Well...

guess who is about as clingy as they come...Sarah! That girl is getting to the point that she NEVER wants me to put her down. I'm not even talking about just wanting to be held, I am talking about wanting ME to hold her. She will tolerate Daddy for a bit, but eventually she'll start crying for me. Last night I couldn't get her to go to bed! She just wanted me to hold her all night. Today in the store I had to hold her. She stayed in the car seat to eat, but after she was done she wanted me to hold her. It's so cute:-)

Olivia is getting to be a little clingy. She isn't like Sarah though, Olivia still likes laying down and playing on her back or tummy. She just seems to get into moods where she just wants to be held, and even that sometimes doesn't make her all the way happy. She has the saddest little cry sometimes. Her problem is that she'll get all worked up and no matter what you do she won't calm down. It takes a good 5 minutes for her to be happy again when that happens. It's quite sad :-(
She's getting REALLY strong though. Oh my, that girl arches her back so much that she can almost roll over front to back, I think if she realized it was possible she could do it. This morning she pulled herself up onto her feet just using my fingers. I was like OMG! Good job!

They both are OK with other people holding them, although they always need to be able to see me still or they get upset. Of course they are fine with Chris if I'm not around but otherwise they are not happy campers. They don't even like to be in a room without me or Chris, especially Sarah. We'll put them in the swing and go in the kitchen or the restroom and she'll just cry and cry. Of course it's sad when they cry, but oh it just makes me feel soo good that they love me so much :-) The joys of being a parent :-) :-) :-)

God is great!

You know that song "All you need is Love"? I've been singing it all day today. I've been dancing around with one of my babies in my arms singing to them, and subbing in their names for the word love.

"All you need is Sarah do do do do, All you need is Sarah do do do do, All I need is you you, all I need is you"

And that is the God's honest truth, all I need is my baby girls and my life is complete.

I think the way God made love work is absolutely brilliant. For one thing, we will never be able to fully understand or even comprehend what love is, or how big it can be. It changes every day, and in the context of loving my children, it grows every day. Every single day I wake up more in love than I was the day before. I'm glad I don't fully understand it. I'm glad I can't fully wrap my mind around what love is and how it works. The mystery and joy continues to grow because I don't understand. I think if I did fully comprehend the power and glory of love, I would end up thinking I had it figured out and put it away in a little box somewhere in my mind and quite honestly, forget all about it.

I am blown away by how much I love these girls. They are my world, my reason for living, my complete and utter joy. I can't stand to leave them, even with Chris. I'm so happy they are awake more now because when they used to sleep all the time I would just miss them so much. I'd sit and stare at them and wish they would wake up so I could hold one of them. I can't wait for the day they call me Mommy. I can't wait to hear their beautiful little voice tell me they love me. I want to hear them running around giggling and screaming. I want to see their little hand prints on the walls and hang up their drawings. I love the fact that I know every little thing there is to know about them. I love when they hold on to me. I love that they recognize my face and my voice. I love their smell. Sometimes Chris will watch them for me so I can take a nap. When I lay down I sometimes smell their little blankets, I love the smell. I love dressing them up and showing them off. I love just sitting in their room. I love to kiss them, and come up with cute little nick names for them.
I'm just completely and utterly in love, and I hope to God I always feel this way about them. Even when they are teenagers telling me they hate me and can't wait to move out. I hope I can still feel as much adoration for them as I do at this moment.
I want to treat them with respect. I want to parent them full of grace and mercy and love. Above all else I want them to know that God loves them, and I love them, and nothing they do can ever change that. I want them to feel accepted by me, no matter what choices they make and regardless of my approval. I want to love them the way God has loved me; with grace, kindness, forgiveness, and true love.
This is my prayer.


God is great. His love is grand.

NIcknames and love.

I don't know why, but Chris and I have come up with nick names for every kid that's lived with us, and even one that hasn't haha.
When we watched Tyler all the time he became Tylee, Tydie, Tydie bowl, Tyty, Tyman, little man and I think that is all. Every time I see him now, 3 years later, I still want to call him Tydie or Tydie bowl. The names don't make any sense, but for some reason those are the ones we came up with.

Kayla and Carly had nick names too. More so with Carly. I always called her Carls Jr. (it's a fast food chain out here). They were teenagers and rather picky about their names so we didn't have tons for them. I can't remember what we called Kayla, she came up with her own nick name though--Circle K. lol.

Then Mercedes and Mariah. Together we called them MnM. Mercedes was Mercy, Sadie, Mercenator and that's all I can remember. Mariah was Ryry, Mar-dog, Marmar, baby girl, little lady and the like.

