random moments

last night oz pulled his slippers out from the drawer and desperately tried to get them on his feet. mind you, the boys have worn these slippers maybe twice in their lives, a good seven months ago, when they were in chicago for christmas. austin just isn't the place for wearing fleece booties most of the year. so i put the plush cozy shoes on oz and he was in all his glory. it was one of the cuter things i've seen - little boy with pot belly in footed pjs and big slippers running around the house.

life is so much fun with two lil' boys who turn 16 months old today!






p.s. the green liquid in his cup his green machine veggie drink, because i just have to get some kind of veggies in these kids some way. they love it!

spontenaity

we walk with the boys every morning. it's been our ritual since the guys were just a few weeks old. i remember in the very early days walking around our neighborhood pre-dawn. yah, we had some early risers on our hands. these days our walk starts sometime around 8am, after breakfast and getting ready for the day, but before hard core play. with the advent of walking, our walk has evolved. now we have some running around time in the front yard, followed by abel leading us on a little "pre-walk" walk down the side walk, before we fully embark on our 30-45 minute stroller chasse.

this morning we stepped outside to find our neighbors sprinkler in full force. four eyes lit up. two eyes gave them an affirming "go for it." another two eyes looked at the affirming two, rolled, and said without saying, "what are you getting us all in to."

i love spontaneity and i try to give into it whenever i can, especially if the repercussions are within reason and easy to clean up. jordan is more of a carefully planned person, neat and clean. i'm a roll in the mud kind-of gal. so with my positive nod, the boys charged forward for their morning frolic in the water. it ended up being the perfect start to a very hot day in texas.

nanny 911

we finally did it! lupe joined our house this past monday and will be hangin' with the boys in the morning for three days a week. i have to admit it, being a stay-at-home-mom with twins was starting to make me a little batty, and after talking to jordan, we quickly decided to get some help so i could regain a little "me" time. i can't tell you how important this is. because while i love being mom, i love being tracey-who-is-a-mom even more. i plan to use this time for myself each week wisely. i want to regain an old hobby or two (rock climbing will be one of them). and i want to start giving back to my community, which has been sorely lacking. i also want to spend more time with my friends!

lupe is a wonderful nanny who already works two days a week with a fellow family in the neighborhood. she speaks spanish exclusively with the boys, which we are overjoyed about. she is kind and gentle and has an amazing way with oz and abie. they warmed up to her immediately and started putting on a show for her (they do this with guests in our house). by friday, she was on her own with them and i swear, the guys could have cared less that i wasn't there. oh, and get this! she nannied for twin boys for 6 years and was ecstatic to have twins back in her life.

i feel like this is such a great development for all of us. the boys need to be comfortable spending time without me during the day, and they will be with a wonderful caregiver and learning spanish to boot! and i already feel like i have regained a sense of myself in this short time. now if i can just get jordan to stop worrying about our check book...

summertime...

and the livin' is easy.

welcome to pukesville

we had one very good thing and two very bad things happen this past week. the good first. lee-lee came into town last weekend and we got to celebrate her birthday and mother's day with her! the first bad news. we found abel last sunday morning covered in puke and within a few hours he was in the throws of full blown stomach flu. the second bad news. oz got it two days later.

it's been pretty miserable around here lately with projectile everything coming out of our two toddlers. and it's just plain weird when you witness your energetic, happy, playful, running around boys turn into wet noodles without enough strength to even stand up and walk. abel basically slept on me for two straight days and oz slept on lee-lee and dad. and just when we thought they were coming out of it, oz decided to throw in one more day of non-stop puking yesterday, just for good measure. ugh! so far today seems pretty good and he's kept down some frozen waffles and strawberries. cross your fingers...

all i can say is, once again, thank god lee-lee was here all week. this is her second time being our saving grace with sick twins. she got in two great days with the guys before this knocked them out and here are the pictures to prove it!


lee-lee models her new b-day hat

we had a nice celebration for lee-lee on saturday - j made his famous smoked brisket!

lee-lee brought the boys my old synthesizer from when i was seven. i can't believe she kept it all these years! it is a huge hit with the boys.

oz modeling his new chef's hat.

