Madison's Birthday Party 7/27

On Sunday we went to Madison's birthday party...the boys had a fabulous time. There was a deluxe jumper with a basketball hoop in it and a slide, a fabulous see saw, a little princess playhouse, lots of hopper balls, crowns to be made, pin the sticker on the crown game and a crown pinata. There were delicious appetizers followed by L & L B-Bque, 2 icecream cakes and a snowcone machine. My sister in law sure raised the bar high. There's no way I could ever thow such a grand birthday party. And everyone went home with a loot, baggies full of candy and toys from the pinata, red envelopes with money, stickers, and helium balloons. Everything was so well put together that I was happy I had taken the time to put my boys together. My boys arrived looking pretty cute, they were wearing coordinating Hawaiian shirts. You couldn't miss the 3 brothers at this party.

Well Aidan's birthday is just around the corner and we'll be throwing him a birthday party. I can assure you, his party won't be as grand. It's going to be short and sweet, pizza and cupcakes and maybe snowcones if I can get the ice shaver to work. We're going with a dinosaur theme and maybe we'll play pin the tail on the dinosaur but I'm not planning on a jumper or a pinata. As it is I'm having to squash poor Aidan's little dream of inviting his entire preschool class and plan on only inviting his close friends. As much as I love birthday parties, I also understand I have limitations and need to work with those. I want my boys to have fond memories of their birthdays but hope this doesn't mean having to have jumpers, performers, and caterers. I want them to remember the sweet simplicity of homemade cupcakes, handmade birthday banners, and pretty wrapped gifts from mommy and daddy. Time will tell if I accomplish this.

Time Flies When You're Busy (and having fun)

I can't believe how many days have gone by since my last blog entry. So much has happened since then. I'll give you a brief run down.

The boys have begun seeing a pediatric chiropractor who also practices homeopathy. They seem to be responding wonderfully. The intial visit was for Liam. We were taking him for sacral cranial outlet treatment and some Neurological emotional treatment (NET) to help with his head banging behavior. Well he seems much calmer, not perfect of course but definitely calmer. Miles she is treating his sinus and tonsil/adnoid problems hoping to drain them so he they'll stop giving him problems and he won't have to have surgery. And she saw Aidan for his slight scoliosis in hopes of correcting it. We'll be seeing Dr. Tulloss for several more visits.

The boys also had terrible colds with fevers now passed on to me. Aidan stayed home from preschool and daddy stayed home from work to help take care of them all. That was pretty miserable.

After running into my neighbor at the park with her 2 yr old and 1 month old and seeing just how tired she was, I delivered dinner (veggie enchiladas) to her on Thurs to try to provide some relief. I remember how thankful I was for all the neighbors and friends who delivered a meal. So I decided to pay that one forward. I'm sure there will be a few more of those to come.

Then yesterday we all went next door and picked blackberries. Well I did while Aidan held the bowl and the twins ran around. Our neighbors have an amazing huge yard, the boys love it. The twins actually got to go twice, we went first in the morning with our twin friends sebastian and Fletcher then when I realized I didn't have enough black berries we went again after dinner.

I baked a cheesecake and made blackberry sauce for the playdate/baby shower we had today for one of our new friends via preschool. Aidan had his 2 best buddies over, Ryan and Tim while we hosted a small baby shower for Tim's mom who is about to have identical twin girls in the next 2 weeks. It was hot but fun and everyone enjoyed the deserts. Ryan's mom Anna was kind enough to bring burritos and quesadillas from Cactus, that was a hit too!

The only other update is that the boys seem to be settling in now at daycare. The morning vomits have stopped and the crying is down to a minimum. I'm thankful for this because I was concerned the daycare attendant was going to tell me they were just too disruptive to be there.

That's it for now...tomorrow we have a birthday party and grandma to see ...

