Olympics Revisited

Today is a year since a country's hearts collectively stopped beating, then soared....watching Sid score the Gold Medal winning goal in mens' hockey. I will never forget that moment. Ever. There are many "Where were you when...?" moments, but for this generation, it is undoubtedly that one.

I just spent ages looking through youtube videos, trying to find the best (and maybe getting a bit teary) but decided on this one since I was a bit of a sucker for "I Believe". Oh come on, you were too. That game, that goal, brought so much happiness. Was it because I was having such a particularly hard time emotionally with the boys in the hospital at that point, so I didn't have a lot of other joy going on in my life? Maybe. But probably not. I just love hockey that much, love Canada that much, and that moment, beating the US (sorry to my American friends but really, that was the icing on the cake) could not have been better written for the history books if it were scripted.

Anyway, now that I have once again waxed poetic about my love for hockey, my point is that with all this re-living the Olympics that the media is doing these days, I remembered that the boys' Olympic t-shirts might finally fit them, so I took some photos of them wearing them today.

Check out what they looked like wearing these same shirts just over a year ago here. Wowsa!

Another Victim

The bug hit Jordan Saturday night. Rio and Nolan still healthy. Fingers crossed!

Sickness Has Struck

I apologize for my lack of blogging, but I've been otherwise preoccupied with a stomach bug. I woke up in the middle of the night on Thursday and then it began....I will spare you the sordid details but I spent all day Thursday in bed or throwing up. Thank goodness Jordan was off work that day because there was no way I could have taken care of the kids. I don't think I have slept that much in one day since I was a teenager! Thankfully I woke up on Friday feeling slightly better, at least able to take care of the kids as Jordan went back to work.

This morning I awoke hopeful. It had been more than 48 hours since I got sick so I knew if we made it through today the rest of the crew would be fine (I was pretty confident it was a bug not food poisoning as I hadn't been eating differently from any of the rest of them). I felt slightly better again, still not really eating, but was at least able to keep long made plans with friends we never get to see. But lo and behold, after I dressed Asher and Nolan in cute outfits for our date, Asher managed to projectile vomit all over himself and poor Rio who he was sitting on (for the record she took it like a champ!). I hoped it was an unrelated incident but he did it again tonight (not on Rio thank goodness!) so looks like we have another victim. In true Asher, pillar of strength fashion, he is lethargic for about 15 minutes afterwards and then all smiles again. Makes me a bit embarrassed by how sick I was when he can cope so easily. Or better yet, makes me marvel again at his strength.

So now another 72 hour count down begins. The likelihood of Nolan being spared is not good, considering they share toys and food, but we'll keep fingers crossed. At least hoping Rio and Jordan are spared. Hand washing, laundry and wipedowns are at an all time high around here. So if you don't hear from me again for a few days, exhaustion and barfy babies are to blame...

Snow Day

This morning we woke to snow, and a whole lot of it. We were sitting at close to 8 inches first thing this morning and it's still snowing lightly but getting wetter and no longer so high and fluffy - still pretty impressive for a city that gets snow 2 or 3 times a winter (none last winter!). Very few of us own winter tires (we do not), boots (we do not) or even shovels (we bought one last year - the first time it snowed this year our tenants shoveled as we didn't even bother. Woops! Sketchy landlords!).

Rio's preschool is cancelled so she and Jordan are outside taking care of business right now. I am inside with the fun task of tackling the 47 loads of laundry and house mess from our trip. Feeling very thankful we made the drive home last night in good road conditions instead of today.

I would be enjoying this a lot more if only the cupboards weren't bare and the roads a mess...

UPDATE: It's dumping again! Jordan and Rio's shoveling has been completely covered over again, but in the mean time they made the coolest snow man ever - or should I say "snow baby eagle"!

Jordan dug himself out and went grocery shopping in the 10 minutes the snow let up. Now it's a white out again and I am wondering how he's going to get home....

Weekend Update

Busy busy weekend and we are beat around here! Original weekend plans fell through so we decided to take advantage of some free time and...gasp...went on another date! Saturday night we put the boys to bed and our neice came to take care of Rio while we went to the neighbourhood pub to watch the Canucks game. Too many greasy wings but a good time had by both of us!

Then instead of Jordan and Rio going up to the Comox Valley to go skiing on Monday, we pushed the trip up a day to Sunday and the entire family went. The boys and I hung out at Gramma's and Rio and Jordan spent some time on the slopes. They went up for two days this time and Rio was a star. The videos are hilarious - she is going FAST - much faster than her mother does on a snowboard!

Boys are well but tiring us. Actually, Nolan doesn't deserve a bad rap - Asher is tiring us. For the past couple weeks he hasn't been sleeping. Literally up 6-10 times per night and barely napping during the day. Not to mention the parents' moods, you can guess what kind of a mood Asher is in care of the no sleep. And I will save his frustration levels as of late for a whole other post (just imagine what it's like when your brain clues in that you should be mobile but your body can't do it for you). It's not fun. None of it. At all. And if you're wondering, yes, I am whining. This is a hard patch!