"hey dude, you got a big puffy thing on your head!"

oz fell in love with the hat. he kept bringing it to lee-lee for her to put it on his head. he even wore it during the party! here's oz and the boys' bf kai.

the chair

the boys new thing is to climb into our arm chair, hang out and play with the "texas" pillow. it's a pretty cool pillow and they make them for all 50 states, plus cities, regions and countries! i brought up the boys' fascination with this arm chair to my girlfriend this morning and she astutely said, "well, you know that's where you breastfed them for 13 months." makes sense!


ozzy demonstrating his texas pride - he already loves the longhorn


brotherly stare-down



half the fun of getting up is getting down!


abie is the king of expressions. here he says, "puhleese mom. of course i know what i'm doing."

more tidbits

- abie has added a new element to his bedtime routine. instead of reading a book, he'd rather spend his last few minutes of wakefulness playing with his cog puzzle from ikea.

- the boys are now drinking from cups with straws instead of the traditional sippy cup. they love it! abie loves it so much that he drinks for the fun of sipping it out of the straw, however instead of swallowing his milk/water/etc. he sips it into his mouth and then opens his mouth part way to let it run all over his shirt. lovely. i actually had to tuck a burp cloth into the top of his shirt today at the mall as we were strolling around. i just knew those things would have a second life before they turned into cleaning rags.

- with the advent of drinking from straws, i thought it would be so perfect to get the travel sized milk boxes for on-the-go. let's chalk the idea up to, "not ready for this one yet." we had two ecstatic boys running around kohl's squeezing the boxes and squirting milk everywhere.

- the boys have been going over to their best friend/neighbor kai's house for morning play time and have discovered the piano. they both wanted to sit on the bench so bad today, so i put them both up and they played duets of avant guard piano for a good 20 minutes. it was one of the cutest things i've seen in a long time. well, almost as cute as...

- ozzy feeding abie today. we had an impromptu string cheese snack this morning and oz was loving putting the cheese into abie's mouth. now this is what having twins is all about, people!

sign of the times

the guys are becoming hilarious with their sign language. they love communicating with their hands and gestures, which is a good thing, because their words just don't cut the mustard yet. besides mama and dada, abie says dog (duh) and truck (druh) and doi (oh, come on, y'all know what a doi is!). he also says bizabuzabizell a lot. abie is extremely conversational and will talk in complete sentences as we discuss the presidential primaries. complete sentences in baby chinese, that is. oz says dat when he points to everything, and ma-maaaaaaaa! or just maaaaaaa! when he wants something or more of something. he will also say nanana when he is really excited about eating a banana.

but the signing is where they really shine and it's so much fun to see them show me what they are thinking. they do both traditional and non-traditional (as in they/we made it up) signing. they've both mastered some basics - milk, eat, more, all done and clean up. oz will get to the page of the book where there is a monkey on the indigenous man's head, and he will pound his chest like tarzan and then put his hands on top of his head. "look ma, there's a monkey on the guy's head!" every time he wants me to sing itsy bitsy spider he pulls out the book and pinches his fingers over his head. abie raises his arm next to his face and blows a loud raspberry when he sees an elephant. and we actively make up our own signs for lots of things. a good example lately is truck, where i've taught them to "pull the horn" (remember doing this on road trips when you'd pass a truck?!). i've realized i should probably look up the actual signs for these things so that the boys don't have TWO secret languages, so i've bookmarked the ASL's video browser, which is super cool. i'm going to try and incorporate as much sign language as possible, including teaching them a new sign every week, starting with bird, since they love birds so much.

i'm sure as soon as we start to really get into signing, actual words will start pouring out of their mouths. they just love to shake things up like that.

abie luvs him some shoes

just in time for his 15 month birthday yesterday, abie j made the transition to big-boy soled shoes. he was psyched! honestly, i just haven't gotten him a pair because they are so darn expensive. but our good friend diane gave us a pair of kai's "see kai run" shoes (yes, i'm not joking) that never fit him. they are so darn cute and fit abie like a glove, which means he'll grow out of them in a month or less. but for now, abie is seriously digging his shoes. when i first put them on, he examined them for about 5 minutes, after which he promptly got up and stomped around the house with glee.

