Happy THIRD Birthday!!

Look who turned 3 today!!! As luck would have it, this was the best picture we took of the two of them together!

The rest looked like this:







Can't you tell how interested they were in having their picture taken?

Fun Birthday Party Post coming soon!!

My twins: Age 2

I want to be able to remember what my kids are like right now. We are in the last days of being two. Another year has zoomed by, so I want to be sure that I can remember (or look back and read) about what my kids were like at this age. So this is a "what they are up to" post:


Phillip Rush: Age 2

Personality and playtime:
Rush has the sweetest heart and personality. He is easy-going unless you try to mess around with his cars. Then, he is considerably less friendly. He tells us he loves us all the time. He can be a little bit of a brown-noser. If his sister gets in trouble, he likes to point out to us all of the good things that he is doing and how he isn't doing any bad things. For example, "Teeta not being sweet. I being sweet, Mama. I sweet and I don't make you sad. Like Teeta do. I not saying sassy words like Teeta. I wuv you, Moooom." With that being said, he loves his sister very much, and he still calls her Teeta. His favorite toys are his cars and trucks. He likes anything related to cars and trucks. He also loves Buzz Lightyear and specifically asked for a "big Buzz" for his birthday. (He is getting one.) Rush is content to sit and play by himself, and I think he would prefer to do this most of the time. (He doesn't get a chance to do that very much because his Teeta has a different idea of how they should spend their time.) He really likes to watch TV, and he would really probably watch it all day if we would put on the movies that he likes. His current favorite shows are: The Backyardigans and Wow, Wow Wubbzy. His best buddy at daycare is J.R.

Learning:
Rush is a fast learner, and he has a great memory. I am sometimes surprised at how much he can remember. He does not like to "impress" us with how much he knows. If we try to get him to tell us what he has learned at daycare, he will often say, "I don't know." If you can get him to interact with you so that he doesn't feel like he is being quizzed, he will talk and tell you about what he is learning. He knows his colors and can count (although he usually won't). His favorite color is green. He knows some letters of the alphabet by sight. We use letters in the bathtub at night to talk about letters. Sue Sue also uses the "Letter People" curriculum with them at daycare. If you name a letter, he can usually tell you someone's name from his family that starts with that letter. Rush enjoys listening to someone read to him. His favorite books are about Curious George... especially "Curious George and the Dump Truck." (Pronounced dunk trunk by Rush...)

P.S. Rush is completely potty-trained for both day and night. We are working on being more independent when he goes now. He still needs help getting his clothes pulled back into place after he gets finished.

Eating and sleeping:
He can be a really picky eater. If you fix something he likes, he will eat an adult-sized portion and then some, but if he doesn't like what we are having, he just won't eat it. I will admit that we have resorted to bribing him with yogurt and cookies at the end of his meals if he will eat. I don't care, and I don't feel bad. I just want him to eat. :-) His favorite foods are pancakes, bread, and well... that's about it. He will eat other things like grilled cheese, muffins, mac and cheese, PB and J, chicken nuggets, french fries, etc., but he doesn't feel strongly about any of them. He basically wouldn't choose any vegetable to eat. He will eat green beans, English peas, and corn, but not without some coaxing. He LOVES fruit and will eat almost any fruit. He will eat apples, pineapple, peaches, oranges, bananas, strawberries, and pears. He has been very proud of himself for the last few nights for drinking his milk out of a big boy cup (not a sippy). He still drinks whole milk. He is a good sleeper at night. He just wakes up too early. If he could sleep until 7:00 am or so on the weekends, I would be a happy camper.

Speech:
Rush actually talks a lot, but he can be difficult to understand sometimes if you don't know him well. I sometimes have trouble understanding him. He says a "w" sound for all "l's". So, light becomes wight.. love becomes wuv, etc. He never makes an "l" sound, and I don't know if that is normal or not for his age. I plan to talk about his speech with the doctor at his next checkup, but I think it is probably fine. At this age, I think there is a wide range of what is acceptable, but the main reasons to worry are related to volume of speech. There doesn't seem to be a problem with that. He does talk less than his sister, but if you know them at all, this is not surprising. You would have to do a hard day's work to fit in more words than Frannie. :-)

I love my sweet little man more than I can say. He has the best smile (and knows how to use it!). I am looking forward to seeing what the years hold for him. I know it will be something great!





