The boys' fourth Halloween

This Halloween was amazing as I had hoped it would be. A day care party, a fun neighborhood party (I brought mummy dogs, yum!), and two little boys excited to go trick-or-treating. They told us when they wanted to go home and had just as much fun handing out candy. This year we got record numbers of trick-or-treaters since we decorated the outside. And it was 75 so we were all dressed in shorts. All in all, it was another Halloween that is going to be hard to top.

My new focus in photography is less shots with more thought going into each shot in effort to find my sweet spot. Find my sweet spot I did:



And let's not forget my other sweetie:



I do not want the boys to look back at these holidays and see pictures only of them together. On Alex's fourth Halloween, he was a little scared of spooky stuff but incredibly enthusiastic, and was always the first to say thank you for the candy.



On Nate's fourth Halloween, he was outgoing with everyone, displayed immense excitement for everything related to Halloween, and pouted incredibly when it was all over.



This was truly a Halloween I will always remember, these sweet boys so excited over something as simple as candy.

Phone Photo Friday

The mind of a 3 year old edition.

My friend Heather lent us a green monster costume to solve our Alex blue monster problem. When they saw the costume, Alex suddenly wanted to be a fireman (his almost original costume) and Nate suddenly wanted to be a monster. The problem? The forecast says it will be 80 tomorrow.

Last night as I made Alex's fire chief badge, Nate decided he wanted a badge to go with his train engineer costume (his almost original costume) and he no longer wants to be a monster. The reason I said "almost" original was the original decision was for Nate to be a fireman and Alex to be a train engineer. When the costumes arrived, they traded. Let me state for the record I am glad we bought costumes rather than spent time making them!

So... if that was confusing for you... Alex will be a fireman and Nate will be a train engineer.

Have a fun and safe Halloween everyone!

Hopes for my boys, part two

I went out to dinner with some girlfriends last night and was surprised to learn the restaurant was having trivia night. We decided to play along and busted out some impressive answers along the way. One friend was responsible for the Campbell University mascot (fighting Camels?!), I was responsible for the Greek mathematician who studied buoyancy (Archimedes), another friend knew the most common Vietnamese name (Nguyen), and another friend ruled the football BCS list.

It was a much-needed fun night during a stressful week. And not being mocked for my instant Archimedes answer (and in fact, being told I should probably have my Caltech degree revoked if I did not know the answer), made me think again how my biggest hope for my boys is that they are happy. They don't need to be classically successful, rich, smart, athletic, and handsome with tons of friends. All I want is for them to be happy.

How to go from the best McD's to the worst in five minutes

We don't really take the kids to McD's very much. Chick-fil-A is so freaking good there's no reason to hit McD's if I want fast food. Sweet tea and waffle fries > McNuggets. But I digress.

I had a crapload of errands to run last night and Jon was out of town. The boys were really good the entire time and I decided to grab some dinner out. I remembered it was Chick-a-Fil family night and it would be a zoo. The only other close option was McD's.

Turns out, this McD's is AWESOME. They have a huge play area, a flat screen tv that was playing Madagascar (on the approved list of Scared Alex movies) with surround sound, and touch screen computers. I was patting myself on the back on how fantastic this night was going to be - the boys happily eating and watching tv, me checking my iphone and eating McNuggets and my errands were done. Golden.

Then the dad behind me LET LOOSE screaming at his kids. After he was done yelling, he proceeded into what Jon and I call "sarcastic dog training" mode a la the Will Ferrel SNL skit. Saying things like "Why do I ever do anything nice for you? We're never coming here again, ever." Fortunately Nate and Alex were distracted watching the movie. And they didn't notice when this dad proceeded to spank his kids because they didn't put their shoes on fast enough.

It was bad, really bad.

They left and my McNuggets tasted like cardboard after that. I decided to turn it around and focus on the positives when ANOTHER dad started yelling at his teenage daughter, "You're a %$&*# liar! Why can't you just admit it? You *&$^% lie all the time."

I have never been so glad my kids are zombies when watching tv. They were oblivious to the madness. I was not.

