The Twins Are Coming Today!!

We had our growth ultrasound yesterday and while everything looks good, baby A (Anna) didn't grow as much as the doctors would have liked. So, we were scheduled for an induction today!!!! It was a major shock to me, in fact I burst in to tears as soon as they told me!! I was expecting to have at least a week, maybe two before their arrival.

Thankfully yesterday we got a lot done:
We bought a new car- a Honda Pilot that fits all three carseats across the 2nd row!!

We also got our dog adopted!! Amara was adopted by a very nice couple that owns a cattle ranch. They are very old (80s!!) but seemed to have a good way with Amara. She will hopefully be very happy there!!

Thankfully my Aunt Ann was on her way to stay with us and help out for a few days when we learned we'd be induced today, and so she jumped right in to take care of Ellen while we ran our errands!


So far induction has been pretty slow, they started me out with cytotec and hopefully contractions will start soon!!

The worst has been the IV and the penicillin for group b strep that they don't know if I have for sure or not buy since we only did the test yesterday it's too soon to get the results. The penicillin really burns!! Ow.

I'll post a full detailed birth story when they arrive!!! Until then keep us in your prayers!!

The Nursery!

The nursery is officially done! Thanks to all family and friends who contributed to our beautifully decorated twin nursery. The theme is "Sweet Safari" - basically jungle animals in pink. I had a lot of fun decorating it and planning for the girls arrival.

Here is Lucy's crib:


Here is Anna's crib and the rest of the room:


Sweet Safari stickers:


Its a pretty small room and it *just barely* fits two cribs, a changing table, and a love seat! You can't see from the pictures, but there are two built in dressers with bookshelves above in the opposite wall. There is also a closet so we have lots of storage space thankfully!

We are officially ready for the babies. They must wait at least 1.5 more weeks before arriving, and hopefully will wait 3 more. It so soon! :)

Halloween! Roar!

Ellen was a dragon for Halloween this year, and I was a pumpkin. :) Matt was a deranged umbrella holder? Not sure what this expression is. He claims he was roaring with Ellen. :)


We had a great time trick or treating - we went with a few families who also have toddlers - we had a dragon (Ellen), a lion (Liam), a candy corn princess (Emma), and little red riding hood (Joceyln).

We only stayed out for about 45 minutes and went to maybe 12 houses, but Ellen loved it! She loved knocking on the door / ringing the doorbell and then when prompted would say "trick or treat" or "happy halloween." At one house she was so excited she yelled: "Happy trick or treat!!" She loves all things chocolate, and at one house when she was given a bag of m&ms yelled immediately: "I'm going to EAT THAT!!"

We had a good time! I love halloween. And eating Ellen's chocolate after she went to bed. She doesn't need all of that! (but clearly I do!) :)

Here are some pictures:

The toddlers:


My pumpkin belly:


Ellen earlier in the day roaring on our front steps:

Fall Projects

This past month I've been collecting fun project ideas from a few different blogs, one is a friend from high school who has twins a few months older than Ellen. She has the cutest ideas for fun fall projects and I've shamelessly stolen most of them. :) Another fun blog called: Play at Home Mom also has a lot of great projecty ideas, though sometimes they are a little more complicated than I'm ready for.

Here are a few of the projects that we've done:

Fall Wreaths:
I took Ellen and Emma to the park one day while babysitting and gave them two big buckets to collect leaves. They were both really excited about it, and when we got to the park immediately sat down to put all of the leaves they could find in their buckets.



This enthusiasm didn't really last the entire time, but we did spend about 30 minutes collecting leaves and pine cones. Ellen kept sitting down and declaring that she needed to rest. Emma was much more cooperative but got quite upset when she got sap on her hands from the pine cones. We got lots of different colored leaves, and the girls had fun finding different colors and shapes.

Here they are with their completed buckets:




The next day Emma and her mom came over to make the wreaths, so this was a two day project! I got foam wreaths from Michael's, and we used a hot glue gun to put the leaves in place. Ellen and Emma put a few leaves on the wreaths, but then both decided to be done. I gave them both markers and this bought a little more time, they decorated the wreaths while Melissa and I glued on the leaves and pine cones. The only issue we had was when Ellen was helping me glue on a leaf and put her hand down on the hot glue right after I had just squeezed it out of the gun. She was very upset and cried for a while. Her hand just got a little bit burned, it turned a bit red but there was no blister. Next time I might try for a different type of glue, but I'm not sure that it would hold the leaves and pine cones in place. At least Ellen learned not to touch hot glue!

All in all it was a great project - 2 days worth of activities and both girls are very proud of their wreaths which are now hung on our front doors. I will definitely do this again next year!






Fall Trees
The next project Ellen and I did together was a fall trees art project. This one was a good one in that I was able to sit still for most of the project, which is getting more and more important the more tired I get!

