Snow Day Ruined

Friday was a snow day.  It was awesome.  We had about a half inch of snow here at our apartment (sorry, only one picture!) and the entire city shut down.  My physical therapy was rescheduled and all of the schools Travis can substitute at were closed.  The boys and I stayed in our pajamas and snuggled on the couch to watch movies under a blanket.  All that was missing was a mug of hot cocoa.  Frankly, it was turning out to be an awesome, quiet snow day.  Of course, this is when the day decided to stop being so awesome.

I wasn't present for what I'm about to describe so I'm not sure exactly what happened.  I think I was in the bathroom or something.  Apparently, Travis and the boys were playing with the multitude of balls littering our living room (thanks, Mom for that ball pit by the way... : ) ) and somehow a racquetball found its way into the mix.  You know, one of those sort of heavy, blue bouncy balls.  Anyway, one of the boys threw it directly into the television.  The tv seemed okay at first so the offender got a time-out and they moved on.  We turned off the tv and put Eli and Jude down for their nap after lunch.  Once the boys were settled, Travis and I plopped ourselves back on the couch to play our respective video games - him Fallout 3, me The Sims 3 - and it became clear the tv was broken.  Travis turned it on and there were green lines all the way across the entire screen.  Thinking it was the PS3, he changed the input and the lines remained.  I had no idea why it would act like that but Travis knew exactly what happened.

So, the poor old tv is being sold for scrap parts on Craig's List and we bought a new one from Costco.  Not exactly how I envisioned spending our coming tax return, but the new tv is really nice and we plan to keep it for the next 10+ years.  Needless to say, there is no more throwing of balls anywhere near the television.

Two Little Butts

I put Eli and Jude down for an earlier nap again today - they just can't seem to decide if they want to nap early or late - and after lots of yelling and laughing and banging, they finally quieted down and fell asleep.  I wanted to go and check to make sure they were in bed or at least not on top of each other and this is what I found...

Poop-tastrophe

I have to say, until I became a mom I was very grossed out by all kinds of bodily fluids.  Vomit, urine, excrement, what have you.  I have had to get over this since the boys have arrived but days like today really test my resolve.  A little back story - Eli has been getting very good at controlling his bowel muscles.  This is exciting because it means we're getting that much closer to potty training but not exciting because he's decided he never wants to poop again.  I have tried everything to get this boy to poop but it won't work.  Suppositories, prunes, lots and lots of juice... you name it, I've tried it.  He is very stubborn about it and refuses.  I know it must be very painful for him by this point and he won't let me anywhere near his behind so I've stopped pushing the issue.  He will poop when he's good and ready.  Okay, on with the story.

Things were all running smoothly, generally speaking.  Travis was at work and the boys and I were at home, hanging out.  We're experiencing a bit of nap rescheduling (it seems to be shifting from a morning nap to an afternoon nap) so I didn't put Eli and Jude down for their naps until about 1:30 pm today.  They seemed unfazed by staying up a little longer and actually went to sleep at about 1:50.  I went about my afternoon not knowing what I would discover a couple of short hours later.

Eli and Jude awoke from their naps at about 3:45 and started to play.  It started to get a little loud and rowdy so I went in their room with the intention of changing diapers and then feeding them a snack.  Oh man, was I shocked.  I'm still not sure what exactly happened.  When I entered the room, I found Jude completely naked, Eli with his diaper half off, and the room and my children covered in poop.  It was such a mess and so completely disgusting that I wasn't even sure where to begin.  So I started with Eli and Jude and figured I'd clean the room when Travis got home.

I put Eli and Jude into our shower with the sprayer-like shower head and literally hosed them down (thank you Savannah for that amazing wedding present!).  Eli thought it was super cool but Jude kept trying to hide in the corner of the shower and yelled at me any time I went near him with the water.  And he was the most dirty too.  He had rubbed the poop into his eczema so he had little rough nasty patches all over his shoulders, arms, and back.  It was gross.  Also during the scrubbing, Eli peed for the first time without a diaper on (that I can remember, at least) and looked at me with a horrified "Oh my god Mom, what is happening to me???" face.  It was so adorable that I almost forgot why I was so cranky and grossed out.  Almost.  We had a quick chat about what pee-pee is and he was soon back to stomping around the shower.

