Yay! Lauren met a goal! And Kyle is a singer.

What a groovy day yesterday was. First of all, it was a therapist day. And Lauren has been messing around with the straw on her usual sippy cup lately, so I brazenly handed her one of those old fashioned Tupperware sippy cups, with a dome lid and no straw. (I hate picking straws up after her, and it drives me nuts to constantly be scrubbing sticky dried juice off the floor because the juice sprays all over when she whips the straw out and throws it.) Anyway, she picked up the very full cup with two hands and tipped it up to her mouth and drank! This is big. 7 months ago when we started getting therapy from Early Intervention, this was a main goal for her development. She started off nowhere near being strong enough, and frankly I wasn't even sure if this goal was realistic. But woo hoooo! Here's an example of the cup I'm referring to. The cup on the right is the usual straw sippy cup that she used to use. The cup on the left is the retro-Tupperware cup that she can use now. Yay, Lauren!

Truthfully, this is a skill which would be expected of a normal 10 month old. But Lauren is a trooper and never lets anything phase her.


Also, it was a groovy day because Kyle has begun to sing. Yes, the boy who prior to today would only say, "no no no no", "oh yeah", and "uh-oh" now attempts to sing. I couldn't be more thrilled! Here's video of him. The song is from The Good Night Show and I don't expect anyone out there knows the tune. The words are supposed to be:

Lull- Lull- Lull-a-bye
Lull- Lull- Lull-a-bye
Sing, sing to yourself
A lull- lull- lullabye

Additionally, Kyle had his speech therapy evaluation today, and it was determined that he does qualify for speech services through Early Intervention. Woo hoo!

Don't tell his daddy

Chris isn't here (still sick) and doesn't know how adorable his son looks in a Target $1 section Easter hat. Or how excited said child is about wearing it. Or that it's on backwards. ; )

This is a Germ Free Zone

Jenna woke up this morning feverish and pukey. Chris still isn't better. They're both now camped out at my parents house while I sanitize the hell out of this house.

Vaccum, sweep, mop, baseboards, ceiling fans, coffee table. And every piece of bed or bath linen in the house is clean, being cleaned, or about to be cleaned. The windows and doors are all open and everything is airing out.

We cannot let the babies (or me) get whatever this is. I suspect the flu, but who knows. Chris didn't get a flu shot, but Jenna did and she's sick, too.

All this cleaning feels really good, actually. Sort of therapeutic in a manic, frenzied sort of way.

Also, I still haven't found my arm brace to help with all the pain. I bought a new one at Target this morning, and am surprised to report that it's already helping. Woo hoo!

A Quick Check-In

Chris is on Day 5 of suffering with The Crud. He has been banished to a corner of the upstairs and is only permitted to leave to use the facilities. I bring him his food and drink, and he texts me when he needs something brought up to him. He is feverish, lethargic, congested, sore throat, and naseaous. It is not good.

It is also not good that Jenna appears to be coming down with the same Crud. She is on Day 2 of suffering with something suspicious, we don't know what. So far she's just feverish and tired, so this could be another week of fun for me (I'm so self-centered! Of course we want her to feel better soon, too). I'm telling you, this house is like a $200,000 petri dish these days. I keep the windows and doors open and hope that the breeze, and the grace of God, keeps these Crud germs away from the twins.

The babies are still doing very well. They are entirely healthy. Lauren can say almost all the words to Twinkle Twinkle. Kyle can make sounds that follow the melody of Twinkle Twinkle, but can't say any of the words yet. He has a speech therapy evaluation next Friday, when we expect he'll qualify for speech therapy with Early Intervention. Lauren is right on track, or ahead of the curve, for being 20 months old, but Kyle's lower muscle tone seems to be affecting his speech abilities. We shall see.

Chris is waiting for some follow up phone calls with open positions with two companies. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the phone calls come, and that he is healthy enough to come downstairs and answer his phone when they do!

My carpal tunnel and RMD on my left arm/hand are causing me major distress. The timing of the pain seeme like it coincided with Chris getting sick. It makes me wonder if the fact that he's had to disengage himself from family life which has caused me to personally get no down time possibly also caused me to "over use" my arm. All I know is that OTC pain meds don't help it at all, and it hurts like Hades. But I bet I forget about the pain when the Twilight DVD is released this Saturday. If you buy it at Target, it's a 3-disc set instead of just two discs, plus it comes with a code to download the entire movie from iTunes. Score!

And no more spider sightings at our house. WOOT WOOT!

Otherwise things are great here! If Chris and Jenna could just get better, that would even be more great. Greater? The bestest, for sure.

