Summer in San Francisco

The first pic gives you some idea of how bad the weather has been in the past few weeks (ok, it hasn't been that cold, but I always think it will be that cold when I see all the fog). But seriously, I mean to look like this in August???? I hear Marin calling my name.

The other pics show the girls on the swing... they have definitely grown since the last time I put them in it. Taking the girls to the park by myself is a little scary because I have to leave one to put the other in or out of the stroller. I feel very safe in the park I go to but it still worries me. But they are really starting to enjoy the swing and watching the other kids so I'm sure we'll still visit often. I can only imagine what lies ahead when they start walking.

Still sick but feeling better. Now I just feel like a fat, mushy, lard because I haven't exercised in forever. With my mother and Kallie gone this week it would have been difficult enough...add the sick factor in and you get couch potato molly.

Parental regression

So I have a confession to make. I think I'm regressing back to childhood a bit. Maybe it is because I am sick, but there are a few of these 'baby' things I might like a little two much. Two examples:

---Baby food...I have to say that I LIKE it. Last night I topped off my dinner with a jar of Earth's Best mashed bananas. NO JOKE. Ok, maybe the real problem is that Andrew was working late and I didn't feel well enough to get to the store on Sunday, but still, the stuff isn't half bad. I mean really, who doesn't like pureed sweet potatoes??? mmmmmm.....good.

---Animal blankets. So we started to give the girls little animal blankets (half stuffed animal/half blankie) during sleep training. The ones I bought originally were cute but probably wouldn't stand the test of time (meaning 2 years of little girls trying to eat them, rub their faces in them, etc). So my mother found and bought new ones... the most adorable giraffe and rabbit blankies I have ever seen. So incredibly soft AND they come with proteins embedded in them that help fight asthma and allergies (a big concern with preemies). As part of the process of giving them to the girls I sleep with them for the first few nights so they smell like me. The problem is that I LIKE sleeping with them. I'm actually having a hard time giving them up to C & D (although it is really cute to see how quickly they have fallen in love with them...they get huge smiles on their faces when I give them to them).

So I attached this picture because it is a classic "dylan and charlotte" comparison. We tried to take pictures of the girls and couldn't get Dylan to stop moving long enough to look at us. Charlotte, on the other hand, mugged for the camera for several minutes. You can see the drool hanging off of her chin as evidence of how long she was grinning.

One more tidbit about the ladies....they LOVE when things hit them on the head. I'm not joking on this one. We have these soft foam blocks...you would think they would like to see them stacked up and then knocked over. Nope. They prefer that I throw them up in the air and they land squarely on their faces. Dylan laughs and laughs and laughs. Or, even worse, the Prices gave them these little toy hammers that make noises when you hit them lightly on something. Charlotte and Dylan, Dylan in particularly, LOVE it when I use the hammers to hit them on the head, forehead, nose, etc. I have absolutely no idea what this says about them.

Big Weekend

This weekend was a busy one in the Dodson household. Considering that I have not been out two nights in a row--other than for a wedding--in about a year, I am definitely feeling it today. I didn't even really drink and I still feel hungover. But it was fun, so I guess that makes it worth it.
First, Friday was Andrew's birthday. No, sadly, not the big 30 yet. Just the little 29. We started the morning with a walk to get coffee with the girls, which was nice because andrew had just returned late the night before after a 4 day work trip. In the afternoon we joined Andrew for a work happy hour near his office in honor of his birthday. Then in the evening we met some people for dinner at Tortilla Heights. Tortilla Heights is a relatively new restaurant that has semi-decent fajitas, good queso, good margaritas, and good churros. The queso, margarita, and relatively good prices have made it, as you can guess, Andrew's new 'favorite restaurant' in SF. This is good news because usually he just says "i'm fine with Left at Albuquerque," which means we end up eating really bad Mexican food with lots of B&T people (I know, I'm one too, but whatever) on a Saturday night. (btw, I don't know what bothers Andrew more, the fact that I have a mental block and always want to spell queso "cheso," or the fact that our friend Peter (from Chicago) refers to it as "cheese dip." The lack of queso in CA may be Andrew's biggest beef with the place (well, that and the 10% states tax, ridiculous housing prices, and the fact that we paid $90 for <5 hours of babysitting Friday night). Other than that we are slowly converting him.)

