Merry Christmas!

Without a doubt, this December has been my worst month of posting in the three years I have had this blog. It has thoroughly kicked my butt, from multiple ear infections (the twins) to severe sinusitis (me) to acute bronchitis (DH) to preparing for and hosting five family members for the holidays (in-laws).  Not to put my in-laws on the same level as infectious bugs, but you know what I mean.  Ahem.

Despite limping along through the month, we managed to get a few things done.  In order to have an extra bedroom for our guests, and desperately hoping it would help get the twins on the same schedule (HA!), we moved the babies into the same room.  The jury is still out on that decision, but at least we no longer feel guilty for having Nix sleep in the lovely nursery with Gax tucked away in a random spare room.  I did most of my Christmas shopping online, indulging my love of Amazon.com and UPS tracking web site.  It's coming... it's coming... it's HERE!  (I am so house-bound right now that I almost rabidly await the arrival of mail and parcel trucks. Maybe Santa will bring me a life for Christmas.)

We are rapidly approaching 12 months since I went on bedrest with the twins: January 4.  It's been a strange year, filled with the most amazing blessings (gave birth to healthy full term twins, DH's mom successfully finished chemo and radiation for breast cancer, my parents moved across the country to be near the boys), but yet the daily grind was especially... well, grindy.  Spending almost 3 months on bedrest and then raising three munchkins under the age of three has NOT been easy.  But soon they'll have birthdays, so I'll have three kiddos under the age of four, which I'm pretty sure is going to be a breeze.

So 2010 wasn't exactly a bad year, but I am definitely greeting 2011 with open arms.  Hoping to get out of the house more, laugh more, sleep more, bake more cupcakes, read more trashy romance novels, spend more time with my husband, and play more with my children.  I have the most amazing people in my life, and as I slowly emerge from the fog of parenting twinfants, I am so excited to enjoy them more.

And speaking of the most amazing people... pictures!

This is the teddy bear that DH bought me for Christmas 1996.  Bean calls it "his" bear, because what's mine is his, and what's his is his.



Determined to crawl, Gax spent a few days getting the form down, then another few days coordinating movement...



...and now will spend the next 17 years getting into things he's not supposed to.



Nix has no interest in crawling yet, but he has every interest in being stinkin' adorable.



DH's parents, two brothers, and sister arrived in town from Michigan last week.  We are beyond thrilled to have them for the holidays.  It's the first time they are meeting the twins, in fact.  The boys are turning on the charm in the hopes that, like my parents, my in-laws will be unable to leave Seattle, ever.  Then we just have to capture my brother with our Web O' Cuteness, and the whole family will be together again!























The twins were baptized last Sunday.  It was such a lovely service, and it meant a lot to have our family there. Nix and Gax took pity on me and didn't fuss the entire time!  (They saved that for 10 pm, midnight, 3 am, and 5:30 am.)



Both Grandpas were on hand to entertain the babies for the remainder of the service.  Joy and love, indeed.



The twins absolutely adore their Bumpa, and evidence points to the reverse as well.



Bean is totally a Grandma's boy. They are thick as thieves, those two!



Bath time is major cute time in our house.








Nix shows off our new Lemony Inka wrap.  (No worries, I may have been sick and busy this month, but not too sick and busy to manage my stash of baby carriers.)



Despite teething six pearly whites at the same time (praise be to infant ibuprofen!), Gax retains his sense of humor.





Merry Christmas, from my family to yours!

Win a date with your favorite bloggers!

(And by "win," I mean everyone is invited and encouraged to attend.)

(And by "date," I mean we are going dutch.)

(And by "favorite bloggers," I naturally mean Katie, Jen, and myself.)

That's right, we are having a Seattle Bloggers Meet-up next month!  We even have our own web site where you can RSVP, which makes it incredibly Official and Fancy.  As bloggers, we all obviously love to talk about ourselves.  So let's eat cheesecake together while we do it!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go crawl back under my rock.  I have been afflicted by a deadly plague that some "urgent care" doctor would like me to believe is allergies.  HA!  Note to self, inscription on tombstone to read: Told you Claritin wouldn't make me feel better, doctor.

(If I do indeed succumb to this illness, or am otherwise on my deathbed, I will not attend the Seattle Bloggers Meet-up.  Please have a piece of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cheesecake in my honor.  Thank you.)

More pictures than you can shake a stick at

I've been lax in posting lately for several reasons.  First, as I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we are not exactly leaving the house much these days.  While I'm sure you are all waiting with baited breath to hear when the twins napped (or didn't) today, I like to cultivate a bit of mystery about my life, so I remain silent instead.  And second, my brain is clearly functioning on "low" these days -- even introspective topics or simple life observations seem farther away than Lindsay Lohan's sobriety.  (Hey, I can still read "People.")  Maybe it's the sleep deprivation, maybe it's the fact that I hear "Mommy, I want..." spoken so often that I'm no longer capable of doing anything else but fetching apple juice and searching for missing Matchbox cars.  But I always appreciate inspiration, so please do let me know if there is anything you want to hear about!  I know I've asked you this before, but here I am, feeling stale yet again. (And I don't mean because I haven't showered in a couple of days. But yes, since you asked, I am feeling stale in that way as well.  Fortunately I am well stocked with Shampowder.)  I have a few posts started that I haven't finished: my chaos-level theory of family size and why we should have one more kid, the joys of babywearing and how to justify another carrier to your spouse so that you both kinda believe it, the personalities of my kiddos and how they combine to make the Superhuman, my Julie-and-Julia cupcake quest that has no chance of being made into a chick flick starring Anne Hathaway as myself...  Anything sound good? Something else? Just shut up and post pictures? Sure.

We went to a kids' cooking class hosted by our MOMS Club, and Bean enjoyed creating (and munching) his own pizza.  At least someone in the house will be able to make dinner.





That Bean, such a hot head.  (groan...)



Found in one of my parents' moving boxes was an alphabet floor puzzle Bean's uncles got him for Christmas last year. He and Bumpa teamed up to knock it out.






It doesn't matter who it is, but the twins strive to make sure at least one of them is unhappy at any given time.



My hobby these days is buying, selling, and trading gorgeous woven baby wraps.  And as a bonus, they actually serve a purpose other than just being stalked online and then petted.




We figured it was time for Bean to start playing video games, because he wasn't watching quite enough television to fully rot his brain.



Gax is my little veggie man.  Here he summons great enthusiasm for DH's pureed carrots.




Bean has had a surge in enthusiasm for play-dough because we let him use the toddler scissors to cut it.  You can also see his beloved Black Car "watching him" on the left, resting on a jar opener pad so he won't roll away.  Grandma thought of this bit of brilliance when wandering Black Car caused many a tear to be shed.  (We are simple folk, no?)



The twins have graduated from the uncomfortable reclining baby bath to sitting in suds in the sink.  It's a family affair.  (But what isn't these days?)

I love taking pictures of Gax because it is the only time I get to see him being still.





Nix is such a smiley guy, even when I put him in dorky pants. Bless his little heart.




When I set the twins down before this picture was taken, they were both on the activity mat.  Not two minutes later, Gax had migrated.  I won't say he is crawling exactly, but he can drag himself around on the slippery floor.  Watch out world, here comes the Gaxinator.  You've been warned.



"I want to wreak havoc on your house."



"And I'm going to giggle about it."



We were supposed to go on a fire station tour with MOMS Club this morning.  (Or as Bean said, "We are going to the fire place to see a FIRE.")  However, Mother Nature had other plans, as she shut down the entire city with a snow storm and we couldn't leave home.  Fortunately, Bean wasn't too disappointed.