I played pirate ship with the boys for a bit in the play area then we went home. I got their toys out of their happy meals and it was some kind of Astro Boy toy. The toy guy shoots a spear; it's truly the first gun-like toy the boys have ever seen. Two minutes after giving the toys to the boys, Alex shot Nate in the face with it.

The rest of the night was awesome, but I'm sticking to Chick-fil-A from now on. I'm also planning to refer to this night when I feel down about myself as a "bad" parent.

And if I ever do lose my shizz in public with the kids (which I am sure will happen one day), I hope it's not around a couple of three year olds trying to enjoy a nice night out with their mom in the play area of a family restaurant. Nothing says "family fun" like the F bomb and the sound of a kid getting slapped.

PS. I almost resisted the urge to tell you that Alex "Dick Cheney'ed" Nate but I know my grandpa Joe would love that reference.

The standard kid dressing themselves photo

I read quite a number of blogs and somewhere around age 2, people start posting pictures of their kids dressing themselves. My boys don't really care to pick out anything but shirts because picking out an outfit takes time away from playing, fighting, arguing, running around the house, trying to jump on the couches, and eating.

So it is that we reached almost 3.5 before I had my own classic clothing picture. Nate went up to his nap dressed normally and came down from nap wearing this ensemble:




Those pants were brand new Target pants we were trying to decide whether or not to buy. After this picture, we decided to keep them. You know, as some kind of cosmic karma so that we never buy a pair of pants with some other kid's butt germs on them. Lesson: always wash clothing before wearing it.

Cooped up Halloweeny activities

I didn't run my race on Saturday because I got a terrible cold and Alex woke up with a fever on Friday night. I figured it would be colossally stupid to run 10 miles in the rain while sick with a feverish kid at home. It's a good thing I made that choice as the rest of Saturday I felt like I had been hit by a truck. Alex's fever was gone on Sunday morning but none of us wanted to leave the house and infect other people so we did some fun activities at home.

I made sugar cookies and the boys decorated them with Halloween color icing:



From now on, I am going to buy these tiny tubes of icing for all holiday cookie decorating with the boys. It barely made a mess even with Alex's tendency to get insanely messy. And it dried quickly so I could put them away without making a mess.



We also carved the pumpkins we got at the pumpkin farm.



The boys didn't want anything to do with scooping out the insides or feeling squishy pumpkin guts, so Jon and I got the pleasure of scooping out four pumpkins by ourselves.



This was the first year the boys were actually interested in pumpkin carving. We went a little crazy with the hole punches because they had so much fun doing it. They were really excited to see the pumpkins with the LED lights inside when we put them on the front porch. I think it's going to be a riot to see their reaction to everyone's decorations on Saturday night.

When I went to get pictures of the boys with the pumpkins, I made a big mistake taking pictures in front of our picture window because they all look weird in one way or another.



See? Horribly weird effects that may or may not have been caused by Nate pulling the entire camera basket off the counter (with camera body, lenses, flash, everything). But you get the idea - parents feeling crappy but still pulling out awesome Halloweeny activites for their beloved children.

Phone Photo Friday

I have a hodge podge of phone photos this week. Last week after the pumpkin farm trip, we went out to eat at Mellow Mushroom and sat on the deck in short sleeved shirts and shorts. This is the kind of fall weather I LOVE.

At the fair, we had an insane variety of foods - fried ho ho, fried oreos, fried snickers, fried mac and cheese (no one liked it), snow cones, hot dogs, pizza, hummus (Alex is a hummus freak), caramel apple, chicken pita, and chips. OMG the chips, these were the best fair food of the entire night. The four of us ate the whole bowl. They cut up the potato and cook it right in front of you. This was the only time the entire night the boys were quiet because they were so busy eating them.

And then... if you ever wondered if any of the pictures on People of Walmart were fake, let me tell you how to figure it out. This was as close as I could get to take a picture without it being too obvious. I have no idea how they get some of the pictures on the walmart site. The guy running the pony rides at the fair was texting while wrangling ponies. This wins an award from me for most unexpected place to text.

Leave a comment if you play along or just leave a comment to say hi!

