Eating together

For the past two days the boys and I have had breakfast and dinner together. Now, I know this seems like an insignificant happening, but it's the first time we've sat down as a family and had a meal all together. After two years of not having any dining room furniture (the ex got it all), I broke down and bought a dining table and chairs! Ok, so it's not in the dining room...it's sort of on the side of the living room, but it's a nice, dark, hardwood, square table with 4 chairs and I think that it will do us well for years. My boss said that she got a plastic covering for her table at Jo-Anne and it protects the surface and they can also do arts & crafts on their table. Ok, so I'll feel like I'm living in my grandma's house, but I think this is a good idea and will keep the boys from teething on the table too. I tried a regular tablecloth and Max pulled it off in about 2 seconds, so the plastic is a better idea.

Here are my big boys sitting at the table!

There's no "first tantrum" sticker

I have these "baby's first year" calendars; one for each of them. However, I've been really bad about remembering to update them. I figured it would be the easiest thing, just pull off the sticker and apply it to the appropriate day...I just never seem to remember to do it. Also, there seem to be a lot of "doctor's appointment" stickers and "sat with help" and so forth. But who wants to remember all of the vaccinations and such, and besides, I have all of that on their immunization records. And the boys have been "sitting with help" since about day one, so how is that a milestone?

Yesterday I noticed there were several flies in the house and I didn't have a flyswatter, so I went to Target to get one. I also bought a flat screen TV and 4 boxes of Target wipes that were on clearance (this is a big deal in my household!). I ran over and grabbed the flyswatter while J stayed with the boys at the checkout and came back and, without thinking about it, handed it to Alex. When it came time to ring it up, I had to PRY it out of his little hands and when I finally got it away from him, he started shrieking, screaming, waterworks, everything. I thought maybe I hurt his fingers when I was trying to take it away; he was holding on pretty tightly. So I picked him up to comfort him and he was having nothing to do with it. I gave it back to him after it was rung up and he was happy again. Went to put him in the car and J took it so she could buckle him into his seat. Screaming fit again. Great. Alex's favorite new toy, the flyswatter. I had to wrench it away from him to give him his bedtime bottle. He finally let it go or forgot about it or something, but I'm hesitant to actually kill the flies in the house lest he see it again and freak out!

Flies don't live very long, do they?

What if there was only one?

A woman from my MoM group posted this article from Elle on her Facebook yesterday:
http://www.elle.com/Beauty/Health-Fitness/Fertility-Treatments-Would-You-Get-Selective-Reduction

Now, I'm guessing that the link won't work forever, so I'll quickly summarize. It's an article about a woman who underwent fertility treatments, got pregnant with twins and chose to reduce her twins down to one baby. She did CVS to determine if they were both healthy (they were) and the sexes (she chose to keep the girl).

This article has sparked some interesting commentary, with most people saying that they could never choose to reduce healthy twins (3 or more, yes, but not twins). The staunchly pro-choice, womans' right to choose side of me will defend this right until I die. But the 37 year old pregnant me wondering if I'll ever have a chance to get pregnant again side of me wasn't so sure.

When I found out I was pregnant with twins, I was originally told that they were fraternal. I spoke with a genetic specialist to find out what my options were for finding out as much about the health of the fetuses as possible and when the optimal time was to do anything about them. Ultimately, I decided to only get the nuchal fold tests done, primarily because I found out that the twins were identical, not fraternal, so if one was determined to have Down Syndrome or one of the Trisomy problems, both of them would have it. The nuchal fold test (a marker for DS) came back with pretty low odds, around 1 in 400, I think, so I opted not to get CVS or an amnio as both tests carry pretty high loss risk for twins sharing a placenta. If the tests had shown a high marker for DS or something else, I would have tested further. I know that I could not have handled two DS babies (or worse) on my own. I don't believe that people aren't given more than they can handle (as many of my colleagues and friends have told me for "support"); I think people are given more than they can handle every day. I have a friend who, pregnant at the same time as me, chose to terminate her pregnancy when she found out the fetus had DS. She now has a healthy baby girl. I'm pretty sure I would have done the same. I have a hard enough time handling normal (so far!), healthy twins. I can't imagine if one or both had special needs.

Now obviously, there's no guarantee that both the boys are "normal". They could develop autism or mental illness or have a debilitating accident. But I can't do anything about that and so I try not to stress too much about it. And, when having the testing done, I knew in my heart that I couldn't reduce if the fetuses seemed healthy; to choose one over the other. But I don't fault the author of that article. She did what she and her husband felt was best for their family and I can't fault her for that.

Custody day!

Ok, so think the boys have been testing me the past few days to determine whether I really, TRULY want custody of them! Not sleeping, spitting up more than normal, making even larger messes than usual, that sort of thing! This morning, I had the boys in their chairs and was feeding them their breakfast mixture of yogurt and cottage cheese (two things I detest!) and they were making sure to let bits drool out onto the chairs, my pants, my arms, the carpet, each others' hair (???) and so forth. Really gross. But they are finally starting to truly interact with each other and it is so cute. Alex will reach over and stroke Max's face...and then start hitting him. Then he'll poke his finger into Max's ear. Max, in retaliation, pets Alex on the head and then pulls his hair. They really like to be near each other in the BCA. Being separated never lasts for long. They do tend to become immensely interested in the toy the other one has at the moment, but I think they'll learn to share a lot easier than most kids do.


