Heat Wave

You know how sometimes you’ll exaggerate and say “it’s like a hundred degrees out”?? Well, here this is actually true. Did I mention I am not a fan of the heat? And did I mention that I’m not a fan of 80 degree heat so 100 degree heat is way beyond my ability. Last week temps were in the 70s which is my kind of summer weather.

To make matters worse, these homes were build with radiators. In other words, no air ducts. In other words, no central air unless I want to spend huge amounts of money to install ductwork. I don’t even want to put laundry away because the window units are turned off upstairs.

Hopefully this will break soon but in the meantime you’ll find me lying in front of the A/C while ignoring the laundry, dishes, and vacuuming. (Oh, who am I kidding, I ignore the housework all of the time…)

Summer Sanity Savers

When preschool ended it was with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, the kids won’t be in school 3 mornings a week; when will I have time to do anything! On the other hand, the kids won’t be in school 3 mornings a week; now I’ll have time to do lots of stuff!  I was sad that I’d be obligated to cart around two 4 year olds through the grocery store, bank, and Tar.get but I’m happy to be able to do more fun things with them.  (Remind me of this in a month when I’m exhausted and complaining. K? Tnx!) 

During the school year we have 3 mornings filled by preschool, one morning with playgroup, and one morning to do whatever we want but that usually turns into us hanging around the house.  I’m hoping that this summer we’ll be able to do a lot more trips to fun places.

Thanks to Sav.vySource, (Name of City)HalfOff(dot)com, and a few others we now have memberships to several area museums which also get us into MORE fun places.  My rough plan is to send them to the playground program 2 mornings a week, do a museum once a week, stay home one morning a week, and have a playdate one morning a week.  Afternoons M-F will be filled with Swim Lesson, Library, Swim Lesson, Ki.ndersports, and Playgroup in that order.

My other sanity saver is to *fingers crossed* finally start flying again. I’m dressed to shoes, have a load of laundry in and now I’m to shine my sink.  Any other Flybabies out there?

Favor to Ask

Okay, so I don’t post that often and probably have about 1 person who even reads this, but I still have a favor to ask.  My dear friend, stark. raving. mad. mommy., has been nominated on Babble.com’s top Mommy Blogger list.  Can you please go to: http://www.babble.com/babble-50/mommy-bloggers/nominate-a-blogger/ and vote for her?  Right now she’s on page 2 if you sort by popularity.  If you go alphabetically, she’s on page 13.

Let me tell you a little about stark. raving. mad. mommy.   She used to live a few blocks away until she up and moved to Texas.  The whole move with 4 kids and no more network of support was kind of driving her over the edge so she’s started this hilarious blog.  I miss her tons and my girls still cry to go play with her kids. 

She’s also probably the reason that I’m NOT stark raving mad.  Pretty much any worthwhile parenting practice I use is because she gave me the advice I needed. She’s the kind of friend that if one of your kids is puking she’ll not only drop off the Pedialyte but she’ll leave you dinner too.  We used to share errands and I sometimes still get the urge to call her and see if she needs anything before I head out to Tra.der Jo.e’s.  So, if I can get even one more person to vote for her I’d be really happy.

Happy July!

So the Challenge did work out so well.  It turns out I can barely do once a month so I guess doing once a week was too much.  The good news is that my summer is looking a bit more better for free time and kid-free time so who knows.

The girls have started going to our town’s playground program.  It’s available  every morning for 6 weeks for the low registration fee of $5.  Yes, $5.  When a friend of mine first heard about it she called to ask what the weekly fee was after you register.  Then we both fainted when the answer was there was no weekly fee – it was JUST the $5. 

We had a really fun June.  The girls “graduated” from 3-year old preschool.  Thankfully, it’s not the type of school that actually requires paper gowns and hats but they did have a nice picnic and each child got a diploma, award, photo album and yearbook.  The yearbook was hysterical.  Each child had a page with their favorite field trip, snack, thing to do at school, and what they want to be when they grow up.  A. would like to be a princess and R. would like to be a cowgirl.  (Later R. told me, “I want to be a cowgirl when I grow up.  Or a doctor.”  Good to have goals, huh?) 

After having to drag the kids to school three mornings a week we kind of just stopped doing anything for a week after that.  Pajamas 24/7, lots of TV, games, reading, and sitting on the couch.  You get the idea.  After that we, thankfully, started swim lessons and Ki.ndersports with lots of playdates and fun stuff in between. 

