Little Rugger In Training

I took LR to the last 2 rugby practices. He wanted to join in all their activities and they were more than grateful for the distraction. He jumped right in to the stretching at the beginning of practice. They instructed him on how to touch his toes. After trying for a while he announced, "my legs are too short" which made everyone laugh. I had more than one player come up to tell me how cute he was and how well spoken. Sometimes I forget how nice it is to have a kid with strong verbal skills. His favorite word game now is to match words that he thinks sound alike. Last night I served spinach. He said, "spinach, like 'spin.'" And then he said, "spinach, like 'itch.'" Right. spin + itch = spinach. Makes sense.

At the second practice he came to, he hoped into the end of the line of rookies marching for initiation. He was like the smallest elephant in the line in The Jungle Book. He mimicked everything they did. It was adorable. They couldn't get enough and I hope next year he can come with me to more practices. You can't tell from the pictures, but he's wearing a large sweatshirt from Gigi which says, "Rugger in training." The team really appreciated that and were more than willing to practice lifting him in a line and throw a ball with him. While we sat in a circle discussing the history of initiation, he tackled everyone by running into them and pushing them over. Cute at practice. Not cute with the babies. Let's hope he can make the distinction.

9 Month Checkup

Check out her shiner! This picture was taken about 3 days after the initial injury, so it was already fairly well healed. The black eye was terribly cute.

The babies had their 9 month checkup last week. Missy is 19 lbs. 9 oz. while J Frog is 18 lbs. 13 oz. She is 27.75 and he is 28.5 inches. They both got flu shots, but recovered fast thanks to each having a cookie to gnaw on. They were supposed to get the lead and hemoglobin tests done, but there was an emergency in the office and the nurse who was supposed to draw their blood was occupied. Eventually we had to leave to pick up LR from preschool. I'm debating whether or not to go back to get those done. We live in a house that is 10 years old and I know they're getting enough iron in their diet. Is it worth the finger stick? Probably, but it's so much tougher to get twins geared up to go anywhere that I'm reluctant to do it.

J Frog has started to pull up. He typically finds Missy and drags himself up right next to her. Unfortunately, he's even more unstable than when Missy started pulling herself up, so he's falling over a lot. The best is when they stand on opposite sides of LR's learning tower and play peek-a-boo. They seem to be much more entertained by each other now... in the bath, while playing, during meal times. I have some adorable video of them laughing at each other while standing at the tower. I'll try to get that movie up soon.

Missy's First Tooth

Gummy Sue no longer! Last Friday Missy started putting her whole fist in her mouth and Abra thought she might be teething. By Saturday morning there was a red bump on her lower gum with a white line underneath. On Monday morning it finally broke through. Missy has her first tooth! I thought LR got his first tooth way earlier, but when I looked back in the blog I found that LR got his first around 7 months. J Frog got his at 8 months and now Missy at 9 months, so they're not really that far apart.

Cousin's Wedding

We finally took the plunge and took the whole family out of the state. Luckily that meant traveling only 2 hours by car to a country club just outside Hartford, CT. But, we are adventurers nonetheless. I spent 2 nights the previous week preparing for the event by hitting the mall for outfits for everyone. The kids had nothing but play clothes, so I finally used some of the Baby Gap gift certificates for them. No dress for Missy! They had beautiful ones, but she's just at that stage where she's crawling but not walking and that makes dresses impossible.

The day started well. We loaded up the minivan - really loaded it up. Daddy asked if we were going on safari. We were clearly over prepared, but better that than showing up with no diapers or some other necessity like that. LR started out watching a Thomas the Train adventure on the DVD player, but quickly focused on all the cars and trucks on the road. They were much more interesting to him. He chatted away with Abra in the back and the babies took their morning naps in their car seats. Missy passed out right away while J Frog waited until almost the end.

