Week of 5-12-08

So we started using a "schedule" last week. Thank God! Life is a whole lot better with the schedule in place. I think the twins were just over-tired before and it was really hard to get them to sleep and to stay asleep. Now, they're asleep anywhere between 8 and 8:30 and they wake up between 5:45 and 6:15. Perfect. The schedule even allows us to throw a load of laundry in each day so we stay on top of the mountain and free up that time on the weekends. I remember trying to get them on a routine when they were about 3 or 4mos old, but they were really against it, so we gave up pretty quick...that day. But, it's all good now and we're in it for the long haul.
Over the weekend, the twins' Aunt Amy and Uncle Shane came to visit and Matt's Uncle Jim and cousin Tim came to visit too. I was terrible with my camera - not taking enough pictures, but I managed to get a couple.
Here's Uncle Jim with Bryan. The twins really enjoyed hanging out with Jim and Tim on Saturday. They played on the floor, pulled lots of hair and poked lots of eyes.

Here's Bryan now with cousin Tim.

Our next dilemma is about our cat. He's a dominant cat and ever since we brought the boys home, he's had problems. He'd start peeing out of the litter box and stop and start and stop. He's started up again and I've had enough. With the boys crawling around like crazy, I just can't risk them playing with some cat feces that they stumble upon. It's not like we're letting the boys roam around where they could get into that situation, but you never know where Pepper's going to strike. Anyone want a cat? Here's one of the boys trying to attack Pepper. It really is one of their favorite things to do. Pepper will lay on the ottoman and watch over the boys while they're playing. Then they'll see him and try to catch him. Pepper's afraid and will run away, but just out of their reach, so they go after him. It's cute to watch. Why can't he just not pee???

A trip to the petting zoo.

On Saturday morning, we went to the Randall Road Petting Zoo and Park. This place is pretty big. There's a lot of land for running around, a few playground areas, a picnic shelter, and of course, a petting zoo. Me, Matt, and the boys went there to join our local twins club for a morning of fun. We were debating whether or not we should go because Bryan, Matt, and I were battling a small cold that we caught from Jonathan. Not to mention the fact that the boys can't walk, so they'd just be pushed around. The event was just going to be a couple of hours and we all needed the fresh air, so we went. We brought jackets and blankets and our stroller to run around in. It was a lot of fun and we weren't the only set of "baby" twins there.
The first fun project that the club had set up for the kids to do was to pick "flowers" for their mothers for Mother's Day and decorate them and a card. We chose to try out the flower patch - I guess the flowers were yummy, cause the boys each ate one. I ended up picking up two dry ones for myself...what? I deserve it! :)


After that, we headed to the petting zoo portion of the park. Matt held Bryan and I held Jonathan so they could get a closer look at the animals. Here's Matt and Bryan checking out the chickens and a rooster. It cackled when they got too close to the hens. The boys were in awe of all the different animals. Jonathan would get excited and kick out his legs a lot and Bryan had a big goofy grin on his face most of the time. I loved it.

Here's Matt talking to the turkey. Yep, he was gobbling and the turkey was gobbling right back. It was a bonding moment.

This next one was the cutest thing. Another twins mother took this picture of us. You can see Matt's head. Bryan on the right, Jonathan on the left. Jonathan hit his head on the little opening, so he wasn't too happy, but we got the pic.

With this next picture, I just wanted to document the biggest pig that I've ever seen in person. It was huge people!

By the end of two hours, Bryan was fast asleep and Jonathan was also shortly after him.

Here's Daddy and Jonathan having a laugh later in the day.

Now that the boys' teeth are a little more noticeable, I wanted to get a picture to show you all. Here's Jonathan showing us his. He's got one up on the right side and a little bit of one on the left side is pushing through....still. It's really bothering him, and us! That Baby Oragel really works well though.

Here's Bryan showing us his teeth.

Maybe another day. His two bottom ones are up about the same as Jonathan's first one.

Mother's Day went well. Matt really wanted to try out a new recipe for Kansas City Ribs (smoked). They were awesome! I finally got a chance to use my trifle bowl and made a tri-berry trifle. Yummy!

In other news, Matt and I made the decision to get the boys set on a schedule. This is more for us than them, but it will definitely help them. They are to wake up at 6am and we're going to try and be out the door by 7:30am. After work, we're going to eat, feed them, clean up, give them baths, have play time, read a story and put them to sleep all by 8:30pm. We'll see how it works out and I'll be sure to let you know. They're already pretty close to those times anyway, but we've been rocking them to sleep and we let them fall asleep when they want. Our plan is to literally put them in their cribs at 8:30pm and hope they fall asleep. This actually worked last night, but I could be beginners luck. Like I said, we'll see.

