2 Years Ago.

2 years ago I laid in a hospital bed, sans pain killers for 17 hours post surgery thinking I had made a HUGE mistake allowing a c-section to be performed on my body to remove twins (like I had any choice). Thinking the nurses must be joking (or insane) when they argued with me to "get out of bed and walk" (again, sans pain killers). And then grateful when my painkillers were finally released to me (note to self, being allergic to codeine is NOT handy).

2 Years ago I missed my favorite holiday with my family and I spent it eating hospital turkey food (a word I use lightly). But thankful for a fabulous cousin who came and stayed the night with me and the twins - brought REAL food! To this day, I'm pretty sure she is STILL looking for a way to buy one of those amazingly comfortable chair/bed/torture contraptions! 

But 2 years ago  - we were blessed with THIS:

Born at 36 weeks 2 days - (left) Mini P was 5lbs 2oz and about 18 inches long (right) Monkey was 5lbs 15oz and about 18 inches long.  Their birth was the most amazing experience and unless you have carried twins (or more) or battled pre-term labor you cannot fathom the relief we felt when they were both born healthy. Never once did they enter the NICU. Never.

1 year and a lot of craziness later:

Mini P

Monkey

The first year was filled with a lot of hazy days, unanswered emails, diapers, spit up and LOTS of LOVE! 

And here we are, 2 years later. We now answer most emails, have fewer diapers and our days are far more clear than they were and still filled with LOTS of LOVE! We look back and think - do we really remember how we got here? :- )

Mini P

Monkey (photo kept uploading sideways...ergh)

My sweet little baldies now have hair :- )! Monkey has even had his cut several times!

At 2 years old Mini P is nearly potty trained. She still wears a diaper at night and nap because she is a solid sleeper and logs about 11 hours of sleep a night. She is such a chatter box and at least now we can understand what she is trying to say and it no longer comes out as gibberish! We hear her say stuff like "where's bubba? OH, there he is!" She absolutely adores all of her brothers and hugs on all of them. She is the princess, but isn't girly. At all. For her birthday I tried to get her some "my little ponies" (ok folks, I don't know what I'm supposed to get a girl...) and she calls them horses and doesn't actually do anything with them.  The girl does love books and LOVES Dora and loves to play outside. She has been known to scream and throw her body in all directions when she is brought inside (brought because she refused to go on her own free will).  She is sweet as pie and hands out hugs and kisses all the time! Mini P knows all her upper case letters by sight and many of her numbers 1 to 9. We don't know why, but she just does :- ).

Monkey is such a sweet boy with not much to say. He can string 2 words together but it usually things like "daddy work", "bubba bus". He will answer your question with a "yup" or "no", but doesn't typically expand on that as his sister does.  He has always been and continues to be a Daddy's boy. I satisfy him to a point, but really, it's all Daddy!  Monkey is very much into transportation. Trucks, airplanes, trains, tractors, trailers, cars...you name it he loves it. He will lay on the floor for long periods of time just moving them back and forth...lining them up, moving them forward and backward. He still has to sleep with his arsenal of transportation items. Usually no fewer than 10 items, plus blankets, his baby, and a couple other random things. Surprisingly, he still fits in his bed!  Last week Agent P and I cleaned under Monkey's crib  (we store bean bags under the crib) and we found 25 - yes you read right 25 cars, trucks, trailers etc behind and under the bed. Apparently I should clean that more frequently. Monkey has the most infectous laugh. It is a belly laugh that just pulls you and makes you laugh with him. It is so easy to get him to laugh, which makes it all the more beautiful!!!

We absolutely LOVE having twins and wouldn't trade one moment of it for anything at all.  They complete our family perfectly and give us the perfect balance. So many people (seriously, SOOOO MANY) say, "you have your hands full". Since I refuse to carry them all - really, I have my HEART full and that's what I tell them. You don't know what you are missing unless you have total and complete chaos at least ONCE a day. Usually around here it's more than that!!!

It all started with a faucet.

