"That's Connor's. You can't touch it."

Oh boy. Yesterday afternoon/evening was eventful, in a very fun, kid sort of way:)

1) Sophie had the hiccups on the way home from daycare. She was clearly being entertained by talking to me, and having her words interupted by a hiccup. Each time it happened, we were both doubled over with laughter, at least as much as I could be while driving. I kept catching glimpses of her in the rear view mirror, checking to see if I was looking at (and listening to) her. I love that such simple things can bring her such immense joy!

2) We have never been shy about teaching Sophie that she has a va.gina and boys (like Connor) have penises. She's always seemed to "get" it, but I honestly never gave it much thought. Last week, she saw Connor in the tub and very obviously noticed his pe.nis for the first time. She kept staring and then finally pointed and said "what's that? What's Connor have there?" "Um, Sophie that's his penis." "That's his PE.NIS mommy??" "Yes, that's his penis." That was it, end of discussion. Fast forward to last night, when all 3 were in the tub together. Sophie had a very sly look on her face, and I could see the wheels spinning. I turned away for a second, and when I looked back she was holding his pe.nis in her hand, sort of making it flop up and down. Oh boy. "Sophie, that's Connor's penis. You can't touch it." "I can't?" "No, you can't touch his penis, and he can't touch your 'gina."

Didn't expect to have THAT conversation when she is just 3!

3) And finally, Sophie and I were in bed last night. As she was winding down, we heard a sound from the twins room. At first I thought it was Connor crying. I silently cringed, and hoped he'd just roll over and go back to  sleep. But, he kept going. And then I realized he wasn't crying, he was LAUGHING. Deep, deep, belly laughs, that just went on and on. He laughed for at least 3 minutes, if not longer. The type of laugh you'd hear if you were tickling him. This is SO very Connor. Although the tantrums have started, and boy can he throw one, he is just so happy go lucky, smiley, giggle at everything. It makes me feel like we're doing something right:)

The bites!

Here they are! This sweet little guy....

is capable of THIS (and please ignore 1. Sierra's bum and 2) the piece of fuzz that made it's way into my iPhone camera).  Avery's wounds are just little scabs now, but there were several days that I would have been afraid to take her to the dr, for fear that they thought we DID something to her. Luckily the biting goes in phases, and I'm fairly certain it can be mostly attributed to teething. However, one co-worker brought up the idea that it might be his way of showing affection. I can actually see that, since he never bites out of anger or frustration and he almost always has a huge smile on his face after the fact (and usually giggles alot).



 

 

The picture above, of Connor, was taken at his last ENT appt, a few weeks ago. The hemangioma is still there, although MUCH softer than it ever has been. I wsa hopeful that it had all but disappeared, but ENT still felt it. We're staying the course with his current dose of propanylol, and go back in 4 more weeks.



 

On a happier note, here's a pic of Sophie from two nights ago. She RARELY wants to smile for the camera, so when she does I'm happy to snap away. And, she.wants.to.wear.this.outfit.all.the.time. It's cute, it's "her," I love it, but I'm ready for her to attach to something new already!

 



It's been weeks.Again.

The McBaby baby book is going to be rather skimpy if I don't get my act in gear. But, life happens. Chaos happens. And of course, laziness happens. I've spent over an hour trying to get a picture uploaded and it's not letting me. I don't remember there being a trick to upload from my computer, but apparently there is.

I was going to post some lovely pics of some serious wounds that my little red-head has inflicted on his sisters. The biting is out of control. I'm afraid it's time to start time out, but I'm also afraid he won't get it. But, I need to show them all, especially Sophie, that what he is doing is not going unnoticed, and will be reprimanded. We firmly saw no, we YELL no, we sign no, and he just laughs at us, and gets ready to attack again. Clearly, he thinks it's funny. His victims do not.

The twins are 16 months! They are.climbing.on.everything. Two weeks ago, Sophie yelled for me in a panic, which is rare. I ran to her, only to find Avery CRAWLING across the dining room table. Wha?? WTF? I took her off, and let her repeat it just so I can see what she did. She pushed the chair up to the table, turned the toy shopping cart on it's side. Climbed onto the cart, onto the chair, and then on to the table. She's smart. She's determined. She's resourceful. I see some rather scary teen years in my future.

She has the biggest most fantastic smile. She shoots this at you when she gets in trouble. She has already learned.  Her shrieky little giggle melts my heart each time I hear it. When she is upset, she is the ONLY one who needs attention.

Connor watches Avery, and then does his best to follow her, sometimes to his detriment. He's definately not as agile as she is, or as fast. His "boy" colors are showing. He plays ROUGH with his toys. Thank goodness most of them are fairly well made. He has tantrums. When something doesn't go his way, or something has been taken away from him, he lets you know he's not happy.

