Bubble Wrapped

Bubbles. They like Evelyn.

She's kind of oblivious to them.
Would rather grab the camera.
"They don't dare stick to me."

Keeping Things In

Lately Elijah is not too sure about what eating is really all about. This is nothing new...*shudders at memories of those first weeks of trying to get him to nurse.* But I never thought the problems would be 1) a complete lack of hand-mouth coordination, and 2) a compulsion to shove anything that looks tasty on his tray into his mouth at once and then find he has too much in his mouth to swallow resulting in very little food actually staying in his mouth and thus his stomach.

We have had some success though, had a great couple of days with black beans for instance. The obsession has now passed but I got some good pictures first.

YUM!

"I suppose I'll humor you and eat these...today."

He's a fan of false hope.

"Hm, I wonder what this'll do to my nice, white, cloth diapers?!"

"My mouf if vewy fwull"

For Lack of Pictures

I haven't been very good about taking pictures lately, seems like anytime we do something noteworthy I'm too busy with Thing 1 and 2 to snap some photos. So here's a brief update on the twinners as I watch them quite animatedly argue over a toy. Thankfully one of them usually gives up fairly easily and goes to play with something else. I can only hope this amiable relationship lasts...forever.
Crawling/Cruising/Walking...what?!
That's right, we have all three of those modes of transport going on right now. Elijah is now a pro at crawling, he lost the "wounded solider" look about a month ago. Now he reminds me of a bug, he scuttles across the floor with arms in a wide stance, and he's fast! I can also hear him coming a mile away because he's totally a pounder.
Evelyn on the other hand is crawling about 30% of the time, walking about 40% of the time and cruising on furniture the remaining 30%. I just love watching her walk, every once in awhile she gets excited and tries to run, or takes two big steps and then 10 itty bitty ones in an effort to get there quicker, but most of the time she just determinedly places one foot in front of the other until she arrrives at her destination! This morning it was so cute to watch them in their matching pjs, Eli crawling across the living room with Evie walking along right behind him.
Naps
We're down to two naps, have been for a couple months, and this two nap thing is working fairly well. While I welcome the days that we only have one nap to schedule around, I am wary of losing that precious hour or so in the morning to gather my thoughts and prepare for the day.
And finally: Cedar Point, Iowa, Adventureland, Oh MY!
In the last week we've just had all kinds of fun. The kids spent their first two nights at Grandma Lori's house while mama went to Cedar point with the TCC youth group. Then, after being home for 2 days we headed off for Iowa to visit family and go to a cousin's wedding. Needless to say the mode of transport- minivan was not our first choice, but the kids were troupers and mama only had one small breakdown from feeling like I was torturing my kids by keeping them in carseats/strollers for 8+ hours a day! It was great to see the Iowan relatives that we only get to see once a year, if that, and spend time with the cousin-friends :)
It's been a busy week, I'm looking forward to a little bit slower one!!

The End of An Era

Everybody's saying it..."The End of An Era." I laughed at first, quietly, to myself, shook my head....

But I admit it, it really is the end of an era. The first book came out in 1997...I was 13. I think I read the first one at 15 and then saw the first movie which came out in 2001. There have been a lot of kids series that have come and gone, gained popularity and then fizzled out, but I think what HP had going for it was that the movies are seriously some of the best-made based-on-a-book movies I have ever seen.

I know this, because before every movie came out I reread the book, at least the most recent one, if not the whole series. For the record I do this with a lot of books/movies, not just HP. The director of the original movie (Chris Columbus) also did an excellent job of casting the characters. Never has a person entirely in my mind looked so much like their counterpart on the big screen.

Anyways back to the "era:" by the time the last book was published in 2007 those who had read the book as tweens or teens were well into college or even post-college life. In the amount of time it has taken to the entire series to finally come to an end I have: graduated high school, travelled to many different countries, worked at least 8 jobs, fallen in love, gotten married, bought a house, had two children...and so have, I would point out, the characters in the books/movies. The final scene of the last book shows the main characters grown, married, and with school-aged children of their own. Why wouldn't people my age feel that they had literally grown up and/or come of age with these characters?

I'm not blogging to prove any kind of point, this is just the kind of thing I really do like to write about when I can take a break from adorable twin-pics. I have caught myself from time to time genuinely feeling like I know these people, like how could I not? I've "known" them since 1997- longer than I've known my husband!

It was truly an odd dynamic watching the last movie on Sunday night. Having read the books I was fully aware of what the ending would be, I also knew there were some very abstract scenes and ideas in the last book that would be extremely hard to pull off in a concrete world. I think they did a decent job. There were some things that I could view with a grain of salt that a person who hadn't read the books (Andy, for instance) would say was just plain weird. But there was also a real sense of finality, excitement, even pride, at how far the characters had come and how amazing the relationships and really entire storyline came together.

Well thats it. Call me a super-freak, super-fan, super-dork, but I for one am honestly going to miss these characters and there is a bit of sadness moving forward knowing that we'll never "see" these people again, not in a new movie that is. We'll all have to deal with what will come for our favorite actors, the mistakes they'll make (let's all stay out of rehab guys, that celebrity drug thing is getting kinda old), the bad choices they'll make in future casting calls...

Thankfully I maintain that these books and movies are harmless. I will read them to my kids one day, and show them the movies, when the convincing special effects will be hopelessly out of date. But hopefully they will get caught up in it just like I did, the "magic" of it.

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, it really is the end of an era.

