The Stealth Poop

Henry surprised us tonight with a "stealth" poop. Andy and I each took a baby into their room to change their wet diapers. I was changing Ben on the changing table and Andy was changing Henry in his crib. All of I sudden I hear Andy behind me freaking out. Apparently Henry's diaper wasn't just wet. And since Andy didn't expect poop, he wasn't being very careful so poop got all over Henry and his onesie. So Andy took Henry's onesie off. Then a naked Henry, still covered in poop, fell onto the bed getting poop all over his sheets. At this point Andy decided it would be best to just take Henry into the bathroom and give him a bath. I scooped up Ben and took him in for a bath, too. There is no way I'm going to pass up an opportunity to have Andy bathe the boys. I've attached some pics of my boys enjoying their bathtime.

What a Week!

Wow! This has been a crazy and very hectic week for me. I have been in 5 different airports and 4 cities in the last 4 days. I left Tuesday morning to head to Phoenix for 2 days and returned to Dallas late Wednesday night. I was in Dallas for less than 12 hours, leaving Thursday morning to fly to San Antonio. I stayed in San Antonio last night, woke up this morning and flew to Houston, then flew home this afternoon. So I am very happy to be back home to see my boys.

Today was Rosalina's last day. I barely made it home in time to say goodbye. We have been so blessed to have her for the last year. She has made life with infant twins much easier for us. Everyone is always asking us how we make this look so easy - I think the correct answer is Rosalina! So it will be interesting to see how we do without her. I am sad though that the boys will not understand why she does not come back. I wish we could explain it to them.

So this means we are starting "school" (aka daycare) on Tuesday. I am both excited and worried about the upcoming week. I hope it does not take the boys long to get used to school. I think they will be pretty upset the first few days, but hopefully they will enjoy all of the activities that are in store for them. They will have music time, which I am so excited about, as well as Bible story time, playground time, nap time, etc.

Speaking of music, I am very anxious to move to a bigger house so I have room for a piano. I have been waiting and waiting to get a piano. And now that we have children, I really want to get one because I want them to be exposed to music in our house. So there was a clearance sale last week at Steinway Hall and I decided to go check it out. I know that Steinway is considered the best and is therefore expensive, but I wasn't prepared for the price tags I saw, even the sale price tags. If I could have my pick of any of the pianos there, it would be a basic black grand piano, probably around 6'. The clearance price was around $55,000 (regular price around $70,000). The cheapest Steinway grand was a used 5' piano for the bargain price of $35,000. So I guess I won't be getting a Steinway any time soon. Unless, of course, we win the lottery. But I guess we would have to buy a lottery ticket for that to happen. Maybe I should add a couple bucks a week into our budget for that.

Will We Ever Sell this House?

We have been trying to sell our house since we found out we were having twins. We put it on the market in February/March 2007 in an attempt to move before the twins were born. In June, when the traffic started to really pick up, I was admitted to the hospital for pre-term contractions. This was our first indication that the boys might be a little impatient and surprise us by coming earlier than we expected. We had ordered furniture for the nursery but were waiting to have it delivered hoping that we would be in a new house. So we had to make the difficult decision to take the house off the market and have the nursery furniture delivered. This was a good decision as the boys arrived about 2 weeks after the furniture was delived. Of course, they spent 6 weeks in the hospital but it was still a relief to know that we were ready for them to come home. Here are a couple of pictures of them shortly after they came home. It is hard to believe they were that small barely a year ago!

