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Alex & the boys. Photo taken last Wednesday afternoon, by Alex, with her cell phone.

One of the MAJOR perks of being a college professor is the incredible babysitting pool I have access to! I have 6,000 Lehigh students to choose from — most of whom would be great babysitters for my kids. Last spring, after an extensive search and interviewing process (!!!), I hand-chose one- in my opinion, the most superb of the bunch, to be Kyle and Owen’s babysitter. Alex has come to hold a very special place in our family. She babysat for the boys 20 hours a week this summer so that we could cut down to part-time daycare for the summer. K & O had the time of thir life! Alex is perfect for us. She is a cool, calming, creative presence in the boys’ lives. She off-sets me & Braydon’s frenetic craziness with an entirely different type of energy. And she has a dog, Cypress, something that Braydon and I will probably NEVER provide for the boys!!! On top of it all, she’s utterly ridiculously dependable and reliable – which makes the entire scenario almost too-good-to-be-true for Braydon and I. Once the fall semester began, the boys went back to daycare full-time, Alex started her senior year of classes at Lehigh, and we began a new babysitting routine. Now Alex picks the boys up early from daycare every Wednesday and spends that afternoon with them each week. This gets them out of daycare early once a week, and it keeps their relationship with Alex steady. She also stays late every-other-Wednesday night so that Braydon and I can have a regular date night together. Which makes EVERYONE’S life better! 😉 I think Alex might be the only Lehigh student with two carseats in her car! She’s definately the only Lehigh student who regularly eats dinner at our house and gets a glimpse into Professor Johnson’s inner world! Eeks! As for Kyle and Owen, well, they just think Alex is the best. Braydon and I agree. Alex does such fun stuff with the boys. She takes them to parks, they go on walks with Cypress, she introduces them to her cool college friends when the boys hang out with her on campus or at her apartment. She takes them through the car wash, she runs errands with them, she gives them cookies and ice cream and lolipops. She brought them to softball games all summer, she brought them to the Crayola Factory once, she took them to see The Lehigh Women’s Center one day this fall. She also just lets them chill and do their own thing at home a lot. Yesterday afternoon she and some other Lehigh students took them to a Halloween Party at an After School Program where K & O got to play and eat chips and candy with some big kids ages 6-15… How cool is THAT?! My dad says Alex is his “hero” because she does all of this alone with them. He has direct experience, he knows how incredibly amazing all this is!– Like, for example, she gives them a bath and puts them to bed solo, which is (believe us!), truly worthy of some sort of medal of honor. I am already dreading the day Alex graduates. I’ve never had her as a student in class. Believe me, if I had her in class I’d do everything in my power to fail her… just so that she couldn’t graduate on time.

Owen and Kyle last week, at a park with Alex. Photo taken by Alex, with her cell phone.

Kyle and Owen this summer, at home, at the end of a rainy day, playing in the puddles. Photo taken by Alex, with her cell phone.

Which of course means – ‘candy num nums’ for breakfast !!!

Kyle, Owen, and one of their best friends – Ben Uhrig – have fun in the pumpkins. This photo was taken by our friend Stacey a couple of weekends ago, at a farm in New Jersey.

Owen and Kyle check out some gigantic pumpkins at a farm along the Delaware River, about 5 minutes from our house. This photo was taken this past weekend.

Well, we all go a little far sometimes. In our work, in our obsessions, in our family life.

Every morning and afternoon Kyle and Owen insist on seeing ‘Papi’s Chain Saw’ [ain-yaw]. Every morning and every afternoon. Which really means we first look at a little electric chainsaw, then the gas chain saw Don gave me for Chirstmas, then we look at the weedeater, then the leaf blower, then the old lawnmower (Sheesh, I can’t believe we have all this stuff). And they have to touch each one in succession and pretend the motor is running – vroom, vroom! So, I thought – hey, they would get such a kick out of it if I started up the weedeater – they love when we start the cars engines.