walkin' around

the guys love to walk every where we go, and have gotten pretty fearless when it comes to being outside and in public. oz walks from the car to the door of costco and just thinks it's the coolest thing, until i put him in the cart, that is. and abie just wouldn't stand for me carrying him to the car from a birthday party yesterday. the sidewalk just looked too darn good. so yesterday i broke down and finally bought them cute little teddy bear and monkey "back pack" leashes from target. before having twins, i swore i would never do this. now it's just a necessity, especially if i'm out with them by myself (since they REFUSE to hold my hand - how uncool is that?!).

their favorite game right now is "i'm gonna get you!" when daddy chases them down the sidewalk. here are all of my boys demonstrating:

three times NOT a charm

the blankie saga continues. abie had a fever yesterday so i (against my better judgment) let him have his blankie on our evening walk. low and behold, we come home, eat, play, get ready for our bath, and as i'm looking around their room i realize that his blankie is MIA. j goes to the stroller. nada. so as the tub is filling up, he high tails it in the car and retraces our route. thank god he found blankie! but of course abie went to bed with a filthy blanket. we got all the leaves and obvious pieces of dirt off it, but it had been laying in the street for a few hours. so abel snuggled up to some street last night. ugh!

then tonight, the drama continued. yet again, oz ran into the bathroom with the tub filling up and chucked his blanket in. i actually screamed "NO!" as it happened. it actually felt like the slow motion, drawn out kind you see in movies. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" needless to say, oz went to sleep with another wet blanket.

and if anyone is curious, i can tell you from personal experience from the past 5 minutes, that if a 15 month old child stirs in the middle of the night and his blankie is not there, because it is still in the dryer, he DOES notice and he is NOT happy.

wet blanket + dirty blanket + wet blanket = should have paid $10 for overnight shipping when ordering back up blankets last night

soggy comfort

the boys are seriously attached to their blankets. those little things are 15"x15" "cozychic" knit of pure comfort to them. lee-lee got these blankets for the boys upon their birth, we started putting them in their cribs when they were about 5 months old, and by 7 months they were hooked.

we've had some near disasters with them as the boys have become even more attached and wanting to take their blankets with them on stroller rides, outings, etc. and man, what a mother won't do to rescue her child's blanket! i remember a few months back taking the boys on a greenbelt hike (i.e. rocky, off-road, forested area), only to discover upon coming home that abel's blanket was MIA. it was nap time, but i knew that any chance of them sleeping would be nada without this missing item. so off we went on another 45 minute hike to find blankie. and there he was, laying in the middle of the trail, all alone.

so tonight it was rather surprising when oskar ran into the bathroom as the tub was filling up for their pre-bedtime bath and boldly threw his blanket in the water. doesn't he realize what this means?! pure masochism, i tell you! jordan told me what happened and i honestly didn't think it would be that big of a deal. i said, "well, we'll throw it in the dryer and give him a different blanket to snuggle." yah, right.

so we do our bedtime, and oz totally rejects the "other" blanket, whipping it to the floor each time without a second glance. he finally settles and j puts him down in his crib. not more than two steps out the door later, oz is freaking out. so i grab two of ozzy's favorite ugly dolls, pass them to jordan, and he tries to give oz these second-rate back ups. that appeased him for all of 5 minutes, probably because he was so amused with getting his toys in his crib, but then when the novelty wore off, oz was freakin' again. so i hot foot it to the dryer, and it would be generous to say his blanket was still damp. but as j had already left for class, what was i to do? i grabbed that damp cloth and brought it to my hysterical son, who immediately grabbed it, hugged it, and collapsed into a sleep stupor.

now that gives new meaning to a wet blanket! i just hope i can sneak in there in a few minutes and snatch that blanket away from a slumbering and (cross your fingers) oblivious oksar and dry in properly. oh, and in between writing this post and watching american idol, i just ordered two more blankets so this will NEVER happen again.

theme weekend

i hate to gloat about the weather here, but it really was a perfect weekend. we're talking 75 degrees, light breeze, 20 percent humidity and feathered clouds in the sky blue sky. we wanted to be outside as much as possible, and i'm in a spring gardening mood, so saturday we took the boys to an amazing garden center, the natural gardener. they LOVED the donkeys and running around the gardens and tropical house. they were totally into touching all the flowers!

