2nd Birthday Video-2 year old twin boys!

My 2nd attempt at creating a video/photo slideshow to highlight the memories in the last year. One thing is for sure: I take A LOT of photos! We showed this video at the boys' 2nd birthday party, but if you missed it, check it out here!

Owen and Aaron 2nd Birthday Video

Two.

If you're like me, you haven't celebrated your own birthday since junior high when you hosted a sleepover complete with pizza, the game Girl Talk, prank phone calls, and enough sugar from the bulk candy bins at Cub Foods to make your stomach ache.

But if you've ever been a parent to a toddler (or two at once), you know that birthdays are something to be celebrated. It's that date on the calendar that pinpoints another year under your parenting belt and forces you into constant reflection mode: What were things like exactly one year ago today? How have things changed? Are they better? Do I have this mothering thing down yet?

While the changes in the past year aren't as physically dramatic as when our twins turned 1, turning 2 feels just as monumental in its own way.  It seems as though we are finally starting to see through some of the fog that has been present for so long: a time when their little bodies literally needed us for every piece of their day. To feed them, to carry them, to clothe them, to change them, to help them make sense of a world that doesn't speak in baby language.

(13 months old)

It's not to say that the dust has finally settled or anything like that, but just that I can finally start to see my boys as something outside of myself. The times when I stand back and look at them from across the room and something that they are doing literally takes my breath away. You just lined up all your cars from end to end--you're so imaginative! You just unzipped your jacket all by yourself--I didn't know you could do that! Yes, that is a blue truck--you're so smart! Thank you for offering to carry your jammies downstairs--you're so helpful!

Silly boys and best friends (most days, anyways...)

The moments that stick out for me over this past year are not major milestones. They are only little glimpses into an average day that, had I not written them down somewhere, I probably would have forgotten about. The first time you hugged each other before bed. The time when we were in the process of getting new carpet, we came home from daycare and there was no carpet in the dining room; the way you both tried to explain in your limited language where the carpet went. How you would lean in to the Christmas tree to give it hugs and how Owen would wave and say "hi" to the people and horseys in our Dicken's Snow Village. How you only like singing the "choo choo" song before bed and how you both belt out "A-MEN" after we say prayers each night. How you are obsessed with seeing if there are ice cubes in Mommy and Daddy's water glass at dinner every single night. The time when our house had suddenly gone silent for the first time since the babies were born...Dan and I looked at eachother dumbfounded wondering where the boys were until we noticed that they were sitting right in front of us stacking their MegaBlocks into towers like little champs without any adult help. How Aaron says "yaaaaaa" in a perfect Minnesota accent, complete with an over-exaggerated head nod. The first time I heard you say, "yuhve you, Momma" in your angel little voices, how nothing else in the world seemed to matter at that precious moment.

It is truly hard to remember how we filled our days when "woof, woof" was the only word you were able to communicate with me for several months after just turning 1. Now, you are running out into the street after a runaway ball yelling proudly, "I ga dit, Ma-mee!" Just recently you spent an entire shopping trip to Target telling every stranger we passed who was kind enough to stop and try to decode "buh-ckle bo-ken," your story of how the first cart Mommy tried to secure you into had a broken buckle, so we had to go to a "diff one."

You now sleep with grown-up sized pillows in your cribs and are three times the size of the baby blankets we brought you home from the hospital in. You eat gummy bear vitamins and we now share our kitchen table with messy little eaters who prefer to use the same kind of fork and spoon as Mommy and Daddy. I'm convinced that wearing helmets 24-hours a day would be the best way to keep you safe from your adventurous spirits that don't quite know the limits just yet.

