Oma knows

Every once in awhile, I try to teach the kids a few words in German. They love languages and seem to enjoy it. It's usually just basic stuff, colors, parts of the body, whatever small vocabulary I have. It usually ends with them asking me how to say something very complicated in German, way beyond my limited knowledge. Once, I told them, "I don't know. We'll have to ask Oma." Now, any time they ask me something, whether it's a word in Spanish or "who is that boy walking down the street?" or any of the other random questions they ask, and my answer is "I don't know," Sylvia responds with, "we should go ask Oma." She's on to something!!

man up!

Have I mentioned what a great dad D is?  He's fabulous.  Wonderful.  Amazing.  Truly the best.  He loves these kiddos with his whole heart.  And it shows.  Except when they won't go to sleep and we both lose our #$!^ minds.  He has always been a servant husband, helping me on a daily basis in ways that other women never see their entire lives.  I have always said that I don't like Valentine's Day because I want a man to show me every day that he loves me.  He doesn't get one day to show off and then slack off the rest of the year.  D took that to heart.  Well, now that we have the three munchkins, he now has 3 MORE people to care for.  And he does.  Dads of twins tend to help out more than other dads (because they have to in order to survive).  But, I don't think that is his true excuse for being so wonderful.  Probably because I think he even puts most twin dads to shame.  Yes, I'm bragging.  But not out of pride--out of gratitude.  And a little pride. 

Here are a few pics from our trip of D in action.

With more husbands like D, women would have decent chance at real equality.  Unfortunately, that's not the case and I'm one lucky woman.

sick baby...

Now that he's one, or maybe because he's so tall, I've mentally made the switch to thinking of Oscar as not a baby anymore. He doesn't walk or talk, but he's starting to grow up in my mind.

At least most of the time. He caught some sort of bug and is now sick. We're on our third try of getting him to sleep. He does fall asleep, but he must feel terrible. SylRafa weren't sick often. And when they were, they battled through really well (at least as far as I remember). Oscar is suffering more, or battling less, or capitalizing on mami time--for which he certainly has gotten the short shrift so far. I will make that up to him when he's 17, but he won't care, then.

Anyhow, poor O is not a happy camper. And as I hold his limp, tired, body in my arms, twitching with his aches and discomfort, I know he's still my baby. And he needs my love and hugs and the comfort that he is cared for more than anything right now. And I am erupting with love.

Please pray we get some sleep tonight! And that nobody else caught or will catch this.

our little swimmers

We haven't had the kids in the pool very much this summer.  But, some friends raved about Ms. Janis's swim classes and since they are only for two kids, they seemed perfect.  We ended up with a 3:15 time slot, which is great for some reasons, but not so great for others.  The main drawback is that they aren't napping as early as we would like, so I had to wake them up for class.  Plus, we were out late last night, so Rafa was TIRED.  He's already difficult in these situations (doesn't like water on his face, slightly terrified of water, and never likes to perform or prove he's learning on demand, prefers to try when nobody is looking), but the lack of sleep surely didn't help. 

Sylvia jumped right in and tried her darnedest to get out of everyone's arms and swim on her own.  She followed directions well and did some things that she had never done before!  It was all very fun for her.  She did hit her limit at the end and had had enough of going under the water.  But, she tried everything and learned fairly quickly that she could do most of it.

Rafa, on the other hand, needed some time to warm up to being in the pool.  About 30 minutes or so.  Out of a 45 minute class...  He really didn't want to have to perform on command, even for things that I know he can do.  For instance, the teacher really wanted to get the kids to blow out of their noses on command.  Well, after many months of allergies and colds, I am 100% certain that both children can do it.  But, neither of them really wanted to prove it, certainly not Rafa.  Sylvia at least gave it a half-hearted attempt.  Once we got home and I asked him to blow his nose because of more snot, he asked if he should do it like in swim class and put his finger in front of his nose, like Ms. Janis did to discover if they were indeed blowing out of their noses.  Yeah, thanks buddy. 

Here is Sylvia doing a starfish.  I assume because it has something to do with floating?...  I always floated like a board and moved my arms.  Maybe I can float more easily?  I hope to learn something from this class, too!

And here are both kiddos "swimming" across.  You can see Rafa kicking a little.  And since he's peacefully participating, it wasn't one of the times when he thrust his arms around my neck and clung to me out of pure fear.  There was marked improvement in both kids by the end of class.  I'm really excited to see what progress they'll make these next two weeks.  AND, many thanks to Tia Candy who came to help and also helped us document the fun!

ONE! (yesterday)

Oscar turned ONE yesterday!  Time is just flying by.  One whole year...gone.  And his birthday whizzed past me and I couldn't quite get a blog post up.  Poor third child.

