Trick or treat

Imagine that Dash's thought bubble says "I've decided to take over The World!"

We don't have any candy. If any kid is daring enough to dress up and brave the darkness and the local bear and come through our neighborhood to trick or treat, I'm going to have to hand them a twenty and praise their courage. **

Few things are cuter than an infant wearing stripes. Thanks, mysteriously yet conveniently located Hanna Andersson outlet in Woodinville! If I was rich I'd buy all my kids clothes there.

cute boys napping propped upon the floor to minimize post meal hurling

Today was a peaceful day. It's now 3am and only an hour till my shift is over and I can sleep. Good thing these boys are irresistibly cute.

**subsequent children will receive fresh tasty apples

skelingtons

The boys attended their first work halloween party today. It was filled with kids and candy and spooky decorations. My favorite costume: a three week old little girl wrapped up in aluminum foil with a real tortilla and lettuce cradling her head. Baby burrito, indeed! There were several luke skywalkers, princess leas, a harry potter and her red spooky witch sister, race car drivers, bumblebees and ladybugs, everything you could imagine. And two skeletons. I meant to take better pictures but Dash managed to pee all over his on the way home, was raging in general, and it had to get pulled off rather quickly. Luckily I grabbed a couple of pictures before we left.

Other than that adventure, Charlie's mom is visiting for a week and watching the boys grow. You'd think the woman had already raised a set of twins, the way she's handled some of their night shifts. I slept for seven hours in a row.


The boys are in a super cute stage, Liam especially. He's so very close to smiling at me. We spend a lot of time staring at each other and sticking our tongues out. Dash is suffering through a bit of a cold that Charlie brought home from work, so the poor guy has been sacked out on somebody's lap pretty much continuously, snorting and snuffling. I'm sure his turn to be cute will come next week. This is Liam during one of our late night mutual adoration sessions:




And so as not to play favorites, Dash looking cute on Charlie's lap

screaming mimi

In this picture from the other day, Dash looks about how I feel right now

The boys official due date was Friday.....seems like they've been here for ages! The past few days have been a blur of feeding and friends visiting and sleeping a little bit. Tonight, Liam has decided to perfect his spontaneous freak-out shriek. He's tucked on my chest in the moby wrap, and that has just slowed down the frequency to every 5-10 minutes instead of a steady air raid siren wail. Why? Who knows. Perhaps his brain is growing and it aches. Just when I think things have settled down (like right now, in the middle of this sentence) the little head below my chin flings back and remarkably loud sounds start. A few minutes of walking and jiggling and it shuts off and resets.
Thank you, Dash, for being relatively mellow right now.
Since cohesive typing is a luxury at the moment, I leave you with (silent) pictures:

dueling pacifiers

Liam reclines in the bath, moments before peeing in his own face

I will miss Dash's wizened old man face when he puts on some baby fat

togetherness

I've been experimenting this week with putting the boys together to wriggle and play and maybe even sleep. They seem to be mildly aware that another being is there, and perhaps they feel each other on a more primal level after spending so much time next to each other inside of me. But the rest of the time they grunt and warble and flail and smack each other and pretty much are unmoved. But then they fall asleep and are so damn cute. Yesterday because of laundry issues and the fact that they just don't have many outfits that fit them right now (they grow so fast, and my newborn clothing stash came mostly from lovely gifts) they were dressed identically. I know I vowed never to subject them to that, but I figured if a twin dresses like a twin in the woods and no one hears it, did it really happen? Yet here I am posting proof of their matchy matchy super cute outfits. Little wee bears and pine trees!

Mom's second quilt came! Now I just need to decide who gets which one...

tonight I finished cooking dinner while Charlie served as a napping plaftorm

Today's sweet boys, not sleeping. After a morning of sleeping (and pancakes, don't forget the pancakes) there was a whole lot of not sleeping the rest of the day. I love that in this photo they look like they're leaping up and clicking their heels together, their life choreographed by Jerome Robbins.

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Bonus video of wiggly boys. They do plenty of crying and shrieking, but the rest of the time they've got a vocal rambling repertoire of little grunty animal sounds.

One Month

I simply cannot get enough baby toes.

Yesterday the boys were four weeks old, and today they had their one-month checkup. Dash now weighs 6 pounds 12 ounces, and Liam is 7 pounds 4 ounces. They actually gained identical amounts of weight. They suffered the indignity of their second Hep B shot, and then we were pronounced healthy and out the door.


I celebrated by taking the boys on an outing to Petco. Thrilling, I know. But it was even more fun because Charlie dipped his toes back into work today and I had the boys to myself for the entire day (though he did meet me for the pediatrician appt and then went back to work) (and then was awesome and brought Spicy Talk super hot szechuan food home for dinner). It's become more and more apparent that our cat-peeing problems are because the cats are getting old. Henry especially seems to be having to work pretty hard to get up and down the stairs. It was time to have a cat box on every floor. So I popped the boys into their carseat-stroller (thanks Elisa!) and paraded myself into Petco. Following the advice of my moms-of-multiples group, I pushed the stroller ahead of me and pulled the shopping cart behind. Yes, I may have been a bit of a spectacle but it worked perfectly! I did perhaps look like a crazy person who just got a new cat along with new babies, since I was buying a new box, scoop, more litter, etc. But tomorrow afternoon Henry will have brand new facilities and fingers crossed that fixes the problem.

baby parade float

In six months, pushing a stroller and dragging a cart will probably be a bit old and tiresome, but today I felt like doing a little jump and tapping my heels together with glee.

slowly mastering the art of carrying two babies at once, and still having one hand free to do something

Podling

Sometimes they seem huge, and sometimes teeny tiny.

fresh air

sweet baby toes

We've had a stretch of lovely fall weather, windows opened during the day and leaves falling in the sunshine. Yesterday we bundled the boys and walked with them to the mailbox to get a week's worth of mail. A mile carrying a six pound baby is a pretty good workout! Today we assembled the double stroller and went for a longer walk through the neighborhood. It was so wonderful to breathe and move around in the sunshine. The boys slept through most of it, but did wake up near the end to announce that they were terribly hungry. Good thing we were almost home.

sunshine! babies! blankets and hats!

Other than that, the days have been passing in a comfortable hum of feeding babies, burping babies, changing babies, sitting with babies, Charlie cooking lots of delicious food, and watching Poirot movies. I can't bear to think about the end of this week, when things will have to move to a new more long lasting normal.

just barely fitting into his newborn-sized puppy pajamas

sleepy spaceman

We spend a lot of time remarking that the boys are bigger. Yes, yes, I know that people always say that they are only small for a short time and things change quickly but I really didn't see it until we had a swing that one day Liam barely took up a third of and now a week later he fits in it just fine. And they have outgrown one size of diapers. And pretty soon they'll be asking for the keys to the car.


So this isn't a perfect comparison because I didn't hold the camera exactly in the same place....Liam isn't that much bigger than his brother. He weighs about a half pound more than Dash, but definitely has a more robust bone structure. But here you can see their different hair color and head shape. And belly buttons. And buddha bellies.