Thanksmas

Our tree all lit up


Our beautiful Christmas tree

Mason in the trees

Here's Budda!

The boys at the tree farm

(Almost) the whole crew

The twin convention- Mack and Frank Jones, Mckinley and Hannah Lindwall, Hays and Will

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I spent the day befoer cooking like a mad woman. I love to cook and bake for the holidays, so I was in hog heaven. It was a little tough with three little ones underfoot, but luckily, Matt got home early and was able to look after them so I could finish everything up.

Thanksgiving day we went to my mom's to be with our huge extended family. The only dark cloud was that my grandmother hurt her back and couldn't be there, so we missed her and the few other family members who weren't with us. But it was a great day otherwise. It was funny because we had three sets of twins at Thanksgiving! Talk about twins running in the family! The kids were all well behaved, and the twins stayed in good spirits even though they didn't nap much.

Friday we celebrated "Thanksmas" which is my own holiday. It consists of eating Thanksgiving leftovers and decorating for Christmas! We went out to the tree farm with Matt's parents and got the most beautiful Fraser fir. It's huge! It's so big around that we had to rearrange the furniture to make room for it! So we decked the halls all day on Friday, and it looks lovely.

Today I did a little more Christmas shopping with my mom, and I'm almost done- hooray!!!! We had movie night tonight with Mason and we watched "Home Alone." Mason LOVED it!! He completely understood the movie and he laughed so hard at the antics of the robbers that he almost cried! It was fun watching it with him, and now he's been stalling to avoid bedtime by telling us his plans for defending the house should we ever accidentally leave him home alone!

Poor Haysie has his first ear infection. He's been really fuusy for the past week or two and at first I attributed it to teething pain, but it got worse over the past couple of days. He wasn't sleeping well and he'd cry and cry whenever we put him in bed. Last night I noticed that he was tugging on his ear a little bit, so I took him to the doctor this morning. Sure enough, ear infection in the left ear. The pediatrician said it didn't look like he'd had the infection more than a couple of days, and that the fussiness over the last couple of weeks was probably caused by teething pain. Thank goodness!! I would have felt like the world's crappiest mom if my baby had been sick for two weeks and I hadn't figured it out! So now he's on Augmentin for the next ten days.
He's had a rough day today. He's barely slept and I can tell his ear's bothering him. But sweet baby that he is, he still smiled and laughed most of the day. He just didn't sleep! I'm hoping that the Augmentin will kick in soon so he can get a decent night's sleep for the first time this week. (Then Matt and I can get some sleep too!) Then we can start the Thanksgiving bake-a-thon tomorrow. I can't wait!
*Update*
I just had to add that I watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving with Mason tonight. He belly laughed the whole way through it, and it was so much fun watching it with him. He has a great sense of humor, and the cutest laugh. I think having a four year old at the holidays is wonderful. He's old enough to understand and participate, and young enough to see the joy and magic in all of it. What a blessing he is.

Mason's preschool Thanksgiving feast was a success! It was a hectic morning since Hays decided he didn't need a morning nap. That made it a little harder to make the vat of macaroni and cheese , but it all got done. They sang a couple of cute little songs and Mason did a great job of standing still and singing, rather than running around the stage and doing prat falls as he did at last year's Christmas program. (Ah, the memories.)

One of his teachers was telling us some of the funny things he said at school, and told us that he's quite a little charmer! His class was talking about what they were all going to do for Thanksgiving, and Mason said, "I'm going to be in the kitchen all morning helping my mom cook." That made me happy. How sweet that Thanksgiving means cooking with mom!

I am almost done Christmas shopping! Well, maybe half done. The kids are done, and since that's the biggest chunk of the holiday shopping, I'm sticking with almost done. I spent most of Saturday running around to various retailers, and I think the boys will be with the stuff Santa brings them.
Hays is still having a rough time with his teeth, but now it mostly bothers him at night. He feels better during the day, but now he's up every 3-4 hours during the night! This from a child who's been sleeping 11 hours at a stretch for weeks! He wakes up and eats like he's starving (looks like we're hitting a growth spurt too) but then he won't settle down. He's up right now and has been for the last half hour, but every time we put him down in his bed, he cries and cries. Hopefully we'll get past this little bump in the road soon.
Tomorrow is Mason's Thanksgiving feast at preschool. I have to bring macaroni and cheese and napkins for 50, so tomorrow morning is bound to be crazy. I have to get Mason and the twins fed and dressed and take Mason to school at 9, come home and put the twins down for a nap, make mac and cheese and get back to school before 11 for the feast. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Tummy time!


