Time to Pray

The boys and I pray often throughout the day.  They are pretty good about folding their hands, closing their eyes, and bowing their heads (for a few seconds! Ha!).  Nathan likes to say a confident “Amen!” at the end of our prayers.  It’s precious that they like to talk to God.

 

The four of us sit on the couch together for prayers before we put the boys down for bed at night.  Daddy usually does the praying, but tonight he was gone to a meeting.  After the prayer, we let the boys hug and kiss each other, then Mommy and Daddy get hugs and kisses and say “I love you.  Night night.”  Well, tonight when I said “brothers’ hugs”, they dove on each other and kind of kissed as usual.  Then, as clear as a bell, Nathan said to Logan, “I love you.”  Is that not just so sweet?

 

Nathan has been saying “love you” when he is told to say “I love you” to someone.  But, this was completely voluntary.  He hasn’t voluntarily said it to me or Todd.  I think it is sweet that he said it to his brother first.  Also, did you notice that is a sentence?  Yes, my 19-month-old is (and has been) speaking in sentences.  How are these baby boys growing up so fast?!

Climb & Slide

One of my teacher friends not only offered to hand down her son’s outdoor play equipment, but also delivered it to us! The boys love playing in and on the climb & slide. A few days ago, Nathan mastered climbing the ladder and sliding by himself. Logan loves to play in the “house” under the slide and likes to try to climb up the slide, not the ladder.

Here’s a little video of Nathan playing on the slide.

Slide, climb, swing, run… We’re having all kinds of fun outdoors!

Pretending Together

It’s commonplace for the boys to squirm their way into their closet when I’m trying to get them dressed in the morning.  They love playing in the closet, pulling down all of their folded sheets and towels, and climbing on boxes of wipes and diapers.  Usually it gets noisy pretty fast in there, since playing together quickly turns into pushing, grabbing objects from a brother, pulling, and screaming.  There is a lot of fussing between twins at this age.  If one opens a door, the other tries to close it – then they both yell.  One picks up a rock, the other tries to grab it away – yell.  One sits on Mommy’s lap to read, the other shoves and yells while trying to climb into my lap, too.  Yes, I think there must be more yelling with 2 18-month-olds than there would be with one.

Anyway, there they were playing in the closet, and the noise level was pleasant for an extended period of time (like 2 minutes!).  I peeked in to find that they were feeding each other something.  What could they have found to eat in the closet?!  Nathan is always chewing on something.  He’s really good at finding tiny pieces of leaves or stems and sucking on them.  I fish the foreign objects out of his mouth only to find him sucking on a new speck of something shortly after.  So, I thought that maybe he had gotten Logan on the ‘chew on junk we find on the floor’ game. 

I was wrong.  Nathan had found the cooler part of their bottle warmer and was pretending to pull food out of it and feed the food to his brother.  Logan was doing the same to Nathan in return.  Back and forth, they fed each other pretend food saying “yummm!”  I watched this go on thinking it was no big deal until I realized that I’m pretty sure they haven't actually pretended together before.  They were on the same page.  Then, at the tail-end of this 10-minute interaction, I finally realized that I should probably get this on video.
So, here is the end of them pretending to feed each other.  Feeding turns into blowing kisses…

Painting with a Twist

Our friend, Geran, will be 30 this week.  To celebrate, she invited a bunch of her girlfriends out to Painting with a Twist.  We all had a fabulous evening chatting, drinking wine (except for me, since I don’t drink! Ha!), and painting!

Geran is in the front – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  The lady right behind Geran is the mother to TWO sets of twins!  

Geran, thanks for inviting me.  We all had a great time!

A Typical Day with my Twins

I don’t think I’ve ever done a post with our daily schedule.  I would just like to confess that I am not a morning person.  I generally do not get up before the boys wake up.  I pay for that choice, as you will see.

So, here’s a sample of a typical weekday with the boys along with many random photos…

8:00 – They wake up.  Breakfast: usually bananas, Cheerios, scrambled eggs, milk, sometimes wheat toast with a little jelly.
 

Bath and get dressed for them.
Play, read books, play (I try to do some chores, but usually spend most of my time interacting {and refereeing} with them).

11:30 – They watch Barney while I start their lunch.
12:00 – They eat lunch. 
Change diapers, rock them to settle for nap.
1:00 – 3:00 – NAP  This is when I get to eat my lunch, shower and dress, and maybe spend some time doing chores {very quietly!}, or spend some time on the computer.  Lately, though, Nathan has not gone down smoothly.  He will scream (and I mean really scream) for close to an hour before going down.  Also, Logan will not sleep past 2:00, no matter what time I put him down.  He will not rock back to sleep, either.  So, many days as of late, have been quite frustrating with literally no time for me to pull myself together during the day.  Nathan has been pulling the screaming thing at night, too.  After letting him have his tantrum without rescuing him for so long now, he’s finally going down more quickly and quietly as of yesterday.  There’s no improvement on Logan’s front, yet.
3:00 – Nap’s over.  Change diapers, and at Nathan’s adamant request of “Shoes! Outside!” upon opening his eyes, we go play in the backyard.  I’m so glad for the nice weather we’re having!
4:00 – Todd comes home, I breathe, and the boys have a snack.
Todd usually has tons of photography work to do throughout the evening, especially now that he is finishing up band jobs and has many senior bookings.  From 5:00-7:00 is survival.  The twins are usually pretty fussy in the evenings and it’s difficult manage them and try to prepare supper while Todd works. 
7:00 – Supper for all of us.
Play, Change to Pajamas

8:30 – Bed

So, that’s pretty much it.  Not complicated, but very busy with two active little boys. 

Some days I want to pull my hair out when they don’t nap, or they’re just irritated and cry a lot.  I have a hard time feeling like I can’t control a situation, but I have to remember that they are 18 months old!  I heard Michelle Dugger say that little kids are “in training”.  Fits and frustrations happen, but they are being trained to be well behaved.  Remembering that they are “in training” helps me want to approach these times with the gentleness and love they deserve.  I wouldn’t trade my time at home with these sweet guys for anything {even a bigger house!}.

Flowers for Mommy

Nathan had fun picking flowers off our weeds while we played in the back yard today.  He started by gently picking one at a time, and would bring each one to me while saying “Mommy! Flower!” 

He started ripping up handfuls of grass and bring that to me, too, while saying “Grass!”  I told him how much I like the flowers, but we shouldn’t pick the grass.  He continued picking the grass, of course, but laid it out on the deck steps instead of giving it to me.