And now with our own baby girls we have come up with lots of nick names. Some of them didn't stick once they got a little older but here they are. Olivia's included: Cartman, Chubacka, Chewchew, chewy, Livie, Livie Lou, Lou Lou, Olive, Liver (I hate hate hate this one and I tell Chris to never say it again every time he says it!), Liv, sister, big sister. Cartman came from the face she made when she would scream her first few days, Chewy and Chubacka came from the sound of her cry her first few days.

Sarah's nick names include: baby girl, sister, little sister, Sare-bear, Sare Sare, sweet thang, stink neck, spit up queen, beauty queen. I call them both 'my love' or 'Lovie' all the time.
So yeah, I think it's funny how we always come up with nick names. I guess it makes sense because on both sides of our family nicknames abound. Mine is Missy and Chris' is Bubba. haha.


In other news, omg I am so in love with my baby girls. Tonight for the first time since her first week or so, Olivia cuddled up on me. She slept on me for probably 2 hours at least, and only woke up because I tried to put her down. She's not really been the snuggle bug. She arches her back all the time and likes to look around at everything, plus she fights her sleep like no other. Tonight though she fell asleep right on my shoulder and she was kind of holding me. I moved her a bit and she stayed asleep. She was just so content to have me hold her. She's such a sweetie. Sarah in the last few weeks has taken to snuggling up a lot. If she's fussy at all in her little bassinet, I can lay her down next to me in the bed and she'll fall right to sleep. Also when I hold her she always snuggles up to me and puts her little head on my shoulder. She's such a lover.
Man, I just love these girls so much. I really hope I can be a good mother to them as they grow older. I hope I teach them to be good people. Kind, compassionate, selfless, positive, successful, God loving people.

I just realized what time it is! I need to go to sleep!
Aimeesham out!


Edit: I also call them both 'my love from above' I think that might even be the most common name. And Sarah is also called 'Squawky' cause her cry sounds more like a squawk than a baby crying lol.

Edit #2: Olivia is called snortie, she snorts all the time and I mean ALL the time! It's cute :-)

Finally.

Sarah's goopy eyes went away. She's had blocked tear ducts for 2 weeks, which in tern resulted in crusty goopy eyes. It was rather pitiful, and she absolutely hated when I would clean it all off. However today...it was gone. As quickly as it came it went. No more goopy crusty eyes! I have say I am very happy about it too! Her eyes are pretty again!

Nothing else is going on with the babies. However poor Rosa had to have surgery today on her ear and she is absolutely pitiful. No 6 year old should ever have to have surgery. I'm actually very angry about it, but I can't talk about why--it's confidential. Has to do with details of her removal and all. It just pisses me off because it's not her fault that her ears are screwed up. Ugh.

That is all.

What did I tell you??

Livie Lou found her little fingers too! These days you can find her laying in the pack n play happy as can be sucking on her little fists. It's way cute, I will have to capture it in a picture.

As far as Easter pictures go, well they turned out terrible. The babies were just crying and were way grumpy so we ended up rushing through the pics and none of them really turned out. So...we had a re-do and they ended up being much better! So we'll be posting those pictures soon enough.

Lastly, I am getting to be very excited about our visit to Florida. I'm just nervous about all the stuff I will have to bring and hauling all the luggage. Otherwise, the visit will be glorious!

Guess who found her fingers?!

Little miss Sarah did! She's always got them in her little mouth and it is absolutely adorable :-) When she was first born she tried to get her thumb in her mouth a few times but then kind of lost interest. Now though she's all about those fingers. She's so cute.

Olivia I think is almost there. I've seen her put them in her mouth like 2 times and I think it was an accident to be honest.

Lastly, they are both barely fitting into the 0-3 month clothes, but the 3-6 month clothes are slightly too big. I would bet that within the next week or 2 they'll be fitting the 3-6 month size. I'm glad about it too because I've got some really cute clothes that size :-)

Happy Birthday!

Today is the girls 3 month birthday! HOLY FRIGGIN COW! I can't believe they are three months old already? Where does the time go?

I don't have much to say in this blog except that Olivia rolled over yesterday. I have to kind of prop her up on her arms, but she can do it every time now. It's real quick and she always kind of looks surprised lol. It's so awesome.
Sarah is very far from rolling over though. She absolutely hates laying on her tummy. HATES IT! She won't even tolerate it for a few moments, the second you lay her on her tummy she starts screaming. It's fine that she's not even close, every baby is different and I don't want to compare. I personally think she'll be the first to sit up, she loves sitting up. Olivia is happy sitting or laying. Like I said, every baby is different and I don't want to compare--it's hard not to but I am trying.