Then we had last week which started with R. having a high fever and no other symptoms (ending our plans to visit a local amusement park) and ended with a huge storm that felt like a tornado (complete with golf ball sized hail.)  We were very lucky and only went without power for 2 days.  A friend of ours had a tree land on her garage+car BUT had power the whole time.  All things considered, I’d rather lose a freezer full of food.  (And I didn’t even lose that.  See, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to NOT go grocery shopping for 2 weeks.)  We were lucky enough to pack up and go to my IL’s house AND they weren’t even there.  It was like a vacation.  Their house is clean, has central air, and cable.  No pressure to do laundry or finally finish painting the kitchen. Bliss!

Now, a week later, all of the roads in our town are clear, power is restored, the heat wave has broken (*knock on wood*) and the kids are safely at the playground.  Woo-hoo!  Off to do some more housework.

Telling Identical Twins Apart

Having identical twins adds an additional layer of anxiety over small things like haircuts.  My girls don’t look anything alike to me BUT it’s hard for me to explain to the outside world how to tell them apart.

Since birth, I’ve been color coding the girls and all of their belongings.  A’s main color is green and R’s main color is purple.  After that they split the colors mostly based on alphabetical order. (ie – A gets Blue, Green, and Pink while R gets Yellow, Red, White) This is very useful when I go to label my photos from 2007 because it’s hard to tell who’s who when all you can see is the back of their head.

However, I may have let the color coding go on too long given this exchange last week:
R: Ooo, A. do you want to borrow my Minnie Mouse shirt?
A: Oooo, yes, I want to be Minnie Mouse.
I get the shirt out.  It’s purple.
R: Oh, it’s a purple Minnie Mouse shirt.
A: That’s okay.  I will tell them I am A. 

Last week I learned that their preschool teacher can tell them apart based on their personality.  Here’s what she said:
One of your daughters is so strong willed.  She’s always getting the other one to do whatever activity she decides. 

I’m always amazed when the kids in their preschool can tell them apart.  Although, I had a friend who said that the reason one of the kids in her twin’s preschool can tell them apart is that this little girl can read their nametags.

Well, after this weekend, there’s a simple way to tell my girls apart.  A. is the one with shorter hair!

 

I’ve been hoping she would be willing to get a haircut ever since they started school. (Well, if we’re really honest, ever since their hair got long.  I even used to let them play with scissors in the hopes that one would give the other a haircut, thus solving the “how to tell them apart” problem.)  Brushing two heads of long curly hair is a lot when you’re not a morning person and have to get to school on time.  Especially since A. doesn’t like to stand still or let me do anything to her hair except put it into a pony tail.  (R. loves headbands, braids, and pigtails and will stand still.)  I was originally waiting for her to tell me she wanted a haircut two days in a row (to make sure she really wanted it) but I got tired of waiting and when she asked for short hair this weekend we dropped all of our plans and got it cut.  I’m a little sad that her curls are gone but she loves her new look and so do I.

I was worried about making sure she realized that she wouldn’t have hair like her sister’s anymore.  She seemed okay with it and both girls were excited when I explained that it might make it easier for people to tell them apart.  I was also worried that R. would want short hair when she saw her sister but thankfully she loves her long hair. 

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Side note: Second week in a row that I managed to post!  Visit Mommy Daisy and see how she’s doing with the challenge.

Challenge

That seems to be how long I go between blog posts. One of the first blogs I started reading, Mommy Daisy, put out a challenge to herself to blog more often.  I’m going to *try* to commit to once every week.  Yeah, I know what Yoda says about trying but that’s the best I can do. 

Here’s what’s been keeping me from blogging:

-The girls are loving preschool.  And I’m loving the 2 hours and 30 minutes I get three times a week.  However, I think it means I spend less time at the computer and more time shopping. 

-My best mom friend moved.  It was last November but she was the kind of friend you just don’t find anywhere.    We talk often so I’m not missing the emotional support quite as much as the physical support.  This was my go to person for babysitting, we shared errands (ie-hey, I’m going to Tr.ader Jo.e’s, what do you need?), and even traded cooking from time to time. And, really, there’s no substitute for sipping a martini with a friend while the kids run around the backyard. 

