Cute baby dinner!

Sleepy reader post

Eli and Jude are really getting into reading. Here they are after they were reading right before naptime today; I figured that i'd take a quick shot with my iPad (which allowed me to read in their room before they finally fell asleep)!

Eli and Jude at Bedtime these days

The boys are getting rowdy going to sleep these days, and certainly don't like to sleep much despite their need for it... this is an accounting of our nightly struggle to get into bed. I hope you enjoy (and they're characteristically cute at bedtime too!)

Big, Super post!

A spinning video just to start us out since I haven't updated in forever (Sorry!)

Alright, a lot's happened in the last week and a half (more like 2? Sorry guys!) so I'll get right into it!

First, for my family's Easter, we visited Nanny and Poppa and the rest of the family up in Burnet! The boys of course were big stars, but this time they were joined by a lot of their little cousins, both old and new. In age order, first, we had Julie's daughter, Autumn, who looks a WHOLE lot older than I remember her looking! Dylan and Julie definitely have their hands full! Then, Eli and Jude, the cutest of all twins (not biased at all, can't you tell). Then we had Kai, our littlest boy cousin from Mexico, and Marieke and Scott certainly are doing a great job with him; he's the size of Eli and Jude and certainly has a White appetite! Last but certainly not least, we have Ava, Jason and Amanda's beautiful daughter. Her hair is SO LONG! She's only 9 months old but has more hair than each of the boys individually have grown in 2 years. Crazy!

By far, the most favorite aspect of the visit for the boys would be the music. Our Horne family is definitely very musically inclined, starting with Nanny at the top instilling all of us with the love of music that we have. It doesn't hurt that the boys LOVE the guitar, and especially when their Uncle Mike was playing



The boys had a great time, nonetheless. Eli and Jude both love going to see their family and we love seeing them all too! We had a fun trip; it's a shame that it'll probably be our last family get-together in Burnet; with Nanny and Poppa's advanced age, the decision has been made to probably reconvene at Uncle Steve's house. Hopefully, Alex and I will have a house soon to help contribute to housing the out of towners.



Ah, got to put up a picture of the Horne Clan!



So with the end of the Easter weekend, we planned to go see Grandma Horne for the weekend. This trip started out with a bit more excitement than we hoped. While packing the van for the trip, I saw some smoke coming from one of the maintenance golf carts. Thinking little more than a maint. member left a lit cigarette in an ashtray, I continued to pack the van by going inside to get more supplies. When I walked out, the cart has gone from smoking to full on flames. I quickly dashed back inside to grab our handheld kitchen fire extinguisher and unloaded it on the fire, to no avail. I bolted for the main office, which is close by our apartment, to report the fire and call the fire department. Luckily, the fire department is quite swift on getting out to the fire; I think it took about 8 minutes for a fire truck to arrrive and douse the flames with their industrial fire extinguishing skills. During all of this drama, the boys saw the big fire truck and were happily screaming inside to see it and fortunately, the firemen obligued our favorite duo to a little trip up into the truck, and additional stickers afterwards!




After we ensured that our apartment was in fact, not going to go up in flames (the cart was right in front of our apartment!), we drove down to Houston to see Grandma! The entire trip was a ton of fun; the boys really enjoyed playing with their Grandma and of course, everyone's favorite boxer dog Dixie! Being the dog lovers that they are, they couldn't get enough of her and were constantly playing with her, once they warmed up to how big she was. Alex got to catch up on a lot of sleep as well, and Grandma and I took the opportunity to take the babies off to the zoo!

Eli and Jude LOVED the zoo. Their favorite animals? Probably the Giraffes, Elephants and of course, "Baby Jaguar", who I think was actually a leopard. Either way, a large cat and the babies were very enamored with it. Eli and Jude also had a great time running through the HUGE zoo! I didn't remember how large that place was until we walked around the zoo; truly, the whole zoo while skipping lots of places, in about 4 hours. Fortunately, Grandma remembered to pack a delicious lunch for us all while we were at the zoo, and both Eli and Jude really enjoyed eating ham and cheese sandwiches in the middle of the aviary! It truly was a great visit to the zoo.







