Tuesday, September 27, 2011

September's almost gone...

The month of September is FULL of birthdays for our family!  Patrick and all of his siblings, my Dad, brother, sister, niece, and nephew, both of my best friends, Evelyn and Naomi, and our dog, Flurry! Also, our anniversary is in September.   I have a strange sadness when the month comes to a close...I think it's a combination of all of the celebrating being over and the thought of the holidays being just around the corner.  I am excited about getting to do more cooking and decorating for the holidays this year!  We actually have a mantel for me to decorate in this house, so I am coming up with come ideas for that.  


The girls' birthday party was this past Saturday, and it was so much fun!  It was everything we had wanted for our girls.  We had about 30 or so people here - sweet friends and family who had traveled as much as three hours to make it - love them!  I will be posting pictures later, but for now, here is a video of the babies enjoying their cake.  They hadn't taken a morning nap (just jumped in their cribs through nap time), so they were pretty exhausted by this point in the day.


Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Second Year!

Yesterday was Naomi and Evelyn's 1st Birthday!  The days leading up to their big day held mixed emotions for Patrick and me.  It truly is astounding to us that their first year is over already!  We are so excited to see how far the girls have come, and are excited to see what this second year will bring.  Here are no less than one million pictures to commemorate this very special day!

 Oh, you poor swollen lady!  You don't know it now, but tomorrow morning when you arrive home from a failed attempt at picking up bagels for breakfast, you will go into labor and your life will change forever and your cankles will go away and you'll get to meet the most fabulous set of twins in the history of twins!
Hello, we are so excited about getting to meet our twins today, we have no idea what kind of sleep deprivation we are about to endure over the next year, we have no idea how much we're going to grow together in this new role as parents...we're too little!

 This picture makes me howl with laughter no matter how many times I see it!  We had to actually deliver the babies in the operating room as a precaution in case one of them had to be delivered by c-section.
 See that pretty lady on the right?  She's my sister, she's our doula, she's amazing...oh, and we didn't need to have a c-section!
 This is what I spent the first six weeks of motherhood staring at...
 We had a special birthday breakfast on the back porch - Naomi found a leaf!
 Hi!  I'm a big one year old now, so I get to eat outside in my jammies!
 Outdoor furniture is awesome!
 If you ask the girls how old they are, sometimes they hold up one finger, and then we clap, sometimes if you ask them how old they are they just clap!  Yay!
Eebee's Adventures!  It's their favorite show right now, so they got to watch it on their birthday morning.
Baby A and Baby B hats from the hospital...they were so, so silly while I was trying to get pictures - taking off each other's hats, throwing their hats on the floor, trying to grab the camera - wow, I love them!

Well, happy birthday to my sweet baby girls! I can't imagine my life without them and they have certainly brought about a whole new kind of wonderful to our family!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

A Clean Window And An Excellent Pot of Coffee!

My friend Jana posted a link to a website that has cleaning schedules for each month of the year.  Each month has monthly tasks, weekly tasks, daily tasks, and a monthly challenge for a bigger cleaning project.  Here is a link to the site:  Just Mommies Cleaning Calendar. This is very helpful to me because it helps me to remember to do things like wipe out trash cans.  I tend to feel very overwhelmed about keeping the house clean, and when I worked outside the home, most of the cleaning got done on the weekends as a team effort with Patrick.  One of the things I looked forward to in becoming a stay at home mom was learning to keep up with daily cleaning during the week so that we could relax on the weekends.  So, this website's helpful suggestions and handy monthly calendars are really helping me to be at peace in figuring out what needs to be done each day. Wednesday's daily tasks were laundry, clean windows, and clean light switches and door knobs.  So far, I have done laundry and cleaned the sliding glass door.  The door took me as long as it took for a pot of coffee to brew...fabulous!


Here is a picture of the girls on their one month birthday...the count down to their first birthday has made me feel very nostalgic!


Evelyn on the left, Naomi on the right.  Evelyn was never very agreeable to my photo shoots!




     

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Sister Kisses, and a Completely Self-Fed Lunch

My babies will be one year old on Monday, and I really cannot believe how quickly the year has gone by.  It seems like they are doing something new every day, and I wanted to post this so that I don't forget. 


I have been trying to let the girls do mostly self-fed lunches for a while now, they get pieces of toast with peas spread on them, and some sort of fruit, and then I will spoon-feed them their yogurt and the rest of the jar of peas.  Well, Naomi is a very independent soul, and it's getting to be more and more of a challenge to feed her.  She seems to do better feeding herself.  So, today, I gave them toast with peas, some cut up cheese, and whole pieces of banana, and that was it.  They ate a good amount, and threw a good amount on the floor for the dog!  It is so sweet to see them working their tiny fingers to get the food off the highchair tray and into their mouths. 


When the girls were between 6 and 8 months old, we could get them to "kiss" us by making a kissing noise and asking them to give us a kiss.  They would give the best, most slobbery open mouth kisses ever!  Beyond 8 months or so, they just didn't seem interested.  Lately, though, if I tell them to kiss their baby dolls or stuffed animals, they will open up and slobber all over them!  Today, before nap time, I was sitting on the floor playing with the girls, and they were climbing up on me, trying to pull my hair, looking to see if I had earrings on, the usual, and, all of a sudden, Naomi started laying her head on Evelyn's shoulder and Evelyn started kissing Naomi, right on the mouth!  Oh dear, they just started cracking up laughing, and they knocked each other over, and continued cracking up, just laying on the floor together!  How absolutely amazing to see this sweet relationship between these precious sisters develop.  