Sydney Frances: Age 2

Personality and Playtime:
Syd has such a cute personality! She loves to GRIN at you! She is very talkative around people that she knows well. Around new people, it often takes her a while to warm up. She needs to check everything out before she give you the OK. Once she is comfortable, though, you better watch out! She can talk on the phone like a teenager! She love Rush very much and is probably best described as "bossy". She loves to tell him what to do and "who" he will be when they are playing. I sometimes have to intervene and tell her to reverse the roles to let Rush be in charge for a little while. She loves her family and talks about all of her family members a lot. Where Rush is content to be alone, she usually likes to have someone with her. She is a snuggle bug and wants others to sit with her or play with her. She likes to play with her stroller and dolls. She isn't drawn to one particular type of toy, although her favorites seem to be whatever Rush wants to play with at the moment. :-) She really wants to interact with others more than spending time playing with toys. She loves playing with her friends at daycare. The two friends she talks about most are Bailey and Mary Cara. She will often sit on a bar stool and watch me cook supper (and ask questions!!!!) rather than playing or watching TV like Rush usually does. She does really love to watch Max and Ruby when she watches TV, though! Sydney Frances is my child that can really push my buttons. She can be very dramatic and will have a "hissy-fit" before you can blink. We work really hard with her on trying to learn how to get what she wants without having to be so dramatic. I think it is just part of her personality, though. She is very SPUNKY! (I'm sure my mother is secretly laughing behind my back because I have a dramatic child. I have know idea where she might get this trait...)



Learning:
SF loves to learn something new! She is constantly saying nursery rhymes and telling me things she knows. She is happy to share everything new that she learns at her daycare. She also gives me a play by play of everything that happened during the day. This is how I know she has a good memory. She doesn't leave out much. She loves to sing songs. She can count, knows some of her letters, and always tries to "write her name". I could be wrong, but my teacher's heart tells me she will love school. :-)SF loves to listen to books, and she has several of them memorized (Goodnight Moon, Pajama Time, and What Sisters Do Best).

Eating and sleeping:
She is a picky eater, too, but she will try new things. She loves milk, chicken nuggets, and ranch dressing. :-) Sleeping has been an issue for her the last few weeks. She has decided she is afraid of the dark and wants to have the light left on at night. She also wakes at the crack of dawn. My niece, Kate, sleeps SO late. I wish she could teach the twins a lesson on letting Mama rest a little.


Speech:
On target and full speed ahead... :-)

These two stinkers wear me out, and sometimes I feel like I will never feel fully rested again. So even though I am (literally) by myself for about 1.5 minutes total every day, really and truly, I wouldn't change a thing. I waited a long time to do this Mama gig, and it is everything I hoped it would be. I've got two incredible children! I love them to pieces!!


P.S. I have got to get going! I have no business on the computer tonight! We have a party tomorrow and my house is still a wreck! It's gonna be a long night! Party pictures coming soon!

A Little Laugh

I came across this picture tonight as I was browsing through some old ones. This picture makes me laugh because even though they were two months old in this picture, it could very easily be today. It is SO reflective of their personalities!!!

(Frantastic on the left and Rush-man on the right)

She came here letting the world know exactly what she thinks. And the little man has always been the calm one.

The twins turn three this Saturday, and I am feeling reflective. I am working on a post about what they are like right now as we start looking toward being three. I have finished Rush's part, but I need to work on hers a bit more. I will post again soon.

Excuse us!

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted an update on the kiddos! We have been SO busy starting a new school year. We even had a trip to the lake at the end of our summer that never earned a blog post!

So this is what we have been up to:
1. New school year start up at work

2. Being afraid of the dark: Frannie has developed a fear of the dark over the last couple of weeks. Not sure what to make of that... I know I have had it easy, but my kids have always been good, easy sleepers that go to sleep in their own beds and sleep all night by themselves. So, this has thrown us for a loop. She actually went to sleep without tears tonight, so I am hopeful. She currently has to have the hall light on (we turn it out after she falls asleep) to go to sleep. She needs to be reassured that everyone is going to be nearby, and she sleeps with her face pressed against the side of the rail on the bed so she can see out. Will update again soon... please let the drama/screaming/fit-throwing aspect of this be a phase.

