We Are 2! Happy Birthday!

I can not believe that I have two 2 year old toddler running around this house. Every time I see them shrieking past me I smile. Every single day Drew and I still say to each other "Hey, you know what's weird?" but the answer isn't just "We have twins." or "We're parents." Now it's "We have two two year olds." Cameron and Evan still blow our minds.

They are talking up a storm and every day it's something new. They both notice so much that we never see, and when we finally figure out what they're yammering about it's just as amazing to both Drew and me as it is to Cameron and Evan. The boys only run, there is no such thing as walk, and it is NEVER in the same direction at the same time. And if something can be climbed, they will climb it. They are entertaining the idea of food now, though still not technically eating anything. They love books, flowers, dogs, anything with wheels, buttons, levers, cranks, pulleys, doors, buckets, sticks, all zoo and farm animals, Elmo, Barney, and being outside.

We had a fabulous birthday party at Rollie Pollies on Saturday and all our friends and family were there to celebrate with us. Everyone was able to run around on the equipment, jump, bounce, throw, slide, roll, dive, swing, hop, and toddle. Even the grown-ups. And all the kids were wonderful, there were no real meltdowns and everyone had fun. Cameron got into the party spirit by sampling a lick of pizza and some Elmo candy, while Evan spent a large part of his time jumping on the trampoline and running through the moon bounce and slide. The boys received so many wonderful gifts and we want to thank everyone for them and for sharing this special event with our family. It means the world to us that this year the boys were able to have a REAL birthday party with friends and family about them.

In this first picture Cameron has just put a piece of pizza in his mouth for the first time, totally unprompted. He did not gag and he pulled the piece out without any anxiety, mostly because he didn't know what to do with the cheese once he had it in his mouth. There were several witnesses that saw the exchange, and had I not been so overcome with emotion that I had to leave the room I would have gotten more shots.





Cameron did suck on a piece of Elmo candy from the top of a cup cake. I have not been able to convince him to try this again, but I am not giving up.


























Happy Birthday to my sweet, mischievous, energetic twosome. Daddy and I love you with all our hearts.

Putting on the Ritz

The boys have been introduced to Ritz crackers this week and for Cameron they are a major hit! So much so that today he gave me a little scare and surprise. I had handed him his crackers (one of his new words) and turned to get milk from the counter top to put on his highchair. When I turned back to him he was gagging and turning red, eyes watering. No biggie, I thought he'd taken a tiny bite like he usually does and gagged on it and was trying to throw up, like he usually does. But then he turned purple, opened his mouth really wide and out popped the whole cracker. He had put the WHOLE thing in his mouth. He's never put anything but empty spoons, teethers and a wet toothbrush in his mouth but never actual whole pieces of food. It startled me so much I think I yelped kind of loudly when he inhaled air. But here's where the bigger surprise comes in. He grabbed another cracker and tried the same trick not once, twice, but three times! And never once did he gag or throw up because of his oral aversion. Wonders will never cease.

Cherry Popping

Yep, I had my very first emergency tube change out today. Good times! :-/ This is a scenario that I have been mentally preparing for every day for the last year since the day they explained what would happen if the boys pulled out their tubes somehow. It was really quick and easy, but on the inside it was all I could do to keep myself from crying and shaking and I didn't want the boys to see that at all. I knew that Cam's tube was leaking because it was hanging waaaaay out for the last two days and I had to keep adding water, but today it was dangling practically all the way out and I knew I wouldn't make it to the GI doc on Monday. We have made it 13mos without ever having a tube pulled out or leaking water from the balloon, which is an impressive record based on the other reports from my friends who have kids with feeding tubes, especially since I have two kids with tubes.

Cam was calm and distracted by a toy and and my wonderful husband's antics, and he really could have cared less that I was pulling a two inch piece of plastic out of his gut. The grossest thing about it was the pop and hiss of gas when I pulled out the old tube and looking into the black hole of his insides. The second gross thing was how hard it was to get the new tube back in; I really had to push and almost wiggle the sucker in there. But Cam was fine, barely noticed a thing like as if I was changing his diaper. A major difference from every other time the doctor has changed the tube. This kind of procedure is not something I have ever wanted to do, but becoming a mother makes you do things you would never imagine yourself doing without batting an eye.

Now my question for all you tube feeding parents is, should I go ahead and change out Evan's tube now or wait for the GI appointment in April to swap out his tube at the doctor's office?

I like to think of my self as a pretty good person to have around for an emergency, I don't hesitate much and can stay pretty calm in most cases. Now that this first experience is behind me (and it took me a couple of hours to get rid of the shakes afterward) I feel like I could totally handle anything at all. Nothing like a big old hole through your kids' belly to make you super brave. I'm pretty proud of myself, but I do have about 10 new gray hairs on my head.