Will sitting up all by himself!



What a big boy!

Here's Hays studying his toy very intently.

Yay!!! Fun toy!

This is the first chance I've had to post anything all week because Hays has been crying NONSTOP for the past three days! I think he's trying to get a top tooth (as if the bottom two weren't enough for a two week period), and he has been completely miserable. We've been giving him a rotation of tylenol and motrine coupled with teething tablets and baby oragel. The oragel helps for 15 minutes or so- after he stops screaming from the awful taste, but then he's back to crying. Today he finally seemed better, and that was such a relief. I had almost forgotten what a sweet, smiley guy he is when he's not hurting!

So today was a much nicer day since I didn't have a baby screaming at me for 10 hours or so. Mason went over to his Nana's house for most of the day and had a big time. I stayed home with the twins and my mom came to hang out with us for a while. I'm not sure if Hays stopped crying because his mouth wasn't hurting, or if he was just so happy to see YaYa that he forgot about it! This afternoon we were able to get outside for a little while since it wasn't freezing cold. That was nice- until my dog decided to roll in the biggest pile of deer poop she could find! She was covered in deer doo all down her side, so I had to give her a bath. That was loads of fun with the babies yelling in the other room, but at least the dog is nice and clean.

We met with our physical therapist this week and she was really impressed with how well the twins are sitting up. I'm pretty sure Will was trying to show off because he sat up for probably five minutes without wobbling or tipping over! And Hays decided that it would be a good day to try to crawl, so he surprised us all by trying to get his knees under him while he was on his tummy and pushing off. I told him to put that little fanny back down, because I am in no hurry for them to crawl. Can you imagine trying to keep up with two of them crawling in opposite directions? Yikes! I get tired just thinking about it. but I'm really glad they're learning to sit up. It gives them new options for playing (good thing since they're getting tired of all the laying down toys). Plus, they're so much cuter in pictures when they're not just lying there like baby blobs!

We're at the end of a very productive weekend. Matt and I spent all day today cleaning our yucky house. You know those days when you look around and go, "holy crap, this place is a wreck!" Well, it was one of those days. It just needed a really good deep cleaning, so that's what we've been doing all day. Now everything is sparkling clean, and I know by tomorrow afternoon, it will look like a tornado blew through! Such is life with a bunch of little kids in a small house.
Hays and Will are both kind of pitiful today. Both of them were running low-grade fevers from the flu shots and their teeth were bothering them. Thank goodness we had a nurse today to help us with the cranky little monkeys.
Yesterday was really fun. I went to the Junior League holiday market with my mom. We spent a fun couple of hours checking out all the booths. I swear, I could have spent a fortune on all the jewelry, accessories, Christmas decorations, toys etc., but I showed great restraint and just bought one small Christmas gift. We spent another couple of hours downtown going into all the cool shops and looking at beautiful things we can't afford. I was pleasantly surprised when I got home to find that Matt had not only kept all of the children alive and fed, but he had also done two loads of laundry without being asked! Husband of the year!!!!!

It's been an uneventful week, so there hasn't been much to share. We're about to drown in the ocean of drool created by the two teething babies, but they're doing all right with it. They both got their flu shots today. I was so impressed by the nurse that did it- she gave those injections so fast, the babies never even knew what hit them. They didn't even cry! Hays frowned a little and looked like he might cry, but he didn't shed a single tear. Will looked slightly perplexed for a second, like "hey, did she just poke me with something?" but that was it. Total time in the doctor's office- less than five minutes. It literally took longer to get them out of the car than it did to get the shots and get back to the car! Hays had a rough time with it this afternoon. He didn't feel very good, and ran a little bit of a fever. Once he got some Motrin, he was fine. So far, no side effects for Will, but it might get him tomorrow. The hardest part of the afternoon was when they were both exhausted, but refusing to settle down for a nap. They were both screaming their heads off, and I was going back and forth between their cribs, patting their backs to settle them. I'd get one pretty settled, go to the next, and the first one would start screaming again! I was just about to start crying right along with them when they finally settled down and went to sleep.
Mason brought his class teddy bear home from school this weekend, so we have to show "Bubba Bear" a good time, so we can write about it in his journal! Since it's Friday night, we're going to have family movie night and watch Bee Movie. So I'd better go make the popcorn!

