Archive for October, 2007

• Our Pet

  Date: 2007.10.20 | Category: Twins | Response: 1

  The girls have a pet.  It is a porcupine.  We are unsure if it’s male or female because he/she/it is up in a tree, and has been for days.  You can see our pet in our photo gallery.

  At first, we watched the creature from a distance.  It was raining alot, you know the kind of autumn rain which changes the way the woods smell and make most trees shed all their leaves. So we observed our friend from the safety of the windows. I did my usual research and concluded that the porcupine was eating leaves from the tree rather than making a winter nest for itself.  Eventually, the rain stopped and girls wanted to go see the creature. We ventured outside ever so silently, and Alexis (who doesn’t understand how quiet “Quiet” really should be) continued whispering all the way down the hill in the back yard and up the next hill until we were underneath the oaks near the “lammy” trail (garden side).  The cordial twins shouted, “hello Mr. Porcupine” and he/she/it looked down on us. How cute! Unsure of how agile a porcupine really is, I decided we should retreat rather than hold an entire conversation directly under the creature. So we backed off and watched it climb to a different branch. Of course, every person we met this week had to meet or hear about our new pet. I am accurate in saying this wild animal was our pet, not because we touched it, but because as soon as Rachel had her diaper changed every morning, she was on a quest to see if the porcupine was “still here.” We were falling for the porcupine.

  Eventually, we had a family night at home. The twins and I introduced our new “pet” to Daddy. He adequately and appropriately entered into the excitement of our new odd family member.  Of course, the four of us had to go out and give our daily greetings to the porcupine. Rob positioned us so we could see his/her/its activities more clearly. It was eating all the bark off the oak branches! I suddenly realized that there weren’t any fewer leaves in that section of the woods due to porcupine consumption.

  Later, when us girls had returned to the indoors, Rob gently pelted it with something. Rob loves trees more than porcupines, so he felt he had to ask it to leave. The porcupine’s bark-stripping diet would kill our tree, so he took his slingshot and the smallest bee-bee balls and zinged it twice, supposedly not hurting our pet.

  The porcupine is now at large in the woods, eating someone else’s tree.

• The Great Escape

  Date: 2007.10.13 | Category: Twins | Response: 0

  Some women watch soap operas.  Some go shopping. Some buy lattes. I get on the internet.

  I’ve found that I can escape the stress of the daily grind by emailing my friends, chatting on line with teens, and reading forum posts on twinstuff.com.   Somehow, by focusing on others’ enormous (or petty)  problems, my stressors seem to fade into “fake crises.”

  Here’s my current frustration:

  After lunch, every day, the girls have to go to the bathroom.  Nature takes its course, you know, and what goes in, eventually must come out in some form or another.  So at the end of lunch, Rachel declares “all done” and while Rob directs her to the LR to play, I direct her to the potty.  She went in there, I thought.  But when I found her, she was sitting on the futon.  No problem, I redirected her again to the bathroom and she refused.  Ok, fine.  I’ll do Lexi first.  So I take Lexi into my bathroom to potty, and as soon as Lexi is finished and all put back together, here comes Rachel saying, “Mommy, I peed!”  She is still fully clothed and  I hadn’t heard any bumping in the other bathroom.  So I felt her pants, and sure enough, they were soaked.  I knew she had peed on the futon.  I wanted to spank her bottom but didn’t because I was so mad. Plus, I thought, she’s going to get confused on why I am spanking her.  Rob and I both talked to her about how she was supposed to go in to the bathroom to pee.  Peeing on the futon is really no big deal, except that I don’t enjoy the extra work of having to wash it all.

  I write these memoirs of my incredibly frustrating  life so that one day I will look back and smile and laugh or maybe even cry with nostalgia.  My other purpose for writing this is so that all of you readers who have “been there, done that, and gotten the wrinkles for it” can laugh at me, relieved that you don’t have to relive this portion of your life.

• Potty

  Date: 2007.10.12 | Category: Twins | Response: 0

  Alexis has decided that she is  “big girl” and she doesn’t want to wear diapers anymore (but I make her at nap and night) and she doesn’t want to use the “baby chair” on the big toilet. she sits there (with her stool beneath her feet) and hangs on for dear life and does her business.  Yippee!!  Still lots of accidents.  I told her,” If you are a big girl, then you have to stop and go potty when mommy tells you OR you are going back into diapers.”  she says, “NO! No diapers! Lexi big girl!”

  So now I remind her, “Lexi you are a big girl and it’s time to go potty.”

• Language learning funnies

  Date: 2007.10.01 | Category: Twins | Response: 0

  At 2 yrs old

  Alexis: waterlemon (watermelon)

  Rachel: “I have a lipstash” (moustache) after drinking juice from an open cup

  Alexis: “lemon-sour” is a “choking hazard” after choking on lemonade.

  Rachel: Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of fries.