Baby Birds

Sometimes I get so irritated when I finally find something both twins will eat, only to find my other two prefer whatever that is, over what I already fed them. This is me a few weeks ago feeding my little brood, they're so happy you'd think its chocolate ice cream or something...nope, just plain old oatmeal, certainly not a favorite of mine. With so many babies, perhaps my perspective is a little warped. I guess I should try to remember that they are all very young, even my BIG boys are barely 2 and 4!

The Cleanest Lawn

Yesterday afternoon we had a little BBQ in the backyard, it was hot as usual, so in an attempt to keep the children from melting while eating their hot dogs and Cheetos, TOWW put up our shade umbrella. Unfortunately we left in such a hurry to get on to the rest of our day's fun activities, we forgot to put the umbrella down. This morning we awoke to the consequences, our beautiful glass table had shattered into a million little pieces all over our lawn. You see we don't have a patio, so our outdoor furniture sits right on the lawn, we move it around as we need, to mow, or water. Last nights little storm, which proved to be quite ineffective at providing any rain, was quite effective at producing wind, thus knocking over the umbrella, breaking our table. While only slightly upset at the broken table (we actually have a piece of replacement glass in storage already) I was very upset at the millions of tiny pieces of glass all over my beautiful, backyard playground. We spend hours every day running, playing, and sometimes streaking all over that very lawn, the last thing I wanted was cut feet or worse. TOWW and I spent an hour on our hands and knees picking up as much as we could, but we realized very quickly that our efforts were mostly in vain. The table had broken into thousands of tiny little squares, you know the kind a car window does when it shatters? Anyway, after racking our brains we realized we needed to literally vacuum the grass. Unfortunately we don't own a shop vac, a purchase we've been looking into, but haven't actually followed through on yet, but we found we could rent one for 4 hours at the local Home Depot for $22.00. It worked great, TOWW and I spent the next couple of hours again on our hands and knees vacuuming our beautiful backyard lawn. I'm sure the neighbors thought we were crazy, I know our boys did, Walnut kept asking me why I was cleaning the outside now too. So for today at least, I'm pretty sure we've got the greenest, cleanest lawn in the entire neighborhood.

Zoo Day

We could have called it a "sick day" but he wasn't really sick. Actually he (The One Who Works) was all ready for work and on his way out the door when he stopped to kiss me goodbye last Tuesday....big mistake this particular morning, I didn't want him to go and so invented a outing to the Zoo to keep him all to ourselves that day. TOWW happily obliged and spent the day with us instead.


We had a great time, we packed up two double strollers, sunscreen, a gallon of ice water and a bucket of KFC chicken and headed up the canyon.


It was a HOT day, but we bought all the boys matching hats and drank lots of water. The kids loved it, we loved it. We ended up leaving at nearly 5pm! A really long day, but so worth it!


The only "bump" in the day occurred when poor Sweetie fell out of her stroller and onto her head, no major damage but a GIANT bump on her little forehead! Nothing a quick stop at first aid for a band aid and some ice couldn't fix.

Jumping Jack

Peanut told me recently that he was the master of the Jumping Jacks, "oh really" I said, "why don't you show me". And so he did....


Problem is, it wasn't really a jumping jack after all, it was a cartwheel....well sort of.

Our pet Puppy

After months of hearing my little boys scream every time they spotted a spider in the house, I decided I had to do something about it, no one likes a man who's afraid of spiders....or snakes for that matter, nothing emasculates a man faster in my eyes than being squeamish around creepy crawly things. My sister Heidi reminded me about her LOVE of spiders as a child and told me how she got that way. My mom is a lover of letting things live, seriously she would catch and haul every living creature out of our house unharmed. Spiders, bugs, flies whatever, I even remember an occasion once where we didn't cook for a whole week because some giant spider had built a web that hung from the stove hood down to range top. Every morning while eating our cold cereal we got a science lesson first hand, "see how many flies she caught?" "Look how she wraps them all up like little mummy's and saves them for later". Daily I saw the death struggle between some poor little fly and that giant torturer. Needless to say when a huge black jumping spider found it's way into our house one spring, my mom decided she(the spider) could move right in permanently, she named her "Puppy" and my sister Heidi got her first pet. Years later Heidi reminded me that because of this little experiment she overcame her fear and learned to love those creepy little arachnids.
Thus my thinking when last month I spotted a big, black, furry jumping spider on my celling, the boys were screaming and near tears when I decided to let the little guy stay. We named him "Puppy" and after weeks of spotting him all throughout the house, my boys have stopped acting like a couple of whining babies and can now pass within feet of him with nothing other than a passing glance and a quick "hello Puppy".
I do limit the rooms he's allowed in, and have on occasion had to move him, no nursery and not in the boys room at night, but other than that he's got free rein of the house. I prefer him to stay out of the kitchen but have made an exception if he promises to stay on the ceiling. Whew, I guess it worked for now at least my boys are boys again...tough boys!

Shake Your Bootie

For Peanuts birthday about six months ago my sister M sent him a little MP3 player. She loaded it with a bunch of music that she says would "speak to his soul" and it has. Occasionally I let Walnut listen to my ipod and the boys jam out together. Walnut is obviously listening to "Shake Your Booty" a grovin tune from 1976 by KC and the Sunshine Band. Peanut on the other hand is listening to his personal favorite download "Another Postcard" by the Barenaked Ladies. Even though the tunes are different they manage to have their dance moves in perfect sync!