But good thing they're cuter than ever. Telling stories and yelling and so much fun. More fun when we're all caught up on sleep...but we're working on it.

Speaking of sleep.....zzzzzzzzzzzzz.....soon as tonight's hockey game is over.....

Twin Chit Chat

This morning while Rio was in preschool we took the boys out shopping and as always there was a lot of admiring happening. The sight of twins is like a jolt of happiness for everyone in their path; people can't help but smile when they see them! Of course it is the same comment every time about how busy I must be, but my favourite to hear is how lucky I am. The classic is hearing anecdotes about *insert name of random friend or family member who had twins*, and I always nod and smile like it is the first time I have had this conversation when in fact it goes the same every time!

I always hear about twin moms who get really rude comments like "better you than me" and thankfully I have never (so far) had a reaction like that because I think I would punch them in the teeth. I have been asked on occasion whether we used fertility treatments. Whether we did or didn't (we didn't) HOW, perfect stranger in the grocery store, is that any of your business and why on earth does the answer matter?!

Anyway, today that never came up. Everyone just commented on how cute and quiet they are. The sweetest old woman stopped to talk and told me she was a former obstetrics nurse and she had seen over 5000 births! She asked if I had any other children and I told her about Rio. She put her hand on my arm and said "Dear, you have a perfect family".

Indeed, I do.

Stats

The boys saw their pediatrician today so that's always fun for some stats! Not only are they chunky, but they've had a huge growth spurt in height (5 cm in 2 months!) so they are completely caught up there too (they've always been behind in height as compared to their weight and head circumference). Numbers are as follows...

Asher:

24 lbs 7 oz*
80.6 cm long
46.8 cm head circumference

Nolan:

25 lbs 2 oz*
80 cm long
47.2 cm head circumference

As you can see, Nolan is slightly shorter, but stockier with a bigger head. Poor guy! Either way, they are growing like weeds and I am proud to say that they are average or above for not only their corrected age of 12.5 months, but for their chronological age of 15.5 months.

Our doctor was thrilled with their progress, and even though Asher is obviously having some muscle delays she was very pleased with his social and verbal progress. What he is lacking in physical prowess he more than makes up for in the personality department - that is glaringly obvious to us but always nice to hear from a professional.

We are so proud of our little tanks!  I guess I wasn't losing my mind thinking their 12-18 month clothes are getting too small. Never in a million years did I think that those struggling 2 pounders would grow to be such biiiiig boys!

* First time they have been within a pound of each other (Nolan always bigger) since late January 2010 when they were at 6 and almost 7 lbs. Their biggest weight discrepancy was close to 2lbs at the 7 and 9 lb mark and Asher has been very slowly closing the gap since. Well done Ashy!

Bunkey

We're not really sure whether her jacket is a monkey or a bear so we call her bunkey. Either way, she's damn cute.

Cords

2 cords

2 babies

2 houses

2 of our favourite pictures

Happy Valentine's Day

Today I had every intention of taking nice photos of my loves and posting a little tribute to them. But we had a rough night last night and I am just not in the mood. Asher was up all night - ALLLLLL night - and I got possibly one hour of sleep sometime between 5am and 6am. Wow, I don't know insomniacs do it because I could slowly feel myself going insane last night.

Anyway, right now Jordan and I have bloodshot eyes and can barely function, and the boys are napping (Thank God) in dirty clothes, desperately needing a bath, so hardly up for a photo shoot. Rio on the other hand is dressed in head to toe hearts and looks unbelievably cute, but she's at preschool so no photos of her either.

Regardless of the fact that I am tired and a wee bit cranky today, I do love my family immensely and am very lucky, today and every day.

Happy Valentine's Day to you!
xo

Soil Sampling

Our little environmentalist thought he should test the quality of our soil - with his mouth. Clearly, it passed with flying colours.

Uh oh - busted!

Wait mom, I can explain...

It just tastes so good!

We're all good here, right?

Rockin' the Hawk

Today I bathed Nolan, rubbed some cream on his face and head, then put him down for nap. The result when he woke up was the best hairdo ever. This was not intended, but I think it should be his new do! (I particularly like the tough guy face that goes along with it).

Updates

Well there's not a lot going on around here now that the birthday festivities have died down, but I'll give you a quick update on what the kids are up to this week.

Rio:

• Same old. Preschool, swimming, skiing again in a couple of weeks.
• Artistic ability through the roof. Her drawing lately is blowing my mind. In particular one of penguins and another of her cousin playing hockey, complete with his smiling face on the jumbo-tron after scoring a goal. So cute.

Nolan:

• Sitting! Finally.
• Crawling on all fours. Finally.
• Pulling up to stand on occasion.
• Eating dirt from the fig tree in the kitchen every chance he gets.