Mommysham out!

Post-Partum Party Pics

Wasn't that a mouthful to say! I finally got through the pics from the post-partum party we had with our pregnancy class. There are lots and lots of awful pictures, but some really cute ones! It is hard to get 'good' pictures of babies, but when you have twins it is almost impossible to get a picture where one of them isn't screaming or puking or making a weird face. Olivia is in pink and Sarah is in green. Let me know what you think!

Our midwife Ellen holding the girls

Baby's first Easter!

What a great Easter! We took lots of pictures and will post them over the next few days.
We were really busy all day. We got up and of course we had to check out what the Easter bunny brought the older girls. We decided to get them gifts instead of candy. They ended up with each of them getting a chocolate bunny and some marshmellow bunnies but everything else was gifts. The "Easter bunny" AKA Aimee, did a great job at picking out some awesome gifts. Then we went to church for an egg hunt (2nd of the weekend), and also we ate some pancakes and sausage at church. Then we went to the service which was very very spirited. It was nice.

Then we came home and had nap time for about an hour. After that we headed off to Easter Dinner with Art and Dinah from our other church. It was a really nice dinner with lots of kids. Ave and Rosa had a great time running and playing. Their favorite person in the world Christina was there so she was in heaven. lol. Also lots of people got to hold the babies, although Sarah slept for most of the time haha.

All of the girls had some beautiful dresses. Ave and Rosa even had Easter hats heh. They were adorable! The babies ended up wearing two different dresses--Church dresses and then afternoon sun dresses. They even had little shoes with their church dresses. We took pictures of both of their feet with shoes on. I decided I am definitely going to save their Easter dresses and shoes.

First doctor visit...

that wasn't a normal check up. Poor Sarah had all of this eye goop in her right eye, it's been going on for about a week and today her eye was kind of like crusted closed. I felt so badly for her. It didn't seem to hurt her, but it was obviously not normal.
So I took her in to the doc and he said most likely she has a clogged tear duct. Which isn't a big deal really. He gave me a prescription for some eye ointment just in case it's an infection but he didn't think it was anything serious.

The shocking part of this visit is that she weighed 10 pounds! 2 pounds from now she'll have tripled her weight from birth! That is unreal.

No other news really. They are still sleeping for 6-8 hours at night. As soon as they get to a full 8 hours consistently I am going to have them start sleeping in their crib. Right now they are in our room. I think it's going to be a bit of a transition for them because they definitely associate our bedroom as the sleep room. They calm down as soon as we come in here. It's cool but I hope it isn't too hard to switch rooms. I am going to make it happen though because I don't want to end up with a couple of two year olds in my bed years from now. lol.

Milestone!

Last night both of my girls slept for 7.5 hours!! Isn't that awesome--and for some reason I felt so rested today! I woke up and I was like--what time is it?! Yay babies! Hopefully tonight will be the same.

Additionally, I decided to try yet another formula for poor little Sarah. The soy definitely helped her spit-up, but she seemed to be having a hard time digesting it. So I was looking at all the different formulas (at wicked wicked Wal-mart) and found one that was milk based but "#1 recommended for excessive spit-up". I'll tell you what, I think this one is doing the trick. She is so happy, hardly any crying. She eats it very well. It's rather thick--it's mixed with rice starch so it thickens in the tummy making it stay down. I think it's working for her. I felt so badly for her, she was clearly having digestion problems with the soy. Today was her first day on this new stuff though, so we will see if her happiness lasts.

I am so excited to go to Florida. I can't wait for everyone to see the girls. They are just getting so darn big, and their personalities are really starting to show. Olivia is more like Chris and Sarah is more like me, I think anyway. Sarah is sort of a goof ball--lots of smiling, she's funny when she dances, impatient, distinctive, and it's hard to figure out what she wants. Olivia is more serious, not so much smiling, she seems like she thinks a lot--she's always concentrating on something it seems, she's rather patient, she's easy to figure out, and not to mention she just looks so much like Chris. I am so excited to get to know them better. I am particularly excited to hear their voices. So cute cute cute!

What else, Olivia seems to be losing her hair. She definitely had more hair when she was born than she does now. I wonder if she's going to end up bald? I hope not, I love her cute little hair. Sarah doesn't have as much either, but it doesn't really seem like she's losing it necessarily.

Well I guess that's all. I need to get to sleep.
Mommysham out.

Lesson learned:

One reason women cut their hair super short when they have babies is to keep spit out of their hair! First time, probably not the last. Ew.