3. Strep throat (Rush): Not so much as a sniffle all summer long, and then, literally on the first day back at daycare, his nose started to run. It went on from there and we ended up at the doctor where he tested positive for strep. Ahhh!!! Of course, there is no way he got sick at daycare that quickly, but it threw us into what are we going to do with the sick toddler with a fever mode. Thank goodness for Gigi and Papa! Yes, I know I am beyond lucky that my mom can keep my sick children so I won't have to miss the first few days back at work. Very lucky! Just as a side note, though, Rush LOVED staying with Gigi and Papa by himself. I think my kids are lucky to be twins, but it definitely means they don't get as much one on one time with anybody. So, as much as he loves going to Sue Sue's house, the days on his own at Gigi and Papa's were really special. When it was time for him to go back to daycare on Monday, he said, "I fink I am still a wittle sick. I will go back to Gigi's, OK?" Sweet. Oh, so sweet.

4. Burying my head in a pillow: My babies are about to be three years old. How is this possible?

BEACH!!!

We got home on Wednesday from a fun beach trip. :-) I read a blog a couple of weeks before we left about a family with 3 year old twins and then an older son that had been to the beach. The writer made sure to clarify that it was a trip to the beach... not a beach vacation. When you have two toddlers, there isn't much vacationing involved. But, that doesn't mean we didn't have fun! One of Phil's long time friends from high school, college, and beyond let us use their condo at the beach, so it was so fun to stay in a place that was familiar and had everything that we needed. There was plenty of room for the kids, and since this family has little ones as well, they even had a toddler rail on one of the beds! Perfect!

The trip down to Florida was INTERESTING! We are about 4 hours from the beach, so I was not happy that it took us 6 hours to get there. The traffic was horrendous, and little towns named Florala, Luverne, and Paxton just aren't meant to accommodate that type of traffic. To top it all off, it was raining and raining... and hey, how about some more rain?!?! I had a not so good feeling and outlook about this trip. I was grumpy, we were all hungry, and there was no where to stop for food. Every gas station we stopped in had a place for only ONE person to go at a time, so we waited and waited and waited some more. Because guess what? The newly potty-trained twins have to stop to go the restroom. Oh, my sweet word, would we ever get there?
But, guess what? WE DID!! It continued to rain for the rest of that night, and I made the mistake of trying to buy groceries at the Publix near our condo. I have never seen anything quite like it. There were lines in the aisles. You couldn't push your cart freely up and down, you just had to wait your turn to pass what you needed. Then, we had to form the checkout line down one of the aisles in the grocery store, and three managers directed people into the proper checkout lane. It was madness! P.S. I don't like crowds or lines. I made it, though! Groceries purchased and loaded into the car on the rainiest day of the year in the whole southeastern U.S.

The next morning, it was... raining! Haha! I can laugh because things did get better. We were finally able to go down to the beach later that morning. It rained on us some, but we were determined to stick it out because it ain't easy to get a family of four down to the beach. So we planted ourselves in our chairs, threw out the beach toys, and the kids went to town! They don't need sunny weather, so I decided to adopt their philosophy and just go with it. We built sand castles, played in the sand, and let the ocean waves lap over our feet.

A few pictures from the first day...






The kids and I loved having breakfast and lunch on the balcony each day.


The other two days we were there were simply beautiful! The weather was perfect, and we spent our mornings until lunch time out on the beach with a quick dip in the pool before we headed upstairs for nap. To say that Rush loved the beach would be an understatement. Gigi suggested we take a big Tonka truck that was donated to us by our cousin, Trey, for Rush to play with. It was a fantastic idea! It was big, but he had a ball playing with it. He was so excited to have his "dunk trunk" there. He literally played in the sand the entire time he was on the beach. Frannie liked the beach, but she was not as interested in playing in the sand. On the last day, she and I spent a lot of time in the water because the seaweed had cleared enough to let us enjoy the water. She really liked the ocean!












We also enjoyed some fun dinners out each night. (I am all about the food!)There was one small incident involving a dress that I thought was precious... Frannie, not so much! It made her face look like this...

And then this...


I think she likes symmetry in a dress because the problem seemed to be that it tied on one shoulder. It was quite a show! She did wear the dress, but it took a while to move past it. I feel slightly nervous that we already have clothes drama. It is the classic tale... Mama vs. Daughter in the clothes department. Pray for us.

