A post with two topics

I really want to write a post about how I'm looking at camera lenses, driving Jon crazy with indecision.



And I really want to write a post about how Jon hates this picture but I think it's so fun.



Instead I will tell you about how Nate and Alex found their first year photo albums, the ones I put together during the summer Olympics. The very first picture in each album is a picture of the moment they were born. The boys were VERY concerned there was blood on the babies.

I explained the doctor cut a hole in my belly and took them out. When he cut my belly open, my belly bled and got blood on baby Alex and baby Nate. That made them feel better. I successfully changed the topic when they asked if I had a scar.

There are very few times that having had a c-section is advantageous, but this was certainly easier than explaining the other way babies come out of their moms.

Life in a boy house, part 6734

Jon to Laura: "The boys were playing tug of war with my pajama pants and ripped them."

A decision on allowance

Thanks for the comments last week on thoughts on my post about allowance. After many discussions (over months), we have decided to not make allowance chore based. Our main factor in making this decision was we want allowance to be a teaching tool for the boys to learn to handle their own money, not an incentive.

This whole decision process has reminded me of my Myers Briggs mothering assessment where I learned two of my main mothering strengths are preparing kids for life in the real world and teaching them to work hard. Again and again we came back to how we already have clear expectations of the boys that they will help in our household.

On Monday we bought the boys banks, gave them starter money, and explained allowance to them - $2 every Friday. At bedtime last night, Alex was crying and crying. I thought he was crying because Jon was gone. Wrong! He told me he was sad because he wants more money and Friday is so far away. Part of me wanted to cave to give him a quarter, but I thought about what a great teaching moment this was - you don't get money whenever you want!

During this process, I read many books on the subject. The one I would most highly recommend is "Raising Financially Fit Kids" by Joline Godfrey, however the major points of the books don't start until age 5. It explains the developmental changes occurring in children at different age ranges and how those changes relate to money concepts. It lays out fundamental money concepts children can/should learn by age 18 to make them financially fit.

I'll let you know how this goes and would love to hear other experiences as well.

Shorties

Nate and Alex are short. Many many times, people tell me I am crazy and they are normal size. I know they are short. They are regularly in the 25th percentile for height at their checkups. We see them every day in a classroom filled with kids their age and they are definitely short.

Today I will provide photographic proof of their Verhoff genes (it can't be Case genes because Jon is 6'4"). Here's Alex at soccer with a kid his age:



Maybe that's not a fair comparison because maybe that boy is tall. How do Nate and Alex stack up against girls their age?



Yep, short.

Time to stop the soccer and start them at horse jockeying.
Or featherweight wrestling.
I guess they could be point guards?

The other twin moms will appreciate this

Anyone who blogs long-term knows that blogs are a slightly modified version of the truth. Over time I've developed a thick blogskin about sharing the tough times, but I keep the most difficult times off this public space. When I really need to vent, I call my friends. For the last four years, my go-to person for the worst of the worst of parenting twins has been my best friend Irene. Irene has known me since before I met Jon, before I knew I wanted kids, and before I was a mature adult.

And so it is that Irene sports this enormous five month belly because she is expecting her own set of twin boys. Yes she still has four months to grow.




So many thoughts have gone through my head since Irene found out at her big ultrasound she is expecting twins:

* Irene will make a kick ass twin mom.
* I wish I could take back the last four years of anything negative I've ever said about having twins because I know I've scared her.
* Please oh please let them be full term.

But overwhelmingly I am excited for her because having twins has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. Has it been hard? Yes. Has it been worth every difficult minute to experience something so special? Yes.

We met up this weekend in Greensboro for what might be the last solo trip we make together for awhile. Motherhood has been the most difficult time for Irene and I to stay in touch, but something tells me in 20 years we'll be sitting around talking about how great it was that we both got to experience the unique joy of parenting twins. And probably crying over paying for 5 boys in college at the same time. In the meantime, I know we'll carve out small opportunities to steal away for Krispy Kreme sundaes and pedicures.