So after the zoo, one would think our day would be done, right? NOPE! We were just beginning. The boys slept on the drive back to Grandma's house, and when we got there, they slept a bit more; so tired probably because we walked SO much. After our naps, Eli and Jude had their first ever trip to Chuck "E." Cheese's, something I was very surprised at being appropriate for kids. I remembered a whole lot more games for older kids at Chuck, but it seems like this Chuck E Cheese had a TON of young-focused activities, and the boys really caught on it. They had a great time thanks to Grandma and Grandpa, who really were excited to be there for their first Chuck's trip. I'm sure that if we ever mention the name again to the boys, they'll jump at the chance to go again! The pizza was delicious (to them), the games were fun, the rides were silly but enjoyable for the duo anyway.

Finally at Grandma's house, we had to leave early in the afternoon to get back to Mommy could get back to work, but we had one more opportunity to swim in the kiddie pool on Sunday morning. The boys, being the boys that they are, ALWAYS love that opportunity and jumped at the chance to get their bathing suits on! This one also has a few videos, so I'll let them speak for me.

That brings us back to where I am today... suffering from a sad moment of baby interference. So, Eli and Jude have forced our hand with several electronic upgrades recently; our broken HDTV, broken toys, lights, etc. Lots of stuff. Well, the boys are at it again. This time, they borked Alex's computer (with a little help from yours truly). Somehow, the boys shoved an SD card into the computer's CD drive, destroying the drive and I think also destroying the disc inside... not as bad as destroying the drive. So, this computer's monitor is now damaged by the boys, the CD drive is damaged (and whining when turned on... ) and during my attempt to fix the problem, I broke a plastic insert within the computer, which ensured that I can't connect the touchpad to the motherboard. I despise Dell for their poor, shoddy construction, something that I haven't ever dealt with on my MacBook. Anyway... we were going to get Alex a new computer in the next year or so anyway, since her current computer is about 4 years old this fall... but now that the computer barely works, it's time to get an upgrade. The cheapest plan right now for us is for me to give her my MacBook Pro, which is still a powerhouse, with its dedicated graphics for Alex's video editing and (ahem) Sims 3 gaming pleasure, while I downgrade to a new MacBook Air (or more specifically, a refurbished one) once the next model comes out and drops the price below 1k. If you'd like to donate to the cause, travis.horne (at) gmail.com is open for your paypal pleasure (seriously, I doubt anyone will actually do it, but one can hope, especially since you won't need that money after tomorrow anyway because the rapture is coming! /sarcasm). On a more serious note, I'm still hoping to land a permanent teaching position, so if you've got one of those open, e-mail me! I know I said to my lovely wife that I'm okay with her bringing home the bacon a bit more than me, I'd really like to bring more bacon home so she doesn't have to work such horrid hours.

Well, that's it for me today... I plan on taking the boys to the Austin Children's Museum for the next post, but since I'm working all this next week, I probably won't be able to. Maybe the next week? The summer is long in Texas, so don't worry, Alex and I will have plenty of time to blast away at plenty of the local things to do!

One more last video!

Early Summer Playground trip

Eli, Jude and I went to the park the other day to play around! Sorry this video is so long coming, we just haven't had a whole lot to put up video wise and with the holidays, we've both been pretty pooped.



Look forward to this summer's videos at the playgrounds, zoos, museums, and trips across the country as we get ready for a fun summer!

Return of the sickness

Hi everyone, sorry that we haven't updated that frequently this week; I've been sick with a stupid bronchitus infection, the boys have been not feeling the best, and Alex has been exhausted and stresssed with her night shift Panera bread job. Whew... so exhausting. Also in other notes, I find it completely ironic that I have a better chance right now finding a position with a school district in administration doing similar work that I used to do than as a teacher. So. Crazy. Ugh.

Anyway, back to the babies. They've been feeling under the weather this last week, and really only have started to feel better in the last couple of days. Sickness seems to come with the terretory of school though, so I suppose this will not end for 16 or so years.

Eli and Jude are also developing so well these days. They're big talkers, giving full sentences regularly, and they're calling everyone by their names these days and can even remember things that have happened in the not so distant past with them. It's really exciting to see them growing into little young children.

