It has been a while . . .

Just some new pictures. We have a busy fun weekend coming up (shocking, I know!). Here are some photos of B&K playing and checking out K's new shoes (and showing on her new climbing skills).

Enjoy your weekend! More on ours to come soon . . .

Feminine

I think I'm done tweaking the look for now. I may tackle it more sometime this weekend. What do you think? Technically this is my blog about B&K . . . but I'm thinking all the pink & flowers may be a bit too girlie for someone like B-dude to hang out here. So I may change it up one.more.time. Thanks for your patience.

And I promise pictures soon!! :) B&K are still a bit out of sorts, which doesn't make for good photo subjects (although they had a good evening yesterday . . . I just didn't think to get the camera). Anyhoo I hope to have some new pics soon. I promise.

Transformation

I'm working on a new lay-out / header. Please bare with me . . . it make take a few days to decide on what I like. :)

In other transformational news, we unloaded some furniture this weekend and have fully converted the "family room" into the "play room" (I LOVE Craigslist!!!!!!!). On the one hand it is bittersweet, like so many other things we have removed / sold / donated from our lives. We had taken MANY a picture of B&K on that couch. We bought the couch to go in the family room before we even were officially in the house. We saw it in the store and went with it -- hoping it would actually fit in the space (and yes of course, it was a wicked deal!). It was a super duper comfy couch, too -- by far the best "nap couch" I've ever owned!!

But in a LOT of other ways selling that couch is very therapeutic for me. It was a reminder of very, very difficult days. If I could have, I would have burned that couch in all honesty. In the birth of this blog I was trapped on bedrest in my house. In the dead of winter. Confined mainly to the family room as I was only allowed to go down and then up the stairs in my home once a day. While I spent hours watching HGTV (and a little "The Price is Right") I literally redecorated the entire first floor of our home in my mind. Over and over and over again. And with an impending - most likely - premature birth and two additional headcounts to our family I never in a million years thought we'd actually carry through on these projects. But low & behold we have gone above & beyond all of the projects I could have dreamed:

- we painted the kitchen from a sunny, cheery, make-you-wanna-puke yellow to a nice neutral mocha.
- we replaced the horrid white laminent counter-tops (thank GOD for the magic eraser) with beautiful granite (and of course we scored a deal there, too!).
- we lightened the family room by painting the really, really dark knotty wood pine paneling a light cream / mocha color with crisp glossy white trim. Fabulous!
- once B&K gained more toys & mobility we quickly realized the value of an actual playroom. And so the family room became the playroom by moving the TV over the fireplace. This gave B&K room to play (and be quarantined) and it gave us an excuse to use our beautiful and rarely used living room.
- earlier this year we sold Tim's butter cream colored leather rocking chair. It, too, provided me some reprieve from bedrest (an hour treat each day!) and also a cute backdrop for some B&K pictures. But we didn't have another place for it in our home and we needed to make room for more baby crap. So we listed it on Craigslist (again -- love it!).
- and lastly saying goodbye to the couch. We had kept it as a place for us to sit while we hung out with B&K in their new digs, but we found that we mainly sat on the floor. It was a LARGE couch and it was about three days away from being a catapult for K to get over the gate (OK not quite yet, but soon enough I'm sure).

So there you have it. The last of my bedrest reminders are gone. Aside from moving into a new home (which we still may do -- ha!) I think I can finally move on. Whew!

MIA

Sorry -- it has been a bit exhausting around here. The weekend was busy with "Man Day" and "Girls Night Out" and other random weekend stuff. Bennett developed a nasty cough on Saturday which only got worse over the weekend and a trip to the pedi on Monday reveled that is is probably seasonal allergy related. But now Kendyll has the cough so we're thinking it is more like summer cold related. B has been just m-i-s-e-r-a-b-l-e this week - red puffy eyes, runny nose, chesty cough - and thankfully he was a bit back to himself today. But neither little one has napped well this week and last night was really rough. I'm dragging today and I just put B&K to bed an hour earlier than normal. Plus Tim was traveling earlier this week and has work dinners the rest of the week. Is it Friday yet?

In other news Kendyll is a full - on walker. Yes I announced this well over a month ago and she had been taking 2 - 5 steps in a row and standing on her own for LONG periods of time, but now she will walk from one side of the room to the other. From room to room. Sometimes carrying big things. And often stopping along the way to pick up something else from the floor. And she can stand up / start to walk from sitting -- she doesn't need to pull herself up on anything to get started. Oh fun.

We tried to take her to get "proper" shoes last weekend. Norstroms was having a wicked sale and I took her to get her feet measured and to check out some of the shoes. Unfortunately they didn't have anything in her size on sale and I couldn't bring myself to spend more money on her shoes (which she will out grown in a month) than I do on my entire shoe collection (I'm a bargain shopper, remember!?). Then while we were at the mall I figured I'd step into one of those dreaded Stride Rite stores. Um yeah, don't think I'll be doing that EVER AGAIN! Ugh, the lady there was one of the rudest, meanest, least helpful human beings I've ever met! I think I'm going to stick to my fellow twin mommy Meghan's strategy and order her some shoes online! Ugh . . . shoe shopping in person (with twins and one who is quite the diva) = royal pain in the ass.

Other than B's cold / allergies he is doing really well. Crawling all over the place, trying to pull up and talking up a storm. This morning he woke up earlier than normal and I brought him into our room while Tim & I got ready for work. He was sitting in the middle of our bed watching "Blues Clues" and I was getting ready to leave. I said bye and he looked up at me, waved and said "bye bye". Tim was my witness!!

Oh another thing I want to document before I forget . . . things are finally starting to click with them. Meaning they are really starting to understand questions / commands / associating words with things. Three times in the past week I've asked Kendyll: "go get your baby Kendy". She'll walk over to her chair, pick up the baby, rock her and bring her to me. The first time I figured it was a total fluke, but she's done it a couple other times (on separate days) since then. Totally weird! :)

Ok, I think that's enough for now. I hear someone coughing on the monitor so I better go get a couple of chores done before someone wakes up crying.

Pool time!

I stayed home with B&K last Friday. The weather was up in the high 80's so we broke out the little pool and let them have a grand old time.



Mmmm, pool water!





{is it just me or does Bennett look a little like Dave Matthews in that last picture??}

OUAC

If you've been reading this blog for a while you know I LOVE bargain shopping. Bennett has been using a ball popper toy at PT and he really enjoys it. While I was fully prepared to buy something similar brand new to use at home, I thought I'd check out one of my local Once Upon a Child consignment stores first. I scored not only the ball popper, but also a FP shopping cart that I had been hunting for Kendyll and a new little helicopter toy for both of them. And super score -- I bought them ALL for about what I would have paid for the ball popper alone. Woo-hoo!!

17 Months (pictures)

Um yeah, here is the attempt at 17 mo pictures tonight (see post below for other update):