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Today was a big day for Kyle & Owen: their last day of daycare before their summer vacation!!! They have been in daycare either part-time or full-time for the past two years straight. It will be very interesting for all of us to see how they like being out of daycare for the next three months! We’re all really looking forward to having Alex be our Nanny full time for the summer. Last year at this time we were livin’ it up in the Turks & Caicos Islands… Since I didn’t have the blog then, I’m posting these photos now!

Please take twenty minutes of your time to watch this short documentary on YouTube:

Malnutrition in Haiti, Part 1 — click here
Part 2 — click here
Part 3 — click here

–OR– Three Things that can Truly make a mom of Twin Three-Year-Olds feel Tremendously Terrific:

1) Yesterday when I picked up the boys from daycare they did what they have done almost every single daycare day for the past two years… when they spotted me approaching, they starting jumping up and down yelling at the tops of their lungs “My Mama is here!!! Yay my mommy!!! Mama mama mama!!!” As soon as I was to them they were jumping all over me, hugging me. Nothing could make a working mom feel much better than that… except… it just so happened that no other parents were there when I was, and one of the daycare staff/’teachers’ said to me: “Do you realize that you get by far the biggest welcome of any other parent?? No other parents get that kind of response from their kids when they come to pick them up! Kyle and Owen just adore you!!!!!!” Um, o.k., it does not get much better than that!!!

2) After daycare pick-up I brought the boys to the drugstore to buy each of them a new toy car to bring on vacation [very random, but Eckerd drug store seriously has the absolutely BEST toy cars on the planet — and they are less than $3 each]… We were looking at all the toy cars and I was telling the boys they could each choose one. They were both having a really hard time deciding which one to choose. Kyle said, “Mama, which one do I choose?” I said, “I don’t know baby, which one is your favorite? which one do you like the best?” Owen stops everything, turns away from the toy cars, gets right up close to my face and says, with total sincerity: “My mommy is the best mommy.”

3) Last night was Hair Night (we re-twisted the boys’ dreds)… which means we all sit on the floor of the family room and K & O eat their supper while watching videos as Braydon and I do their hair. I put the boys’ supper in these containers (see below) for hair night… Their supper was (clockwise from top left): soy nuggets & ketchup, raw baby carrot chunks, cherry tomatoe halves, wheat bread with roasted-red-pepper-hummus. When Kyle saw his supper he said, “Oooooh Mama!!! Look at my supper!!! You make me a happy happy boy my mommy!!!”

Sunday afternoon at the playground… Braydon turns to me and says, “It is days like today that I feel more like an uncle than a father. It seems like other dad’s don’t have this much fun with their kids, it seems more like something an uncle does.”

If they are doing this at age THREE, what on earth will they be doing when they are THIRTEEN???

Today while they were playing in the driveway after daycare, Owen and Kyle decided that they wanted a “bump bump” to ride their bikes over. Braydon found a piece of a 2×4 and laid it down in the driveway for them. K & O quickly learned that if they pedalled hard enough they could actually catch some air coming off of it. They both loved that. And they literally rode over that bump about 30 times each.

But Kyle is our little dare-devil. He is FEARLESS. And soon enough he was not satisfied with just one “bump bump.” Suddenly he announced, “I know!!! How about two bump bumps?!!” He looked to Braydon and pleaded, “Two bump bumps please Papi???!!!” Braydon took off into the shed and came out with another piece of 2×4. This time the “bump bumps” were laid out at the base of the driveway (our driveway goes down on a decline), and K & O quickly figured out that the higher up the driveway they started the faster they could get — and thus, the more air they could catch coming off the double bumps.

It started to get really wild (Owen stayed somewhat in control the entire time, taking his feet off the pedals as he neared the bump so as to not go over it with excessive speed… but again, let me repeat: Kyle is FEARLESS. Kyle would just pedal harder and harder the closer he got to the bump with a crazed look all over his face that just screamed “THRILL SEEKER!!!”). Right around the time I watched Kyle’s entire bike come off the ground a good solid ten inches, I turned to Braydon and said, “Do you really think we should be encouraging this when they are only just barely THREE????” Braydon’s response: “Heck yeah!!!!!!!” Luckily for me, the boys soon decided to take the bikes off-road. Owen announced: “Mama, we are going to ride these bicycles into the woods.” And Kyle said: “Yes, we will ride into the woods!” And that was that.