springtime in texas is a fantastic season because of all the native wildflowers. fields of lavender bluebonnets, indian paintbrush, and buttercups blanket the highway frontages. last weekend we went on my favorite drives for wildflowers and there was zilch to be seen. i could just imagine the boys sitting amidst all the flowers and taking some incredible pictures. so this weekend we went straight to the source - the lady bird johnson wildflower center. it was awesome, but of course we forgot our camera. so here's our quintessential texas wildflower pics with j's camera phone!

oskar tidbits

- oz has a new component of his bedtime routine that consists of him kissing all of his stuffed animals. he points to each animal on the shelf, one by one, and we bring it to him to kiss. one is a blue ugly doll, which he promptly smooches his fanged teeth. the next is a very furry alpaca teddy bear, which he won't kiss because it's too fuzzy (but he needs to say good night to him, nonetheless). when we get to piglet, a homemade version from my youth, he yells "mama mama mama!" and gives him the biggest kiss you can imagine. he basically inhales his face. we have no idea where this whole routine came from. just one night last week he started pointing to the animals and wouldn't give up until j would given him each one. what i want to know is why piglet is emphatically identified as "mama!" what is he trying to tell me? and why the heck don't I get a kiss like that before bedtime?!?

- tonight during the boys' bath, oz grabbed the washcloth and started to clean abie's arm, and then face with it. if he drools on the floor, he'll grab a burp cloth or tissue and wipe it up. but god forbid you wipe his hands and/or face after a meal. that is just unacceptable.

- oz loves to go for walks around the neighborhood. he walks on the sidewalk and he just keeps on going and doesn't look back. he's also getting really good at throwing the ball for mati and loves to hang out in the yard throwing the ball for her over and over again. that is when he's not running laps around the yard.

conversationalists

the boys LOVE to talk to people on the phone. last week ozzy managed to call lee-lee all by himself. i was on the computer and all of a sudden i heard the phone ringing on speaker and lee-lee saying "hello" on the other end. oz proceeded to scream and babble into the phone, blowing kisses and kissing the phone every time lee-lee said, "i wish i were there to give you big kisses!" and then hugging the phone at least a half a dozen times. it was unbelievably cute.

but the best is when we talk to j throughout the day. the boys can't get enough of talking to daddy on the phone. they get so excited, doing a happy feet dance, screeching and screaming and saying dada over and over again. i know i need to get it on video, but for now, here's a little sequence of photos, mainly of abie talking to dad.

the look of things to come

it's heating up here in austin (85+ degrees!) so we're appropriately spending more and more time outside in less and less clothing. today i glimpsed my future. it's a fun, adventurous and slightly scary image. two little boys running around the backyard like mad men, spraying water at each other, flinging wet dirt everywhere, chasing the garder snake back into the rocks (for real - i think he's our friend though!), and falling backwards from the patio into the raised plant beds. oh, and i forgot the best part! the joy of smearing said wet dirt all over their bodies. let's just say we took our bedtime bath early tonight.

papa mickey

three generations of silver"men" - jordan is one happy father and son this weekend!

abie luvin

lately we've had some beautiful one-on-one time with the boys, as one will wake up from a nap and the other will keep snoozing for another half hour or so. it's a whole new world when you have the leisure of just hanging out with one of you babies! abie is a total cuddle bunny and loves to just roll and around and lay in our bed, all the while getting smothered in belly kisses from dad!

big shoes to fill

oz got a pair of big boy shoes for his 14 month birthday today! the boys got some wicked shoes from their aunt brandy but they are still a little too big. so after some research, we settled on a pair of "see kai run" shoes. aside from being super stylish, easy to get on, and with a super flexible sole, i couldn't resist the 50 percent off price tag! plus, the boys' best friend's name is kai!

oz man has become quite the adventurer outside, and is walking all around the yard, to the car, etc. so it's become a necessity to get him something with a little more protection. i think we'll still stick with our trusty robeez for most occasions, but man does he look cute in his big boy shoes! he is totally fascinated with them too, constantly pointing to them as he's walking, and playing with the velcro.

when i tell the boys to go get their shoes, they run to their room, open the bottom drawer and pull out their robeez. today, oz-man pulled out his cool, new sneakers!