My kids/husband are perfectly aware of my slight addiction to home improvement shows.  Saturdays are not for cartoons, but for HGTV and DIY. Trust me when I say, my kitchen is outdated, my cupboards are close to antique, my flooring is shameful, the paint needs "replacement" and really, the whole house needs to just be totally renovated. Don't even get me started on the backyard or the front yard for that matter. Trust me, I'm near "expert". They (kids/husband) are also very aware that I am one step away from putting my house on the market and having HGTV join me in "House Hunters International" somewhere in the Caribbean - if it were not for the ridiculous shape my home is in ;- )! I am a firm believer in having my kids raised on the beach and home schooled during bad weather!

But the reality is that I will live in this house probably until it becomes the latest home deemed Historic and will never be demolished due to some county ordinance. Then people will tour my home to see how homes were built "back then".

Given all of that pertinent information, I'm a huge fan of renovations (side note - have you ever watched "Renovation Realities"??? Oh friend if you have not, you do NOT know what you are missing. This is true, unabridged entertainment). I'm also the mom of 4 kids that enjoy my attention, thus keeping me (really my sweet husband) from doing as much as my renovation wild hair permits.

I decided not long ago that we needed to redo the kids' bathroom. Well, let me back up. I decided we needed a new faucet. HOWEVER, if I was going to buy a new faucet, I wanted one in a new finish. I really like brushed nickel - and the antique brass (see, again with antique) had to GO.

The need for a new faucet stems from the need for a 4 year old to be able to turn the water on and off himself. Currently we have the "pull the knob really, really hard - straight up - and don't turn it to the left or you'll burn yourself knob". I want one with 2 handles so the kids can turn on the cold water and wash. Simple enough right?

So, to change the faucet we also needed to remove the mirror that was glued permanently to the wall, remove glue, fix wall, remove old towel racks, patch wall holes, remove old light fixture, fix wall, paint, buy new shower curtain, towel bars, mirror, light fixture and of course the faucet.

Here's how it went:

Bathroom BEFORE (notice - white walls - GASP!)

Bathroom BEFORE

Before (see, sports themed? That's going...)

Mirror GONE

Wall fixed and painted.

Now for the AFTER pictures:

Now Agent P can reach his own towel!

New shower curtain picked out by A-Dog (with my guidance)

New mirror! New lights (hard photograph) and paint - well it's light grey, also hard to see!

Do you see something that might be missing?? Like the FAUCET??? :- )

I try to be..

Calm, Cool and Collected.

I try to be that mom people look at and say "man she makes that look easy". Cuz really, I have a 2.5 year gap between Agent P and the twins and upon first glance it does appear somewhat chaotic. I like to think that it is organized chaos that I have completely under control.  Or to at least appear that way so that people don't offer up their typical comments that I endure on a regular basis. 

Today I wondered if I was taking that a little too far. I was at the grocery store (a necessary evil) with the 3 younger ones, when out of one ear I heard a small *coughing on my cracker* cough. I was about 3 feet from the cart (looking at juice or planning my escape you decide) and I didn't even flinch or look. Seriously not even a twitch. Then I hear a lady say "oh my goodness are you OK???" Very worried and very concerned. Then I looked (hoping some passerby wasn't going to have to Heimlich one of my kids). But by then, I figured out she was talking to her daughter who was carrying a baggy of crackers and looked to be at least 6. She then continued with her daughter "I thought you were choking it was such a horrible cough!".  There was more but you get the distinctly opposite response to the situation.

Now honestly, I really didn't think the cough was that bad. Certainly to get my attention there would need to be more than one hack at the cracker imbedded in their throat and to really get me moving some gagging sounds or noises.

But for a fleeting moment, I thought to myself how sad that was. One of my chicklets could have actually been choking and here I was just trying to find the juice that the coupon pictured. The juice was for them if that gives me any consolation points...

Perhaps in my attempt to allow chaos to rise to a level 4 or so before reacting, I've permitted myself to tune out the other sounds that may come from the chicklets before the ear piercing screams, hitting, yelling, grabbing, pushing or throwing begins.

And if I allowed this, I do I figure out how to decipher out the emergent sounds and the annoying fighting sounds?

I'm not sure I can.

So, while I may try to be Calm, Cool and Collected...I probably come off more as the mom that onlookers laugh, roll their eyes, gasp, *ahem* real loud in hopes that I might notice that one of my chicklets needs to be handled. And I ignore those sounds too :- )