They both love light switches. They have started hugging us(love!!!). Avery has started yelling "Maaaaa" for mom. She can never say it quietly, it's always a scream. She's a snuggler, Connor is more on the go now.

Sophie is 37 months old. We're talking about pre-school next year! She is hilarious and stubborn and sweet, all rolled into one. Our house would NOT be the same without her. We're still working on potty training, but getting closer. She's become much more vocal, more conversational in her speech, grammar is improving. Two things I LOVE that she says "upsy doopsy down" for "upside down." I have no idea where she got that, but I adore it. TV is T-T, as in "Can I watch T-T?" I love these little quirky things, and will be sad when she says things correctly,lol. She says "fly me" when she wants me to throw her up in the air. The 3's haven't been horrid YET. Still waiting for that shoe to drop...

Sophie is THREE!!!

Well, she turned 3 on December 5:)

My poor girl has been SO sick. She had a HORRIBLE virus the weekend before her birthday. I got her in to see the pedi on the Friday before her birthday, even though she'd only had a fever for about 12 hours. I don't care if I am "that" mom. It scares me when she is sick. Three hospitalizations is enough for me, for a lifetime. Dr R completely agreed with me, and was glad that I took her in.

Bottom line, no strep, no ear infection, no flu. She even checked her for meningitis. She kept complaining about her hair hurting, which is apparently how some kids talk about a headache. Dr. R sent us home with Tamiflu, in the event it *was* a flu strain not detected by the test. No amount of tylenol/ibuprofen would bring her fever down to normal. She was too weak to walk, and slept for almost 72 hours. The sheets were soaked where she slept. She did start retracting on Saturday, but a bit of Albuteral seemed to get that in control. Her fever started breaking Sunday morning, but a few hours later would rise again. It did that a few times.

By Monday morning, it seemed the worst had passed, but I kept her home from school. She did go on Tuesday, and appeared to be getting better. Wednesday was her birthday, and about noon she started heading downhill again. Very lethargic, no energy. Her birthday presents didn't really even perk her up.

She was fairly sick again by Friday, but her party was Saturday morning. I couldn't decide whether to cancel it or not. I decided to move forward, but on Saturday morning she all but refused to get out of bed, "My no go to Magic House! My stay home with babies." I'm going to sound like an evil, evil, uncaring mother, but my thought was "the party is an hour, and we've put down a deposit. Certainly she can suck it up for that long." Horrible, right???!!!! I talked her into getting out of bed, eating, getting ready. It was rough. She is stubborn. STUBBORN like her father. I feared she'd get to the point where she would flat out refuse and I'd have to pick her up kicking and screaming and drag her to her party. Luckily, she perked up a bit for the ride there and a bit of playtime before the party.

But, once we entered her Party Room, she completely unraveled. She REFUSED to sit in the birthday chair. She REFUSED to paint on her canvas. She only wanted to be held; kept rubbing her eyes. It was not her shining moment.

The rest of the weekend was not a ton better. She did play with her new toys, but was still "off." She went to daycare on Monday, again me with the "I'm the mom and you're going to go" mentality, even though she specifically said she didn't want to go. It's just such a fine line between HEARING what she is saying and deciding if she's saying it to be manipulative, or because something is really wrong. The teachers said she was the first to nap, the last to get up and her usual rambunctious self on the playground didn't want to play outside at all.

By Tuesday morning I was fairly certain she needed to get back to the dr, where she was diagnosed with a sinus infection and a double ear infection. On top of that, they tested her for Mono. MONO, OMG! My first thought was, holy crap, that would explain SO much, especially the fatigue and lethargy. My second thought was holy shit how was I going to present this to all my friends and her daycare moms who came to her party.

Luckily, her bloodwork was normal. THANK GOD. She's STILL not 100%, 6 days after starting her antibiotic. We have her 3 year check on Wed, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they didn't order another round of antibiotics.

So, that's that.

Just over 3 feet tall:)

 

The best we could do at her party. She.was.clearly.miserable.

She perked up a bit when the presents came out:)

Puke, puke, pukety puke

It finally happened. Our house was attacked by a stomach virus, and Sophie was the only one it spared. I woke up about 2:30 Friday morning to the lovely sound of Dan throwing up. I thought I was imagining it, but after listening for a few minutes I realized he was indeed throwing up. I got up to check on him and he told me he'd been sick for hours, and that he thought about calling 911.

WHAT? 911 because you're puking? I didn't say that, but I certainly thought it. Men are such wimps!

