Easter 2012

Easter was definitely quite a bit better than Christmas was for us.

That morning we saw that the Easter Bunny had visited and he brought the boys a sand and water table in addition to some goodies in their baskets.

All 3 Easter baskets all lined up

Sand and water table, minus sand and water

The table is a hit!

Joel with his basket

Jeremy with his basket

Jacob with his basket

Since moving to Texas 6 years ago, we traditionally spend Easter at Justin's cousin's house with Justin's dad's family down in Texas City (just north of Galveston).  And traditionally I make the rolls.  This year I decided to make rolls that looked like bunnies using a new recipe.  The rolls looked cute and tasted ok, but I probably won't make this recipe again - they weren't my favorites (however I probably will make them bunny shaped again).

Bunny-shaped rolls

Finished product

They have an Easter egg hunt for their kids, who are all quite a bit older than our little boys.  Jacob wasn't even into the hunt much.

Justin helped Jacob do some hunting

The twins just wanted to hold some eggs

Ever wonder we we don't post more pics of all 3 kids together?  They look something like this.

Jacob loved this.  Might have to get one of our own.

Our kids really liked their puppies.  I'm so glad that my kids like dogs and aren't scared of them.  I honestly think it is so sad when kids are afraid of safe, family pet dogs.

Joel says- I have a treat for you!

Jacob felt the need to get up close and personal

Joel is trying to win a staring contest apparently

Not sure what Jeremy is trying to do here

After getting back home we decided to set up the kids sand and water table.  They loved it!!!

All happy!

We even let the babies have their first candy ever from their Easter baskets.  Jacob was too busy playing to want any candy.

Joel likes his chocolate

Jeremy may like his more

However, it wouldn't be a day at our house without a meltdown/breakdown about something.  Jacob threw a complete and total fit when it was time to come back inside to eat some dinner.  If you haven't experienced a Jacob fit - consider yourself lucky.  Not your normal 3 year old tantrum, my friends.  At least we made it through almost the whole day before it all went South.

The twins' birthday party

For Jacob's first birthday we only invited family over and we decided to make it a tradition by doing the same for the twins.  And similar to Jacob's first party, I kept things simple - no decorations except some balloons and most of my effort went into the cake(s).

One big cake for everyone else, a little cake for each birthday boy

Joel and his little truck

Jeremy and his little truck

Tentative about digging in

Yummy cake

Joel is just about finished

Jeremy actually threw his cake off the tray - definitely done

The babies woke from their morning naps, we all had lunch, then opened presents, then had cake.  All pretty low-key.  After cake the babies took baths and went down for their second naps.  

We are grateful for our family that made the effort to come celebrate with us.  And also for everyone who helped us get through the year that led up to this celebration!

Goodbye carpet!!!

The carpet in our house kept looking worse and worse.  But let me tell you - having not one but two babies who spit up all the time made it look completely disgusting.  

This is what it looks like after a year of 2 spitter-uppers

Last fall we kept talking about possibly removing all the carpet downstairs in our house if Justin got an end-of-year bonus or if we got a decent tax return.

In January, we started having an awful problem with fire ants.  In fact, Jeremy got a bite that ended up developing a staph infection.  No matter what we did we couldn't get rid of the ants.  Then we realized that even though we were cleaning the carpets every now and then with the carpet cleaner we had purchased, the spit-up must have gotten down into the padding and it was drawing fire ants in.

Getting rid of the carpet turned into something that we really needed to do and not just something that we wanted to do.

So in March we got rid of all the downstairs carpet (with the exception of our big storage closet that goes underneath the staircase - that stayed spit-up free).  We are so super grateful to those who donated their time, talent and energy to put the new floors in.  One of our friends in particular was definitely the expert and we wouldn't have been able to do it without him, his knowledge, or his tools.

After moving some things out, but before ripping out carpet

Justin and his dad pulling out carpet

Carpet is gone, new padding being installed

New flooring going in

The (almost) finished product

Looks like I don't have any pictures of the family room besides the close-up of the awful looking carpet.  Maybe one day when the house is clean I'll have to take some to post.

To be completely honest we still aren't really done.  We still have some of the finishing work to do - filling nail holes in the quarter round and such.  We haven't really been the type of people that do much work on their home, so we were just impressed that this got done in a weekend!  And when I say we got it done, I mean my mom and I kept all the kids out of the way so the men could work on the floor.