After dinner we went out for drinks, but then I had to get home to relieve the babysitter. Although Andrew was only out about an hour and a half later than me, he managed to make good use of the time apparently. Given that I found him peeing into the shower at 3:30 am, I think it is safe to say that he didn't let the fact that he has a wife and two kids get in the way of celebrating his birthday in true 20-something tyle.

Saturday came along and we had to get ready for baby Dholakia's baby shower. The baby shower was moved to chez Dodson after Reese Glotzbach arrived 5+ weeks early and we figured that she might want her new home to herself. The party was moved here and we had to make the place look more like a home and less like a pre-school. Thanks to Krista and Sudhir the party seemed to go ok. One of the best parts was that we got to meet Peyton Price, who is as beautiful as she looks in pictures. I felt bad actually because I kept saying "wow, she is so beautiful"...but really, she is. I feel bad enough that I gave my daughters my boring brown eyes, and when I see babies like Peyton I feel even WORSE. It was great to hang with Andy and Mackenzie, and of course, it was just cold and ugly enough here that they could ask us why the hell we don't move back to Texas.

So today we basically did our best to recover.

So what else is going on?

--The girls are starting to sleep through the night, which is going to be a nice change in our life. After 4 weeks of Dylan crying all but a few nights for 40+ minutes, during which time I was either spending the day stressing about whether or not she would cry or spending the evening feeling completely exhausted from hearing her cry, the sleep consultant and I decided that she clearly didn't "get it" and that I should just get her down any way that I could. Well wouldn't you know it, the night after I soothed her to sleep she "got it" and she has basically gone to sleep very easily since. It is almost as if she sensed that I was less stressed because I knew that I didn't have to let her cry, and that in turn made her less stressed. Whatever the reason it makes me VERY happy.
I have only had to let them "cry it out" a bit 3 times in the middle of the night so far. The first two times Charlotte cried for about 30 minutes but the cry was more of a cry to herself than a cry for me. The third time was gut wrenching because she was almost asleep when she woke Dylan up. Now I'm all for teaching them not to wake up in the middle of the night, but can you blame a little girl for waking up when her sister is screaming in her ear for 30-40 minutes?? (The fact that they can sleep through each other crying for so long bewilders me. Other than the "waking each other up" issue, I love having them in the same room again because A) I hated having Dylan sleep by herself so far away, and B) I'm ready to claim my own room again.) So after almost two hours of listening to crying on and off (Andrew was out of town) I caved. Since they seem to be on the right path I'm no longer going to beat myself up when I go against the "rules."
The good news is that the girls are so much happier now that they are settling into a sleep routine. It is almost bizarre... you read these books, they tell you how babies will respond to this or that, and then they do almost EXACTLY what the books say they will. It almost creeps me out (I found out, btw, that it 'creeps' Andrew out that I keep a blog. Not quite sure what to make of this new information). Anyway, as you can see the sleep thing has been ruling my life lately, and I'm happy to say that I things are getting much better (and I promise not to go on an on about it anymore as a result).

ps. The first pic is Dylan watching her Daddy open gifts. The second pic shows off the Astros outfits I bought the girls in honor of A's birthday (although they have already told me they are As fans first, but will humor him). C=L I don't have pics of the party because my camera broke shortly after taking these pics.

WHAT A *%&#ING MESS!!

OMG, why didn't someone tell me what a mess food would be?! Here is how it goes down:

--I get the food out. They start to grunt because they can see it coming. OR, I'm eating my own food, like cereal, and they look at me pleadingly because they can't understand why I'm not feeding THEM.
--Ok, so let's assume that I actually AM trying to feed them. The minute they get the bibs on they A) start grunting because they want food, and B) start eating their bibs.
--I start feeding them. One grunts while I am feeding the other. When the grunting gets to a very high level I attempt to feed one with my right hand and one with my left. Since I can't do ANYTHING with my right hand this makes things REALLY messy.
--By the end of it all, there is food EVERYWHERE. I strip the girls down, stick q-tips in their noses to try to get the food out of their noses, do the same for their ears, and try my best to get the food off of their seats.