2 year old twin boys

And while there are glimpses of what friends warn is to come in the next year (how dare I take the string cheese out of the plastic wrapper, I forgot that you want to "doo wit" yourself for goodness sake), I do try to hold onto what each day brings. I know in just a matter of time, we will be able to play at our neighborhood park without my blood pressure spiking every time you get close to the edge when Mommy is still making her way through the tunnel. I will probably have forgotten that we spent a month (or more) of this past year sleeping on an air mattress when one little guy just needed to know that Mommy and Daddy were close by. We will forget the crabbiness that accompanied the welcoming of 22 new teeth and molars into this world in the same year (okay, so maybe we will never forget the joys of teething). But you will laugh when we tell you how much you loved to read the Superhero Potty book or how you would ever so politely say "key que" (thank you), complete with the baby sign language, just after stealing a toy right out of your brother's hands. Soon, you will no longer be asking me to carry you up the stairs to go to bed. Before long, there will be new hurdles to conquer and milestones to reminisce.

So for today, we CELEBRATE turning 2.

To read my thoughts on my twins turning 1, read my post from last year here.

My Little Helpers

If you know me, you know that I like to be efficient and get things crossed off my to do list as quickly as possible. More jobs are waiting to be completed and I am already thinking about my next project before I am even done with my first.

My husband and I learned long ago that we do not cook well together. He is one to measure sugar perfectly by leveling it off with a knife, actually sifting the flour if the recipe calls for it, and will not bat an eye when just about every dish in the kitchen is being used for said recipe. He is a great cook and the end result is always worth the...ahem..long wait.

I, on the other hand, try to hurry up and get the brownies in the oven so I can wash the dishes and put them away so the kitchen will look pretty again. I resist the urge to wipe up the flour on my countertops each time it spills, and the sight of all the ingredients sprawled out on every flat surface of my kitchen makes my blood pressure rise. (OCD much?!)

I am just really not one for messes.

But, Santa must have been listening when I told him that all I wanted for Christmas was a cleaning lady. He even sent 2! Their hours are 5am-7pm and are immediately at my beck and call if they see the need arise.

"Howp?!" In Owen and Aaron's language this means"help" and let me tell you it has become a favorite word around here, usually right as I am about to get down to some nitty gritty cleaning for the first time in 3 weeks. From doing laundry to washing dishes to vacuuming up Brady's fur to wiping off the food that is caked on our dining room walls, our to-do list is always a work in progress.  And each night, just as I open the fridge to gather some ingredients to throw together for dinner, I hear the tiny voices asking to help...and, as if they already know the answer, they push over the 2 booster-less dining room chairs so that they can hog stand at the counter with me to help.

I secretly cringe at the fact that my 30-minute meal will undoubtedly will now take a good hour.

But every time, my answer is the same. Yes, you can help. Deep down I know that not much gets done when my helpers are at my side. The floors will need to be swept again. I will have to re-wipe the windows down in all the places that were missed. And I will have to re-wash a load of laundry that just came out of the dryer because I couldn't bear to tell the boys to take the clothes out of the washer once I saw the proud looks on their faces when they knew that they had "helped" their mommy. 

In the end, it is not about how clean my house is or how quickly I can make a meal. It is about spending time with my little helpers. And for that, I will take all the help I can get. 

Now, can I get someone to help me pick up these toys?!

First Haircuts

It seems like we are running out of times we can say "their first _____." The token first smile, first steps, first teeth, and first holidays seem like eons ago and now we are just in the thick of living life with two very busy toddlers.

Maybe that is why I held off on Aaron's first haircut until just today, at 21 1/2 months old.  As I see my little babies becoming little boys right before my eyes, I find myself clinging to hold on to anything that will remind me of their tiny little bodies, of a time that has so quickly come and gone.

While Owen's first haircut was just as momentous of an occasion, and I was that mom in the Kids' Hair salon with my camera snapping a bazillion photos and probably getting in the way, I was so much more ready for it. It was the end of Summer, he was15 months old, and his hair was getting long. And while I held out until the last second and debated over it for weeks, it just seemed like the right time. (Seriously...do other moms linger over these events as much as I do?!)

But Aaron. He really has not had much hair until recently. It is fine and thin and wispy. But then there are curls. Right at the back of his neck. Sometimes just one. Sometimes more. The curls melt me and are probably the single reason that I held on this long.

