake lobster, shrimp, sea stars, and shells. Evan especially love to stick his hand in the tidepools and touch the sea stars and sea cucumbers. Ryan prefers the plastic variety. With Nana and Grammie in tow, we enjoyed all the Aquarium had to offer, with a strong emphasis on the outdoor activities.

I didn't have my camera handy for this, but we have a big slide very close to the house. We've gone over to it occasionally, and the boys love it. It's not something I can do by myself. Some one has to be at the ladder, with each boy, it's really big, and once you send one boy down, he's bound to come running around to the ladder again and start climbing before you can get the other boy down. So it is really a two person operation. Cindy and I took the boys over one afternoon, Ryan must have gone down this slide 30 or 40 times. It wasn't long before he realized that he could turn around at the bottom and yell and scream and point "request" that Cindy join him at the bottom of the slide, via the slide. It was really cute and funny, and I think Cindy made at least 20 trips down the slide herself.

Ryan tried to feed Nana potato pancake. And Evan says, no, if I can't see you then you can't leave! We had such a nice visit with Grammie and Nana. Visits are always too short and we are sad to see our family go home. Grammie had a great time watching the boys interact. She got a kick out of our "ritual" (or how we get Evan to open his mouth to eat) of singing at mealtimes. Sorry again for me being out of tune! and best of all, the boys got some wonderful quality time with their Grammie and Nana.



Sunday we went to the Zoo with our friend Tobin and his Dad Philip. I of course didn't take any fun pictures of us, because that would require me remembering to take out the camera and do so. I did remember to take these photos.

Why you ask?

We are still working on being out of the stroller in public, so today we would move from exhibit to exhibit in the stroller and in relatively controlled environments, let the boys out, to hold our hands as we walked or looked at the animals. It was getting pretty near lunch time, and both boys wanted water, (did I mention it was almost 80 degrees at the Zoo today?) I gave them their cups. I was walking with Evan, and he became distracted and no longer wanted to carry his cup. So, I had his hand with one hand, and his cup with the other, we were standing on Monkey Trails right up against the wire fence. Mind you, I could see it all happening in slo-mo. Evan was sticking his leg through the wire, his heel on the lowest wire. Just as I was getting "Evan, we don't..." out of my mouth, yep his shoe went flying. Down, Down, Down. My reflexes were not even close to being able to catch it before it went over. We then spent the next 15 minutes looking in the bushes trying to find this brown shoe, in amongst bark and mulch. No luck. Scott climbed over the barrier that keeps Zoo guest a safe distance from the animals. No luck. Finally, on one last attempt, we tried to estimate the trajectory of the shoe from above.

So the first picture is the bush where we FINALLY found the shoe. And the second, I'm pretty sure that's the guy that tried to attack Scott as he was climbing through the bushes, yes, that is why they have that buffer zone between the guest and the animals.

Before we hit the freeway, this was the cuteness in the backseat. The upside of all this out of stroller activity? VERY tired boys.

February Sweeps

In the world of Television, February is a big month. Every quarter the industry re-asseses their ad rates. So in February, May, August, November the networks and the affiliates pull out all the stops and try and attract viewers. This is when you will be most likely to see "A very special episode of..." or a string of guest stars or the long awaited return of a hugely popular show.

In our world this February is going to be a bit like sweeps in that we'll be having a string of very special guests.

Sweeps started off this weekend with a visit from Maric.

The boys love Maric. Ryan, loves Eric. He's really bonded with his Uncle. It's really amazing to see, it's been since Christmas, yet as soon as Ryan saw Eric, his face lit up, and I think he started making gestures to be held. Ryan really loves people. He really seems to know the people in his life that love him and he is always so comfortable in their presence.Evan is also really starting to be more comfortable with people that aren't his Mom and Dad. He still makes sure we are around, but as long as we are near, he is good. (Ya-Ya has to be close by too or he will start calling for him. "Ya-Ya, Ya-Ya,Ya-Ya!")

We had such a nice weekend of eating, (Ryan also ate two pieces of pizza from Pizza Port this weekend!!! I won't even begin to think it, but, breakthrough???) wandering the horse trails, and riding the escalator up and down, and up and down, and up and down. (Who knew that we could milk hours of enjoyment out of escalator rides?)

Visits from Maric always end too soon and leave us hoping they will be back soon, but because this month is sweeps, our next guest stars arrive tomorrow.

No Explanation Necessary*

*For those of you that require an explanation, we are at Phil's BBQ, Ryan is chewing on a rib bone, and yes, he ate his first baby back tonight, with gusto. I guess he does belong to us.

ALWAYS Take Time

to stop, even with twins, and smell the flowers.