I'm so glad that no one told me what a mess this would be or I might never have fed them real food. (Although I figured out that I am producing 70 and 80 oz of milk A DAY to feed them. How I am still carrying about 10 more lbs than I'd like around when I'm basically a human COW is beyond me). The good news is that the girls seem to like food...they have now eaten sweet potatoes, bananas, peas, and winter squash. Thus it seems they already like more vegetables than their father.

So here are some videos (not that exciting but i figure the out of town relatives will enjoy):
Dylan going crazy on the jumperoo
Charlotte playing with her favorite friend the lion (we find lion fur in her hands hours afterward)
Dylan and Charlotte eating
Charlotte trying to eat the dragon

Glorious Mornings

Why don't adults act more like babies? When I lean over the girls' cribs in the morning they get huge grins and they start kicking furiously and flailing their arms. It's like I'm Santa Claus. And, regardless of how little sleep I've had the night before, seeing those smiles and watching those legs kick feels better than any Christmas morning I have ever had. So it is a complete win-win situation and the most spectacular start to a day. So I wonder, why the heck don't we do that as adults? I mean maybe I should kick my legs and flail my arms every time I wake up next to Andrew (which, given his work schedule and some weekends with friends, isn't that often lately). He didn't even make me cry myself to sleep the night before like I did to the girls in the past week....doesn't he deserve to be treated like Santa Claus even more??

I honestly wish that I could bottle the feeling I get when I see them each morning and pull it out whenever I need to throughout the rest of my life. Because really, it doesn't get any better.

Rocket Scientists

Here are 6 month pictures ... please shoot me an email if this link doesn't work.

Our friend Kate Sweeny is a kindergarten teacher, and she says that everyone thinks their kid is a genius and sometimes her job is to have to set them straight. First time parents are the worst because they think "my son learned to tie his shoe...he's a GENIUS".... it is the job of the kindergarten teacher to break it to them that all the other kids learned to tie their shoes AGES ago. I can totally see how this happens... first timers have nothing to compare the kid to, and the other people they might ask are usually grandparents, who have totally gone ga ga over the kid and are already filling out the Ivy League applications.

With twins you do get the benefit of comparison. For example, Dylan can now roll herself around the room, while Charlotte looks at her like "why bother doing that...if I just scream long enough mom will come pick me up." Charlotte is trying to sit up a bit...Dylan is too busy flipping to ever stay still long enough.

You still, however, wonder how your children "measure up" relative to others. For this reason it sometimes makes me nervous when I hear parents keep saying to their kids "oh you're so smart!" I mean really, what if they aren't?? It's like When Harry Met Sally "we all think we have good taste, but we can't all possibly have good taste," except I'm talking about brain power. So as for Charlotte and Dylan? They are starting to dig the idea of food. The problem is, they don't seem to get from where it comes. Even though they see it on the spoon, they seem to think it comes from the bib, as evidenced by this picture. Clearly these girls are a couple of Einsteins : )

So maybe I don't need to send money to Stanford/Harvard with the hopes of assuring their acceptances (not like I'd be sending enough to make a difference, but I like to pretend). Maybe they'll just have to settle for Duke. Or better yet, maybe they will join up with one of their Texas friends... Avery Erwin or Peyton Price perhaps... to become the next generation's Dixie Chicks (I gotta believe they already have Peyton on the karaoke machine practicing). Then they will be famous, and they can eat food any which way their little hearts desire and Us Weekly will say it's cool.

P.S. Dylan went down with only about 10 minutes of on and off crying tonight. I had to take longer to soother her before putting her down, but it was worth it!!! I'm so relieved that things seem to be getting better!!!!