I went back to bed, but never back to sleep. The power of suggestion is strong, and I of course thought that I was going to start throwing up as well. I finally got up about 6:30 to check on him, where in all honesty it DID look like he was on his deathbed. He started mumbling about the ER again, and I told him if he was still miserable when Melissa (our sitter for that day) arrived, I'd take him to Urgent Care.  I was starting to feel really gross myself.

I walked down our hallway and could SMELL puke. Ugh, gag. I went to see how bad he had left the bathroom, but to my surprise it was spotless, but the smell was just overwhelming. I even checked the shower for any signs of nastiness. Nothing. There I was at not even 7 am and I decided to clean the already clean toilet. I HAD to get rid of the smell. It didn't help. I lit candles. Didn't help. I finally gave up and got in the shower, and then oops my body was telling me I was going to have something coming out the other end. Lovely.

Finally dressed, the smell of puke was nauseauting (pun, intended). I walked in to Sophie's room, where Connor has been sleeping while we are letting him "cry it out" a bit.  Poor little red headed man was covered in dried puke. Ahh. Well, at least I found the reason for the smell. I stripped him, wiped him off as best I could and  went to wake Avery. Boom. The smell of puke when I walked into their room almost knocked me to the ground. She also was covered in it. Stripped her. Stuck them both in the only puke free crib. Stripped both cribs. Went to get bathwater ready for them, and then I finally puked. It wasn't even 8 am.

Luckily, only one baby threw up (just once) after that. I have no idea which one it was, but I found a pile of puke later in the day. They rebounded fairly quickly.  I only threw up once, but it was everything else that goes along with a bug like that that really did me in. The chills, sweating, achiness...my FINGERS hurt. That was the sickest I've seen Dan in 12 years, but he also rebounded fairly quickly.

I do not know how, but Sophie was spared. I certainly didn't have the energy to make sure she stayed away from babies. I figured if she was going to get it, it was inevitable. Later Friday morning I went to look for her, and found her face down on the floor in the twins room. I thought "uh-oh here it comes," but nothing, thankfully.

And that's the story of how we survived our first house-wide stomach bug. Don't want to do that again any time soon.

Pull-ups and "hi, mommy"

Wow, it really seems like 2 weeks ago some flip switched inside Sophie. The same weekend that her wubby broke, she suddenly decided she was done with dipes. My mom handed her one the other day and Sophie looked at her like "WTF is that thing." She will ONLY wear pull ups. This means that she's also regressed a bit, in that she's refusing underwear but that's OK. I consider this a MAJOR victory in the potty training arena.

She spent 3 days with my parents this past weekend, the longest she's been gone from home. She peed on the potty every.two.hours. This is also because my mother had the time to encourage this behavior. She's now peeing on the potty at daycare 2-3 times a day. She LOVES to show me her stickers when I pick her up each day:) But then, of course, it all goes down hill when we get home. Clearly, I don't have the time to make sure she pees every two hours, NOR would she be too hip on this idea.  But she's making HUGE progress.  Here's hoping we're done with pull ups by her birthday in December:)
Also, today was the first day she actually talked into the phone. Usually, she loves to play with it, press buttons, etc, but adamantly refuses to talk. Today, Dan called me and she got on the phone and said "hi mommy." Am I a complete fake because it made me cry? She's a big girl now. It's showing in so many ways. While thrilled for her, and her independence, it makes me sad.

I was holding Connor last night, cradling him in my arms, and I realized that I won't always be able to do this. I just want to soak it all in. Something I realized awhile ago, that I'm reminded of every now and again, is that I rarely held the babies while they ate. I breastfed each one twice, while they were in the NICU, but once we came home, whether it was formula or pumped milk, they usually were just propped in a boppy to take their bottles. It makes me sad, but it's the reality of twins I think.  

The day the Wubby broke.

Sophie was sitting on my lap last Saturday when she said "look what happened mommy." Her beloved kitty cat Wubbanub was broken. The plastic on the nipple part was torn. I'm confident she did this herself, as she likes to play with the damn thing, in addition to keeping it jammed in her mouth.

"I have idea!" What's your idea, Soph? "We fix it." Sorry baby, we can't fix it. And that was that.

She still carries it from room to room with her. And, if she really needs soothing will TRY to suck on it, but I know it's useless, lol. I have no interest in taking it away from her; I'll let her decide when she's ready. We do have several other Wubby's around the house. Although Avery will simply throw the thing across the room if we try to give it to her, Connor will sometimes use it in the evening. My fear has been that she'll "attach" to another one, but so far so good. Just last night I saw her find one and take it to Connor "Here Connor. I found your Wubby."

This really could be too good to be true!  Next stop...peeing on the potty!