penguinos at the library halloween party

going bananas

I decided to give Max a frozen banana hoping that it would help with teething pain. I thought he would just nub on the end of it and get a little relief from his pain. Once the banana was in his mouth he went crazy. He nubed and nubbed, crying when we would take it away, until it was gone.

very early voting

Max and Maya went to the polls today for early voting. They have been pretty excited about the election from the start so this was a pretty big day for them. We were all excited to be able to vote in this historic election.



In case you were wondering who we voted for and why we voted for him.....
We think General Colin Powell sums it up quite well. He makes several points that I agree with. Enjoy.



The political process can be pretty exhausting....

she's back

Maya had a happy day today and she napped!

My sweet, happy, and well rested girl.

I was so happy that she decided to nap again today. The last week and a half had been pretty tough. Maya has been quite fussy and not napping well. I'm not sure which started first, the not napping or the fussiness, but they feed on each other and made our sweet baby into quite the grump. We thought the root of the problem might be teething but still no teeth have appeared.

Here's a few things I tried differently today.
1. Let the babies sleep together again. They took all their naps in the same bed.
2. I snuggled the babies and had some more quiet time than normal before putting them down for naps.
3. I tried hard not to stress too much (when I stress, the babies stress...it helped that I went to bed at 9pm last night so I was well rested today).
4. We fed the babies a different brand of formula than we had been giving them for the last week or so (they get one bottle a day, just before going to sleep).

Maybe the changes helped. Maybe they just took it easy on me for one day. Who knows....



Just in case I am starting to get over confident, Maya also gave me a warning glare to let me know that she is still in charge.

solids

Our doctor said we could start offering the babies solid food at four months. After our battle with breastfeeding and finally getting into a feeding routine, I was pretty hesitant. But now that the babies are 5 and a half months old we decided to give it a shot just to see the babies' reactions. We have offered the babies rice cereal a couple of times over the past weeks. Maya was much more interested in her fingers and pacifier. Max seemed to enjoy the cereal. When I offered him a frozen banana today, he was thrilled. Maya couldn't be bothered. I don't think I am ready to make food a regular part of the day, but it was a fun activity.

thing one and thing two

We have noticed that Max has an almost uncontrollable smile. Even when he is a bit sad, tired, and/or hungry, if we smile at him, he will smile back.

Maya has been spending a lot of time lately with at least one fist in her mouth. She has also been having a harder time sleeping lately and has been more grumpy than her normal happy self. We are thinking the combination of fist-munching and grumpiness might be early signs of teething. The babies are only five months old, which is a little young to be teething, but my mom has said that I had a tooth come in at four months old. Any suggestions for dealing with teething, fussy babies would be appreciated. We've tried frozen teething rings and the like.

These cute onesies were given to us by my long time friend Tara and her husband Jeff. We love them (the outfits and the friends)! Our little "Things" first wore these outfits when we went to library story time, which is starting to become part of our weekly schedule. The kids seem to really enjoy the singing and the movement along with looking at the books and other babies in the room. When the babies wore these onesies, we appropriately read Dr. Seuss books.

On other occasions, Maya has worn the Thing 1 onesie because she was born first. This morning, Lonnie put the Thing 1 on Max as a reward for being such a good boy lately (very little crying and grumpiness like the other one). I am always telling Lonnie that we need to try to not compare them too much. :)

rollin', rollin', rollin'

I love the look of amazement on Max's face.


This week, Max figured out how to roll over from his back to his stomach. It is now one of his favorite activities. Almost as soon as we put him on his back, he will swing his legs around and contort his arms. You can see the concentration on his face and hear it in his grunts and groans. On Thursday, he even rolled from his back to his belly and then on to his back again. He and Maya have been rolling from their bellies to their backs for over a month and a half now, but only when they are really in the mood.

picnic in the park

thank you for sharing

Thank you, thank you, and thank you to everyone who added advice on the service post. You all shared so many wonderful ideas and insights. I was also so happy to hear from those of you that I didn't even know were checking out our blog. I always love connecting with friends from the past and making new friends. I have decided to be on the look out for more service opportunities (including being less selfish in sharing my husband's time and enjoying special moments to appreciative my wonderful children) for the next couple of weeks while also using some of the ideas that you have suggested. I will report back on what I have learned. Thank you for all your support. I feel loved a virtually hugged.

I kind of feel like an unintentional blogger. Lonnie and I started our blog as a contact point for adoption. We were told that we would have to wait until we had been married for two years before we could officially sign up with LDS Family Services. We were also advised that we should be ready for a long wait once we were officially signed up. After two years of infertility and a strong desire to have a family (along with having waited until I was 30 years old to get married) I wanted to do something right away to start our family. I wanted something I could work on everyday that would help me feel empowered. We had heard so many wonderful stories about a friend of a friend or a distant relative who had found out that a couple were interested in adopting and then connected them to a women looking for a couple to adopt her baby. So we reached out to our friends and family to help expand our family. We hoped our blog would be a place where people could come and get to know a little about us. We had heard about people using websites, but we liked the idea that our blog would be a place that friends and family would come to often and remember us when the topic of adoption was brought up. So we shared our stories (sometimes more that I would have shared had I not felt the need to be open and vulnerable) and hoped that somehow we would be connected to someone who was also looking for us.

No, we never got a strong adoption referral from our blog, but we did let the world know that we were interested in having a family and maybe more importantly I was able to feel like I was doing something small everyday to build my family. We took a risk and put ourselves out there.

Then one year and nineteen days ago (yes, we know the exact date) thanks to some good doctors and lots of prayers we got pregnant and a few weeks later we found out that we were expecting not only one but two babies and we started a whole new adventure.

Now I am part of the ever-growing group of mommy bloggers. To be honest I don't normally think of myself as a very open person and I don't think I would have started a blog were in not for the original intention. I love to hear other people's stories but I tend to be a bit more vague about my own. So what is our blog now? I' not really sure. Is it a photo album for adoring grandparents, a memory book for the kids, and a public journal for our whole family, sounding board for me, or a new type of online community? I'm still trying to figure it all out but it the meantime I will continue to write when I feel inclined and I will continue to post photos and stories of our kids (it never hurts to hear other people tell us that they are as cute as we think they are). On Monday when I was having a hard time getting the kids to nap and I was exhausted from all the crying (my tolerance is low because the babies thankfully are usually pretty happy), Lonnie suggested that I get advice form my blogging friends.

Sometimes I feel like I am writing our story. But there are so many things left out....so many posts I started but never finished and posted, so many events, thoughts and thanks that are not recorded. There are also so many joys and struggles that never get posted because they are so eventful that I get caught up in the moment and can't seem to put the experiences into words or photos. Maybe one day I will finish as my unfinished posts. Maybe one day I will get better at telling our stories. In them meantime, this is what we get.

Why do you blog? Who do you blog for? What are your motivations? Are you ever surprised at what you are willing to publicly post? Are you ever thrown off when someone knows something about you they learned about you over the internet?

I also added a photo for those of you who don't really like to read blogs and only want to look at photos.

why we have a double sink

In honor of making it in the crazy world for five months we bathed the kids in the sink for the first time last night. Maya had had a pretty hard day, refusing to nap and crying most of the day. By the time Lonnie got home from work I was worn out, tired and was ready for some happy time.





Max loved the sink. He probably could have sat there for hours. He looked like he was sitting and relaxing in a hot tub. Maya tolerated her bath and sucked on wash cloth most of the time, but she kept quite and didn't cry so I was satisfied.

Seems to me that double sinks were especially made for twins.