We skipped the actual wedding since there was the potential for the kids to destroy the audio recording they were making of the service. That worked just fine for us since the reception was a much easier place for LR to be. We had just a few minutes to say our hello's to Daddy's family before the lunch service began. We took our seats and thanks to cookies being on the table and hot rolls and fruit bowls to begin the meal, LR was incredibly well behaved. He is a typical 3 year-old, so for him to sit through that meal and chat with the people around the table was awesome. J Frog and Missy ate the lunch we brought for them and J Frog really dug into one of the apples on the table. He screamed whenever Abra tried to take it away, so she just let him gnaw his little heart out. Yianni and Cookie spirited away Missy and J Frog for a little while and that was a really nice break for us. Even stranger-fear didn't keep Missy from socializing.

Right after lunch LR found a playmate! His second cousins M and I are 4 and 2 years-old respectively and they played chase for at least an hour. It was great to have so many family members around to keep an eye on them as they ran the loop through the dance floor, in front of the bar and around the tables. They also joined in the circle dances and entertained the crowd. They also decided that I was a maypole at one point and ran around and around. It made me dizzy to watch them.

At the end of the reception, we had a decision to make. We could either pack them up and feed them dinner in their car seats, potentially ruining their bedtime by making them sleep early, or go hang out in Yianni and Cookie's hotel room for an hour, change clothes, get the kids into pjs and head back right at their bedtime. We chose the latter thinking that they would fall asleep in their seats and we'd just transfer them to cribs when we got home. Yeah... well, it didn't go that smoothly. The extra visiting time at the hotel was great, but there was lots of screaming on the ride home - Missy for awhile, then she conked out, then J Frog for a long time. We had to stop for me to nurse them again, so the ride home took 3 hours instead of 2. Everyone was completely exhausted when we pulled in around 9pm. Since then J Frog has been ultra resistant to going in the car seat, so I think he's having flashbacks.

Missy loved playing peek-a-boo from behind the table chairs. She practiced standing up and sitting down over and over again. She no longer gets stuck standing up!





M and LR dancing with the Daddy's aunt and uncle, M's grandparents.






More dancing!









Maypole time












Steppie and LR cuddle. Awww

Visit from Uncle T and Aunt E

A couple of weekends ago we had a great visit from my Uncle T and Aunt E. They live in NY, so we don't see them as often as we'd like now that we're more housebound, but it's great when they stop by to visit.

Missy didn't seem to have much trouble warming up to them although she's still suffering from some stranger fear. I think it may be morphing into a bit of separation anxiety too. She and J Frog both hate when Abra or I leave the room. Maybe it's because J Frog has started using Missy as a step stool. Another blogging friend of mine mentioned in her last comment that her twins did the same thing. As if by magic, within days of that post, J Frog started using Missy to pull himself up. Boy does she scream when he does that!

LR loved having new people to play with and really enjoyed (and is still enjoying) the 2 new Leo Lionni books they brought for him. We already had "Let's Make Rabbits" and now we read "Inch By Inch" and "Frederick" often during the bedtime routine. I think "Frederick" is his favorite. They also arrived with awesome brown corduroy overalls for the babies. They're perfect for this chilly fall weather and they've already worn them a bunch of times. You can see them wearing them in the pictures too.

Oh, and Missy has her first shiner. I should've taken a picture of it, but now it's almost healed. She pulled herself up on a chair and then pulled the chair over onto her face. It bashed her right across the eye and I was definitely in let's-get-to-the-ER mode, but once she stopped screaming, I could see that her eye was okay. She has a huge bruise below her eye and a tiny cut on her eyelid. She looks just like some of my rugby players. Thank goodness she held off on doing that until after we came back from a family wedding last weekend. So no more letting Missy crawl out of sight as long as I haven't nailed down everything.