For those of you who don't know or don't remember what a G tube looks like here's a pic of the old one I pulled out of Cam with the leak in it. In this pic I have the balloon filled with water which is how it should be inside his belly. To pull it out you have to remove the water with a syringe and the balloon will deflate so that it's just a little plastic tube.



And here's Cameron showing off his new "bellybutton" as we call it.


In other news here are some of the fun things the boys are saying right now:

Evan -
Ah ah ah... (and he waits for you to say "choooo!")
Ah-choo - sometimes he wants to say the choo part
Dooraw - draw
Kay-on - crayon
St-hur - stir
soo - soup
hop
jum - jump (and he can actually catch some air when he jumps too!)
peese - please


Cameron -
bi-kal - bicycle, this applies to all bicycles and motorcycles
crown - crayon
Quinkle Star - Twinkle twinkle little star
pan - pants
stur - stir
finger
ky-et - quiet (usually followed by a finger to the lips and Shhhh....)
seep - sleep
ABC! - He's been saying the alphabet but gets stuck after the letter C. It's his favorite thing to say over and over and over, but will say the rest of the letters with some prompting.

Also both boys can count to 5 with prompting by holding up your fingers, though tonight out of the blue Cameron counted to 10 without any help. Evan can do it up to 5 without help too. Both boys can recognize the numbers 1 through 5 because we have seen these numbers in our outings and they will come and get me and point to the number and tell me what it is without my asking. I'm totally loving this stage!!

Weekend Getaway!

Boy have we been busy! It's beautiful out, so escape to the sunshine we must go. The boys have plateaued on their willingness to eat but they are talking up a storm and that's great. And plateauing is fine too, at least it's not going backwards. We have been doing lots of play dates recently, the best one is going to Storyville. Storyville is a toddler sized world with lots of things to do and play and lots of great books to read all supplied by the county library system for free. It's wonderful and so clean!






Hanging out with Auntie Annie, Lila and Sasha in the Infant Garden at Storyville:

Our friend Lila is giving Cameron & Evan a tutorial on how to use the cash register:






I also was granted a temporary weekend release from my Mommy duties by my awesome hubby to go to New Orleans and meet some wonderful Moms of Multiples (MoMs) for the first time. Drew stayed home with the boys all by himself for four days playing Mr. MoM, and did a fantastic job at it too (as expected, I might add). Thank you Sweetheart for allowing me to go on this weekend getaway. I'm so glad that we did it.

This is how a REAL man does it!


In honor of my hubby and children....


I met these amazing women through an online support group and we've become very close. We come from all over the country and all have at least one set of twins or triplets. We've known each other for about two years online, started our own private board about a year ago, and this past weekend about 30 of the almost 200 member group got to meet in person for the first time in New Orleans.

It was a fabulous weekend and perfect weather. And the highlight of my trip with these ladies was getting to meet my friend Annie in person for the first time. This is a specially moving thing for me because Annie has twin boys too, and one of them (Jax) is also on a feeding tube and has had to deal with everything we have and so much more because he's officially diagnosed with a very serious condition called CIPO, which in many scary ways mirrors what Cameron and Evan have been going through with all the vomiting. Annie is amazing and has really helped us through so much of our feeding tube and reflux experiences. Our first meeting was a ten minute hug filled with tears and joy, and I think we had all 30 women sobbing. All our boys are doing so great now that this get together was a real celebration and Annie and I finally got to have our much needed stiff drink together.

The group refers to itself as The MoMfia (you may have seen me refer to the MoMs and the MoMfia on FaceBook at times), and while the first rule of any great club is not to talk about it, I need to give a big shout out to all my girls who've gotten me through the last two years of having twins. Without their support I would be a wreck. It's also nice to know that someone else is still in a daze from having more than one kid at a time, even if it's one, two, three or four years later. On our weekend away from the kids we ate so much delicious food, especially Tamlyn's welcome dinner (so good!), went bar crawling, took a ghost tour, did some shopping, took a swamp boat tour, held an alligator, and learned by example how to get beads by Holly and her southern charm at the St. Patty's Day parade. We had such a great time and can not wait to do this again next year.

So without further ado, here are some of the obligatory pics from my trip that I'm allowed to post:
For my boys, who will never believe I did this without seeing the proof...

This hot little number is my good friend and soul-sister Annie. Yeah, I'm jealous. She's a size -2, and she's super sweet and wicked funny and cool.

Yes our group motto is "We laugh at your ONE baby." and "No Drama Llama's allowed. Girls only." If you had two or three or more children all at the same age you'd be laughing too!

Marcie managed to get the best beads, the were personalized with the letter M just for her!! ;-)