The Past Two Weeks Ending 5-4-08

The Past two weeks have been very busy for our family. I'll start with the oldest news and bring you up to date with this past weekend. (Sorry for the delay - I was at a client last week and could not post)
The weekend of 4-26-08, we (Matt, Me, Jean, Mark, and the boys) all went to Univ. of Illinois to see Matt's cousin, Paul, pitch for Penn State. It was a nice trip down and the boys did great. We had lots of snacks and magazines to keep us occupied and I even got a little cat-nap in (who doesn't love a cat-nap?). When we got there, we had a little bit of a hard time finding the stadium. If we didn't watch Paul pitch, this would've been the highlight of the trip. It was the classic "we saw the lights, but couldn't find the stadium" problem. We eventually found it and fortunately didn't miss too much of the game. It was a double header that ended around 7, if I remember correctly, so it wasn't too bad timing-wise for the boys. They were really over stimulated by the end of the day, so it was pretty hard to get them to sleep. Other than that, they loved every minute of it.
Here's Bryan cheering on Penn State to a victory of 10-7 in the first game. There was a home run after home run with 6 altogether. They made it look easy.


Here's Paul pitching on Sunday. Penn State was having a hard time in this game, so they called in Paul to save the day. It was already too late.

Our trip back on Sunday went pretty well also. We were all exhausted and turned in early for the night. Here's the boys when we were trying to get them down to sleep. (Jonathan on the left)

OK, here we are into this past weekend (first weekend of May). My Grandma and Grand pap Miller came to town from Pittsburgh, PA. They just got back from a trip to China, I know, amazing! We saw some pictures of the Great Wall which was just one stop of many on their tour. Matt and I hope to be as active when we're that age. Personally, I don't see myself getting my butt off the couch, but you never know. :) So here's one of the boys hanging out in a highchair. Both boys were doing this and I thought it was the cutest thing. They're using the hook on the bottom of the tray as a footrest.

Here's Great-Grandpap with Jonathan...

And Great-Grandma with Bryan. Check out that necklace. It has a little boy or girl figurine for each grandchild and great-grandchild. That's some serious bling.

Here's Jonathan (a.k.a. "the animal")cruising down Grandpap's leg with a trail of slobber. He's really progressing with his motor skills and he was untying Grandpap's shoelaces over and over again. Since they've cut their teeth, they've been trying to bite everything. I'm starting to suspect it's because of the reaction that they get. It really hurts!

Here's just a cute picture of Bryan.

It was a beautiful day on Sunday, so we all went for a walk around the block after lunch. Jonathan was in the front and Bryan in the back. Can you see his alligator sunglasses? They stayed on for at least 15 minutes! For those non-mom's out there, that's a really long time! (By the way, it was a bit windy when we took this first picture. Grandma's hair doesn't normally stand up like that.)


At the end of our walk, we had a chat with our neighbors (Diane, Lisa, Shannon, and Shannon's soccer friend were there) and Bryan had a chat with their dog Bailey (I think that's her name).

Here's Jim and Joann with Bryan and Jonathan. This was the best picture I got since they were clearly not in the mood to get their pictures taken. After this, we all went upstairs to give the boys a bath. Good times. Kinda wished I had cleaned the upstairs bathroom at that point.

Ok, there's a story behind this picture. Each year, my family on my Mom's side has a jelly bean count contest for all the grandchildren. I was out of the competition for a number of years due to me being busy, forgetting, etc., but these past two years, I've put in my guess. Last year, I had no idea what the container looked like but my count won! This year, they allowed Matt to compete as well (with a picture of the container to look at) and guess what, he won! The winner gets the container of jelly beans and $20. Yummy and Yummy!

It's official. The boys are now in the woddler room! Today I brought the camera into daycare to document the special day. Here are the boys with their Infant-room teacher, Miss Karen.

Here are the boys being passed onto their new teacher, Miss Kim.

They were really excited and so was I. I'm such a dork of a Mom! Who else would take pictures of their kids moving from one room to the next? Anyways, the boys really like this room, there's lots of toys to play with and plenty of soft areas to fall on while they practice crawling and eventually walking. The next step is to move on to the toddler room. Let's not talk about that because I'll just start tearing up again. They're growing up so fast!