Name Calling

Do you like your name? I've never really liked mine (sorry Mom) and I'm wondering if that's just par for the course since Todd hates his too. Even Ella has been asking me why we named her Ella, apparently she thinks Isabella was a better choice. So it got me thinking about the boys - I wonder if they will wish we'd named them something different, not that there's anything they can do about it. While we were expecting each of our kids and going through the process of picking names, Todd would always try to play the naughty kid at school and come up with any and all of the horrible nicknames one could possibly imagine for the particular name in question. I liked Daniel - "they'll call him Dan Ruff, you know dandruff..." What about Adele'? "Fatty Addy" and on and on. So Todd of course had to put in his 2 cents about the twins' names, but he knew they were family names that meant a lot to me, and after what I went through he said I could make the final choice, and he got to pick middle names. I promise this rambling nonsense is getting to my point. I must be in a chatty mood tonight because this is a whole lot of talking about nothing really. Anyway, the main reason for this is to make a little announcement to my Dad about Charlie's name...

Approved Names:

Charles

Charlie

Charwee

Charwee Honey Ham Ruff (my personal favorite and most commonly used)

Chaz

Pork Chop

Ham Hock

Chuck

Charlie my lover, son of your mother (another personal favorite)

Unapproved Names - Dad, please note this is a very short list so there is no good reason why this will be hard to remember:

Chucky (for obvious reasons)

And now we come to it, the dreaded nickname my father has been calling Charlie just to annoy me, which is by the way his sole purpose and joy in life.....

CHUCKLES

This is terrible, all I can think of when he says it is a deranged clown.

The best Christmas gift....

When we were opening presents this morning, and having our usual Christmas breakfast, my mind wandered to the Christmas we missed 3 years ago... Dawson has been slithering around here, acting like "Mitter Grinch" and today he said with a scowl "I'm stealing Cismas" and I told him he actually did steal Christmas once. Even though Ella was our firstborn, Dawson was our first in a different way. After 8 years of struggling to get pregnant, I was finally living this dream that I'd prayed for and ached for. I had a text book pregnancy with him, actually I guess I had the opposite of a text book pregnancy because all the books tell you what kind of horrible symptoms and discomforts you'll have and I got off easy in every department. It really was bliss. And even though it was 20 days ahead of my due date when I started feeling funny on Christmas Eve, I knew our introduction wouldn't be far off. I was in labor all of Christmas, and at the hospital for about 18 hours of it. But it was everything I'd hoped and prayed for, what a blessing to have such an amazing experience. God took care of every detail - my parents were already here for Christmas, my doctor was on call, our nurse and doula were amazing. Dawson was good to me other than the fact that his giant head was wedged kinda sideways which made pushing tough, especially since I'd been up for over 40 hours by that point. But it was love at first sight when I held my sweet boy. I will never forget the moment I saw each of my kids for the first time, it truly is forever burned into my heart and soul. Todd walked out of the room to tell my Dad and Sis, the only troopers left standing at the hospital, and he crumbled into tears in my sister's arms. We had our son, and it was magic...

I don't know how to describe my love for him, or what he does to my heart when I hold him close, smell his sweet breath, or watch him play, sleep, talk... and just become more and more who is going to be. I love him so much that my heart aches sometimes, it feels like too much for it to hold, like it may break - but in the good way. Dawson is calm, meticulous, articulate, affectionate...but he also has a terrible temper and is still not happy about being a big brother. He wasn't ready to have competition, especially twice over, no one asked him if he was cool with it, and he isn't. And you know in some ways I'm still not either. He still feels like my baby boy, and I'm still his yuver (lover) and I hope I always will be. I have a true Mama's Boy and I need him as much as he needs me. So we find snipits during the day to be back in our little world. A world where it's just Dawson and Mommy,where he is my only boy, my only baby, and everything is just as it should be.

Happy birthday my Lovey, you will always have my heart.