The boys stood about 3 feet away, I pulled the starting rope, again, again and it started. Kyle was very curious as the motor jumped to life (interesting since he was very worried about the neighbor’s chain saw when a tree fell down in his yard); Owen immediately started crying. ‘No, no, no Papi!’ he called out. He quickly ramped up to full panic. I immediatey stopped the motor and picked him up. Held him; he was so scared and crying. Kyle reached down and made motor noises – vroom, vroom! I held Owen until he calmed down. We had to replay the whole thing in detail (without starting the motor), until everything made sense and was ok. Then we went and played a little golf in the front yard (with the golf tee of course). We’ve been talking about the Big Green Chain Saw since (it’s not even green).

We’re a very enthusiastic family and get a little carried away sometimes.

Ben swings Kyle (then Kyle gets down, and jumps up and down looking up at Ben saying, “AGAIN!” Then Ben swings Kyle. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.)

Our friends Ben & Ruth came from Delaware to visit. They arrived Saturday afternoon and left today. It was a short overnight visit but it was jam-packed with fun and Ben-Ruth-Kyle-Owen-bonding time! We went on a horse-drawn hayride, ate kettle corn, threw rocks in the river, and played outside a lot! Ben is my dear comrade from grad school, and with Ben & Ruth both having tenure now (yay you two!), it was a real inspiration for us to hear lots about how great life is post-tenure.

Kyle snuggling on Ben’s lap on the hayride

Ben hugging Kyle, Kyle loving every second of it!

Photo Shoot: Ruth, Kyle, Owen, and Ben at Trauger’s Farm Market

Owen “up high!”, Ruth enjoying (sort of) the head massage

Kyle, Ruth, Owen, Ben: A Beatiful Fall Weekend

One truth about Kyle and Owen: They eat a LOT. Always have. At first their intensity about all-things-food was understandable (it was so sad– they had been starving, literally, for their first eight months of life). But it was still shocking and unbelievable how much they could consume at ages 8-9-10 months old. It would break your heart to watch them eat. My mom still talks about it. It was like watching a “little bird” she says. Really, the entire thing was truly heart-wrenching. I could go on and on about so many food/eating-related behaviors from their first few months home. But instead, I just want to talk about the here and now.

O.k., so they are two year olds wearing size “4-5 year” socks. They are HUGE. And they never seem to not be growing like weeds. Other parents talk to me about their kids’ “growth spurts,” and parenting books and pediatric guides I read go on and on about the ebb and flow of baby/toddler growth and eating — our boys seem to clearly defy all the norms. They seem to be in full-time growth/eating spurt since the day we got them. People who see them eat regularly comment on it: “Oh my god, I can’t believe how much they eat?!!!!!!!!” and “Heather, if they’re like this now, what on earth are you going to do when they’re sixteen?!!!!!! Men seem to love to watch it. They’re like, “WOW! YOU GO BOY!!! YOU GO!” Women are appalled. They’re like, “Heather, do you really think that is o.k. for a little child to eat that much?! Don’t you think you should stop them?” (Believe me, I worry too- that their stomachs will explode, or that they’ll make themselves sick. I’ve talked to our pediatrician about this numerous times: she tells me to just let them go and not stop them. Once I had to ask her, “How many bananas can I let Kyle eat per day?” and that was the only time she ever limited the food intake: she said he shouldn’t be eating more than 2-3 per day on average, so we’ve tried to stick to that. She’s been our medical saving grace throughout K & O’s entire adoption so I never second-guess anything with her, and we just do what she says.) Braydon and I are kind of used to it — to seeing how much our boys can consume. Kyle, especially, is truly shocking to watch. I swear, if they had eating contests for 2 year olds, this boy would win every single one he entered. But still, occassionally, even Braydon and I are stunned. Particularly when it comes to pasta… these boys can EAT!

