Things that I love part (I hope you're keeping count because I'm not):

1.  My snot nosed sicky baby.  He has the best attitude about being a total booger face.

2,  Homemade oatmeal golden raisin cookies for snack time!

3.  Finding a cute, flowy shirt I've had for years and wearing it for maybe the 3rd time.  Why have I neglected you so?

4.  Bath time is back!  Charlie loves her bath.

5.  Porch time!  It won't last long.  I'm sure winter's not done being a big fat jerk.  But today we're on the porch.  And it needs to be cleaned.  Boop.

I love (pt. 2,3,4...)

-That we're having one of the first sunny days (and a warming trend, lower 60's!) this whole winter.  I can open the curtains in the play room and let the sun work its magic!

-That the kids LOVE playing under the crib.  It's their clubhouse.  I'm not allowed.

-This face.

-Good gravy, and this face.



-The height difference.  All of their differences.  They are their own people.  And best friends.

I love today.

The very definition of a "bad day":

Charlie had a doctor's appointment yesterday, in Jackson.  I think I've mentioned this before, but Jackson, MS is about 2 hours from where we live.  It's kind of a long drive, but it's actually how long the kids nap, so sometimes it actually works out great.  Because we had an in office appointment, I figured I'd be fine to take Davey with us.  Joe had to work, and I'm already getting my parents to watch the kids Friday.  I didn't want to baby bomb them.  Plus, in office appointments are usually about 45 minutes long.  No big deal if you've got snacks and a favorite book or two.  Note to parents right here, that don't know it already:  when taking your kids out of the house ALWAYS BE PREPARED FOR THINGS TO BE A BIG DEAL.  Because it was a big deal.  This is Charlie's 4th or 5th cast now (I know, that sounds awful, and she's got 2 more to go), and any time she's had one taken off or changed they've done it at the children's hospital and given her anesthesia.  So I did not anticipate the cast coming off yesterday.  But hey, thats cause for celebration.  The cast was coming off right then and she'd have a month to be cast free and to just play and be.  Worth the aggravation the kids were going through because they were getting sick of the stroller.  We had to wait about an hour before they came in to take the cast off.  They finally came in and had this little saw and warned me that it's pretty loud.  Great.  Charlie is terrified of loud noises.  Davey's ok with most of them.  But not a saw apparently.  And I guess thats a justifiable fear.  So here we go - the saw is cutting off the cast while both kids are purple in the face from screaming bloody murder.  I can't hold Davey because I have to pin Charlie down.  Awful.  But it only took about 2 minutes.  Still, 2 minutes of screaming = a lifetime. 

But it's off:

I know what you're thinking.  Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to snap pictures of my miserable children.  I was thinking the same thing! We are so much alike...

After that she had some xrays, we looked at them with the doctor, and he said everything looked great!  So now we just needed to go across town and get the brace she'd be wearing for the next month.  Wait.  What?  This is my first time hearing about the brace.  A brace that looks more constricting than any cast she's been in.  And it's across town?  So I have to put my screaming kids in the car, drive them across town, only to have to get them back in the stroller they now despise?  You do it.  I'm out. 

Unfortunately that's not an option.

We go to the brace and limbs place and I got my miserable children (who were actually being really good sports by this point.  proud.), put them in the stroller, walked up to the door, "We are closed for lunch from 12:00-1:00".  It's 12:20.  MOTHER OF HOLY, why?  Baaaaaack in the car we go.  Luckily I somehow had a stroke of genius to bring the laptop and a Baby Einstein DVD in case of an emergency.  Emergency!  Finally it's 1:00, we get in, and proceed to wait.  The kids are still holding it together.  Until we get back to the room to fit Charlie for the brace.  They have officially had it.  Davey is just a ball of snot and Charlie is being possessed by some demon I've never even heard of.  A squirmy demon.  I could hardly blame her.  Oh, can I show you what this room looked like?

Plaster powder every where.  The kids kept sneezing.  It was insane.  And a lot of babies go to this place.  In fact there were 3 others in the waiting room.  And speaking of 3, thats the exact number of COLLECTIVE teeth the staff at this joint had.  You think I'm being ugly because I had bad day, don't you?  I'm not.  A dental nightmare.

We got home in one piece, and the kids were ecstatic to be home. 

The brace looked worse than it actually is.  She was still pretty stiff yesterday, understandably, but today she's moving like she always has.  It's got more give to it than I thought.  I guess I should've figured it would.  It's plastic and foam.  Look, I'm not a scientist.