If you want to see a slide show from his last birthday post, click here:
Dawson

For prego pics and his birth story, click here:

Big D's birth

Random Christmas Cheer

Here's how we're doing on the list:
*The babies' "1st Christmas" ornaments are done and hanging on the tree
*We looked at Christmas lights
*We had breakfast at Chap's
*Todd and I played Halo, quality couple time
*I updated the twins' baby books, not the big kids' yet
*Got our baking done
*Todd has been playing a LOT of XBox

We had our besties out for dinner and we got lucky because it happened to be the night that the local fire department Santa goes around our neighborhood. We didn't hear the ho-ho-ho-ing until he was just a couple of houses away, and Ella and Liv were running around in their undies, so Ella grabbed the closest thing she could find to wear - her Tinkerbell costume, Dawson's sweatshirt and leather boots, a great look. And Dawson is sporting Ella's pink slippers, I wonder if Santa thought that perhaps these kids need either new clothes, or new parents for Christmas. Milk? Check. Jammies? Check. Christmas cookies? Check. Okay, let's head out to look at the Christmas twinkle lights. Hope Spokane did it's civil duty and decorated their houses!

Diane wrapped these gifts for the twins and asked us to guess who gets the "naughty" one and who got the "nice" one. Hmmm, I wonder...You'll see what's inside soon...

Making sugar cookies! The kids LOVE to help me in the kitchen, and Dawson has recently designated himself "the baker man."

I think Ella may have been smoking the sprinkles instead of decorating with them.

I even roped Todd into decorating a few:)

A few of Ella and Dawson's masterpieces. A side note to friends, family, neighbors: The kids' dough is kept COMPLETELY separate and is consumed by the cookie's creator for health and safety reasons.

These are one of Todd's favorite cookies, but he thinks I'm crazy to spend so much time decorating them since they just get gobbled up. They make me smile though, even if it does take an embarassing amount of time to sort through the jimmies to find just the orange and brown ones.

Half Yearly

Six months ago today!

The twins are 6 months old today and it's a big milestone for all of us - everyone survived, so far... It has gone by so quickly, and I'm not exactly sure why it feels that way. If you count the hours I'm awake while everyone else is sleeping, I've actually been up for 8 months out of the past 6. The days at times have crept by, I remember the first few weeks after they were born I would sometimes count the minutes, literally, until Todd got home. The last year and a half has been the toughest of my life - with a pregnancy that was a bit rough, and bringing home twins to an already busy house, but it's been my greatest achievement and joy at the same time. I was downloading some pictures today to my digital picture frame and ran across the ones from their birth day and the tears fell, they didn't ask, they just came. Todd asked if my allergies were bothering me which made me smile, but the lump in my throat wouldn't let me explain for a minute. Why is it so hard to watch them grow, but on the other hand, exactly what I want? How come it breaks my heart that we won't have more babies, when I know we have a lot to handle already? I wish I could make sense of my feelings sometimes, all I know is that my heart is full today - full of love, pride, amazement, thankfulness - and a part of it is a little sad to say goodbye to what is past and what I will never experience again. Okay I better stop, those uninvited tears are coming again...

Escape from Alcatraz

My parents drive up to visit one Friday a month and stay the night. So we took advantage and snuck out to celebrate our anniversary, our first dinner date WITHOUT KIDS since the twins. I think we both realized how much we miss eating a meal while it's still hot, and dinner-time conversations that don't include any sound effects or potty talk. We ate way too much way too fast, but Charlie wasn't about to let me out for too long - he was a hot mess for Nana and Papa. One of the things we chatted about was Christmas break. Todd is taking vacation the week of Christmas, and I wanted to get some ideas of what he wanted to do, and vice versa. So we made a little list of sorts, just some of the things we'd like to do if we get a chance. I'm glad we have a psuedo plan, I can't stand the thought of sitting around the house all day every day, since I have to do a lot of that anyway. And let's face it, I'm just not that good at sitting around, unless it's on a beach somewhere. But he feels the opposite about sitting around, so I guess that's where the whole compromise thing comes into play. I never really liked that word...