7:00 a.m. this morning — both boys wake up asking for milk

7:30 a.m. — Owen helps me make yogurt smoothies for the boys. (in it: 2 bananas, 1 tub of peach yogurt, 2 cups frozen strawberries, 2 cups orange juice)

7:40 a.m. Owen and Kyle drink up all of the smoothie from the blender.

By our 10:00 a.m. arrival at The Little Gym they had also eaten 2 bowls of dry cereal each.

12 noon: Kyle is done with his lunch. And happy as can be about it. What did he eat? An entire bowl of Panera Bread’s broccoli cheddar soup (rich!) and a large piece of multi-grain baguette (dense!). This is not a “children’s meal” (we don’t even order off the children’s menu there), this is a fully adult-size-meal. A meal that would make many adults comfortably full (I know it makes me comfortably full).

12:30 pm: They’re asleep for nap. I read in the pediatrics books that children only grow when they are sleeping. Must be why our boys sleep so much.

Twins are challenging in terms of who covers whom. People often tell me sports analogies: “With one, you can trade off and perform full coverage; with two you have to go man to man coverage.” Then the joke goes that with three you have to play zone defense. Right now we’re with man to man coverage, or parent to toddler coverage with both running backs heading for opposite end-zones.

And when you’re working your butt off to have a balanced marriage (which we do every day – sometimes more successfully than others) and balanced parenting it can be down-right nutty. Whose rules go where, what happens when he bites, or kicks, or runs out into the middle of the street? Instant time-out? One warning and time out? Yelling or total detachment? “Do you think that is really productive?” So you celebrate the little accomplishments when they come.

Last night Owen had a “paci-event”, which translated means his pacifier fell out of his mouth in the night while he was sleeping and he wanted it, but was too half-asleep to figure out that it’s in the same place it always is – attached to his pj’s about 3 inches from his mouth.

I woke up hearing him crying out in a very forelorne voice: ‘Mapi’, ‘Mapi’. I realized then, at 2 AM, that he was combining Mama + Papi to come up with Mapi.

It’s the little accomplishments that matter.

Oh happy day! Oh happy day! After daycare today ANOTHER package was waiting in the mailbox!! This one: from cousin Sadie!!! When I took it out of the mailbox and showed it to the boys Kyle said, “Let’s go open it!” It still feels strange every time one of them uses a full, grammatically correct, coherent sentence!?! We opened it right away.

Guess what was inside?! One “yummy thing” for each boy! Rice krispie treats with dried cranberries and pumpkin seeds mixed in! “I like it!”, said Owen! They ate them right up! THANK YOU SADIE! What a great way to start off the weekend! Since the two of them got to have their “yummy things” Braydon and I thought it only fair to start off our weekend with our own “yummy things”: a big glass of wine for each of us. This has been kinda a long week for us here, so we’re glad it is done. TGIF.

P.S. A side note: O.k., so, here’s the thing: regularly arts & crafts projects come home from daycare. Today these two pumpkins were waiting for pick-up with K & O. So, in all seriousness: does anyone out there realistically think that it is humanly possible that my sons actually hand-glued these little foam things onto these pumpkins? The daycare staff swear that the kids make these things. I can kind of believe that some of the kids might make these things — the really good nice well-behaved kids who sit still for big stretches of time and patiently calmly do nice quiet little craft projects. But the thing is that the daycare staff swear that my kids make these things. They say it with a straight face. This has been going on at daycare since K & O were about 14 months old. I simply cannot imagine my boys doing this. Simply cannot imagine! And get this, tonight, during dinner, when I pointed to one of the pumpkins and asked K & O “Who made this?!” Owen said dumb-foundedly, “Hm?” and Kyle said, “Marcus did it.” [Marcus is one of those really good nice well-behaved kids I mentioned above.]