The great Halloween costume debacle

I thought I was pretty smart with Halloween costumes this year in the planning department. I pulled up the Melissa and Doug play clothes choices online and told the boys to choose. The costumes came a month ago, tried them on, and loved them.

Except.

In the last two weeks, Alex has become insistent he is going to be a blue monster for Halloween. We remind him of his train engineer costume and he says he's not wearing it. Blue monster, blue monster, blue monster. The thing is, I'd be totally cool with making him a costume if he wasn't scared to death of monsters. And everything else. We got Monsters vs Aliens on Netflix and he refused to even be in the room when it started because it was going to be scary.

Yet I know if I don't do something, we are going to have a very tough Halloween where he is crying about his blue monster costume. So I'm now in the group of people running out trying to put together a costume at the last minute, as if I hadn't made plans last month for Halloween costumes.

Hopefully I will get some discount candy out of the deal.

If they didn't get swine flu at the ped office, they most certainly got it at the NC state fair yesterday

This year we took a tip from Michele when planning our trip to the NC State Fair. We decided to take a half day off from work and go after the boys' naptime to beat the weekend crowds. We lucked out as yesterday was sunny and 70 and it was about one-tenth as crowded as it is on weekends.

Nate is completely fearless when it comes to rides. Again this year he demonstrated that he would be willing to go on any ride. He went on the noisier tame rides:



And he went on his first roller coaster. When it first started, he looked both completely terrified and completely excited. Around the first bend, he was shouting, "YAY!!!" and he had a smile on his face the entire time. I could not stop giggling watching his face.



Alex felt a lot more comfortable on the tamer rides. He wanted only rides that were not noisy and not too fast. His reaction is what I would expect from a 3 year old.



The airplane ride was one of the biggest hits. It was quiet and it went on FOREVER. Jon and I stood outside chatting for what seemed an eternity while they circled around and around. Honestly it was nice to have a break from wrangling two overexcited 3.5 year old boys.



The other favorite was a giant kiddie slide. They were too short to go down by themselves so Jon and I got to ride. Nate loved it so much he broke through the line and snuck in the gate before I could catch him and drag him away. There was one literally twice as big for the grownups that Nate begged me to go on.



We did have two MASSIVE Alex freakout moments. In both cases, he said he wanted to ride a ride then when he got in it, he realized it was beyond his comfort level. Fortunately the carnies were quick to respond and they refunded our money. One freakout moment was the pony ride. (I'll come back to the other freakout moment.) (Nate constantly checking out other rides.)



The food was also a massive hit with the boys and us. This year we learned the major advantage of having a four person family is we can order TONS of junky fair food and get to eat little bites of everything. Our first stop was the biggest fried booth where we got a fried ho ho (not so good) and fried oreos. The boys loved both. We came back later for a fried snickers and the boys ate most of it.



And since it was hot and the boys needed sugar for stamina, we got snow cones.



There was not much excitement about the snow cones until I showed them how you could tip it back and drink the juice from the bottom. Then it was Snow Cone City and we had to tear the melting paper-ripping snow cones from their hands. Alex made a huge mess, AS USUAL.



We did manage to get a real meal in them in the form of hot dogs. And this photo demonstrates what sugar + fair fun can do to their attitude - Nate did these crazy poses for me, laughing the entire time.



A trip to the NC State Fair would not be complete without some seriously good people watching. The "highlight" of the trip for me was seeing a pregnant woman smoking. There is a photography term "bokeh" which refers to out of focus areas in the back of the photo that can often enhance the overall feel and beauty of the photo. Since all I had was my old crappy point and shoot, I didn't get any real bokeh but I decided to make up my own definition for "NC state fair bokeh" - the hidden gems in the background of the photos.

In this photo demonstrating how ridiculously large this monster truck is, check out the bokeh dude in camo and boots really checking out the truck.



And in this picture of Nate in the boat ride (the other one where Alex freaked!), check out the bokeh family in the background - mom, dad, and kid in tie-dye matching shirts.



After almost five hours walking around, eating junk food, and riding rides, we were so exhausted that I think a Disney trip is a long way away. But like a day at Disney, we had a complete blast and can not wait to go again next year. If my shrimpies grow enough, Nate and I will be riding some kickass rides before too long.