Can't keep this delightful, charming baby down.  No sir.  Love it.  Love HER.

Thanks, Davey, for being a tough tiger.  At least everyone thought you were like 18 months older than Charlie (seriously.  No one figured they were twins.).  That's pretty cool right?

Here Comes Your Man

Maybe it's the new job and all this time we have to spend apart, but sakes alive!  Joe and I have been on this great streak of happy days together.  That sounds like we never had them before.  We certainly did.  We're married, duh!  We must have had happy days, at least that one time.  But with two babies it's easy to get tense and forget to breathe.  Who knew breathing was a skill you could actually forget?!  Yikes.  We get right up under each others feet and being tired from the circus makes it really hard to not just want to go straight to bed, no talking, lets just pass out right now, as soon as the birds are down. 

This new job offers a new schedule for Joe and gives me time to run the show at home so I can feel like I'm actually contributing.  So I feel better.  And I've got the kids on a routine (though, truthfully, it's a pretty lax routine.  Outside of bedtime, anything is subject to change.).  And when dad gets home we're all so happy to see him and I'm ready to sit next to him and hear about his day and make him dinner.  OMG we are SOOOO Norman Rockwell, yall.  Gross.  Well not to me...

I've had this song stuck in my head every day that he's walked in the door since the new job started.  I romanticize my life sometimes.  Is that wrong?  Um, doubtful.  Get romantic, son!



Theme song!  Seriously I love this man...

Projects

I'm that person that has 5 million projects swirling around in my head and I generally only get about 2-3 done. I hate that about myself.  I know I have the ability, but the drive is lacking sometimes.  Still, I have a few projects that I'd like to start and I think I might actually get them done.  One is to make a quilt.  I tried my hand at a quilt while I was pregnant.  I still thought I was just having one, so I only made one, and it wasn't up to any professional quilter's standards.  But I love it. 

I really would love to make a bigger quilt. A quilt for family snuggling time.  One we can all get under and watch a movie together when the kids get a little older.  I imagine in the next year or so.  Which is how long it should take me to complete this, or any project.

I've been working on some stuffed animals and trying to make some patterns for some of these little guys.  With spring coming, little bunnies are going to become very popular and I'd love to make some Easter Basket pals! 

Will post pictures of stuffed animals TODAY.

Right after I turbo clean my kitchen and bathroom.  We got new cleaning supplies!!! Celebrate!!!

Lazy

Thats what I am today.  I'm SO tired.  We use a lot of white noise in our small house to make sure the kids aren't disturbed when they go to sleep.  Each kid has a fan in their room, a humidifier, and then there's a big fan in the hallway between their doors.  Around 3am, this morning, the power starts cutting off and on for about 20 minutes.  And it's pretty noticeable when the sounds start and stop.  This jolted Charlie out of sleep and it was pretty much impossible to get her back to bed.  Hopefully the kids will take a fat nap around 10.  And so will mommy!  Wewt!

I know.  I'm disgraceful.  But I 100% phoned it in this morning with breakfast:

Cereal suicide anyone???

I'm sorry, babies.  I'll do better with lunch.

Terrariums

Pardon me while I nerd out 70's style, but I am fascinated by terrariums as of late.  And I have this strong hope that at least one, if not both, of my kids will find these to be awesome as well.  I think they are nothing short of magical. 

I think the fascination started when I went to an art opening for my cousin, Tim Crowder, and he'd done a few pieces featuring miniature houses and pipes and other things, in these mason jars.  They included moss and were definitely of the terrarium persuasion.  I wanted to fill my whole house with them.  They've been stuck in my brain for years, and it would seem terrariums in general, are making a bit of a comeback.  I keep reading stories about them on other blogs or see them featured in magazines.  And this past Sunday, CBS's Sunday Morning did a feature on them:



(By the way, does anyone remember when Serena Altschul was a correspondent for MTV news?  I thought she was so cool, with her super short blonde hair and her "I hate most of you people watching MTV" attitude.  Man she was too rad...)

I called my dad as soon as I saw this piece and told him this year I wanted to start making some wood framed, boxed terrariums.  I'd like to put little figurines inside of them too.  Maybe make hanging terrariums.  I'd love to have them in the kitchen.  Or along the walls of the hallway.  I just love the idea of this tiny little ecosystem contained in this pretty, glass space.

Thanks Twig for some further inspiration:

Les do dis.