We put the house back on the market around Thanksgiving and have been waiting...and waiting...and waiting for an offer. After at least a hundred showings and a dozen or so open houses, we finally got our first offer last Saturday. It was ridiculous. Andy wanted to tell them "Thanks, but no thanks." But our wonderful realtor Janet urged us to counter. So we did. And then they countered our counter and we countered again. On Wednesday, it looked like we were finally going to have a contract on our house. I had looked at a couple of houses on Saturday and found the perfect house for us to buy. So Janet typed up an offer, which Andy and I signed. Just before Janet sent our offer to the seller's realtor, the potential buyer for our house called and said that her husband had just lost his job and they were withdrawing their offer. Seriously? After over a year of trying to sell our house, we get this close and it falls apart? Is this a cruel joke? So now we are back to playing the waiting game. This sucks. I'm so tired of having strangers come look at my house. It's not an open exhibit people! Don't bother me during dinner or my babies' nap time unless you are seriously considering buying my house. If it is out of your price range, don't bother coming to see it. If you want 2 or more bathrooms, go somewhere else.

So now that I have vented about the whole house situation, it's time to talk about everyone's favorite subject - Ben and Henry, aka the Little Escape Artists! Since we haven't baby-proofed the whole house (I keep thinking that we will sell the house and move so it doesn't make sense to spend $$ and time baby-proofing this one), we keep the boys confined to the living room. We have a baby-gate between the living room and dining room and keep the door to the front bedroom closed. The boys are always trying to escape. If you open the door to the bedroom they make a beeline for it to try to get through before it closes. So Thursday night, Andy and I were in the kitchen making dinner. I heard the familiar sound of two little boys crawling along the hardwood floor, but it sounded like they were getting closer. I looked up to see them both crawling down the hallway. How did they get out of the living room? Andy and I went to get them and take them back in there. We found the door to the front bedroom open and their little fire truck at the door. Our best guess is that Ben, our little climber, pushed the fire truck up to the door and used it to climb up and reach the doorknob. He has figured out that he can climb on the fire truck to reach the window and t.v., so why not the doorknob, too? One more thing for us to have to watch for!

Now for our big news - Ben took his first steps yesterday. Henry has been walking for a few weeks now, but Ben has been content with crawling and cruising. A few times I have seen him thinking about walking a couple of steps but then he decides against it. Yesterday afternoon I came home and Rosalina was in the living room with the boys. Ben looked up at me and then walked a couple of steps to Rosalina. Then he looked back at me and just grinned. He was so proud of himself. So I'm sure it won't be long before he is running circles around Henry.

My Little Smurfs

I finally have some pictures of the boys' first birthday to post. Gee and Pops (my parents) came to visit so I was able to download pictures from my mom's camera. I didn't end up taking any pictures that day with my camera because my hands were full. So anyway, here they are.

We had their party in our backyard on July 5 so it was pretty hot. To keep the kiddos entertained and cool, we filled up the baby pool and let them swim. We have discovered that Ben is our little fish - he doesn't care how cold the water is, he will stay in there all day. Henry prefers to sit outside the pool and splash and chew on the pool toys.

Ben and Henry's first friends from their days in the NICU, Luke and Jacob Patterson, came to the party and enjoyed the pool as well. In the photo, Luke is playing with the bucket in the pool.

Other party guests included all of the boys' cousins, including little Hayley, their buddy Mason, and neighbor Matilda.

For their first birthday cake, I decided to get one of those cupcake cakes that is really lots of cupcakes put together and iced as one big cake. I had them shape it like a big cupcake with a candle on it to match the invitations. It turned out really cute. Then I had two individual cupcakes for the boys to eat. They had blue icing so my two little angels looked like smurfs when they were done. We took them straight from their high chairs to the pool in the backyard to wash off the blue icing from their faces, hands, and bellies. All in all, it was a great first birthday and I think everyone had a good time.

Get with the program!

So I finally decided to start a blog. I've been thinking about it for a while. I enjoy reading other people's blogs, but wasn't sure if I should create my own. Lots of reasons for my hesitancy - 1) do I really want my life to be an open book for all to read? 2) I'm not sure I'll really stick with it. 3) I hate writing. 4) I'm too busy to add anything else to my "to do" list.



So why am I doing this? I'm still not sure, but I guess I'll give it a try. I hope to find some time this weekend to actually make this page look good. And maybe I'll add some photos. For now, here's a somewhat recent picture of my boys.