First I took some construction paper and cut up "leaves" in different fall colors: yellow, red, orange and brown. We talked about what colors I was cutting up, and then I let Ellen pretend that they were leaves falling to the ground while saying "Wheee!" She loved this!
Next I took some clear contact paper folded it in half, and cut out the shape of a tree (just the top part). I then spread the contact paper out on the table and we picked up the leaves and sprinkled them on to the sticky contact paper, again saying "Wheee!" Ellen liked that they stuck to the paper. I took the other half of the contact paper without leaves and pressed it on top to make a tree! I then cut out a trunk of brown construction paper, and added it to the tree top, making a complete tree.

We made two of them and then I hung them in the windows. They are super pretty to look at, the fall colors look awesome against our actual fall colors outside!



Beans with Halloween objects / Letters
The latest project we did which wasn't really so much a project as it was a fun new toy for Ellen to explore was a beans sensory bin. I bought a bunch of the cheapest beans I could find at the grocery store, some erasers, foam letters, and Halloween monster finger puppets. I put them all in a big container, and gave Ellen some spoons and containers to play with. She LOVED these beans and immediately told me to "Go away Mommy" so she could play independently! I happily complied and made dinner. :)

I am slowly trying to introduce her to letters, so far she knows the upper case letter E. I added in a few foam Ms for Mommy and Ds for Daddy into her bin as well as a bunch of Es. We practiced identifying them a few times and she seemed to enjoy finding the different letters buried in the beans.

Her favorite objects in the beans by far were the Halloween monster finger puppets. She kept putting them on her fingers and running around the house yelling "ROAR!!" to scare the cat. It was hilarious.




Our next project will be magnets! I bought some magnet paper that you can print on, and I've been collecting various objects that I plan to glue magnets to so she can play with them on her easel that has a magnetic side. I'm hoping to include her in picking pictures with me on the computer, she's never used a computer before besides to bang on the keyboard... so we'll see how that goes!

These projects have been a lot of fun to do over the past month. I'm hoping to have a couple set aside ready to go so people who are coming to help us with the twins can do a fun project with Ellen so she doesn't feel left out!

The twins should be here in a few weeks! I'm 34 weeks this week, need to make it to 36 to be considered "term" and to be able to deliver in the local hospital. This is my first goal! Once I hit 36 weeks assuming all is going well I'd like to make it to 38 weeks if possible. The babies aren't very big yet (only ~4lbs) so I'd like to give them as much time as possible to grow!

Here's me at 34 weeks: (sorry its kind of grainy, Matt just took this tonight and the lighting wasn't great)


p.s. check out the upside down Elmo balloon in the background - that balloon is from Ellen's Elmo party on October 6th... over 3 weeks ago and that balloon is still going STRONG! :)

2nd Birthday Party with Elmo

Ellen is 2!! I can't quite believe I have a 2 year old! I feel like this past year has just flown by and she's grown into such a sweet little girl. We celebrated her birthday with an Elmo themed birthday party with her friend Emma who has a birthday 6 days after hers. We had lots of friends and family here to celebrate with us and it was a great party!

The girls had matching Elmo outfits, but had to wear jackets most of the time because the weather was a bit chilly, but thankfully not raining!!

Here are a few pictures of the big day:

The birthday girls:


The toddlers: Emma, Ellen, Emmalia and Marshall (plus Mommy Kristen) in the background


Ellen and her Aunt Sara and Aunt Lindsay:


We played an awesome party game: Pin the Nose on the Elmo!
Here is Ellen getting spun around by Uncle Chris (Emma's Daddy)


And she goes for the win:


Actually all of the kids did really well and were remarkably accurate with nose placement. I think Emma ended up being the closest. :)

We had chocolate cupcakes because Ellen LOVES chocolate. She ate her first one in about 1 minute by shoving it in her face. She then had a 2nd one. She was definitely not hungry for any dinner that night!


Party Table: There were a lot of awesome gifts!!


Girls playing in the sandbox at the park where the party was held:



In other news...we have our dog back. The guy who adopted her was a bit too naive and didn't really listen to me when I told him that she doesn't get along with other dogs inside. (I must have told him 100 times) So he stupidly had her stay with his friends dog the FIRST WEEKEND he had her, and of course they got in a big fight, with Amara as the attacker. So she was returned to the shelter 2 days after the "adoption" and is now back with us. We continue to take her to their adoption events, and people love her, but seem to have an issue with one of her two problems: Either they have other dogs, so that won't work, or they have young children, and I just don't trust her around young children. So... we will continue to foster her and hopefully over the next month we will find a good home for her with someone who is not a moron.