Alex has started saying, "up! UP!" repeatedly, all day long. Except I'm not quite sure what it actually means. The conversation goes something like this...
Alex: up! UP!
Me: Do you want UP? Do you want me to pick you UP? (picks him up)
Alex: UP! UP! (pointing down to the floor)
Me: You are UP. Do you want DOWN? Oh, there's a sheep! Are you saying "sheep"? "SHEEP!" (gives him sheep)
Alex: up! UP! (throws sheep, points at ball)
Me: That's a BALL. Do you want the BALL? Let's play with the BALL. (rolls ball)
Alex: Up! UP! Blahbledadadaupuppbttthpbthhh! (blows raspberry, ignores ball)
Me: ??????
Alex: UP! UP! UP!

A weekend of firsts

1. Pulling up in bed for the first time.
Ok, I already blogged about this one. The pacifier dropping continues unabated. It is getting annoying.

2. The boys ate my spaghetti for the first time.
They loved it. But, what can I say? My spaghetti is awesome. I also let them eat it themselves and they made QUITE a mess. What could be better? (Yes, the bowls and spoons were quickly abandoned!)



3. Eating turkey sandwiches for the first time.
This was also their first meal completely made of "real" food. Ok, so the sandwich was sort of deconstructed...turkey, cheese and bread. I also cut up cherries into little pieces for them and they loved those too! I ate my turkey sandwich while they ate theirs and it was a lot of fun!

4. First time getting stuck while climbing.
Max tried to climb the gate. He got his hands on top of the gate and climbed up onto the ledge of the gate and then got stuck. Two inches up. I rescued him, of course.

5. First very stern "NO" from mom.
Alex has started spraying out his food when he gets bored or doesn't particularly like the food. So all weekend I ended up with pureed green veggies all over me. I looked at Alex, summoned up my resolve, composed my "I'm totally serious" face (trying not to laugh, of course) and very sternly said, "Alex, NO!" Alex, totally unimpressed, just stared back at me. Max, on the other hand, collapsed into dramatic sobs and tears. Of course, I had to do it two more times during that meal and every time, Max just lost it. Talk about drama. He's definitely the more rough and tumble of the two of them, but he's also more sensitive. He plays hard and cries hard!

6. First playing up of an "injury".
So, Max fell over or something this morning as I'm trying to run out the door for work and decided that he'd hurt himself and started to cry. Lindsay picked him up and put him on her lap and he sits there crying looking up at her and looking over at me standing about 3 feet away, as if to say, "why am I here when mom is over there?" So he crawls over to my feet, plops down, starts wailing and holds his arms up to me. I roll my eyes and pick him up and he's instantly smiling and cooing. Two words. Drama. Queen.

6. First injury resulting in blood.
About 5 minutes after the above situation, Alex fell over and must have bitten his lip because there was the tiniest drop of blood. He must have really hurt himself because he actually cried, which he normally doesn't do when he falls. It was a very sad moment and, because of it, I had an excuse to be 10 minutes late for work. He's totally fine now, btw.

Yay for torque! And other observations...

Ok, so yesterday morning I was awoken to the sounds of happy shrieking, laughing and screeching. Well, that's not so bad, aside from the fact that it was just before 6 am, but whatever. Anyway, I go into the boys' room because they seemed WAY happier than normal and this is what I see...

...yeah, ok, that's insanely cute, I get it. However...once they figured out that they could stand up and see each other, that's ALL they wanted to do! At nap time, I finally separated them after 45 minutes of "talking". Also, when Alex stands up, he tends to drop his pacifier out of the crib. After he does this with all 4 of the pacifiers in his crib, he starts to cry. So he ended up in the pack n play in the office for nap times. Then, at bedtime, after 45 minutes of talking, I finally split them up again. Alex fell asleep right away in the office. Max stood there looking at Alex's empty crib and crying. It was the saddest thing. It took him an hour and a half to fall asleep (instead of 20 minutes), but he finally did it.

So this morning, after breakfast, I put the boys in the BCA (baby containment area) to play, while, armed with toolbox, I went to lower the boys' cribs to the lowest setting. My thought was that Max wouldn't be able to see over the changing table if his mattress was lower.

I'm so glad the crescent wrench was invented! Not only did I not have to find the exact size wrench for the bolts on Alex's crib, but it provided the torque I needed to twist those tiny bolts in a confined space. I'd also like to give a little shout-out to my old friend "lefty-loosey, righty-tighty" at this time too.

So, cribs lowered, babies go down for naps. It still took about 40 minutes, and one trip to collect Alex's errant pacifiers, but they finally both fell asleep. I guess that I can put something on top of the changing table if the "talking" continues to be a problem. I don't know what I'm going to do about Alex dropping his pacifiers though.

Oh, and the first set of teeth marks have been spotted on Max's crib rail. I guess I'll have to go buy some rail guards in my spare time!