We did manage to get out to get pumpkins, but they didn't have the bouncy castle at the patch that they had last year. I had promised it to LR and he was pretty disappointed. Without that distraction, it wasn't as fun to haul the kids around the palettes of pumpkins trying to pick out one for each of us. The double wagon came in handy as a pumpkin hauler though when J Frog decided he'd had enough of riding. That kid just can't be held enough! Such a cuddler.

Twin Sale

So, twice a year the Massachusetts Mother's of Twins Association puts on a sale of all the members' crap. It's pretty amazing and luckily they hold the sale in our town's high school cafeteria. Two Saturdays ago I sent Daddy with Abra to the sale to see what they could find for Missy for winter clothes. We have enough hand-me-downs for J Frog from LR, so he's okay, but we are obviously limited in girl clothing. They came home with 2 garbage bags full with clothes. I don't think there's any way Missy will even wear it all before she grows out of it. Abra said she'd be playing a lot of dress-up with Missy. I have to admit that after almost a lifetime of jeans and t-shirts, pink, ruffle-y girls clothes are really cute.

About a week and a half ago, Missy started pulling herself up to a standing position. Now she's starting to cruise. She also tried to climb the stairs. I came around the corner a few days ago and she had her hands on the second stair and her knees on the first stair. She's killing me. Daddy pulled the gate out of the basement that night and put it up. It's been down for a year and those were good times. It's a pain to have to go through a gate and both the top and bottom of the stairs, but I'll get used to it. Safety first! So no more dresses for Missy for the time being. Between the crawling and the climbing, there's no place for them.

For a few days J Frog was content to crawl over to Missy and pull her legs out from under her while she was trying to stand. This seems to be a problem that is unique to twins. I don't think I'd have this problem if it were just LR and Missy, but J Frog was intent on grabbing whatever leg was closer and chewing on her pant leg. Plus, he has sharp little teeth! Just in the past few days, he's started to show signs of pulling up. I lowered his mattress since he was hanging over the bar every time Abra or I went in to get him. Missy, however, cries herself to sleep while standing since she can't figure out how to get down. She learned how to get up so fast that I'm not too worried about her learning how to bend those knees. It's the imminent walking that I'm worried about!

Holy Crow!

Disclaimer: Pictures are random for this post - leftovers from various occasions.

So when Daddy and I decided to have kids, we tried to clean up our language. Years of involvement with the rugby community had us swearing slightly more than a middle schooler. So, when LR was born, we tried to use variations to keep it clean. I know I shouldn't use anything, but trust me, with 3 kids under 3, swearing is one of the smaller battles. As a result, LR's favorite new expression is "Holy crow!" That particular expression is courtesy of my step-father who used that as his clean version of swearing when we were kids. And the circle of life continues...

At first I was a little concerned about LR using phrases like the above in his new preschool, but I've come to find out that his classroom has bigger battles too. I've already blogged about his first day where he had a discipline issue, but I've found out that every day since school started, he's been sent to the office at least once for anything from throwing sand to not sitting still in the reading circle - He's 3! Not sitting still is an infraction worthy of a visit to the office? I get the throwing sand one, but sitting still?

So, I started to get concerned. I mentioned it to another mom the second week of school, unaware that she is also a VP on the board of the school. The next week she asked me how it was going and I said, "not so well... maybe it's not the right place for him." She said, "no, I was the parent helper yesterday and LR is clearly being singled out by the teacher. When all the kids are mauling each other in the reading circle, LR is the one who gets called out. It's her first year teaching and she doesn't have the skills to deal with anything other than all the kids sitting quietly at the same time. I'm thinking of taking my son out since even though it's LR this week, it could be my son next week." Well, shit. Sorry,... shiz-nit. She's on the board and she's serious about taking her son out of the school because of the quality of the teacher. She's been calling around to other schools since the first week. My guess is that LR was unaware of the expectations the first week, broke the "rules," and was identified as a hot spot by the teacher.