Dinosaur Public Service Announcement

Our local library has a 7PM family story time and I have been wanting to go forever but my boys have an early bedtime. Now that the boys are not tired until 8:30-9 because of the day care napping, we thought this would be a perfect time to check it out.

The theme was dinosaurs. All of the books and activities were about dinosaurs. It was like this story time was meant for Nate and Alex.

In addition to the dinosaur books the librarian read, she had another 10 dinosaur books on display available for check out. One of those books was Dinosaur Train.

You're welcome.

Another edition of Lil Jon and Lil Laura

I was talking with some friends last night about the Magic 8 Ball. When the boys were on the inside, I spent a lot of time meditating on what they would be like and we called the process Magic 8 Ball. Looking back at old posts, I was correct on all my predictions - they were fraternal boys, they were born May 16, Alex has brown hair, and Nate has blue eyes.

The eeriest part of Magic 8 ball is that I picked the correct names. I meditated a long time and decided Baby A would be Alex and Baby B would be Nate. It felt "right." Alex was the name Jon picked and Nate was the name I picked. Anyone who's met them in person knows Alex looks exactly like Jon and Nate looks exactly like me (see our baby pics here). The similarities go on and on, too many for one post.

This week brought THE DEFINITIVE example of how much they are like us.

Alex's favorite Girl Scout cookie is the Samoa (Jon's fave).
Nate's favorite Girl Scout cookie is the Tagalong (my fave).

I think he's ready for an allowance

I was recently reading a book on teaching kids about money. They suggest starting an allowance when children understand the concept of money, what it is used for, and where it comes from. Jon and I have been discussing whether we want to make allowance chore based or not and have not come to a decision so we haven't started allowance yet. (Please weigh in on the comments!)

Last night I took the boys shopping for birthday presents for upcoming parties. At the craft store, I reminded them they had $5 they got as Valentine's Day money from Gigi. They both picked out some Thomas stickers that were $3. As we went through the store, they found some dinosaur toys they wanted. They picked ones they liked and asked how much they were, but they were all more than $5, beyond the boys' budget. Alex found a sea horse that was $5 and he decided to get that.

After a lot of indecision, Nate asked, "Which one is $2? I only have $2 left." I'm pretty sure when they can do basic subtraction, they are ready for an allowance.

When we walked out to the car, I reminded them they didn't have any money left because they spent it all. Nate said, "I'm going to get more money because I go to school and school is my job and people pay you to do your job."

It takes quite a bit to stay a few steps ahead of these boys.

10 years ago, a nerd story, part one

Ten years ago this week I was sitting on a plane for my first ever visit to Chicago.

I was a technical lead for a software consulting company that built custom large-scale applications. My official title was Guru. Yes, that is the most embarrassing work title I've ever held, but it fit the description of the work. After finishing a project in Atlanta that achieved legendary status, I was courted from project managers across the company to lead up their next project.

(Notice how men never apologize for saying they are good at their jobs and women never apologize for saying they are good mothers. I'm not going to sugar coat it or downplay my achievements. I worked my butt off and earned the right to say I rocked that job.)

I was unhappy in San Francisco for many reasons and looking for the direction my life would take for the next year. I had heard great things about Chicago and there was a company training there, so I hopped a plane to check out the office. Between meetings that week, I was bombarded by a project manager, Jim, who wanted me to guru his next big project, the biggest project this company had ever seen.

Chicago wooed me that week. The architecture! The shopping! The completely freaky 60F week in February so you think winter is over! There were so many reasons to say yes to the project but I wasn't sure I was up to the challenge. Insanely huge two year project commuting between SF and Chicago every week? On my last day in the Chicago office, Jim gave me one last hard court press. He said he would do whatever it took to get me to lead it, he was that confident in my abilities.