Brown recluse? Pshaw! That's a black widow!

I was wrong--that's a black widow there in the last pic from two posts ago. Apparently they aren't black. Who knew? Apparently that red hourglass shape visible on it's thorax (or whatever, I have no idea about spider anatomy) that you can't see in this photo, but we could see in person, is Mother Nature jumping up and down screeching, "danger, danger!" a la vintage Steve Irwin. Well thank goodness that the day I saw that spider, I had the good sense not to open my garage door (and thereby position my hand within striking distance of spider) and instead run to find my camera. Yes, I focused on taking a photo of the doomed spider, while all three children were left unattended in a stroller (and standing next to it) without the breaks set, all the way across the street and next to some desert scrub where indeed a whole coven of spiders could very well have been waiting to attack them.

PSA: do not EVER under ANY circumstances Google for spider images. Really, trust me on this one. If you're hoping to match a dead spider body in a baggie on your kitchen table to something you can find on the internet, just.... don't. Just assume the worst and move on. Collect your children once more for a group hug, and carry some Raid (or just Aqua Net) on a keychain until your children are old enough to trust not to chase/eat a spider. I'm just saying. Whatever is entombed in that Ziplock bag, all soggy from the hairspray or whatever, is dead and therefore less fearsome than the world that is Google Images. I think I shaved off about 45 minutes from my life span by doing this. [[shudder]]

Hey Phoenix: Eat Some Pizza and Support the MDA (and therefore SMA research)

NYPD Pizza this Thursday is enlisting the help of the Phoenix Police Department to wait tables, and your tips will be donated to the MDA.
http://www.evliving.com/2009/03/10/4210/fight-muscular-dystrophy/

The MDA "buy a shamrock for $1" campaign ends one week from today. My twins benefit from real financial aid from the MDA, so now you that that's where your money goes. Maybe my babies should be poster children for the MDA. Indeed, they are cute enough. But anyway. I digress.

I bought my MDA shamrock at a Honeybaked Ham store this week, of all places, but I know all the grocery stores are selling them, too.

So if you like your cops walking up with a pizza instead of a traffic ticket, join us at 20th Street and Camelback at NYPD Pizza on 3/12, from 4-9pm. Or, just swing by and drop some money in the tip jar that I'm sure they'll have out. (And I suspect that there is more than one NYPD Pizza participating in this, but I'm not sure...)

Thanks to everyone for their support! Go buy a shamrock!

Backyard fun, and what I think is a brown recluse spider.

Caution, there is a photo of an icky spider at the end of this post. You've been warned.

What a cool afternoon we had today. Lots of backyard playtime. I'm thrilled with the new swing we got for the babies. Now that outdoor toys are appearing on store shelves, I was able to find this swing for them. It offers more upper body support than the bucket swing. Now I sort of wish I bought two of them instead of just one.

Chris' new custom grill finally arrived. Some famous BBQ grill maker in the South manufactured it. Chris would be annoyed if I can't remember the name.... hmmm, oh well. Anyway, it certainly does look nice. It's like our old grill, but on steroids. It has a big smoke box, and the iron is really thick, so when he smokes meats he won't have to wake up as often as night to add to the fire.

Some Jenna fun:

And finally, the spider photo. Do you think this is a brown recluse? We live right by some buttes and a wash/desert scrub, but we've mercifully been devoid of most bugs, snakes, scorpions, spiders, or other critters. Though we found one brown recluse last year, and now this one. It was on the garage door, right next to the key pad. It's like the thing had a death wish. I couldn't miss it. I might have accidentally brushed it with my hand if I'd been looking somewhere else when I approached the pin pad to open the garage door. Yeeps! So, any spider experts follow this blog? Weigh in, please.

A Blessed Day

I'm blogging to you now from the gorgeous green grass, in the shade, in my backyard. There are a few whispy clouds in the sky, nothing more than some smears of white against the baby blue sky. The sun shines--making my back hot, as I'm wearing a black shirt--and it's about 84 degrees here outside, with a little breeze.

Lauren is next to me, laying on a blanket and watching the birds and planes cross over her in the sky. Jenna is sitting next to her eating an apple. Kyle is eating mandarin oranges with his daddy on the back porch, in his outgrown baby walker. We're listening to Fishing In the Dark on my iPod, along with a little freeway traffic and some prop planes landing and taking off at the municipal airport a couple miles away.

Laundry is waiting. Decluttering everywhere and dirty bathrooms are waiting. Paying bills and shredding a tall pile of paper is waiting. Refueling our cars for the week is waiting. Making brownies for dessert tonight is waiting. Who cares? This is what it's all about. What a blessed, blessed day.