The only problem was that these days the curls, more often than not, resembled a frizzy rat tail. The "bed head" was out of hand, and was present at times when he hadn't just gotten out of bed. And I say this this in the most endearing way, but every now and then those curls took on the look of an over-watered Chia Pet. It wasn't until I saw him with his crazy locks from across the room at ECFE class this past Tuesday night, that I finally came to terms with his need for a haircut.

He was so quiet and shy, but he sat in that big red chair like such a brave little boy. And again I got to be the sentimental mom snapping pictures of this momentous occasion. The stylist knew, without me saying a word, that I wanted to save those sweet little curls from his haircut. So she tucked them into a cute little souvenir baggie to remember this haircut. His first haircut. 

Aaron and his sweet, sweet curls.

Before His First Haircut

Little boy in a big red chair.

So brave.

Not so sure what just happened!

Aaron's first haircut. After.

These Are My People

I remember the moment like it was yesterday. I was over in London, England completing my student teaching.  My fellow student teacher friends and I were waiting in line to get into a pub one night. We started chatting with the people in front of us, and learned that they were from Norway. And all of a sudden it hit me. The trademark Scandanavian "thin upper lip" was the first dead giveaway. "Oh my goodness," I told them. "We look alike!!!"  Of course, they had no idea what I was talking about. But I could see in these strangers my own reflection. I could see my grandma, my dad, and my uncles. I could see my Norweigan roots like never before and I couldn't believe my eyes and the connetion I felt with these people!

When I found out I was pregnant with twins, of course everyone I talked to had a cousin with twins, a grandma who is a twin or a neighbor who wishes they were a twin. But I didn't KNOW anyone with twins. A former coworker invited me to join a local group of Mamas of Multiples and this group of amazing moms has been one of the biggest blessings in our journey with twins.  This group can roll the acronyms TTC, PUPPs, VBAC, CIO, BH, and RSV off their tongues with the best of them. It is a place to go to for support, to share in accomplishments, and even to see if your child's latest diaper looks, ahem...normal. It is where I first met moms of twins the same age as my boys, who on any given night can light up my cell phone with more text messages than most teenagers I know (and the sole reason my husband made me take my phone off "vibrate" when in silent mode, turns out it's not too "silent" when receiving that many messages at a time!)

It is a support system that I wish upon every new mom. These rockstar mommas have all faced the daunting tasks of everyday life with more than one child of the same age at the same time. We can all answer the unending questions of, "Just HOW do you do it?" and "Two? Are they twins?" We speak a sometimes unspoken language, us moms of multiples. But it is when we all gather on a snowy Minnesota night after our babes have all been tucked in snug as a bug, and we look around the room that we see our reflection in each other and find the comfort and presence of strangers and friends. Of those who have gone through the trenches before us and those who are bringing up the rear. They get it, when no one else does. These are my people.

 

*Special thanks to Kate B. for taking photos and allowing me to use them here.

The Little Things

A fellow mom of twins once told me, "The days are long, but the years are so short." And as we are approaching less than 4 months from O and A's 2nd (that's right, SECOND!!) birthday, that phrase has never had more meaning. Where is the time going?

Our days begin at the 4:18am crack of dawn when one of the two wakes up and wants to start the day. Inevitably, the other one wakes up and soon we have a chorus of way-too-early cries and I spend the next half hour going back and forth between their two bedrooms like a ping pong ball, replacing pacis and blankies, hoping for a few extra minutes of sleep.

The other morning, I was walking by Aaron's bedroom while Daddy was trying to rock him back to sleep, and all I could hear was him (Aaron, not Daddy!) sucking on his pacifier.  It's a very distinct sound and sounds completely different than the way Owen sucks on his paci. I all of a sudden got really sentimental and thought about how sounds like these will soon escape my memory. I thought about how I can barely remember the sound of the squeaks Owen made for the first week of his life, and if it wasn't for photos, I wouldn't remember that just a few months ago, the babies were small enough that they could walk directly under our kitchen table without bumping their heads, or that they used to eat baby food or drink bottles or wear onesies, or...