We did take him to the doctor on his birthday for shots and a checkup.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 

He's still taking after his sis, although SUPER tall.  I'm not sure she ever hit 99% (with the incredibly inaccurate stretch the kid and draw on the paper measurement).  Here they are:
Height: 32" (99%)
Weight: 22 lb. 4 oz. (66%)
Head: 18" (39%)

He will catch up with Rafa in height really soon...  He is super healthy other than nagging ear fluid that won't drain.  We put him on another antibiotic to see if it does the trick.  So, 10 more days of medicine and another doc visit on the horizon.  If we can't get rid of this fluid, we will probably have to put tubes in.  Yuck.

Here are some pictures of O from the day before and the day of his birthday.  Oh, how I love him!

family vacay

We're off on our family time trip away from home.  SylRafa were thrilled to go to the airport and ride on a plane.  All three did great in the airport, on the plane, everything.  Our flight was an evening flight, though, so Oscar got quite tired and didn't want to sleep.  So, he was a little fussy, until the gentleman across the aisle from me asked if he could hold him.  He was wearing a hat, glasses, a mustache, and a beard, so Oscar was entranced checking him out.  The kindness continued when we arrived at the airport.  We had gotten moved to the very back of the plane (because there wasn't an extra oxygen mask in our row for Oscar, our lap child), so we were the last to enter the airport.  As we waited at the end of the line for immigration, the immigration official saw us with all the kiddos and the baby and came and brought us in to cut in front of everyone.  For which we were grateful.  And nobody seemed to mind.

[So that was the post that I started in Mexico, then added a few pics, maybe half a dozen, and somehow couldn't upload.  And possibly, the reason we burned through a gig of data in a matter of days.  I did try to capture some of our memories before they became fleeting one of our last evenings, so here's what should have been about 15 blog posts all in one.]

The transition started out a little rough.  Oscar did not do well sleeping the first week.  We discovered that he had an ear infection, so that no doubt was part of the challenge.  He also slept in our room and so when he woke up and saw that we were almost within reach, he would rather cry to be picked up than soothe himself back to sleep in an unknown bed in an unknown room.  Our curtains did not provide great darkness, so I taped a few cardboard boxes to the window to help make it a little darker.  We also bought a little clock radio to be able to turn on the white noise.  I’m a little afraid it’s hurting his hearing, though, and since it’s a little annoying to me, I always turned it down when I went to bed and sometimes off if I couldn’t sleep.  By the end of the trip, while Oscar would wake up and fuss for a couple seconds, maybe roll around a little, he would stay in bed lying down and go back to sleep on his own until he knew it was 6:00 am sharp, at which time he would stand up and babble until we picked him up.  MUCH better than the crying.  All of our kids are like little alarm clocks.  It pretty much doesn't matter when they go to sleep, they wake up at the same time in the morning no matter what. 

The twins adjusted quite well to sleeping in a new place and in beds rather than cribs.  They both fell out of bed at least once.  But, much to our surprise, they almost never left their beds even when they didn’t want to sleep (which was always).  Sylvia came out of the room twice and Rafa would get up to play in the room a couple times to avoid sleeping.  That didn’t mean that bedtime was necessarily easy.  They fought and fought every step of the way and Sylvia wailed her heart-wrenching wail when she would realize that it was time to sleep and we really meant it.  This is neither a battle we enjoy nor have figured out how to handle very well.  But, it’s also not unique to the trip.  We’re just in a smaller house so we can’t escape it quite as well.  And, because we’re around more and gave in a little thinking that we needed to be more accommodating to the transition, we probably just made it worse.  We were not strict about naps, either, as we didn’t want to have to battle every day or not be able to see anything since Oscar naps in the morning and afternoon and the twins in the middle of the day.  So, that made some evenings a little rough since they were certainly overtired, both from all the activities of the day and also from skipping naps.  A few times, I lay down with them to read, which helped them to drift off to the land of Nod.  And it was a nice rest for me, too!

In the car one day, Rafa was a mess.  I tried turning on music because he often enjoys listening to music to see if it would distract or calm him.  It did neither.  He wailed.  And cried his typical, "NO QUIEEEEEEERO!"  ("I DON'T WANT IT!")  When he finally got quiet, Sylvia, who rarely stops talking, turned to him sweetly and the following ensured:

S: No estas molesto mas?  (You're not upset any more?)

R: No.

S: Quieres la musica? (Do you want the music?)

R: No.  Yo quiero el silencio. (No.  I want silence.)

[You and me both, little boy, you and me both...]

Oscar learned to back down stairs while we were away, but much prefers going up.  In fact, every free moment he beelines towards the stairs, goes up a step or two, turns to look and see if anyone will stop him, flashes his winning smile, then heads up.  He also learned to take a couple steps.  He’s not full out walking yet, but on the verge.  He much more confidently stands and squats, and definitely cruises, but often bails and goes back to crawling rather than taking more than 2-3 steps.

