Friends have been telling us we are screwed for a long time now (I know, with friends like these who needs…).  I think they may be right.  Now that the babies are self aware, their favorite hobby is getting into trouble.  One of Cole’s new past times is to pull on the oven door handle (especially when there is food cooking in it).  Tonight, both babies were congregated around the oven and Cole started to grab the oven door handle while I was cooking dinner (I made hamburgers, and I have to say they rocked). 

Now before I continue, I should let you know the babies totally understand what “NO” means.  A lot of times we say no, but also back it up with some redirection, like:

“No Cole, dog food is for dogs, how about you take this toy instead (or for the love of everything good, why not eat some people food instead of dog food for a change)”. 

Distraction works most of the time as they have the attention span of a gnat. So back to tonight’s oven door incident, Cole starts grabbing the door and I’m like:

“No Cole, very dangerous, no touch, let’s go over here and play”. 

He starts laughing at me.  Then Paige starts laughing at me.  Now they are both laughing at me.  Without skipping a beat, Cole grabs the door again.  They both look at me and start laughing again.  Okay, maybe I wasn’t firm enough with him:

“Hey guys, this isn’t a good place to play, why don’t we go over here and play with these super cool toys that cost tons of money that we don’t focus enough on and I would like to play with these toys before you out grow them and we end up giving them away because you never played with them and I could have spent that money on a new plasma TV (60 inch of course)”.

First Cole looks a little perplexed, then he looks at Paige and they both start laughing at each other, then they stop and look at me like they were children from Village Of The Damned. It’s at that moment I realized they are in my head and we are so screwed.

Drew can’t believe he’s related to these two.

Cole and Drew have the same facial expression.

Us parents have lots of influence on our children. Everything we do and say somehow molds their life experiences to help nurture them into the adults they will soon become. I’ve already started to notice many little things that may give us a glimpse of what’s ahead for our little girl.

1. Will she be a cook? She loves food, there is no denying that. When we are cooking in the kitchen, she’ll just plant herself a few feet from the stove and look up with her tilted head. She’s really interested in the cooking process. And watch out if she smells food, she’ll go nuts!
2. Will she be an interior designer? Paige loves nothing more than rearranging furniture. She might be part Asian, because this girl has some feng shui in her. Everyday I hear noises in the next room and find Paige moving chairs around. In fact today, one of the chairs fell on her and scraped her leg up a little. She’s willing to suffer for her craft.
3. Will she be a hair stylist? Ladies, if you come to our house, be preparded to keep your hair up. Paige loves to run her fingers throw long flowing hair. If she feels you’ll look better with a little less hair here and there, then out it comes.
4. Will she be an actress? Let’s just say she knows “high drama”.
5. Will she be a nail tech? Okay, let me explain this one. Last year when we thought Paige was going to be blind, or near blind, Tobie came up with a list of jobs that Paige could do with poor eyesight. Somehow nail tech was on the top of her list. I don’t know what to really say about this one except I guess Tobie has blind women doing her nails.

It’s so weird, when I was working full time last year and the kids were in the hospital, and we were living day to day, it was so much easier to blog.  Who would have thought that situation would get the creative juices flowing?

Tobie here: Okay…that was Eric above.  I have soooo many things to write about.  First off, I have been without my helper J these last three days.  I was so miserable on Friday, crying the whole day at the thought of not having her…but it hasn’t been so bad.  Things aren’t always smooth, but manageable.  Paige had one of her worst tantrums I’ve ever seen on Tuesday.  She was mad about something and would run full speed from room to room and throw herself on the ground and roll around screaming.  It was funny and scary all at the same time.  Of course this occurred after she decided she didn’t want to nap that day.  Speaking of naps, this is by far my most challenging event being alone with the three kids.  The key is to make sure Drew is happy before attempting to put P & C down.  If it’s close to feeding time for Drew I will feed him early and attempt to get him to sleep either in his crib or the swing.  One thing I learned from P & C is to get him used to napping in his crib early.  Yeah, right!  Usually he gets groggy in his swing and then I try to transfer him to his crib when he’s 3/4 of the way out.  Back to naps for P&C…one day this week they climbed up the stairs themselves, the other days I had to wrangle them and climb up the stairs holding them.  Last time I did this was when I was pregnant and they weighed a lot less.  Seriously that’s 22.4 +24.7lbs=~47lbs I’m carrying.  Uugh.

Yesterday was our Peed appt for the 18mo check.  Yeah, we got a month behind when Drew was born.  Anyways, our doc said they were awesome.  He kept saying, “they’re born at 24 weeks?” and we’d answer yes and he’d comment again that they were awesome.  That’s pretty much all we got out of him.  He did say we should get them out as much as possible to broaden their minds and vocabularies (Nancy-we’re going to the zoo when you visit) and he said we don’t have to be psychotic about RSV season like we were last year.  In fact he said they won’t qualify for the RSV vaccine shots this year which I’m happy about.  Shots suck.

Today we had our first gymnastics class.  It was soooo cool.  P & C did great for their first class.  I was with Paige and my mom hung out with Cole and Drew was with my dad in the waiting room.  I can’t say enough good things about the class.  We started out in circle time doing stretches and singing songs then they played on mats for 10 minutes.  Then they moved to trampolines and these great squishy mats for 10 minutes.  Next came the foam pit.  This is where I lost Paige.  She didn’t like being submerged into 8 ft of foam blocks.  Her crying continued into Freeze Dance time then the class was over.  It was really neat and the best part is they slept 2.5-3 hrs for nap afterward!!  Just like when they had swim lessons, I could always count on them taking really long naps after swim.  The bad news is that last Friday was their last swim lesson.  Just when they were doing super great in the pool, it’s over.  Cole used to put his fingertips in the water and pull them out like he stuck them in acid.  Now he’s all smiles in the pool and actually will jump in.  Why do all good things have to come to an end?

Our speech therapist came by today.  She is going to recommend 4 hours of speech therapy a week outside the home to the support coordinator.  Wow.  That’s a lot of speech.  I think they’re going to be saying many words before that gets approved because they are both babbling and mimicking up a storm lately.

How’s that for a lot of rambles?

Eric here: Dang you woman, you hijacked my post.  I had a lot to say too.  Oh well, I’ll save it for another day when I feel the creative juices flowing.  I did have one thing to add, take a look at the picture of Paige to the right.  This morning she tripped over a pillow and went chin first into the frame of our bed.  She has a big ol’ cut on her chin, a fat lip, and a cut on the inside of her mouth.  To top that off, after breakfast she did a face plant into one of the kitchen cabinets and has a nice bruise on her forehead.  What more can I say? She gets more roughed up by 8 am than most kids do all day!

Tobie here:  Ooh, almost forgot another story…Cole loves to feed Moxie.  He will feed Moxie all his snacks if I don’t quarantine her away from the snack area.  So now that he can’t feed Moxie, I caught him yesterday trying to feed Drew his goldfish crackers.  Drew seemed happy…but geez!  Then today instead of feeding Drew his pretzels he took the pretzel and thunked Drew on top of the head with it.  Aaagghh….brotherly love.