Twin empathy?

This morning I took the boys to get their regular flu shots. Nate was a champ, took his arm out of his shirt, got his shot without any fuss, and asked politely for his sticker and lollipop. Alex was out of control, screaming and fighting to not let us take his shirt off, yelling "I don't want my flu shot!!!" kicking like a maniac, and trying to wiggle free as I held him down.

While Alex was having his fit, Nate started crying as well. I was so surprised as this was one of only a handful of instances of twin empathy I've seen from Nate. I got everyone calmed down and when we got to the car, I asked Nate why he was crying. He said, "Alex was crying so loud it hurt my ears."

Yep, no twin empathy here.

Truly a Monday

So... we ventured out to the county health department to get H1N1 vaccine today.
It was 44 when we left the house.
It was between 45 and 50 for the entire 2.5 hours we stood in line outside waiting.

Through a combination of facebook, emails, chatting with people in line, texts, and phone calls, we were able to determine we had another 90 minutes to wait.

We left.
With no swine flu shot.
And two kids crying, "But I want my flu shot!"

We're still getting vaccinated, just not today.
And next time we will bring enough snacks and things to entertain two 3 year olds for 4+ hours.

You've never seen four hangrier (hungry + angry) people in our car before.

Phone Photo Friday

I have something to admit: while I am trying hard to make fall my favorite, it's not working. I am a summer girl through and through. I love warm weather, long sunny days, shorts, and flip flops. It doesn't help this week is 20 degrees below average so we had to break out winter coats. And it's been raining so much the day care playground is soaked with no hope of drying out.

This led to the dirtiest pickup of all time. Earlier this week it was dirtiest in terms of amount of dirt. Yesterday was dirtiest in terms of intensity of filth.



Believe me when I say the butt of these pants were just as filthy. I am switching him to athletic pants for day care from now on.

But I'm not giving up on fall. I still want to create traditions. One of my all-time favorite foods is caramel apples with peanuts. I had braces for three years and the day I got them off, I wanted a peanut caramel apple as my celebration. We're making them this weekend but I wanted to make sure the boys liked caramel before attempting this with them.

The boys loved caramel but guess what I forgot?



I forgot how much caramel sticks to your teeth. Cute cute cute moment! I love sharing these first experiences with the boys.

Please play along and leave a comment if you post a phone photo! (It doesn't even have to be on Friday.)

Doing laundry, part two

Guess what I found handfuls of at the bottom of the washing machine last night?

I'll give you a hint.




Yep, corn kernels. LOTS of corn kernels.

And because so many people mentioned it, check out this fun little triptych:

Why we have a lot of clothes for the boys

One way we minimize laundry frequency is to have enough clothes to last an entire week. And we need to leave two sets of clothes for each boy at school. Add in a couple of accidents each week. And while I do try to let the boys wear pants or jeans multiple times before washing, Alex gets inconceivably dirty at school (Nate is very clean).

This is Alex at day care pick up yesterday:


At least I know they did a painting project and spent quite a bit of time outside on the playground.

Extra tired

Just everyone wants - a post about sleep! After my recent "3 is awesome with twins!" post, I felt the need to provide an update on one item that has changed - bedtime.

From the time the boys were 6 months old until they were 2, we shut their bedroom door at 7PM and went about our business, cooking dinner, cleaning up, spending time together, etc. At 2, we moved their bedtime to 7:30 since they needed less night sleep. Door shut, end of our night with the boys.

Until....... potty training. Within the last few weeks, we took the doorknob covers off the inside of the boys' doors to allow them out to use the potty when they need. We still shut the doors to their rooms at 7:30 (lately we've been pushing it back to 8, we'll assess at the time change) but that is almost never the end of us hearing from them. They both come out at least once to pee, and when Nate decides to poop, he sits for an hour reading books. Last night, they were both finally in bed for the night at 9:15. Jon's gone all week so all the trips up and down the stairs were just me.