Travis arrived home shortly after drying and re-diapering the boys and he volunteered to clean the boys' room - much to my excitement - before looking at the daunting task.  Apparently, the boys had gotten poop on the bottoms of their feet and walked around, so there were little brown splotches all over their carpet.  All of the sheets and blankets had to be washed because someone peed on them.  And it was quite smelly.  Travis did a fantastic job and you can barely tell what grossness had been there earlier today.  We will need to steam clean the carpet now though, there's no way around that.  But we'd known that for a while since Eli and Jude have a great talent for spilling things EVERYWHERE.

In short, it was a very draining afternoon.  If you have children, I hope this never happens to you.  If you don't have children, I hope I haven't terrified you into never having any.

Twinkie Madness!

Hello faithful blog-readers! Sorry to have not posted this week, I was planning to do a couple of posts but I was just too loopy from the pain meds to write anything coherent or worth reading. : )

For all who were curious, my surgery went very well. I am still recovering but the worst is over. Immediately after surgery, I did feel relief from the stabbing pain down my left leg that I've felt all day, every day for a couple of years. It has been very nice. Obviously, I am still in some pain but it's from the incision and also from my nerve recovering. I have some neuropathy (pins, needles, and numbness) in my left foot which is annoying more than painful, but the doctor says this is a normal symptom of the nerve healing. It should get slowly better and then go away in the next few weeks. The difficult parts are my restrictions - no lifting, bending, twisting, and sitting for more than an hour. I'm not the best patient, but I'm trying hard to follow my instructions and heal quickly.

Now for the fun stuff! Memorial day weekend was pretty low key for us. We went to a barbeque with friends on Monday and stayed for a couple of hours but I was having a hard time keeping up with Eli and Jude so we thought it would be best to head home early. We ended up having dinner at Plucker's Wing Bar and took their signature Fried Twinkies home for dessert. I thought for sure Eli and Jude would go to town on their halves (there's no way I would give them a full fried twinkie each, I don't think an ADULT even needs a full one) but they were pretty skeptical of them. I started taking a video of them while eating because I thought it would be hilarious to watch them try to scarf these delicious morsels down but little did I know that the REALLY good video would be the post-twinkie aftermath... See for yourself!

Nothing Is Safe!

I took these pictures yesterday but I wanted to post the video first and I didn't want to overload everyone with cuteness. : )

The subject of this post is climbing. Eli and Jude have been climbing onto the couch (and anything else they can find) for about a month but it has gotten ridiculous in our new apartment. We thought we were pretty baby-proofed right off the bat but we were wrong. It has taken some adjusting but I think we're finally set again. But before we had gotten everything moved and re-arranged to the current set up, Travis said he caught Eli standing on the kitchen counter. Travis was doing the dishes and looked up to see Eli standing in front of him with a "What?" look on his face. Luckily I was not in the apartment or I probably would have freaked out.

Despite the lack of high places to climb now, Eli and Jude are still OBSESSED with climbing into the papasaun chair. They climb into it and then stand on one side to make it shift and then try to grab things off of the kitchen counters. I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of them yesterday because they were simply too cute!

Eli in the papasaun.

Jude had to get in on the fun too!

Of course, Jude then wanted to climb higher than Eli...

And then Mommy decided it was lunch time.

Maybe I'll do it... finally.

I could blog about the boys, perhaps. That might be an easy one to do. I'll say this though, once I get a new iPhone this summer... I'll be video-blogging the boys for all time. I'll have to figure out how to link YouTube to Blogger for easy uploading here... but they're both Google apps, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Oh, right, onto the boys. Eli and Jude have been sick for the last 2 weeks, finally I think we're out of the woods though. They didn't have RSV, but some sort of annoying cold that they passed to each other at least once. Oh well... sickness, thy fate is with babies. Let's hope the upcoming Spring is great for their health!

Cute things the boys did today: Eli brought me a forgotten slice of Apple from yesterday's dinner that he found -somewhere-. He was so proud of his find, but I was even more proud to see how he was holding it- with his pincer grasp. He's becoming so dexterous. Jude's cute moment for the day was when he brought me a block that had a whistle in it, and I shook it to show how it made noises, and he giggled and started jumping up and down and mimicked the motion when I gave him the block. They love sounds, our sons.

As a first post, I hope this is good. Video blogs will be coming soon!