How cute!


Henry's not so sure about this trampoline thing



Charlotte in the leaves

Paige and sweet Charlotte

Too much excitement for Will

Charlotte on the trampoline

Bouncing Cousins!

Henry with the wagon

Tuckered out Hays

Well, it's just tooth city over here. Will's first tooth finally came through this morning, and Hays is already working on tooth number two! The tip of it just poked through today. I couldn't figure out why is was being so pitiful and acting like his mouth was hurting all the time, but I guess that's why. He's going to have a mouth full of teeth before we know it. Will doesn't seem to be having as tough a time as Hays, but Will's probably got a higher tolerance for pain considering everything he's been through in his short life. That's both pitiful and a blessing!

We had a fun weekend because we got to introduce our twins to my cousin's twins! My cousin, Chris, and his wife, Jane, were visiting from New York with their two year old twins, Charlotte and Henry. They are so cute, and Mason had a great time playing with them. It was neat to see what we can expect in a couple of years. I already knew that one two year old would keep you busy, but two is going to be exhausting! I can only hope that mine will be as sweet and well-behaved as Charlotte and Henry!

So here's a disgusting little story. Yesterday I had Hays and Will out on the front porch in their bouncy seats. We have a lot of trees in our yard, and consequently, a lot of birds. Well, apparently one was sitting right over Hays, because it pooped on him! It got his seat, his head, and his shirt! How gross is that? I washed everything (of course) and it came out of the bouncy seat, but not his shirt. One of our trees has some kind of purple berries on it that the birds love, and they have been kind enough to cover our cars and deck, and now our baby with dark purple bird poop. Thanks a lot birds!!!! So now I'm a little hesitant to sit on the front porch with them!
Other than that, all the boys are doing great. Will is his usual sweet, smiley self. He is babbling all the time now. He says mama, dada and baba, the problem is, he has no idea what they mean! I can't wait for the day that he makes the connection. Hays is still gnawing on everything he can get his mouth on. That little tooth is only about halfway out, so it's still hard to see. But you can sure feel it as he bites the crap out of you! Mason is still loving taekwondo. He got another black stripe on his belt today. I have no idea what that means, but apparently, it's good.
I'm almost done painting our bedroom. It's such a pretty shade of beachy blue. I can't wait to finish it so I can get my house back in order. I looooove redecorating, but man, does the rest of my house suffer!

What an exciting election!!!! Matt and I are thrilled that Barack Obama has been chosen as the next president. But I am even happier about what this says about America and how far our country has come. no matter what side you're on politically, I think we can all be proud that we finally live in a nation where, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "A man can be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the strenth of his character." I am glad that my children are growing up in a society where when we tell them "you can be anything you want, even president of the United States," it is true for every child. Go America!!!
Okay, so now I'll step down from my political soapbox and tell you about my hilarious Mason. The other day he got the world's best toy. Matt's grandmother had a small vacuum cleaner with an adjustable handle in her apartment. On its lowest setting, it's just Mason's size, so we brought it home for him. Mason has always loved vacuum cleaners and has had his own toy one since he was two, so he was thrilled to get a real. But not nearly as thrilled as I was when I walked into the living room after putting some stuff away in my room to find that he had cleared the floor of all the toys and was preparing to vacuum the rug! Best. Toy. Ever.

Hays finally has a tooth!!!!!! He's been trying to get that thing in for months now, and it has finally arrived. You can see the top part of it and you can definitely feel it. No wonder he's been gnawing like mad on anything he can get in his mouth. I'm sure Will won't be far behind. I can't wait until it comes all the way in. Hays is going to be too cute!
Mason had a fun-filled weekend. He went to a birthday party yesterday at Pump It Up, which is a place with all these inflatable slides and bouncy things. He had a ball, but that was one tired little monkey by the time we got home. Then I made his day when I returned from a grocery shopping trip at Walmart. I found an Optimus Prime Halloween costume for five dollars, so I got it for him to play in. He loved it and wore it the rest of the day yesterday, then wanted to put it on first thing this morning.
And let me tell you, first thing this morning came a little too early at our house. Someone neglected to tell my children that the time was changing and they should sleep an extra hour, so they were up and raring to go at 5:45 am. Hopefully they will adjust quickly and not start the day well before the crack of dawn!