Owen & Kyle get care packages from their Mormor quite often! Every single time it is a truly exciting and awe-inspiring experience for them — the thrill of it doesn’t seem to wear off, ever, no matter how many packages come, no matter what is in the package (cookies? YAY! YAY! toys? YAY! YAY! clothes? YAY! YAY!). Mormor can do no wrong: all things good come from Mormor (she could send a box filled with crumpled newspaper and they’d be absolutely thrilled). Yesterday a package was waiting when they got home from daycare! Oh happy day! Oh happy day! Guess what was inside? It couldn’t be better: 2 new motor-noise-making toys! A book that makes motor noises and a wood block toy that makes motor noises (note: how ironic is THAT?! read Braydon’s post from yesterday). K & O were enthralled with them both. After reading Braydon’s post you’ll have an idea of just how enthralled they really were. “THANK YOU MORMOR” they said many many many many times over the course of last evening. Oh, how they love Mormor.

It is 7:08 am and the boys are still sleeping. They are usually up sometime between 6:30 and 7:00. This is the first morning in a couple of weeks that Braydon and I have both managed to be up, showered, bags-packed-for-work, coffee made, washing-machine-and-dryer running, everything-ready-to-start-the-day before the boys wake up. This is our goal for every morning, but so often K or O or both beat us to it. It feels good to be one step ahead of them since so often we’re trailing in the dust behind them!

TGIF!

Right now the boys are obsessed with motors. All things motors, and everything seems to have a motor. Even Owen has a motor – ‘papi, watch me, my motor’ and he points to his bum and makes a motor noise and takes off running. Going a step further, they are obsessed with the lawn mower, the car motor, the weedeater and the chain saw. Every day they want to see the motors in both cars. ‘papi – white car motor?’ I hear when I get back from work. ‘Don’t touch it – it’s hooooot! [sounds like huuuuut]’ I pick them up (all 70+ pounds together) and show them the motor. They can both consistently point to the “motor”, the “air filter” and the “battery”…not that they have any idea what any of those are, but they can do it!. And they can point to the muffler on the cars, on the weedeater and the chainsaw.

I could easily be one of the people to who says “well, they’re boys, of course they love motors!”, and wouldn’t that be so easy. Maybe there is some predisposition to liking motors. But I seriously doubt that embedded in the psyche are the instructions for “locate battery in 2004 Acura and 2000 Volvo, note that they are both next to air-filter, but not the air-filter”. Or that they come pre-programmed with “Make really loud motor noises when looking at machinery – oh and by the way – that’s a piece of machinery.

They might come pre-programmed with things like: “Papi looks at motors, I love my papi and am interested in what he’s interested in. He talks about cars and trucks and lawn mowers all the time, it must be interesting. I’m hardly a developmental psychologist, but I assume that it’s true that I am having a strong influence on them in a wide variety of things that they do – related to motors and otherwise.

Which of course for me begs the question: Will boys be boys? I know we are trying really hard to make them boys (it appears it’s working based on the picture below). But I really really really want them to be good boys. Nice and respectful, thoughtful, generous and super confident boys. That might be harder to accomplish than interesting them in all things motors.

But maybe when I catch Kyle looking in the mirror with his skull cap on dancing and singing “I’m gonna catch you” by Laurie Berkner, it might be working. Or when Owen gives me and Heather a kiss before we leave for daycare we’re on the right track. Or when they offer their lollipop to someone, or when when Kyle gives Owen his lovey lion when Owen is crying – maybe so.

I got this photo this morning from my phone – that’s Kyle bombing down the drive way on the ‘blue’ truck (that also apparently has a motor) and Owen patiently waiting his turn.

Kyle and Owen love the bath. Can you tell from the pictures!? Their favorite things to do in the bath are as follows (in order of their preference):

• splash like madmen
• “make coffee” — i.e., fill a cup with bath water and say, “here mommy, here’s your coffee!”/”here, papi, coffee for you! careful papi, it’s hot!!!”
• “make yogurt smoothie in the blender” — i.e., put a cup filled with bath water on the soap-holder-wall-unit-thingy and make very, very loud blender-motor noises for a very, very long time and say, “here mommy, yogurt smoothie!”/”here, papi, yogurt smoothie for you! it’s cold!!!”
• pour bath water over each other’s heads and their own heads
• play with bars of soap saying “it’s slippery” and “don’t eat it” (while putting the soap in their mouths to taste it on the sly, dropping them, and then searching for them on the bottom of the tub saying “where is is is is is is is is it?”)
• pretend the rubber duckies are swimming, diving, jumping, splashing, etc., etc., etc.