We are in new territory now, with potty chairs and 2 word sentences and eating with spoons AND forks. We can do puzzles and shapes and "make pizza" in the most gourmet Little Tikes kitchen around. And if the amount of photos on my camera or videos on my phone are any indication, I am trying to stop time. Or at least, push pause so I can look back later when I am out of the blur of raising twins.

I recently came across this quote from one of my favorites:
“You will never have this day with your child again. Tomorrow they’ll be a little older than they were today.  This day is a gift. Breathe and notice. Smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today, mama. It will be over before you know it.”-Jen Hatmaker

At 20 months old, there is so much I want to remember.
~How when I pick you up from daycare you come running around the corner with gigantic smiles and want to show me and give me every toy that you are holding.
~How you have learned that kisses are the best cure for your owies.
~How you LOVE to "ruh, ruh, run" around our house before bedtime in just your saggy little diapers.
~How you both call eachother "O" (as in Owen) but both know who we are talking about if we say Aaron.
~How Aaron smiles with his straight-across smile with the gap between his front teeth and eyes that light up the world.
~How Aaron stands up waiting for me in his crib, but always leans down to pick up his blankie before I lift him up.
~How Aaron gives the sweetest hugs that are defined as bending at the waist and leaning his head in towards whatever he is hugging.
~How Aaron's one little curl in his hair sits at the back of his neck, and how I haven't brought myself to cut it off yet.
~How Owen runs with a hop in his step and his hair flops up and down as he moves.
~How Owen immediately says "bye-bye" when you ask him where anything is.
~How Owen giggles at himself everytime he gets into his carseat and sees himself in the mirror on the seatback.
~How Owen is genuinely concerned when something is wrong. Aaron accidentally bonked me in the eye with his toy the other day and Owen looks at me and says, "Sye...(long pause) Mum." (Sorry, Mom)
~How when we are out and about and we see babies and you both get sooo excited and want to see and wave at them. And then I look at you both with your long legs and big boy tennis shoes and realize that you are not my little babies anymore. You are my little boys. My sweet, sweet little boys. What a lucky mama I am. 

Have Twins, Will Travel

When we told our friends and family that we were going to be traveling (in an airplane-the kind that actually leaves the ground with people in it) with our 18 month old twins over Thanksgiving weekend, most people looked at us as though we had just told them we were going to join the circus. We could see the shock in their eyes that wondered, "Are you CRAY-ZEE?!" And, in all honesty, they weren't that far off. At times our adventure from Minnesota to California and back did kind of feel like we had joined a special kind of circus. One where airports, and nap times, and hotel rooms, and meal times, and oceans, and traffic, and sightseeing, and family all sort of mesh together into one big whirlwind of a vacation.

PLANNING

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a planner. And those who have gone before us in flying with twins know that planning is a must. I was given several awesome tips from my twin mom friends who made me feel like I could tackle the task of packing and executing a trip with our twins, hundreds of thousands (okay maybe not that far) of miles from home and the routine that we thrive on. I took the challenge and started list-making and shopping and laying things out probably 4 weeks before we actually boarded the plane.

Contents of our carry-on bags

Bribes for our fellow passengers: Earplugs, candy, and a note with the cutest picture I could find of the boys.

SURVIVING THE AIRPORT

Given that our flight left at 9am, we wanted to be at the airport by 6:45am to make sure we made it through security, had time to eat, and attempt to run off any lingering energy in the boys. Dan and I spent days figuring out who was going to do what once we arrived at the airport. It sounded kind of like this: Okay, I am going to take the boys jackets off while they are still in their carseats and you are going to take the stroller out of the trunk and wheel it over to me, and I will put them into their stroller with their blankies and wheel them into the heated airport and go get in line and you are going to remove the carseats from the car and put them into those handy carseat bags we ordered. Then you are going to get one of those Smartcartes and put our 2 suitcases and 2 carseats onto the cart and meet me inside the airport. Everything we did was majorly calculated and planned out ahead of time if possible.