Asher:

• Not sitting. As expected.
• Not crawling. As expected.
• CUTE! As expected.
• Met OT last week and has a lot of work to do around feeding. Or more accurately, the parents have a lot of work to do around feeding. We built up his highchair tray to make it more at chest level so he doesn't have to reach so far for his food; additionally she gave us some nifty curved cutlery in an attempt to get it in his mouth more easily. He can't do any of this on his own (yet!) so we feed him hand over hand to teach him to make the connection. Makes meal time a much longer process but obviously worth it.

Asher at his command centre. Nolan uses these same toys to pull up on to stand. 

So that's about it around here. Next week we have a ton of appointments for the boys so I'm sure I'll have more exciting news then. In the mean time, we plug along!

PS - I know you all claim they are clones of Jordan but I usually don't see it. Sure they resemble him, but they resemble me too, far more than Rio did at this age. But I have to admit when I snapped this above picture, this is the first time I looked at one of them and really truly saw Jordan's face in them. Funnily enough, Jord doesn't see it!

Happy Jordan Day!

Today is the man of the house's birthday and we've had a great day. We picked Rio up from preschool and went out for lunch. The cutest little old couple sat next to us and ooohed and ahhhed the kids the whole meal! Then we headed over to the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre to check out some local sea life. The kids were all incredibly well behaved through the whole outing, making it very enjoyable for the grown ups.

When we got home, Rio and I proceeded to make the birthday boy's dinner - butternut squash ravioli (from scratch I'm proud to say!), roasted asparagus, and to follow, coconut lime angel food cake. Cooking for Jord always stresses me out, but the birthday boy at least pretended he liked it, even if the presentation was...well....lacking. What can I say, when you have a gourmet cook taking most of the cooking load, you get a bit out of practice!

The day will finish with us putting the kids to bed (soon!) and our friend coming over for wine and a second course of cake. Excellent day for the whole family!

Happy 3-4 super dad. We love you!

Of course they were ooohing and ahhhing your cuteness!

Serious menu colouring

Bday boy inside a display at the aquarium

Candles!

Shopping

Yesterday we made a family trip out of grocery shopping. ALLLL DAY. First Rio and I went to two grocery stores and the local butcher, then we picked up the three boys and hit the produce market and china town. It was a busy but good to get out of the house for most of the day. We came home and made won ton soup (won tons from scratch!) and it was delish.

Jordan and I talk a lot about our grocery bills in terms of how we can save money. We don't buy crap, no pre packaged snacks, all good, whole food. But we buy organic, local and pesticide/antibiotic free as much as possible, so for that we are paying the price. This world is really messed up - if you want to buy good food that is good for you you pay through the nose, but if you want to buy processed crap full of every chemical under the sun, it's practically free. Really gets me going. How is it possible we are punished financially for eating healthy? In this time of serious budgeting for us this has become really apparent. Ridiculous. I am thankful however, that we understand what we are putting into our bodies and have chosen this lifestyle, no matter how expensive it is.

Ok that's my rant on a Sunday morning. Clearly I haven't had my coffee yet.

One Year Corrected

Today the boys are one year corrected age. Most preemie parents I know celebrate today - some go as far as to have a party. But Jordan and I feel the opposite - today is a day we don't really want to be reminded of.

We don't want to think about the fact that the boys "should" have been born today (or in the case of twins 3 weeks before today). If they had been born somewhere near a year ago today, their lives, all of our lives really, would be so different. Not only different, but easier, especially for Asher.

But there is no point in focussing on the "what ifs" because there is nothing we can do to change it now. So instead I will focus on the fact that we have an amazing set of 15 month old twins. Not "1 year corrected" but 15 whole months alive and with us. Sure things are harder and taking longer for them to learn, but what matters is that they are strong and brave and PERFECT JUST AS THEY ARE - 14 weeks early. When they were born makes no difference to how loved they are and what amazing additions to this family they have been.

So February 4, screw you. It's just another day - a day that we love our boys unconditionally, no matter what their age is.

Party Tricks

We're on a video roll over here....

Nolan is a mad kisser, it is his favourite party trick. It melts my heart when he kisses back to us, especially because he pretty much turns his lips inside out. See for yourself below.



Asher is still working on the kissing. He studies our lips very carefully but is tentative to try (Mr. Observant seems to like having things nailed before he is willing to attempt). His favourite move is blowing raspberries...



Is it just me or are they cute?! I dare you to try to watch them just once!

More Skiing

Jordan and Rio went skiing again and it was another huge success. They skipped the bunny hill and went straight to the 6 man chair! Rio then rocked the blue runs all day! What a girl, she loved it and is so proud of herself, and we are obviously beyond proud. Check out the video.

After performing like that all day, the ride home was a bit exhausting...

She told us she wants to jump on her skis in the Olympics. The next Alex Bilodeau, circa the 2028 games?!