I didn't realize how much I needed that QUIET alone time until it was gone. Make no mistake about it, as soon as they walk in the door each night it is completely crazy in our house with the noise and running around and playing and fighting and demands for help and general chaos. They have so much more energy at 3.5 than they did before. Last night was particularly crazy since it rained all day and they didn't burn off that energy on the school playground. I wanted to lock them in their rooms and say GO TO SLEEP! You are making me cranky! I have been either taking care of kids or working at my job for 14 hours! I have important TV shows to watch while I surf the web!

And then part of me has to laugh. Nate came out to use the bathroom and he had put his socks on his hands because they were his "mittens". He couldn't pull up his pants so he stood at the top of the stairs yelling, "Mommy, you need to pull up my underwear because I have mittens on!" It seems right when I'm on the verge of losing my shizz, they do something that makes me realize I am pretty lucky and I won't ever get these times back. May as well laugh.

Embracing fall: third year of the pumpkin farm

This year I'm laying the groundwork to look forward to fall as my potential favorite season going forward. This weekend was our third annual trip to Ganyard Hill Farm, a pumpkin farm. This year was the best year yet (see previous year pictures here and here).



First up was picking some grass to feed the goats.



Who am I kidding? We fed the goats at least five different times as the boys ran from activity to activity. I think they would have stayed there all day feeding animals, which bodes well for another activity planned for this month: North Carolina State Fair.



Have I mentioned it was 80 and humid? One of the ways I hope to embrace fall is to focus on the near perfect temperatures October always brings. This time of year is perfect for outdoor activities, including old fall favorites... a hay maze...



and a big orange slide. Orange is my least favorite color but it suits Alex well, a good reason to move it up the favorite ladder.



This year they had a new activity called the Corn Cob. They filled half a barn with corn kernels and used hay bales to keep it in. Imagine a ball pit filled with corn. And way too many kids. And some adults in there too. Dust and corn and hay and mass chaos. No wonder the boys loved it.



They actively encouraged the kids to bury each other and jump from the hay bales into the corn. The boys were so filthy afterward but it was worth it. This is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE PICTURES! I guess if I want them both to look at the camera and smile, I should bury them in food products. (Jon took all the corn pictures as I was enjoying it with the boys.)



Of course, there were pumpkins to pick. This was the first year we spent substantial time in the actual pumpkin field. We could have stayed there all day as each new pumpkin was their favorite.



We learned that pumpkins on the vine have thorns on the stems. Ouch. I also learned to say, "Jon I'll watch the boys while you get the pumpkins."



The boys spent a lot of time watching the hay ride it drove away. We did go on a hay ride but after our last two experiences on crying screaming hay rides, I kept the camera packed away. Too bad because they didn't cry at all and really enjoyed it.



Even though I knew I would get cheesy faces, I posed the kids anyway because HELLO I am trying so hard to make fall my favorite. And because I am working so hard, I decided to post my three favorites instead of narrowing it down to one. I think these should make everyone want twins.










It may be working. See????? I can't believe I have to wait until next October for this experience again.



If you are local, I can't say enough great things about this farm. Completely unexpectedly, Alex wanted to say thank you to the owner before we left. He would not leave until he talked to the farmer. We walked over and both boys told him thank you for letting them visit the farm. My heart swells to see them embracing traditions as well.

Bonus post: Beth's visit

Question: why do we look tired and disheveled?




Answer: We are mothers to these four boys ages 3 and under.
(And Beth had been in the car for them for 6 hours.)
(And I had taken a kicking screaming crying Alex to the dentist to start my day.)
(Nate was Model Patient at the dentist).
(And it's Friday and we're both working mothers.)



William is Beth's May 2006 baby. There's a special place in my heart for all these May 06 BBC mamas and their babies because we've been through this amazing experience of becoming mothers together. And I feel honored to have seen these babies grow into big kids.



And look at sweet little Seth, almost makes me want to have another baby running around the house.



While these four are the reason we didn't get to chat much, I wouldn't change a moment (except when Alex cracked Nate over the head with a broom and when Nate constantly tattled on everyone).





Thanks for stopping by Beth! It is always great to see friends and so much fun for our boys to finally meet.