Monday, December 26, 2011

Happy Holidays!

In general, my girls are pretty good.  They sleep well, they eat well and the play nicely.  But, as you know if you’ve been reading my blog, there are times they are not so good.  However, I have come to realize they are only “bad” for me.  With their babysitters they are always delicious!  And, especially, with their grandparents, they can never do anything wrong.  Now, I’m not that naive!  I know grandparents just can’t see anything wrong even if it is.  But, I’m telling you, my girls are complete angels with their grandparents.  In fact, the 3 times they have slept out at their grandparents’’ houses, they have eaten better meals than they ever have with me and they have slept longer than they ever have at my house.  Literally, I’m talking 13 hours of sleep, from 7pm-8am!  Why doesn’t that happen on a daily basis at home?  You know what?  I don’t need it to be an everyday thing.  I don’t want to sound unreasonable.  Instead, I have decided that the grandparents have to take the girls once a month, just to give me and Dave a break and to remind us why we love them so much.  Done and done – great idea Carrie, if I do say so myself.  Happy Hanukkah to me!  And happy holidays to everyone else too!  Thank you so much for all your support.  I’m hoping for great things for you and for my blog in 2012!!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Holiday Card Take Two!

So, its 9 pm and I just finished stamping and addressing our new year’s holiday card.  That’s right, I said holiday card.  I know 2 weeks ago I wrote how trying to get a picture of the girls together for a holiday card was impossible so I gave up.  But, then my husband decided yesterday that we should do a card because he wanted his work colleagues to have one.  Seriously Dave?  It’s already the end of December!  I would have had everything ready for this card at least 2 months ago when I originally tried to start planning it.  And now, after knowing me for over 13 years and how ridiculously organized I am, you ask me to do a card now?  Ridiculous!!  But, I did it!  One of my babysitters, who I’ve mentioned before, Emma, took some amazing pictures of the girls that I originally declined to use for a card because to be honest, I didn’t love the outfits they were in.  Like I’ve said before, one of my favorite parts about having my twin girls is dressing them!  Even when it seemed like I was in the twilight zone those first 4 months of their lives, getting them dressed was always my favorite part of every day.  So, therefore, their outfits were a major issue for the perfect holiday card picture.  But, to give Emma credit where credit is due, the pictures she took did come out beautiful!  So, yesterday I used one of her photos on a card that is for new years, made it on Kodak gallery, sent it to be picked up at Target today.  I then ordered a stamp for my return address because I didn’t have time to reorder my adorable return address labels with caricatures of the four of us.  I also ran to get stamps.  Today I went to pick up the cards which weren’t ready when I originally got to Target even though I had received an email saying they would be ready!  So, I went back a few hours later, picked them up with a 15% discount for being late and just finished putting them all together.  We kept it small this year because of the last minute decision so literally I am just sending a card out to Dave’s work people, our family and our closest of friends.  But, tomorrow morning I will put the cards in the mail and it will be done with!  I guess I can admit I’m happy we made the card, but next year I am definitely doing it my way, 2 months in advance, and hopefully with complete cooperation from my girls!  Yeah right, wishful thinking!  Happy, happy holidays everyone!!

Monday, December 19, 2011

Who's Your Best Friend?

I have to start out this week’s blog with a huge shout out to my other amazingly wonderful babysitter, Samantha!  She saved my sanity this weekend and I have to give her a big thank you!  Dave had to go to Florida for the weekend and while I’m used to taking care of the girls by myself all week, I desperately look forward to the weekends when not only do I have Dave’s help with the girls, but we get to be together as a family.  Unfortunately, he had to go this weekend and I knew I was going to be exhausted.  But, Samantha came to babysit for 2 hours Saturday morning and again 2 hours Sunday morning and it definitely made a difference in my surviving the weekend alone!  So, Samantha, if you’re reading this, THANK YOU!!  And for everyone else, if you can afford it, I highly recommend having a babysitter, even for just a few hours a week.  It really helps you as a mom replenish, have sometime for yourself and I think, be a better mom.
Anyway, onto this week’s big news…I LOVE having twins!  It’s getting so fun!  Of course it’s still ridiculously hard, but let me tell you what they do now that makes me just want to eat them up.  Ever since the girls were teeny tiny babies, I created a morning ritual where I would go into their room, sing a made-up good morning song, and then tell Zoey that Kayala is her best friend and tell Kayla that Zoey is her best friend.  I know there’s the natural twin bond, but I want to make sure the girls know that they come first for each other.  I think down the road, especially since girls can be so vicious to each other, Kayla and Zoey will be so thankful for each other.  I just figured I might as well reinforce that as early as possible!  Anyway, now when I say to Zoey, “Who’s your best friend?”  She immediately looks around, finds Kayla, points to her and says what kind of sounds like “Kayla.”  And when I ask Kayla, she also looks around, finds Zoey and points to her.  She kind of grunts rather than says Zoey’s name, but Zoey is definitely more verbal.  Either way, I know who she means.  And this is by far, the most delicious thing they have done so far!  It makes me think everyone should have twins!  And that’s all I have to say today! 