The twins at 1 yr old

Joel - 2 weeks

Jeremy - 2 weeks

Joel - 1 month

Jeremy - 1 month

Joel - 2 months

Jeremy - 2 months

Joel - 3 months

Jeremy - 3 months

Joel - 4 months

Jeremy - 4 months

Joel - 5 months

Jeremy - 5 months

Joel - 6 months

Jeremy - 6 months

Joel - 7 months

Jeremy - 7 months

Joel - 8 months

Jeremy - 8 months

Joel - 9 months

Jeremy - 9 months

Joel - 10 months

Jeremy - 10 months

Joel - 11 months

Jeremy - 11 months

Joel - 12 months old!!!!!

Jeremy - 12 months old!!!!!

Joel is our little guy out of the twins.  He weighed in on his birthday at 18 pounds, 14 ounces (1 oz more than Jacob did at 1 year) putting him at 5th percentile for weight.  He is 29 inches tall and his head is 45 cm.

Jeremy,on the other hand, is my biggest kid at 1 year old.  He weighed in at 20 pounds, 8 ounces - 23rd percentile!!!  He was also 29 inches tall and head 45 cm. 

Joel is so full of facial expressions - I wish we were able to capture them on film.  But when we pull out the camera he usually has the same wide-eyed expression on his face.  Or a big smile.  Or he crawls away.

Jeremy is still our smiley boy.  And when he is really happy the smile just takes over his whole face, then his whole body.  It is awesome.

Joel is our little bully.  For months now he has been stealing Jeremy's binky from him and "playing" with people by rolling all over them on the floor.  And just recently Jacob has decided that if rolling all over someone is playing with them, he will play with the babies.  If Joel is in a good mood he and Jacob will laugh and laugh while this happens.  If Joel is not in a good mood he cries and Jacob just keeps trying to "play" with him - maybe Jacob thinks he can get Joel to change his mind and laugh?

Jeremy doesn't like being bullied and being rolled on.  Luckily Jacob leaves him alone more than he does Joel.  Jeremy prefers to look at books a lot.

As of their birthday, each baby is going strong with 4 teeth.  Both of them look like there are 2 more on the top that keep trying to make an appearance, but they haven't finally broken through yet.

Joel is our screamer.  It started a long time ago, but if he doesn't like something he starts doing this baby scream.  If it didn't happen so often you might think it was cute.  But no, it is sort of ear-piercing.

When Jeremy is sitting and you reach out to lay him back (for a diaper change or to give him a bottle) he pretty much just falls straight back.  I expect it now, but the first few times he was lucky I caught him before he slammed his little head onto the floor.

Joel is starting to talk!!!  This is so amazing to me.  But sad at the same time.  I worry that it won't take long for Joel's language skills to surpass Jacob's.  As of his birthday, Joel will say "uh-oh" if something falls (or if he throws something).  He will also wave and say "bye-bye".  I don't really think "uh-oh" is a word so I consider "bye-bye" to be his first word.  A few days after his birthday we could get him to say "up".  Joel is also doing the signs for "more" and "eat".

Sadly, Jeremy is not talking or doing any signs.  And also sadly I have been here before.

I don't know what these kids' favorite things to eat are.  Except for the little baby snacks that look like cheese puffs.  They get soooo excited when they see those.  We have good eating days and bad eating days.  Not sure if is a texture thing or what, but not a huge fan of most fruits or vegetables.  Boo.

Nights are still up in the air as well.  We never know when the babies will sleep through the night or when one or both will wake up crying during the night.  Typically if they wake up it seems like they has gas.  After a few toots and some cuddling we can typically get them back to sleep, but sometimes one of them needs a little milk to help him calm back down and get to sleep.  Joel has woken up super early a few times (meaning 4:30 or 5) and completely refused to go back to sleep.  In fact - he did this on his birthday too.  Little punk.

I feel bad that it took me so long to get this up here.  And I'm also almost 2 months late on a 15 month update on these boys.  Hopefully soon though!

Mini-trains

A couple years ago I heard about some small trains that were somewhere close to us that were a lot of fun to ride.  I had forgotten about them but recently was thinking that we don't do enough fun things with our kids so went in search of these little trains.  You can get some info here, but they are just these super cute little trains that a group of people maintain as a hobby and once a month during our non-winter months they offer free rides to the public (but they do request donations there).

We went a couple weeks ago and all the kids really liked it - Jeremy was upset when our ride was over and really upset when we put him in his carseat afterwards.  We'll definitely have to do this again!

Please excuse any random people in some of these pictures - we just wanted to show how the trains look and couldn't do that when we were the ones on the train.

Jacob anxiously awaiting our turn on the trains

Our train ride

Jeremy on my lap, Justin in front

Jacob and Joel sitting with Daddy

Beautiful scenery on our train ride