The twins got really into jumping on the trip.  They enjoyed jumping down steps, off the sidewalks, over cracks, or just around. They also had a blast on these really fun trampolines they had in the parks.  They dug out a hole and the trampoline is at the same level as the ground.  They have the net sides to help keep them fairly safe.  I thought it was brilliant.  And super fun for the kids.

Finicky eating came out in force from Rafa.  He has a major aversion to all things vegetable.  There were glimpses of hope, however, as he would point out that he was going to try something new.  And, he actually would.  But, typical Rafa, it took him some time to warm up to it and it would have to be when he decided to try it.  Sylvia, on the other hand, got excited at the prospect of trying anything and everything new. 

Rafa also has started becoming more of a “boy”.  He has begun doing many things with gusto and excitement and NOISE.  He enjoys shouting and making big sounds, like lion roars.  He has also really improved his vocabulary and is not as intimidated by long words.  He still flips consonants around fairly regularly, which Sylvia is always quick to correct.

In the kids' room, they had a closet with sliding doors.  One in front of shelves and the other in front of a space for hanging clothes.  That became a really fun place for the kids to play.  They called it their ambulance as playing doctor was a frequent pastime.  A really dear friend has been their pediatrician since they were born and so it was really fun for them to play her.  I also really like that when they think of doctors, they think of women.  :)  The closet also got filled with balloons for birthdays and was once a train. It was definitely a favorite play space for the kids, which was wonderful for us when they would escape up there to play for an hour or so.  It's also quite fun to listen to their imaginary play.  They really enjoy playing make believe with each other.  And they're imaginations are quite active.

The kids still love singing.  We will need to start learning some new songs!  We did start listening to a variety of music in the car, which was provided by the car owner and I hope that this might be the end of kid music in our cars at home. 

Every day we would tell the kids that we were going on an adventure.  They really enjoyed seeing new things, no matter how mundane.  They loved going to all the churches.  We told them that inside we had to use voces bajitas and so every time we approached a church or talked about going to one, Rafa would excitedly say, “Mami, mami, mami!!” and then in a whisper, “vamos a usar voces bajitas” ("we're going to use our quiet voices") with his finger in front of his mouth.  They were very proud and also very good at being quiet while in the churches. 

Sylvia learned that the churches are for God and Jesus.  When we neared Santa Maria de Tenantzitlan (sp?), it had two steeples, so she said, “Hay dos Iglesias.  Una para Dios y una para Jesus!”  Once inside, she pointed to each baby or man and said, “Baby Jesus!…Jesus!…otro Jesus!”  And on the way out after looking into one of the capillas, “Dos Marias!”  She’s got this Catholic thing down.

Sylvia also learned to get a little more comfortable with big, loud noises and noises at night in general.   Pretty much every day we were there, some church was celebrating their day.  So, we had fireworks going off all the time at night.  Once, they went off pretty much through the night.  At 2:30, 3, 4:30, whenever.  We told the kids that they are for a celebration at a church.  So, every time we heard the fireworks or thunder, Sylvia shouted, they're celebrating at a church!

All in all, it was wonderful to be away.  But we're also happy to be able to brush our teeth using tap water, to be sleeping in our soft and comfy bed, and to not have to mop away dust every night.  We definitely came back appreciating our lives here more!

the land of the whine

We've arrived.  Welcome to the land of the whine.  Where every request and most statements carry the same tune.  Starts high pitched and a tad nasally, and tapers down on the last, drawn out word.  And, because we were doubly blessed, we get it in stereo sound.  I'm trying to decide if I prefer Oscar's crying to the whining...  The crying is worse, except that I excuse it more.  I mean, he CAN'T use words and a normal speaking voice.  Let's just agree that they both tie for terrible.  A phase I hope they escape and stat.  My hopes were dashed a little when another mom with a tween and a teen told me this week that they both still whine.  If it goes on for that many years, you might find me perpetually in another land of wine.

I might count tomorrow, but I'm fairly certain that I hear "Yo quieeeeeeeeero..." and "No quieeeeeeeeero..." more than any other word every day.  ("I want" and "I don't want")

"Pero" ("but") is a close second.  It's probably Sylvia's favorite thing to say.  She already has about 1,000 reasons why she can't do whatever is being asked of her.  "Pero, pero, pero..."  [pause to think of a reason...then continue] is very common in our house. 

I've started employing any and every manner of strategy to nip this in the bud.  And it's an attack on all fronts.  Ignore, bribe, mimic, we've got it all going on.  I fear I will soon start whining to D before bed, "Why won't they sto-o-o-op?..."