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Similar Mannerisms

I think one of the most amazing things about having twins is that you get to watch two individual people grow up together and notice what kind of effects that has on each of them.  Now, granted, my girls are only 15 months old, which is still super young.  But, I have already started noticing some fascinating things about them.  Really, I’ve noticed one of the defining aspects of being related – similar mannerisms.  I’m sure there are things I do or say in a certain way that is “exactly how my mom does it.”  But, with twins, it just seems cooler when you see them doing things the same or doing things differently.  I feel like especially with fraternal twins, the things they do the same are incredible, since they really are supposed to be different!  Here is my list of things I’ve noticed so far that my girls do exactly the same.  And to be honest, as I’m writing this, while I think it’s cool, it’s pretty freaky too!
1.        Now that both girls are walking, I notice that they walk the same.  Both of their backs arch a little and they take the same size steps with each foot.  It’s actually hysterical!  Besides the fact that Kayla is a little slimmer than Zoey and her hair is lighter, from the back, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell who is who!
2.       I made it a point to introduce sippy cups very early.  As I’ve mentioned before, my girls hated their bottles.  And as tortuous as every feeding was, I tried to remember that bottles would not last forever.  However, cups and sipping through straws could.  So, I introduced cups super early and the girls got the hang of it pretty quickly if I do say so myself!  They totally hold their cups the same way with their fingers in the same place and make the same ridiculously adorable faces as they suck through their straws.  It looks like it takes so much effort for them to do it, while at the same time they’re having so much fun with it!  And, that expression is exactly the same on both of them!
3.       I also think I’ve mentioned that Kayla learned how to shake her head for “no.”  Of course as soon as she figured it out, everything became no.  And I shouldn’t be surprised that now Zoey has learned not only to shake her head for “no” but that it’s super fun to say no to everything!  And they both shake their heads the same, with the same speed and the same distance from side to side.  They even have the same smirk on their faces as they shake their heads and the same devilish gleam in their eyes, like they know I want them to say yes, but are refusing to do so!  As annoying as this game of “no” is getting, I have to admit when they do it together, it is freaking cute!
4.       Each of my girls sleeps with one of those animal blankies.  Zoey has piggy and Kayla has duckie.  They are both obsessed with their animals and the second we get into their room for naptime or bedtime, they each run to their cribs and reach for their blankies (I don’t let them have them outside of their bedroom).  Anyway, they both suck their thumbs (different thumbs though) while holding their blankies in the same exact way.  They also rotate their blankies in the same way until they find the tag and seem to prefer to hold onto that part while sucking their thumbs.  Again, I know I am in for a world of hurt from orthodontic bills because of the thumb sucking, but watching them snuggle up like that is just too delicious to care about!
So, those are the main mannerisms that I have noticed are similar.  Believe me; everything else about the girls is as different as can be!  At least, so far it is.  Now, I have to give credit where credit is due.  One of my friends in my development, Jen, asked me about similar mannerisms the other day while we were all hanging out for football Sunday.  I thought it was such a fabulous question and that’s what really made me start thinking about it.  Of course my other neighbor Scott had a snide comment, like, “Why don’t you blog about it?”  I think he might have been making fun of me a little, but thank you Scott!  I actually totally like this blog so there (I’m sticking my tongue out at you!).  Seriously, Jen and Scott, thanks for the idea! 

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Holiday Cards

So, it’s officially after Thanksgiving, into December, which means its’ the holiday season.  That also means many people are ordering and mailing out their holiday cards to friends and family very soon.  Last year, when the girls were 3.5 months old, we did our first holiday card ever and it was adorable!  I had a fabulous picture of the girls lying down on a blanket looking at each other in these super cute Burberry-like shirts.  I loved it!  It was so much fun taking the picture, ordering the card, getting personalized return address labels, etc.  This year, though, it is a completely different story…
Getting a picture for this year’s holiday card has become the bane of my existence.  Literally, since October 1, I have been desperately trying to get a great picture of the girls together.  I started out trying to get them both looking at me smiling, but trying to get two 13-15 month olds to both look at me and smile seems to be all but impossible!  Then I figured I’d settle for a picture of both of them looking at each other like last year’s card.  However, Kayla has decided to “run” away from the camera the second I take it out.  I used to try to get them to say cheese, but now I sneak a camera out as if I’m in mission impossible and try to snap pictures without the girls totally realizing what I’m doing.  But, that doesn’t seem to be working either.  I have even employed my fabulous babysitter, Emma, to try to take some pictures for us.  Every Tuesday I remind her to use my camera or her phone and try to get a decent picture.  Last week she happened to have taken some great pictures of the girls outside, but none of them felt like holiday card material.  And, now that Zoey is walking too, it has apparently become a game for my girls to run in opposite directions, away from me, the second the camera comes out.  Zoey’s much better about looking at the camera and smiling, but she tends to laugh at Kayla and then follow her lead, just run the other way.  Kayla has some kind of sixth sense as to when I’m even thinking of taking a picture!  You can see on her face that she’s getting ready to run before the camera is even in my hand!
So, it is with great regret that I have decided NOT to do a holiday card this year.  It’s just not fun anymore!  I told one of my playgroups the news yesterday and they did not take it well!  In fact, Ali tried to prove me a wrong and take pictures of the girls.  I hate to say, “I told you so,” but I totally told her so!  Zoey sat in a chair and the second Kayla saw the camera she started hysterically crying and going limp in the chair!  Me, Jamie, Charlene and Ali all started singing, trying to get Kayla to smile for the camera, and I have to hand it to Zoey, she looked adorable, but Kayla would not stop crying!  It reminded me of the professional pictures I had taken of the girls at their first year birthday.  We had 100 gorgeous pictures of Zoey smiling and laughing, posing for the camera.  We had zero pictures of the girls together, one pretty picture of Kayla but she’s not smiling and then another picture of Kayla in hysterics because that just summed up the experience! 
Anyway, Ali, thanks so much for the effort, but I am NOT doing a holiday card this year.  And really, all I want for the holidays this year is for my girls to start letting me take pictures of them together again!  Well, that’s one thing I want, but I actually have a huge list of other things too!  Either way, I hope everyone is starting o enjoy this holiday season!