Bathtime is fun fun fun for the whole family! 😉

It’s safe to say that for everyone, some days are better than others. The two days of this past weekend were great for our family; particularly Saturday. Little Gym was great, there were Frisbees for the first time (K&O throw those at home already so it was a riot to watch them launch them across the room). And Charlie and Sandy had a party next door to celebrate their heading to India to complete the adoption. Our family loves social events – all four of us. The weather was gorgeous – a little crisp, a little frost, light wind and sunny afternoons – perfect fall family days.

But maybe it was that Kyle is getting over a cold and was coughing all night, or that Owen woke up needing help with his pacifier several times, or that Heather woke up with terrible stomach pains and was up from 3AM until we got up. Or maybe those things added up – with normal Monday distress over getting back to a normal week – got us off to a difficult start.

Heather and I got up before the boys (to shower and get ready); I made coffee and moved the car seats from the courtesy loaner car to the ‘Black Car’. I heard Owen and Kyle walk from their room to our room – they were up. When I went upstairs, Heather was sitting on the bathroom floor, half-ready with both boys on her lap in their pj’s with all stuffed animals, pacifiers and thumb sucking present. They just needed a little snuggle with their Mommie. We got them dressed, downstairs, warm milk for both boys (‘not cold Papi, just warm’) and shoes on to go to daycare. Owen had his normal transition troubles before we got in the car – he’s going through a bit of a phase with that. What do you expect, he’s 2 1/2!

Heather and I typically call each other after daycare drop off to talk about how it went.

Owen had brought a book with him – “Black All Around” it’s one of their favorites right now. When they went into the preschool room he held it up to show everyone – so proud, but folks and kids were busy and they weren’t really paying attention. When they got back to the toddler room, he figured he would try it again and enthusiastically held it up to show everyone. Heather highlighted it with “Owen brought a book in to show everyone!” but it was time for breakfast and they would look at it later. It’s totally understandable, but deflating none-the-less. Poor guy.

They got into their chairs, got their bibs on and were served breakfast (it’s really a great situation when you think consider it). But Kyle looked up at Heather and quietly said “I want Honey Bunny, Mama.” Heather gently told him HB was in the car and that he could have it after day care. “Please, Mama, I want Honey Bunny.” She said, HB’s twin is up in his cubby, did he want him? He did and she got down the HB that he uses to nap with at daycare. He held Honey Bunny up to his face and sucked his thumb while breakfast was served. “Mama, where’s Sheep?” Sheep is in the car, you can have him after day care baby. There is no twin sheep at daycare. There is Lovey Lion’s twin, but Lovey Lion is Owen’s. Heather left to go to work. I know after a few minutes they got into the day and everything was fine, but it’s just very hard sometimes.

Of course, when I got home everything was fine. Heather, Kyle and Owen were there playing outside in the yard. They came running up the driveway when they saw ‘the white car’ and both boys insisted on driving down the cul-de-sac with me – too funny. Owen likes to grab the steering wheel while sitting in my lap. When I try to correct before we drive into a neighbor’s yard and I am informed ‘NO PAPI!’ and he cranks the wheel the otherway. All in all he’s not a bad driver, look out NASCAR… in 20 years. After driving, Kyle needs to go see Papi’s lawnmower (in the garden shed along with the chainsaw and weedeater – they mimic the sounds of each).

So what started off rough ended right. That is of course what happens with you’re in love with your family.

And one last thing: a picture from going to the park last week. They just can’t get enough of throwing rocks in the little river.