-We started swim lessons which is fun and not necessarily a big reason I’m not on the computer but I’m still trying to figure out how a 30 minute swim lesson takes up 90 minutes of my time.

-I’m painting my kitchen.  You’d think this was a 2-day project and not something that started when some paint began peeling LAST FALL. At this point I have one wall stripped, patched, sanded, primed, and painted.  Maybe this week we’ll get the shelves re-hung and I can start working on the rest of the walls.

-I caught up on all my blog reading.  I’m talking, read 100+ posts in one sitting, catching up.  But now I think I’m finally caught up and can start writing my own posts.  Unfortunately, all of YOU have way more interesting lives so I often spend so much time reading that I forget to write.  Oops.

Well, that was my Flylady timer, so it’s back to laundry/cleaning/playing with the kids!

Encouragement

A. is super affectionate, outgoing, and just has a big personality.  She’s quick to give hugs and kisses and if you tell her you love her she’ll say it right back.  (My personal favorite is when I tell her “I love you, little A.” and she tells me “I love you, big Mommy.”)  She also tends to mimic my less desireable traits.  It’s amazing how much she sounds like me when she tells her dolls to get in time out – this! instant!   Or, when she tells me that what I did was NOT! NICE! (complete with angry face and finger shake!!!!)

So our exchange this afternoon was refreshing.  It’s always nice to feel like a good Mom.  I was struggling to open a bottle of soda.  The cap was on really tight and I probably should have just given up except I really needed my caffeine fix.  A. stood next to me on the “stepping stool” and cheered me on as I tried different rubber grips.  “Good job, Mommy! You can do it, Mommy! That’s it, Mommy! You’re a good, Mommy!”  with little pats on my back the whole time.  And it wasn’t even something I was doing for her.

Perfect Timing

A. woke up at 12:30am flipping out that her sheets were dirty.  (She wasn’t upset that she’d thrown up but she was really, really stressed out over her dirty pillow.) By the time I bathed her, put the sheets in the laundry, settled her into bed, and climbed back into bed myself, R., who had slept through it all – even with the lights on, woke up crying that her belly hurt.  Then she threw up all over me.  I guess it’s good timing that they took turns but it was 4:30am before I got back to sleep. 

Thank goodness it was Sunday.  DH, who managed to sleep through all 4 hours of this, was resisting getting out of bed at 5am when A. cried to go potty.  I literally kicked him out, mumbled something about how they both vomited, and fell back asleep.  I must have been pretty scary because he let me sleep until noon. 

To add to the perfect timing, the February 1st is the deadline for three separate reports/articles.  And I’m such a procrastinator that I was supposed to take care of all three while the girls were at a birthday party this afternoon.  *sigh*

On a completely different note, I did find time to make homemade soft pretzels today.  I’ve been trying to use my bread machine more and there was a recipe for soft pretzel dough.  I’m still getting the hang of working with dough so these tasted pretty good but looked pretty bad.  Not quite as misshapen as the homemade bagels, but still pretty bad.

New Year

I keep meaning to blog.  Really.  I do.  But then I also keep meaning to clean out my basement and THAT’s 4 years overdue. 

I’m pretty sure I’m never going to have one of these beautiful blogs that are daily journals of my life.  But I can try to commit to having at least a weekly blurb.  Because really, if it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.

This week was a long one.  We’re in week 2 of our 3 week break from preschool.  It hasn’t been that bad in that I haven’t gone completely insane.  Emphasis on the completely part.  What has been bad is that we have very little motivation to get out of bed, let alone leave the house.  For instance, this morning we were meeting B. for coffee at 10am.  At 8:50am, B. called to push it back to 10:30am.  We were still in bed when she called so the extra half hour was a nice surprise.  Somehow we managed to be 5 minutes late AND I completely forgot to bring stuff to entertain the girls.  WTH.

I need to snap out of whatever funk I’m in and get back into a good routine.  Flylady here I come!

Twin Differences

Having “identical” twins, I’m always on the lookout for twin differences.  Today I was handing out the last bit of Oatmeal Squares cereal.  Since they were fighting over it AND there would be no more until I found time to go grocery shopping, I gave it out literally piece by piece.  As I went one for you, and one for you, A. collected them patiently in her hands, while R. stuffed them immediately in her mouth as though someone was waiting to wrestle them from her grasp.