On My Soapbox

In the past 3 years I have dealt with a lot, and I mean A LOT of phone and triage nurses. First there were the long months of fertility treatments which meant calling sometimes daily to talk to a nurse about cycles, medications, ultrasounds, etc. Then there was the pregnancy- obviously I had more appointments to schedule because it was a multiple pregnancy, but I also had plenty of questions as it was my first pregnancy period. Now I call the pediatrician on a regular basis- double because there are two kids (take how many times you had to call your pediatrician's office in the first year of your kid's life, then add a second kid...), and even more because of all Evelyn's ear infections.
I feel I can now say, without a doubt, that there are very few of them I like to deal with. I'm not a snob, at least I don't think I am....maybe I should take a poll....anyways....but I do feel like I should be treated with respect when I call. Am I wasting your time by calling? Would you prefer I found another doctor? Would you like to find out something terrible happened because I didn't want to call and bother you?! I will say that the Fertility Center had generally wonderful customer service. I can think of reasons for why that may be: you're more of a "customer or client" than a patient since most of their procedures are optional, much of their clientele probably IS a little higher class than a regular doctor's office, etc. but should it matter!? I don't care if I'm being completely ridiculous, emotional, or utterly thick when I call....a doctor's office should care and listen to it's clients and serve them as quickly as possible.
You may be wondering what set me off. Maybe you're not but I'll tell you anyway- I called my pediatrician's office around 8am, talked to a nurse, told her everything I'd tried for Evelyn's stubborn yeast rash (including the "magic butt cream" recipe they'd given me). A few hours later I called back and said while they were asking the doctor the first question I would also like to know if Evelyn constantly putting her head down on the floor and crying meant nothing or possibly that her ear infection is still hanging around. The doc has mentioned needing to know if her infections are actually going away or if it's all just one long one so I figured this could be helpful info.


....


At 3pm a chipper nurse called and said: "I just spoke to Dr. _____ (not my normal doc) and he said it's probably just water and to watch her a couple days."

Silence.

Me: "Oh, you mean her ears. Ok, I can do that (though she's already been doing it for several days which I told the nurse and which is why I asked)....but did he/she say anything about the rash?"

Silence.

"What rash?"

Me: "Well, that was the reason I called. She has a yeast rash, it's very bad, she is very uncomfortable."

Silence.

"Oh! Well there's nothing here about that, but you can use the Magic Butt..."

I interrupted- "I already tried that, I told the nurse that this morning (during our five minute conversation), it didn't do anything (and also wasn't cheap), so I need another option."

Frustrated sigh...."Ok, I'll ask the doctor."

Me, Annoyed at this point: "That's fine, and will you also tell him that I think it's important that she is constantly laying her head on the ground and crying? She has had 5 ear infections in as many months and we never know if it's more than one or one long one. She has been doing this head thing for quite awhile and I'm tired of just throwing antibiotics at her if we don't know they are working."

She told me to keep watching her and call back in a couple days. Fine.

At 4pm I got another call, they'd called a script in for a rash cream. I applied it at 5pm. At 7pm the rash is still there but SIGNIFICANTLY less red and obviously a ton less painful.
Was that so hard?!

I'm still not thrilled because I'll probably have to call again when she continues to cry and lay her head on the floor every few minutes, but at least the rash is clearing up.

All of that said, if you are a triage nurse, try to remember that your clients are dealing with sick, fussy, innocent babies. They are moms, just like you, who might have more education than you do! I'm sure you deal with all kinds of people, many of them frustrating and ignorant, but that doesn't mean we all are AND....the customer is always right ;)

Dirty Girl in The Heights

We grilled dinner last night, steaks marinated overnight in Baja Chipotle Marinade with a little Old Hickory Smoked Salt. The sauce was tasty, the steaks were not the greatest cut, but anywho. This mama got sick of Daddy getting to escape outside for an hour while he gets the grill ready and then cooks the food. So once all the prep work was done I gathered up the kids and threw out a beach blanket to sit on so we could enjoy the nice weather and grilling out in the neighborhood.

It was nice and relaxing. If you call repeatedly reprimanding Evelyn for trying to touch the grill, climb the cement stairs, and beat up her brother, relaxing.

My favorite part? The fact that nobody likes crawling on cement so they both adopted the Mowgli Walk to get around, but Evie perfected it:

What you can't tell is that her hot-pink painted toes are scratched and covered with dirt, and everything from her forehead down has a light spackling of green beans and carrots.

"Who me? Getting into trouble and dirty as a little piglet? Not so."

"Daddy loves me, we are working on an advertisement for Alger Heights."

What Not/To Wear

I recently ordered an adorable "petti-romper" for Evelyn to wear in her one-year pictures. I'd been eyeing them for quite awhile and had contacted the seller about getting them with straps (she stocks chiffon rompers with straps but only lace ones without, I wanted the lace one with straps because my girl is not going to go strapless until she's 40...I jest...kinda).
Anyways the seller (TheTrendyTutu on Facebook) just decided to place a one-time order from her supplier for lace rompers with straps. I jumped on it, and have one of these adorable little outfits coming in "dusty pink," a purply-pink color that looks very vintage. Here is her stock photo (minus the straps and in a different color).























Now I just need to find an outfit for Eli. The complication of course is that their birthday is in October, and so, unless we have awesome weather like last year, a sleeveless bodysuit is not exactly weather-appropriate. This is not a problem as I inted to do indoor pictures, but I can't exactly dress Elijah in a fancy little sweater and pants or they'll look like they are from completely different season. So I'm on the lookout for a cute, coordinating outfit for my little guy.

That being said, I know I will not be dressing him like this:

























We did the bowtie thing once and it was very sweet but I prefer a little more...clothing.
No worries.