Here is the list I made:

*Take the kids to Polka Dot Pottery and make the babies' 1st Christmas ornaments

*Watch Christmas Vacation (again)

*Look at Christmas lights on the S. Hill

*Eat breakfast at Chap's

*Bake Christmas treats

*Eat Christmas treats

*Make Ella and Dawson's invitations for their pirate party

*Update the kids' baby books
*Play Scrabble

Todd's list:

*Kill things on the XBox

*Play Halo cooperative mode with Laura (I actually love Halo, so this works for me. Best XBox game ever)

*Take a nap

*Take another nap

*Play XBox

*Play darts

*Watch as many action movies as possible

*Eat a lot of Christmas cookies

*Did I mention playing XBox?

And they say boys and girls are different, where do they get ideas like that from? I suppose that's why they wrote that book, "Men are from Mars, Women are Genius" (heehee).

Hark the Herald Angels Sing....(start humming this song in your head for full effect)

Hark the herald angels sing,

Mitchy did the greatest thing.
He slept all the way through the night,
If only Charlie would get it right.
Joyful, I am so, so glad,
Now my nights aren't quite so bad.
What an angelic face from heaven,
He's even cuter when he wakes at 7.
Hark the herald angels sing,
Mitchy did the greatest thing.
Now he lays, his teddy bear near,
He sucks his thumb and rubs his ear.
He's off to sleep and does not wake,
At least for 3 nights, and that I'll take.

....so I wrote this original song in honor of little Mitch (please don't reproduce without written consent. I'm looking into getting a label to produce this), and of course last night he didn't sleep through the night. But as the song says, I'll take what I can get!

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!!!

We had a nice day celebrating Ella's birthday, she knew it was her special day and woke up with a huge grin. At breakfast she said, "can you believe I'm almost 7 now?!" Seriously kid, one meltdown for Mom at a time please. It was low-key since she will be partying with brother Dawson in a few weeks - we are doing combo birthdays for them as long as they tolerate it. I'm sure at some point she'll beg for a princess party and Dawson will want firetrucks, although with their personalities I think they'd each be fine with those choices. But I'm sure it won't be long before it is just not cool to share your party with your annoying little brother. Their birthdays are so close together, and with our anniversary and Christmas falling in the same month, I have to do something to preserve my sanity. So thar be a pirate party coming up, I gotta get on that now that I think about it, argghhh. So the deal around here is you get to pick what you want for dinner and dessert. Ella made dinner easy since she changed her mind from homemade mac 'n' cheese to pizza. So all I had to do was a side-kick salad and treats. She wanted cheesecake for her actual birthday cake so I made that the night before, and we made cupcakes together for her to take to school today. We let her open her present from me and Todd, a scooter. I got the girliest one I could fine since it was up to me. Every time I take her to get undies, shoes, a bike helmet, she picks boy stuff. Not that I care, but I know I'll be seeing Spider Man and Diego for the rest of my life so I'd like to see some pink while I can. She does love Tinkerbell though, so I got everything Tink I could find - wrapping paper, plates and napkins, balloons, candle, cupcake liners, party picks...And since it was a toasty 18 degrees, she got to take her scooter for a spin, with Dawson running after her trying to rip her off of it and take it captive (I'll give you one wild guess at what we got Dawson for his birthday. We've learned our lesson over the past year or so and will be buying 4 of everything to avoid a world war). She wanted to paint, so we went to our favorite pottery shop and she made an ice-cream cone trinket box. Of course in true Ella form she made it brown and forest green. We headed home for edible ice-cream cones, the Tinkerbell movie, then dinner, and of course my favorite part of any birthday, dessert.

And of course we have a couple of traditions. She has had the pink birthday hat and plate set since her 1st birthday. And I always take a picture of the kids at the exact minute they were born, in Ella's case at 2010.