If you read this blog you know about our incredible babysitter/nanny Alex. Almost exactly one year ago Alex started caring for our boys. Her official “start date” was May 22, 2006. She has been a steady loving centerpiece of their lives for the entire past year. As a working mother I can honestly say that Alex has been my solace — my saving grace — for the entire past year. Last summer she babysat 20 hours a week so that the boys could cut back to part-time daycare for June-July-August. This past fall semester she babysat every Wednesday afternoon and stayed late on Wednesday nights so that the boys could get a mid-week break from daycare and Braydon and I could have one late night (either working or out on a date). And this spring semester she has picked up the boys from daycare early every Tuesday and Thursday, and babysat every-other-Saturday night for Braydon and I to go out. Today was her last day of the spring semester daycare-pick-up-babysitting schedule. I am beyond thrilled knowing that she will soon begin babysitting for us full time for the months of June-July-August so that the boys can be out of daycare for the entire summer. Alex is the perfect nanny for my boys. Today I am so grateful in my heart for this incredible young woman who has become such a central part of our family’s life. On Monday Alex graduates from Lehigh (with, by the way, academic honors and about 100 awards from the university for leadership and community service). She will begin graduate school at Lehigh in the fall. We are so incredibly fortunate to have her. Thank you Alex for being a major part of raising Kyle and Owen. These photos are for you… taken just after you left the house today, the boys wearing the bead “bracelets” (which soon became necklaces!!!) that you helped them make. Owen loves you. Kyle loves you. Braydon loves you. And I, especially, love you.

How things change and how much they are the same….

Today I checked my cell phone and there was a MMS from Alex. She was babysitting the boys, snapped a picture of them and text’d it to me. How cool is that? How sweet is that? How nuts is that? I remember we had a rotary dial phone in our house with the four-prong plug when I was a kid. I am sure there are others reading this blog who remember far more changes. It was a super big deal when I got my 110 camera that had 24 shots on it. I loved walkie-talkies, but they didn’t send pictures. I am so psyched about this though – I got to see a snap shot into their day – at the moment it was happening.

But somethings never really change I am coming to realize. And if any one is timeless in their jubilant approach to life, it’s K&O. Two boys, a fountain and a beautiful day. They love that thing and they know how to find fun where ever they go!

If I had been really cool, I would have actually noticed when she sent the message, and would have replied back with something like: lol – 2cute -thx 4 the pic – ttyl! But I’m not – I missed it by an hour and a half.

O.k., I’ve been postponing posting something about this because I’ve been in semi-denial that it is true. But it is time to come clean. My kids are officially food snobs. I don’t know how this happened. Braydon and I are soooo not food snobs. Yes, we like our gourmet foodie specialty items. For sure. But we’ll also jump right in line at a McDonald’s drive through with the best of ’em. In fact, over the years, we’ve actively and conscientiously and purposefully avoided food snobbery. Yes, we’ve plunked down our fair share of a large chunk of change at some of the finest dining establishments the world over. And yes, of course we have filled our cart many a time at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and Wegman’s and the like. But my bonus card is loyal to the local Giant Supermarket and I’m not ashamed of having a bag of Cheetos in my cart from time to time. Kyle and Owen, however, are a different story. Despite our attempts to instill our food-values into our children, they are exhibiting rebellion in this arena early on. Food Snobs they are (with a capital “F” and a capital “S”), and they don’t like mucking it with the rest of us when it comes to their dinner plates. At the age of just-barely-three, I think you definitely qualify as a food snob if you…

A) Prefer Stonyfield Farms’ All Organic, Whole Milk, ‘Yo Baby’ Yogurt products… and…
… turn your nose up at Yoplait Kids yogurt, even when it is covered with images of Diego?!!!!!

…refuse to eat the classic Velveeta Shells & Cheese, telling your Mama that it is “stinky” (quote unquote).

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C) Regularly chow down on ‘MorningStar Farms’ All Natural and All Vegetarian Soy ‘Chik’N Nuggets’… and…

…won’t even touch the all-American Kids Food: McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets, even when they come specially packaged in a ‘Happy Meal’ and they are dunked in sweet and sour sauce??!!!

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Yup, Food Snobs they are. Kyle and Owen both. I should have known it early on when we discovered that at the age of 16 months they both strongly preferred fine hand-made chocolate truffles from a specialty chocolatier to your basic household Hershey’s M&Ms. What the heck?!!!!!!