Punch Balloons

Always looking for some new entertainment. Today I blew up 3 punch balloons for the boys to play with. Let me add, I thought I was going to faint after blowing them up. They were patient, as I slowly blew them up requiring several rest periods to catch my breath and get past the light headedness. I think they realized, mommy's having a hard time. It was all worth it, the boys had a great time with them and surprisingly the twins were able to get a handle on how to hold the rubberband and punch the balloon. I was afraid they were a bit you for it. They played with them for awhile in the early afternoon and then again later in the day. I always feel somthing is a huge success if it holds there attention for more than 15 minutes and if they come back to it later. I can't tell you how many activities I've taken the time to set up and have it result in a total failure. Either they're totally not interested in it or it's to frustrating. It's always hit or miss. The punch balloon it a HIT! We'll be buying more of those.

Naps

Naps are a hard thing in our house. It would be wonderful if the twins always went down for naps together. But, unfortunatley that is not the case. Liam has always been a short napper. Miles usually goes down first followed by Liam. Miles usually wakes up shortly after Liam goes down. It seems like I never get any down time, there's always one of them awake. I dream about all the things I could do if they would just nap together.

Today, we went to the park in the morning, met with some of our twin friends. They played for a good hour, followed by lunch and then we went home. Well, to my surprise they both went down for a nap together, slept for an hour. It was so nice that now I'm thinking I need to take them to the park every morning and play them hard. Or just maybe it was a lucky coincidence.

Keeping Busy

The weekend flew by and not a single blog entry. Weekends always seem to be a whirlwind of activities with the kids, leaving daddy and I just beat by the evening. Weekends are full of events, soccer practice, birthday parties, play dates, park visits etc. It's all about the kids these days. We've been trying to focus some extra attention on scheduling regular play dates for Aidan. It's good for him socially and gives him a break from the frustration of dealing with his younger brothers. Although Aidan plays with the twins it's just not the same level of play he gets to have with a friend his age.

This weekends play date was on Sunday, a trip to the zoo with his pal Derrek from preschool. Both families went and strolled the zoo. Aidan had a great time with his friend despite one bad fall and one small upset regarding the need to ride the train. We've learned a visit to the zoo is not complete without a train ride.

Play Date - Tub Time Fun

I wish I had a camera with me today. We had dinner at friends home followed with tub time. The twins took a bath with their friends, another set of twins. It sure was the sweetest thing. Miles and Liam freaked out a bit a first, "Whoa, what am I doing in a tub at someone elses house" but they settled down quick enough and enjoyed the water and tub toys. I asked Aidan if he wanted to join in the fun, no way was that going to happen...get in the tub with my brothers and their buddies, be for real mom!

It's funny how when you go to someone elses house their toys just seem so fabulous, even those that you have at home and have been long forgotten. I guess that's the great thing about play dates it's not just the company but the novelty of someone else's toys.

Creative Wednesday

It was too hot to play outside this afternoon and the boys were bored with their toys. So it was time to get creative. Mommy pulled out the washable markers and stickers, and let them go at it. They had a great time and it held there attention for a good 45 minutes. When they were all done, they had as much ink on themselves as they had on the paper and stickers were for sticking everywhere. But it sure was fun.

Hot Nights and Tantrums

It's hot here and our old craftsman home does not have A/C and is not the best insulated home. So in the summer our house gets really hot. Even though, last summer we installed attic fans, which has reduced the temps about 5 degrees or so not enough to make us comfortable. We set up fans in the bedrooms to help the kids sleep but you can still here them tossing and turning. It's hard to sleep when your hot and sweaty. Miles has woken up this evening completely sweaty, beat red face and just grumpy. He has carried on screaming for about 20 minutes with no avail, waking up Aidan. Aidan called out to me asking me to get Miles to be quite. We tried everything, gave him milk, he refused it, cool washcloth to the face, he screamed, massaged his gums with little teethers, he screamed, patted his back, he screamed, motrin, he screamed. Finally, Max loaded him up in the van at 11:30 pm to take him out for a ride in hopes that this might calm him down. This is no ordinary tantrum, this is one of those huge knock down drag outs that frighten us, hoping they don't injure themselves during the event. They don't happen often but when they do, they are alarming.

Please, no couch potatoes!