Finally, on the last night, we took the kids to the circus! Ok.. so it wasn't really a circus, but we drove by it the first night when we were out exploring on our first night. Fran didn't stop talking about the sur-kiss for the rest of the trip. She really wanted to go, so we gave in and had dinner at Pier Park and then on to the sur-kiss. It was really just a place with some rides for kids. Unfortunately (for me), our kids were not tall enough to ride anything by themselves. So, Phil and I had to ride all of the rides with them. :-) They were making a very large profit from their rides, so we only rode two things. That was all I could handle anyway because kids' rides do one thing. Go around in circles. Not really that much fun when you have a tummy full of grilled fish tacos. I was a little nauseated, but we pulled through. The kids LOVED it!! Thrilled is a better way to describe it! The smiles were worth it!!






Overall, it was a really fun trip! We have decided, though, that we are October beach people. The weather is still beautiful, the water is usually clear, and the crowds are gone. I think that sounds like a great excuse to go again in a couple of months, don't you? :-)

Long lost photos

Beginning immediately after my twins were born and for the next three days or so while I stayed in our local hospital and they were transferred to the NICU in another city, my memories are very hazy. There were many things that happened that I was not aware of, and quite honestly, Phil was doing the parent thing "solo". He went back and forth to Montgomery to see them and get daily updates. Then, he would come back to my hospital to bring me pictures and visit with me. Before the pediatrician made the decision to transfer them to a higher level NICU, they were in our hospital's special care nursery for a while. Recently, Phillip, Phil's dad, aka Granddaddy, used a camera he had not used in a long time. And guess what he found when he turned the camera on? Pictures from the day the twins were born. When he told me this, my heart started beating so fast. More details for me about that day they were born... what the feelings of other people were, how they looked in those first hours... All of these things have been told to me through our family's memories, but I just didn't see it for myself. I didn't get those first pictures of everyone holding the babies in my hospital room or feeding them for the first time. We got all of that later but just not in those early days. When I look back on it, would I have changed it? Yes, yes I would. A lot of times people say they wouldn't change things when they look back. But, if I could have had healthy babies with me right then. Then, I would have chosen that. If I could have held them the day they were born, I would change that. But, that was not in the plan. So, since it was not, I cling to pictures like these... taken through a glass window, to see what those days were like from someone else's perspective. And now, it still so difficult to comprehend that these little oxygen-tented babies are the almost-three year olds that just asked me for more milk in their cups. Amazing!!




I'm pretty sure the next two are of Frannie.



I think this one is Rush because of the way his little legs are folded up. I remember seeing the pictures of his legs like this and thinking something would be wrong with his legs. I think Frannie just sat on him for so long, he didn't have any other choice. :-)

Lazy Lake Days and Fireworks

We spent part of the weekend of the 4th at my grandparents' lake house. The kids had a great time and spent a little bit of time in the water. Frannie was more of a fan of the lake than Rush. He said, "Dat water muddy." They did get some mud stirred up in the shallow end, so I guess he didn't care for that. :-) Rush was a fan of the sprinkler that Gigi bought for them to play in. It happened to spray in exactly the right way so it would send his beach ball flying into the air. Pure fun! He loved that! We spent the morning outside and then headed inside where my children proceeded to nap for a little over 3 hours. They haven't done that all summer! Nothing like some good 'ole lake fun to wear you out. The room where they were napping was the PERFECT place for a nap. There was a window unit air conditioner going with a big mattress pallet in the floor for them with clean, fresh pillows and nice worn in beach towel to use as their blankets. I really kind of wanted to curl up myself. The hum of the air conditioner, a cool room, with blankets... not a bad deal at all! Thunder rumbled all afternoon, so we stayed inside after their nap before heading home in the late afternoon. We have plans to go back later in the summer for some family time where we all spend the night. FUN!!










After we went to see Cars 2, we went to our town's fireworks display and had a picnic supper... although we didn't each much of it since we were all full of popcorn. The kids liked the fireworks this year (as opposed to being petrified last year). Phil even found a shortcut to get us out of the horrendous traffic really quickly! It was a good night. The kids were troopers... even with their after 10 pm bedtime that night. So, they slept really late the next morning..... HahahahahahahahaMwahhhahahahahahhaha! {That is their maniacal, joker laugh, by the way.} They did NOT sleep late. 5:52 am. Just like clockwork. It was still a good night, though! :-)