After asking him a million questions, I asked the most important question- who will be my shadow, my right hand man? The Guru and Guru Shadow worked together 60-80 hours a week throughout the project, so this information was vitally important to my decision. Jim said, "We've got this amazingly brilliant guy here, his name is Jon Case. You will not be disappointed."

He handed me a copy of the requirements to read on the plane home and asked me to let him know within the week whether I wanted this project. On the flight home, I read the technical specs and made it my mission to find out as much as possible about this Jon Case character before making my decision.

To be continued....

The mind of a 3 year old

I am endlessly fascinated with how the three year old mind works. Every day that Nate naps at day care, after bedtime he silently comes out of his room and does something strange in the house. Jon and I are keeping track of the events and by far, the strangest one is Nate came downstairs, turned on Law & Order SVU, then proceeded to scoop bedtime snack milk into the sink using a coffee scoop, spilling milk all over the floor.

After all of their why questions, Jon and I now have plenty of our own why questions.

A couple of months ago, Alex started sleeping upside down in his bed so he could face the family pictures on the wall. Now he sleeps sideways in the small toddler bed. He arranges his pillows, blankets, and animals and curls up. At Sunday's nap, he added a new piece to his sleeping collection.



I'll miss the days when I can take sleeping pictures without waking them.

Snow!

Our weekend is going to consist of a lot of time in our backyard:

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Valentine's Day sweetness

The budding photographer in me loves photos taken in great light with great exposure and great composition that evoke some type of emotion.

The mother in me will always love snapshots that capture moments like this, when the boys fell asleep on vacation together watching Curious George:



Hope you have a weekend filled with love and sweetness.

Scene from life in an all-boy house

Scene opens at the kitchen table. Nate produces a loud, long fart and because of the plastic booster seat the noise is amplified considerably.

Long pause.

Nate: "P-U! That stinks!"

Laura: "What do you say?"

Nate: "P-U! That is stinky!"

Another long pause.

Alex: "P-U! That stinks, you smelly stinky butt!"

Both boys erupt in giggles.

Sometimes the blog posts write themselves

With Jon in Chicago, I got to visit day care three times yesterday.

1. drop off
2. pick up
3. apply TLC and boo boo buddy since Alex wouldn't let them ice his eye after he clunked heads with another kid




The flash washes it out. It definitely looks worse in person.
(He's fine! He got extra TLC at home.)

Nate 3.75

The last month, I have found myself wondering when things will get easier with Nate. Looking back through several years of posts, I now see a pattern that 0.75 is a bad time for Nate. Nate 2.75 was so difficult, I dedicated an entire post to the insanity.

In the 1s when Alex was getting into everything ALL THE TIME, we counted our lucky stars that we only had one typical toddler into everything. We're eating those words now. Nate is into everything, except he is more adept and much more creative.

He spread shaving cream over the entire bathroom counter and himself. He came downstairs when he couldn't clean it off his clothes.

When I thought he was using the bathroom, he was filling up a play fire extinguisher with water to "really put out the fire." (Thanks Melissa and Doug for that genius design.)

I got super hero underwear for Alex as a potty incentive. When we thought Nate was sleeping, he went in our room, rummaged through bags, and put the underwear on himself.

Add in the general back talking, screaming into Alex's face, physical fighting, arguing, and he is just a bundle of joy lately. Through it all, I have to laugh. Inside that tiny little 3.75 year old body there is so much opinion. So much spunk. So much creativity. He's driving me a little crazy right now but how boring would life be without him?

Does it get more opposite than NPR and the Super Bowl?

Let me keep the blog real for a minute. After coming back from San Diego, the boys were jet lagged but we still had to get up and get going on a regular (early) schedule. This led to the boys being overtired which led to crankiness which led to fighting and crying and terrible behavior. Wed-Fri were AS BAD as the newborn days. And of course Jon was gone. And then there was extra work to unpack from our trip, do laundry, and get supplies in the house ahead of an imminent snowstorm (that never hit here). And my work was super busy. And the extra stress of Jon's company getting acquired by IBM - which is a good thing but is also a major life change.