Now, I've been a first year teacher and I know how hard it is, but as a parent, I'm pretty furious about my 3 year-old being singled out as a trouble maker. When I ask him about his day, he tells me he was "bad." He's not a bad kid! He's high-energy, but incredibly loving for his age. All he wants to do is play with the other kids. He lights up when I tell him it's a school day. The last thing I want to have happen is to have him stop liking school because he gets in trouble every day for being 3. So, the VP on the board went and spoke with the principal and set up a plan for the principal to observe LR's teacher every week. Then I called the principal to set up a meeting and tomorrow I have to go in during my work hours to meet with LR's teacher and the principal. The principal asked me to come in with suggestions for the teacher for instructing LR. Really?

On one hand, I understand that she thinks I have insight for dealing with LR, but on the other, I have no idea how to handle his behavior when he's with 12 other children that he'd obviously rather pay attention to than any adult. Isn't that what preschool teachers specialize in? How do I go to this meeting without being angry that she's punishing my child unfairly and letting that come through in the conversation? I want to make sure he has a good year, but I also need to remove him from the school if this is going to continue. I fiercely want to protect LR without going all "crazy-change-my-kid's-F-to-an-A-momma" on her. Know what I mean?

The only good news is the confirmation from a third party that LR is being completely normal in the classroom and not doing anything unusual for his age. That confirmation helped make last week much more fun at home since I didn't feel like I had to sit on him to make him behave.

LR's Recent Observations

While reading a book where a boat is being loaded by trucks, "Daddy, that's not cargo. It's truck-go."

Trying to repeat mommy's stellar pronunciation of the word "burritos" with the whole rolled r thing, "Boobies!" (Honestly, it's not a word that he'd ever heard before, but when I'd finished laughing, you better believe he added it to his repertoire.)

After spinning in circles, "Mommy, my house is moving."

Visit from Grandma Nese

Grandma Nese was kind enough to join us for the second week of Abra's trip. That way Daddy could go back to work and I wouldn't go crazy. Nobody likes a crazy Mommy... least of all Mommy. We tried to pack a couple of adventures into the trip, but the favorite was the trip to the Children's Museum downtown. LR went straight to the boat room and he and Grandma Nese played for a while with the boats and the water spigots that control the water flow. It took some convincing to go anywhere else in the museum, but we finally got him to go to the construction room. The museum was pretty empty, so we just let LR have the run of the place while we gave bottles to the babies.

Missy and J Frog have gotten good at eating for the most part. It's yogurt for breakfast and cereal with applesauce for lunch. For dinner we try to sneak in a vegetable and often give them some teething toast. They love the toast, but oh, the mess! Little soggy crumbles end up on their clothes, the chairs, their hair, the floor, my shirt, their trays, and the table. Good thing bath time is always right after dinner. Trying to clean them up any other way would just be a mistake.







LR drives a grocery delivery truck at the museum.







Grandma Nese gets used to the big stroller.












J Frog's preferred method of drinking water. He really doesn't dig sippy cups. Instead he takes big mouthfuls of water and chokes on every fifth sip or so. Doesn't keep him from going back for more though!




Grandma Nese tries to keep the babies on the blanket and grass out of their mouths during a birthday party for LR's friend. They were ALL about the grass.









Yum yum!







It's all mine!

LR's Third Birthday!

He's 3! And this year Mommy has learned an important lesson. When presents arrive in the mail, she shouldn't give them to him right away. I should save them up and give them to him all on his birthday or party day. Otherwise, LR will think that his birthday is about 3 weeks long. I'm sure tomorrow (and the next day and the next) he'll be expecting more gifts!

I started baking cakes for his construction themed party around 7am since the party was at 11am, but I underestimated how long it would take me to pick up, decorate, feed the kids, dress the kids, shower, and dress myself. I was just stepping out of the shower when guests started to arrive. Because of the rain, any plans to paint outside were scrapped. Instead we played a wrecking ball game using cities built of boxes and balls hung from the ceiling with twine. We also had the kids "construct" their cake servings by taking hunks of cake and putting them together with cement icing. They seemed to have fun, but more importantly, LR had a blast. He had a great day playing with friends, eating pizza and cake, and hanging out with the family. It was the first day in a long time that I haven't had to discipline him. It was just a very easy day and for all the supporting cast that it took to make that happen, I'm incredibly grateful.