This does not look good! My 3 boys sitting on the couch engrossed in a dvd....at least it's one of those educational ones by leap frog. That's ok, right?? I sure hope we aren't raising a bunch of couch potatoes. We don't have cable and the only time Max and I watch tv for our own personal enjoyment is when the kids go to bed. Really when you don't have cable, there's not much to watch. We do particpate in one of those dvd mail services but, we don't watch them very often because we're always too tired. We've often toyed with the idea of cancelling it.

The truth is though that we own tons of kids dvds, all educational, you know the leap frog and sesame street type. And, I'm guilty of using them so that I can cook dinner before Max gets home from work. Otherwise, it would be impossible for me to manage 20 month old twins and a 3 yr old while preparing dinner. I've tried on several occasions, setting them up with some toy, project etc and then trying to start dinner. It never seems to work out. I try to tell myself that it's ok, 30 minutes of an educational dvd just before dinner isn't so bad. Sometimes on the weekends we allow it as a treat for good behavior. It just allows us to get a bit of down time. Suddenly after seeing this photo I feel horribly guilty.

The Boys First 4th of July Parade

This is the first 4th of July parade we've taken the boys to, and if I'm correct, I think it's the first parade we've ever taken them to. We had front row seatings, our friends who lived walking distance had arrived early to set up lawn chairs for all of us. I have to say that was pretty nice.

The boys all really enjoyed themselves, especially Aidan. Aidan had a great time hanging out with his buddies from preschool. I brought little flags for them to wave during the parade. Aidan and his friends were quite a little group, playing and dancing on the sidelines, they were hard to miss. They sure caught the paraders attention resulting in tons of candy tossed to them. They had so much fun running into the street after the candy and other goodies they were given. One thing about Aidan is that he's really into music so when this float came by that had a band on it playing some 70's funk song, it really got his attention. He stopped all his goofing around and just watch intently as they performed, rolling by. I can't remember the name of the group it was somthing?? Shack. But,anyways they were pretty good and I'm sure Aidan thought so too. Miles had fun running in toward the parade and back towards daddy. He did this over and over, getting a good laugh about it every time. Liam sat on my lap the whole time, very mellow, taking it all in. He was quite absorbed in it all, very unusual for Liam.

I have to say, I'm not usually a parade kind of person but this was a really nice family event followed by a nice family barbeque with friends.

Imagination Soaring

I've noticed lately that Aidan's imagination is just soaring, it's becoming much more vivid. He tells stories about ojects he sees with great detail now, all from his imagination. We were at a friends house who had a doll house and he went into this elaborate story about the mailman trying to deliver mail to the doll house and how the little girl there was sad about her mail. We were all kind of amazed about the detail he came up with. He's also fascinated with the moon and has told me lots of stories that include the moon. He's told stories for a quite a while now but in the past they were much more concrete. He's also now playing with objects and creating other objects out of them like the train he made out of his beads, or the moon that he makes with his sandwich. I'm just so pleased to see the creativity that comes out of his imagination. I think he's pretty pleased with himself too. I can't wait to till he can start really drawing, I'm anxious to see what his drawing ability will be. His 4th birthday is just around the corner and we still aren't sure whether he's left or right handed. He seems to go back and forth often. In the meantime I'll just enjoy his fun little stories.

Liam reads to Miles

It's moments like this I wish I had a camcorder. Liam was reading this book in his own little twin babble language and Miles appeared to be listening intently. This went on for several minutes. To the observer it really seemed as if they understood each other in that babble of theirs. Most recently, it's been a few weeks now they both have become much more verbal. Sometimes, they'll be playing in their room together and there will be full length conversations in that babble, I stand in the hallway eavesdropping, it just brings a huge smile to my face and warms me in that special way. At some point I'm going to have to record it before it's gone because it's the sweetest thing ever.

My Little Cowboys

I took the twins with me on errands, I know that sounds crazy. We went to the post office, Costco, and Target. They did really well and really seem to enjoy the people watching. And of course they get lots of attention when we go out, as if they were the only set of twins in the world.

Anyways, I bought them this great little cowboy hat out of the dollar bins at Target. They both just loved wearing it and got a real kick at looking at themselves in the mirrow with it on. I just love costumes and playing dress up, so even a simple hat like this creates crazy fun for me. I'm so happy that the twins seemed to really enjoy it too!