Wednesday night I was driving to pick up the kids at school and Ira Glass came on WUNC to say he was doing a surprise show at UNC on Saturday. And it was open seating. During the worst bedtime routine since newborn days, I got a text from Heather asking if I wanted to go. At that point I was so tired and cranky, I wanted to say no. Saturday Jon would be home! I could vent over my crappy week! But Ira Glass! The host of This American Life and my radio boyfriend! Of course we went and lucked into second row seats.

The show was AMAZING. Not only did we get a TAL-like show, we got to hear inside information about how the show developed, why it works, and how he came up with the format. Ira was awesome and provided one of the most interesting Q&As I've ever heard. I came out of there so inspired, so excited, and so rejuvenated. It was exactly what I needed to turn my attitude around. I came home and talked non-stop for an hour to Jon about the show. It's such a good lesson that as mothers, we need things for ourselves for many reasons.

[This is also the week This American Life came out with an iphone app and you can listen to any show from the last 15 years for FREE. I can't wait to relisten to my favorites, like the sleepwalking story and the rabid raccoon attack story. Leave your favorites in the comments!]

By Sunday morning, I was back to my normal Laura self, just in time for the Super Bowl. We had hyped up both the Puppy Bowl and the Super Bowl to the kids, hoping this would be the year we could all watch together. First Alex broke Jon's heart in a million pieces when he said he loved the kitty halftime show but not the puppy bowl. And then we learned that when you never let your children watch tv with commercials and you show them the one show with the most interesting commercials of the entire year, it leads to:

whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy

We literally could not watch the tv because we could not hear anything over WHY TIMES TWO. Did you know the average (almost) four year old asked 437 questions a day? I'm fairly certain we heard all 870 questions in the first quarter of the super bowl.

We finally put the kids to bed after this question, "Why did that truck drive over the people? You're not supposed to drive over people." (The Bud Light people bridge commercial)

Don't feel too bad for us though. We had Pioneer Woman's Chili Con Queso and beer to keep us going after answering all those why questions.

The second half of the San Diego trip

After we left Balboa Park, we drove to Orange County to meet with Erin and her family. I've never explained on my blog but my college friend Libby was childhood friends with Erin. Libby kept a pregnancy website that inspired me to start this blog when I got pregnant. Libby and her husband Albert (also my college friend) started reading my blog when I started it and Libby told Erin about it. This makes Erin one of the few "strangers" to have been reading since before we found out we were having twins. Erin then started her own blog and the rest is history as we have gotten to know each other over the last four years.

Here's the thing about Erin and Libby. They rock. I don't know what's in the water in the OC but they are both gorgeous, friendly, smart, competent, amazing, yet down to earth women. They are the kind of women you think you should hate because they are perfect but you can't hate because DAMN they are awesome. They are the kind of women I am proud to call my friends. It was great to finally meet Erin in person!



We had the honor of joining the Burns family for Sunset Pizza. We got there, I snapped a couple of quick pictures, and then Nate and Alex went crazy. They had been talking about the beach all day but I don't think Jon and I got how excited they were to go to the beach until they ran and ran and ran and ran. I chatted with Erin while watching my boys shriek with joy and I didn't take many pictures. I have conflicted feelings on this. I'm 100% glad I just enjoyed those precious moments but I ended up with almost no pictures of the visit, except this one of the next generation of amazing Burns women (seriously could her girls be cuter?!):



Erin posted more pictures of our visit here. Thank you Burns family for a memorable Sunset Pizza!

After the boys reaction to the beach, Jon and I decided our main focus for our last day would be spending as much time at the beach as possible. We stayed at a resort on Mission Bay and I had mapped out different parks (of course!!). We chose a smaller beach on the bay and were thrilled to be the only people there (except for the homeless dudes wandering around, which is so commonplace in California I barely notice it after having lived there for eight years).