I bought a cheap, but large dump truck this week which served as the platter for the cake. I took plain chocolate cake and cut it into cubes and then tossed them in the truck. It looked like rubble and the kids thought it was awesome. The only drawback was that the parents spent time helping the kids construct their cakes and then didn't eat any themselves. Since there were only 4 kids at the party, I have a TON left over.

LR also spent some quality time giving friends and siblings of friends rides on his cool new tractor. It's his present from Yianni and Cookie and he loves it. I haven't had time to put the front loader on it because he spends so much time playing with it.

Oh, and J Frog and Missy contributed to the festivities as well. J Frog clung onto Daddy's head while Daddy cut up fruit and veggies during the pre-party. It's currently one of our favorite "stop-J Frog-from-crying" moves. He likes the view from up there and apparently Daddy uses tasty hair product. Missy's contribution included pulling herself up to a standing position. She just started crawling on her knees last week and on party day she decided to enter the third dimension. She's now going vertical and it's a little scary. She's not sturdy enough, so if you turn your back, she'll fall over.

Third Baby Reunion and Bath Time

Thanks to a tropical storm our rugby game was canceled this weekend. Free time - wee! We managed to take the zoo to LR's third annual baby reunion. One of the moms from LR's "Great Beginnings" class is a super organizer and puts on this reunion every year. This time it was at a baby gym downtown. The young man and woman running the show were amazing. They had all 10 of the 3 year-olds completely captivated with stories and activities. They were loud, energetic, and entertaining. It's too bad preschool isn't like that every day! LR was in heaven and bounced from activity to activity while interacting with the other children when he careened off walls and into them. It was awesome. He even found a kindred spirit in another boy there. Definitely some monkey-see-monkey-do action going on. And the "car wash" was my favorite part. They brought out cars and motorcycles for them to ride, then started the bubble machine. Very creative!

In the evening, LR decided to climb into the bath with the babies, so we had our very first all-sibling washdown. Everything went reasonably well and then LR and Missy started a splashing war which had everyone giggling. Well, LR laughed and Missy screamed which may sound bad, but she screams when she's happy. She screams when she's neglected, mad, fussy, happy, and watching LR. She is a screamy girl.

Counting Mommy's Bruises

It's that time of year again - rugby season! We're already in full swing and I think this is the largest roster I've had in the past 9 years. There are around 50 players which is keeping both practices and games pretty intense. This is also the first time for a few years that I've been able to participate. Last year I was pregnant with the twins so couldn't do much. Now I'm getting caught up in the action and as a result, LR and I have come up with a new game called, "Count Mommy's Bruises." Between carrying 2 heavy car seats in and out of the car and banging them into walls and my legs on the way and rugby practices, I have a lot. I think our last game ended with a count of 11 and that was only the big ones.

After our first rugby game last weekend, one of my players emailed the team and said she was having fun playing "dirt or bruise" in the shower. Good game!

So one of the reasons I haven't done much posting is that Abra has been home in South Africa having her wisdom teeth removed. We missed her terribly! Now she's back and the kids are getting some much needed Abra-love. It's amazing how much they've changed in just the short time she's been gone: Missy started crawling, LR started school, J Frog now has 2 teeth and is vocalizing much more often.

Well, I've finally caught the cold that both LR and J Frog had this week, so I'm off to bed. Will write about our visit with Grandma Nese next! (She filled in for Abra the second week Abra was gone and we couldn't be more grateful!) And I didn't even blog on LR's third birthday. LR, I owe you a post! Luckily, his party isn't until this Sunday, so I'll have birthday pictures eventually.