Oh, one thing I'm really tired of is Toy Story. The boys have only wanted to watch "Buzz and Woody!" for the last couple of days, I think I'm going to gouge out my eyes over the Toy Story overload. Definitely used to be one of my favorite animated movies, but not any longer.

Other advancements with the boys: they've discovered how to open doors, extremely successfully. We tried to get door knob locks for their room so they'd go to sleep at bedtime of 7:30 instead of playing with the door until 9pm, but they dismantled the best we could find in about 30 seconds. I finally had enough on Sunday and reversed the door knobs during their naptime. This means that the door inside their room cannot be opened without the key when it's locked, a key which we store in the top of the room door (somewhere they have no idea where it is). It's worked wonderfully so far; the boys hate being locked in there, but that's the only way they will actually sleep. The past few nights they've gone to sleep at a normal time, and my sanity has been restored to fullness again. Oh, one concern we had about it would be little ones taking off their diapers and spreading a poopy mess all over their room, but that fear has been minimized by the fact the boys seem to be smarter than to do that these days.

Okay, well now what you've probably been waiting for, the new little video of the boys. I took it on my ipad, which isn't the best camera, but really haven't had a whole lot of time or places to take videos being sick! This one is of the boys playing with their aunties in the pool, which was surprisingly warm enough to dive into this week. I got in shortly after this video was taken, and I'd rate its temperature around 74~75F, which is equivalent to some of the lakes I used to swim in at Pennsylvania, but it was passable none the less and the boys really, really loved the opportunity to swim! Eli bonked his face on a bar getting out of the pool, so he has a bit of a fat lip from the cut, but otherwise, everyone did fine!

Marching for Healthy Babies

Some of you may remember that we participated in fund raising for the March of Dimes March For Babies last year.  We fully intended to participate in the walk too, but my back problems were making walking long distances extremely hard and we ended up skipping the actual event.  This year, depending on how tired I am, we will most likely attend and show off what handsome, healthy NICU graduates we have!  Thinking about how much they've grown and changed since those first weeks of life never fails to bring me to tears.  At the time, it was so hard to imagine the future when we'd have active, healthy little boys.  Today, it's hard to believe they were ever so small.

I'd like to share with you (a slightly edited version of) the post I wrote about this time last year about why I support the March of Dimes.  I hope that you'll also take a moment and give whatever spare change you have around your house - and I know that might not be much, given the current economy - to this very worthy cause.

I thought I'd take a moment and talk about the March of Dimes. I'm participating in the March for Babies in [35] days for so many reasons. The March of Dimes itself is a fantastic charitable organization with the goal of funding research for healthy pregnancies and providing support to families of premature infants and infants born with serious illnesses and birth defects. Their mission is to have every baby born healthy and give doctors and nurses the resources they need to care for the ones that are not! I think this is a lofty goal, but one that I can stand behind with my whole heart.

Many of you know that Eli and Jude are preemies. We were incredibly lucky to make it to 34 weeks gestation - just six weeks shy of their due date - when so many twins are born at 32, 28, and even a stunning 24 weeks. My perinatologist even awarded me a "bronze medal" when I made it to 32! March of Dimes has funded and pioneered research that helped me reach those milestones and also the research that helped Eli and Jude come home from the NICU four weeks earlier than the neonatologist originally predicted. I honestly believe that the work March of Dimes has done to educate doctors of the importance of kangaroo care had a huge impact on their NICU stay.

I also walk for my friends and family who have lost their babies before getting the chance to meet them. Recently I've met a shocking number of women who have lost babies late in their pregnancy or shortly after birth and it breaks my heart. These women - and their significant others - are everywhere and wear silent scars. I cannot imagine the pain they feel and can only hope that continued research will prevent other women from suffering such a loss.

The March for Babies is coming up fast and I'm working hard to raise money for this amazing cause. Seriously, who wouldn't support a group that strives for healthy babies? I'm not one who likes to ask for money but... DONATE PLEASE! I still have a long way to reach my goal but every dollar makes a difference. If you want to donate but don't want to give directly to me, please donate to my team - The Austin Moms of Multiples. You can click on the sidebar here on our blog, or visit my personal fund raising page here.

I too hope that one day, all babies will be born healthy. Please help me help the March of Dimes in their work to make that goal a reality.