And one more thing. If anyone is going to Target anytime soon let me know. I really like some of the things I bought there but after my tirade I can't possibly go back : )

Target is as Coffee is

So let me say first that I feel that I am at a stand still right now. We are still trying to teach the girls to soothe themselves to sleep, and Dylan has made zero progress at bedtime. She is still crying for almost an hour, and not a 'work it out' cry, but a 'why aren't you helping me cry.' It is literally paralyzing me and I feel like I can't get anything done until we fix this... I don't know why, it is just that it is so draining to hear her cry that after she cries at night I'm too drained to do anything, and all day it feels like I'm bracing myself for the next round. Add to the fact that I'm still up several times a night with them, and it is really exhausting. I would stop trying to get her to soothe herself, but she does it just fine during naps so we know she has the skill. Something about bedtime that is just not clicking for her. We are afraid if we stop it we'll have to go through it all over again later, and that is even crueler. But it really is so painful and it makes me feel like a lowsy mother. That and Andrew is now gone 4 of the next five nights so I have to listen to it all on my own. (Here is a pic of happy Dylan talking to the lion...this makes me feel better. You have no idea how often I find lion hair in the girls fingers. That pour sucker is getting torn apart).

Maybe that is why I am about to rant right now. About Target. Yes, I hate it. Target is like caffeine for me. Caffeine, and coffee in particular, makes me sick...headache, sick to my stomach, etc. Even decaf throws me for a loop. But every once in a while I crave it. So once in a while I think "well what if I just have a little bit of a decaf latte, or a diet coke from the can." About an hour later I feel awful and I'm reminded once again of why I don't drink these things.

That is what Target is like for me. Everyone always says how much they love Target, and I always agree. But I never go there....it is far away and I always seem to be able to get things elsewhere. So every once in awhile I think "well I really need to go to Target because it is so much better, easier, and cheaper." That and the online shipping costs are really high so I think it is worth going. So yesterday I take prescious nanny time to go. It takes me longer than I'd like to get there. I go in and the place is a zoo. They have almost nothing that they had online. There is no one there to help me. Most of the things I needed I can't get, and I get a few things I probably don't need because I keep saying "well I'm never coming back here." And at $18 an hour for a nanny, it would have been cheaper to go to the places I usually go. Not to mentiong the fact that I'm surrounded by all of these women with their strollers and something about the whole scene makes me feel like a REALLY desperate housewife. I left Target feeling the same way I do after drinking coffee: I had a raging headache (and was really mad at myself for forgetting that I actually hate Target!) I think I would have rather gone to Walmart...at least there you get a sense of Americana.

Now don't get me wrong, as a retailer I think Target is amazing. Their marketing, partnerships with high status names, etc., all of it rocks. And yes, some things there, like Amy Coe baby stuff, are great. But honestly, as a customer I don't think even Amy Coe is worth the hell that is Target. So I'll take the Container Store, H&M, Right Start, Babies R Us and Costco, and never may I set foot into a Target again.

Oh, and as a followup on the girls development, I spoke to a friend who has identical girls and she just had her 6 month (adjusted age) developmental check (we go in September 13th). The doctors told her that 1) sometimes to accomplish certain gross motor skills (i.e sitting), the babes need a certain amount of bulk 2) he said sitting was hard for preemies 3) some preemies walk before they crawl b/c their extensors are stronger than their flexors 4) preemies tip toe and that's normal and expected for preemies 5) sometime head control takes longer b/c their heads are relatively big. This has made me feel a lot better about the girls current state. That and the fact that Dylan flips herself over the minute you put her down these days. Chubu Charlie, on the other hand, is totally content to wait around until you pick her up. Such is the life of a princess.

Oh and I think we got good news about our apartment. I believe it has sold to someone who sees it as an investment opportunity and she won't be kicking us out. This would be great because our apartment is perfect for us right now, and personally I would like the next time we move to be moving out of the city. Also, Andrew has been torturing himself by looking at houses for sale on craigslist. It drives him nuts because I stand behind him and go "ewwww" about houses that we can't even afford. The other night we tortured ourselves even more by looking at Austin, Denver, San Diego, etc. So at least the torture can hopefully be postponed a few years.