Overall, the airport was a breeze. We knew about the "family" security line check-point and the staff there was extremely kind and helpful. We spent the next couple hours chasing the boys around the airport doing everything in our power to keep them awake but tired before we got on our flight.

Checking in at the MSP Airport

Chasing Daddy down the moving walk-ways-a definite favorite!



Burning more energy inside the airport



Playing in the Kiddie Area

Lots of "Oohs" and "Aahs" as they checked out the airplanes on the runway.

We made it to our seats and were thrilled to find out that there were open seats next to us! We handed out our goodie bags and the flight crew and fellow passengers promised us that there was nothing our boys could do that would bother them. We prayed our boys would not make them liars. The nice thing was, the notes kind of broke the ice and started up conversations with everyone around us. We even found out that the 2 college girls sitting behind us were twins, too! 

Ready for Take Off!

I really didn't need to pack all those toys in the carry-on bags. The window blinds, tray tables,
and seat TVs were definitely a hit with both boys, especially Aaron.

This happened.

So did this.

VACATION

The whole reason for our visit to California was to spend time with my brother and his family. The boys loved playing with their baby cousin. The weather was beautiful on most days and the sight of palm trees and the ocean was enough to help us forget about the 10 degree temperatures we left behind in MN.

Christian's garage man-cave now sports a baby swing-Welcome to fatherhood, brother!



Christian's house: Concrete steps, sidewalks, more steps, and window wells made for many (un-safe) adventures!

The boys out for a stroll in sunny Burbank, CA

Something about seeing your brother with his babe: heart-melting

Celebrating Thanksgiving like real turkeys! Note: We didn't actually get to sit down for the meal.
Between the time zone change and no nap, the boys were just done for the day, so back to the hotel we went.

HOTEL LIFE

Overall, the hotel we stayed at worked out well for us. I am certain we made rockstars look good--toddlers can sure trash a hotel room in no time. I was convinced we would never see any of our damage deposit back. Meal time sans high chairs equals messy fingers finding the white linens, couch cushions, curtains and walls. And timing nap time around Housekeeping's arrival proved to be a big joke as they never came at the same time twice. And then there's sleeping at night..putting the boys to bed in the same room we were in required mommy and daddy to pretend to be asleep at 7pm each night and then sitting in the dark until we were tired enough to actually sleep (which was usually 7:30pm anyways). But it actually worked out okay. The boys loved the new electrical cords in our room, playing peekaboo in the double-layered curtains, putting their toys in the empty dresser drawers, and opening and closing the door to the bathroom countless times proved to be dream entertainment for 1 year olds!

Playing in their cribs at the hotel. AKA not sleeping. 

SIGHTSEEING
We saw the Hollywood Sign. The end.



We didn't let a little rain stop us from a family pic at the Hollywood Sign. 

THE OCEAN
This was the highlight of the trip for us. It was a picture perfect day and the beach in Malibu was the backdrop for these sunny pics. The boys literally RAN straight for the water and left Dan and I in the dust, cursing Christian for bringing us to the rockiest beach in Southern California. It was a dangerous jungle-gym for our boys, but they didn't notice. They loved it all: rocks, sand, water, and the sun.



Seriously, Mom, not ANOTHER picture! 

Oh my gosh, who is this big boy?!

And where did my 3 pound baby go?!

Best pic of the 3 boys we could get!

Christmas Jammies Photo, Take  #1

Christmas Jammies Photo, Take #163
 (seriously the best we could do??!! Note Owen's red face, at first we thought
it was because we were a little late applying sunscreen at the beach. We then determined he had an allergic
reaction to the sunscreen we uhmmm, borrowed from another family on the beach). Oops.

Heading Home: Blessed again with an entire OPEN row of seats!
 They must have known we would need extra room for the arching-back, throwing himself on the floor tantrums that would accompany this leg of the trip!

Goodbye, California

We are happy to report that we survived our adventure traveling with our twins. We are thankful for the experience, but are happy to return to our ho-hum routine and baby-proofed home!