I am thankful for messy big girl lunches, and for sweet twin sister kisses!  I needed an attitude check this afternoon, and sitting on the floor cracking up with my girls was just what the doctor ordered!


I will try and post a picture of the girls each day until their birthday.  This is from the day they were born.  Baby A is Naomi Grace, and baby B is Evelyn Mae.  Oh my, this brings up so many emotions for me...


Sunday, September 11, 2011

Sunday, You Were Not as Relaxing as I Thought You'd Be...

My little Naomi girl came down with a fever yesterday evening, and had to go to the doctor this morning, oh dear, it breaks our hearts to see our babies sick.



It seems that she has a urinary tract infection, which is not good news because she had one earlier in the summer, and this means that we'll have to do further testing to see if she has a bigger issue.  The good thing about this hard day is that we had a chance to do things separately with our girls.  Patrick stayed home with Evelyn while I took Naomi to the doctor - we both agree that taking care of one baby at a time is, well, MUCH easier than caring for twins!  When I got home and the girls got up from their naps, I left Naomi with Patrick and took Evelyn with me to the grocery store to pick up some stuff for lunch and to get N's prescription.  

Neither of our girls have ever had the opportunity to ride in the cart!  Usually, we take both girls or just go by ourselves to the store while the other parent stays home....She.Loved.It.  And I realized that we shouldn't wait for a sick day to do things individually with these little ones.  They need to have special outings or times at home with just one of them and one of us!  So, this Sunday wasn't as relaxing as I'd hoped it would have been, and we hate that Naomi isn't feeling well, but it was a good day parenting these baby girls with my Patrick!

Friday, September 9, 2011

My Mom and My New Great-Nephew!

Well, I haven't posted anything for a few days because I've been out of town visiting my family.  We live about three hours away from our parents and most of our brothers and sisters.  My Mom has had a lot of health issues over the past year, and the latest issue was with a cracked tail bone and then discovering that she has spinal stenosis (narrowing of the bony part of the spine).  She was supposed to have surgery on this past Wednesday, but an EKG determined that maybe her heart was not strong enough for the operation.  The surgery would alleviate the terrible pain from the spinal issue.  She ended up going for a nuclear stress test today to see how bad her heart is, and if she would ever be able to have the surgery.  It seems that the test results showed that she should be able to have the surgery, and she'll go and meet with the cardiologist on Monday to go over the results more thoroughly.  My parents are 75 years old, so these types of situations make me very very anxious!  The girls and I left on Wednesday morning to travel to see our family.  We stayed at my in-law's house, and my AMAZING Mother-In-Law kept the girls for me so that I could be with my Mom and with my new nephew, who was born Wednesday morning.  I have a lot to process from the last few days.  It took a lot out of me to see my Mom in so much pain.  It was also an incredible blessing to get to meet this guy:


Mitchell Scott Tompkins, my great-nephew!
The first picture is of my parents when they came to visit us back in February -- a couple of funny things here, my mom really doesn't love animals on the furniture, and my dog is not ever this calm, also, what is going on with Evelyn's (baby on right) face?!  And Naomi (baby on left) is glistening with drool as always!  Ha!  The second picture is from the beginning of the summer when my Mom came down to visit us for a week.  I am so thankful for her being able to visit this summer, as it will probably be a while before she will be up for making the trip again.  




Monday, September 5, 2011

Happy Labor Day!

Today was a really big day!  We headed out after we fed the girls breakfast to the Isle of Palms again to spend the day with my niece Taylor and her boyfriend's family.  Good food, fun in the pool, and the beach with the babies!  That Patrick was bearing gifts again today - The Help - I'd so been wanting to read it, so I am very excited!  We had french toast for dinner, and now we are going to watch more Harry Potter, we had no idea what we'd been missing!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Some "wonderfuls" for the day!

Sorry, no pictures for today, but there were some sweet moments on this Sunday.  The girls slept in until 8:15, so between P having turned off the alarm clock and N & E sleeping in, we missed church.  Apparently, our family needed our sleep today.  Patrick brought me home some lovely pink and red Gerbera daisies for our anniversary - these were the same flowers we had in our wedding!  I couldn't find Patrick after my shower this morning, and I went into the nursery and he was there in the rocking chair asleep with Naomi...love!  We headed down to the Isle of Palms to spend time with my niece Taylor and her boyfriend's family, who are renting a house down there for the week, and had some fabulous low country boil, yay!  The girls are asleep, and I'm off to watch some Harry Potter (for the very first time) with my Patrick!

Friday, September 2, 2011

The Seventh Year!

Today is my 6th wedding anniversary!  I cannot believe how quickly the time has passed, yet, I feel like so much has taken place - so much change, so much growth, so much love.  Marriage certainly is a blessing, and it is a lot of work.  I am thankful for my husband and the relationship we're building.  I am looking forward to what this seventh year holds for us.  We don't have any solid plans for this weekend, but I am hoping to do something fun as a combination birthday/anniversary (Patrick's birthday is on the 23rd).  Thankful for the wonderful that is our marriage - My one and only, lifelong lover, very best friend!
September 3, 2005 - just before it got awkward and Mr. Lee felt obligated to attack his beautiful bride with cake...
Our honeymoon in Cancun!