The boys had a blast digging in the sand and wading in the calm water. Nate wanted to play "sand monster" - a reference to our family NC beach trip last June.



Despite the cold water, the boys jumped in and completely soaked their clothes. We stripped them to their undies and let them play until Jon ran back to the hotel to get swimsuits. I think the boys could have played all day but we eventually left to grab lunch.



After warming up in the hotel hot tub, we went to Mission Beach to watch sunset and enjoy more beach time. The boys were fascinated by an enormous sand pile.



Did we let them climb down, run down, and roll down? Oh yes, yes we did! They got filthy but they were on cloud nine.



They climbed up and rolled down. They ran down. They held hands and slid down. Nate jumped in the air and landed on his butt. Alex did some serious faceplants. I got tired just watching them.



When they got tired of the sand pile, digging in the sand and running around the beach was also immensely fun to them.



If I think really hard, I don't know the last time I saw such a state of joy for such a prolonged period of time. I could have taken a thousand pictures and shot after shot would have been happy boys in motion. After this trip, we are a definite go for a long family beach trip this summer.



And despite Jon's hatred of messes (particularly sandy messes) everyone had an awesome time.



Remember when I said I was going to take 2010 by the horns? This was a pretty freaking awesome way to spend the last days of January. One awesome month down, 11 more to go. I just hope it includes a lot more time at the beach - my favorite place on earth - and a lot more time spent with friends and family.



(Then I flew from San Diego to North Carolina by myself with two three year old boys. It was easy and the boys were great travelers but SERIOUSLY, I'm still tired two days later. )

The first half of the San Diego trip

We crammed a ridiculous amount of stuff into our San Diego trip. The first day we went to Legoland and it was a blast. I always dreamed of taking my kids to amusement parks and VOILA! That day is here!



For those not familiar with Legoland, it is an amusement park with a lego theme. It is small enough that we stayed the entire time it was open (10-5) without any overtired blowouts. They had tons of age appropriate rides for the boys and there was a lot of excitement from the adults as well.

It is also at Legoland that we met up with Jen and her family (Jen doesn't know I got this shot while we waited for a roller coaster!).



I've now met so many blogfriends, particularly May 06 Babycenter friends, that it's become commonplace and I just fall into talking normally instead of making A Big Deal about meeting. I forget how nervous I was the first time I met a blogfriend! Jen was everything I thought she would be - talkative, stylish, passionate but also a calm and kind mother. It was a special treat to meet her husband Joe. He has that same kind-eye quality about Jon. Something in his face makes you know he is a good guy.

Anyway it says a lot that we could spend an entire day with another family... strangers really!... and have such a good time.



With a three hour time difference and no nap, we turned in early. The next morning we met Jen and the kids at Balboa Park, an absolute must see in San Diego. We rode the carousel and the train and checked out the railroad museum. The kids ran laps around the fountain and we soaked up some sun. And it will kill Jen to see I MIRACULOUSLY got this shot of all four kids smiling!



You can read Jen's account of our meetup here (and see more pics). For the record, from May06 I've met Beth, Megan, Joanna, Lindsay, London, Bridget, Rita, and Jen. Who's next?

Balboa Park was a photographer's paradise and I wish I had more time to take pictures around there. We ran into tons of people with super deluxe camera set ups. So to finish up this post, I wanted to share a picture of each boy that I took while there. First what is UP with fountains being so fascinating to children?! Doesn't matter if it's big or small, Nate wants to check it out.




And oh my, this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of Alex. Technically there's lots of room for improvement here but I.Love.This.Moment.



Tomorrow, the second half of the trip. Here's a hint: beach beach beach.

Home from San Diego...

and I've got some serious snow shoveling to do. A proper post is coming soon after laundry and snow clean up. In the meantime I can tell you we had a fantastic trip.

Fun at Legoland.




Fun at the beach.




Fun at sunset at the beach.




Fun taking a mini-vacation.



Seriously now I need to go shovel my driveway.