Lastly, here are Ellen and Emma on a walk in their new birthday present rain boots. (it was NOT raining, but Ellen loves wearing her boots so she wears them every day) Emma also wanted to wear hers once Ellen came over with them on. :)


And here is a picture of me at 31 weeks!! We are getting closer!


Oh and PS. we are *maybe* starting potty training!?! Ellen peed on the potty ~5 times today! She did have one accident while she was wearing her big girl underwear which we are letting her wear to add to the excitement of it, but its a start! I'm still a little concerned she's not ready, but I'm also so ready to have her out of diapers. I don't think she knows when she needs to go, but she's good at going once she's on the potty. Parents who have done this before... any advice? Our toddler 411 book says that if you are putting your child on the toilet every 2 hours then you have succeeded in potty training yourself and your child is not ready. Agree / disagree?

A Weekend of Cooking

I'm a little behind in my posts, I seem to be getting more and more tired lately for some reason! :)

Two weekends ago my friend from college Angela came to visit and cook with me for the weekend! Our goal was to make lots of yummy food to put in my deep freezer so that when the twins come (or before if I'm too tired to cook!) we will have delicious nutritious meals that are ready to go.



We ended up making 8 different main course recipes serving 4 people, and then we doubled all of them, making a total of 16 meals serving 4 people.

We also made three recipes of quick breads: banana, pumpkin, and zucchini for breakfasts. (these are so good I have already been starting to eat these!!)

We had such a good time cooking together, it was such a nice way to spend a weekend, though next year hopefully we'll do it again with a few bottles of wine!

Here are the recipes that we made:

Main dishes:
Chicken & Broccoli Cheddar Casserole
Creamy Spinach Lasagna
Thai Coconut Curry
White Bean Tuscan Soup
Mexican Casserole
Sausage & Chicken Jambalaya
Amazing Meatballs
Curried Pumpkin Apple Soup


And here are some pictures of the food, I didn't take enough, sorry!

Thai Coconut Curry:


Amazing Meatballs:


And here is all of the food in our freezer!

29 weeks and OW!

Made it to 29 weeks! Hurrah! Now I have to make it another 7-8 weeks... I know I should be enjoying this pregnancy, it may be the last one I have... but I'm getting bigger and these babies are kicking harder! I am about ready to be done and have these babies already! When I was pregnant with Ellen I remember loving all of her kicks, they were so sweet and only slightly annoying at 2am. I don't know whether its because there are two of them, or because my stomach is more tender because its stretched a bit more, but OW do these babies kick hard! A lot of their kicks actually hurt and most of them just feel uncomfortable. And I have 8 more weeks of this! Oh boy.

Here is a pic of me looking pretty huge in a dress. I blame the dress:

(this is at 27 weeks btw... I've grown 2 weeks since then!)


Here is a picture of me and Ellen - I don't look as huge here!



And here is our happy family:



We had our 28 week appointment last week and everything went great - Anna (baby A, on the left side) is still head down, and weighs 2lbs 9oz. Lucy (baby B, on the right side) has flipped so she is now head up, and weighs 2lbs 8oz. They need to make it to 5-6lbs each, so they've still got a ways to go. We hope that we make it to 37-38 weeks! They will be Thanksgiving (or close) babies!

Here is Anna:

And here is Lucy!

One sad thing is going on in our lives this week, we have decided to give our dog up for adoption. We have had our dog Amara for about 3 1/2 years and she's been a wonderful dog. She has a few quirks, but we had learned to deal with them, until a few weeks ago when she started demonstrating aggressive / dominating behavior towards Ellen. She was wonderful with Ellen when she was a baby, but something about the transition to toddler changed everything. She didn't hurt Ellen, but she did scare her, and we a) don't want Ellen to get hurt if Amara ever tried to bite her and b) don't want Ellen growing up scared of a dog that is aggressive towards her.

So, two weeks ago we surrendered her to a local no-kill shelter but agreed to foster her until a home could be found. I wanted to use the shelter because they do weekly adoption events where people come to see dogs which is much more publicity than we could ever manage for Amara on craigslist or any classifieds. During Amara's first adoption event at the shelter two Sundays ago - someone decided they wanted to adopt her!! This past weekend he brought a friend's dog to see if they would get along outside, and Amara passed with flying colors, so she will be adopted this Saturday. We will really miss her, she has been a great dog and we love her dearly. Ellen is really going to miss her too - the other day she said to Matt: "I love Amara SO much!" :( It is the right thing to do for us and Amara. I think Amara will be happier in a home where she does not have to share attention with a toddler and two twins!! The guy who is going to adopt her is single, lives alone with no other pets, and wants a dog! He even lives kind of close to us so he will take her to the same park that we walk her in! Maybe we'll even run into them there, which might make me really sad, though it would be good to see her happy!

Here are a few pictures I took today. We will miss her.