Happy Birthday Will and Hays!!!!!!

Tiny Baby Will Tiny Baby Hays

Look How Far We've Come!!!!!!!!!





Let's celebrate!!!




Yummy Cake



Mommy and the birthday boys

Daddy and Haysie

Crazy big brother!

My little Devil!

Will's getting some Aunt Bea and Yaya love!

Is it time for presents?

I love cake.......

Mmmmmm.....Cookie Monster

Will's getting a little help from Dad and Budda

Hays unwrapping presents with Mommy

Will decided that he preferred to unwrap his gifts under the kitchen table.

Rawr!!!!!!!!

Hey, this looks fun

Sweet Haysie

Will and Budda

Big fun with the sand and water table

It hardly seems possible, but the twins are two!!!!! And I've got to tell you, February 21st was a whole lot better this year than it was two years ago. Who would've believed that those pitiful, scrawny plucked chickens would grow into the wild indians we know and love today! They have certainly come a long way.

And while we didn't do quite as big a shindig as last year, I think they thoroughly enjoyed their birthday festivities. Yesterday I decked out the kitchen with The Dollar Store's finest assortment of streamers, balloons and Elmo party supplies, baked a lovely yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and gathered lots of family to party down toddler style!! The twins were very enthusiastic about eating cake and tearing into presents. They got that whole ripping wrapping paper thing down at Christmas, so I think they were glad for a chance to hone their unwrapping skills! They got lots of fun toys like a sand and water table, Elmo dolls, a bowling set, a few dinosaurs, lots of books and some other things to light up, make noise, and generally keep them entertained!

They spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the sand and water table and getting soaked in the process! Luckily, it was a beautiful 65* sunny day, so they weren't in any danger of freezing. (Crazy since we had 4 inches of snow on the ground last weekend! I promise to tell you all about that in my next post!) It was another beautiful day today, so they got to spend most of their actual birthday having fun outside.

Mason loves his little brothers and he had a good time at their party, but it's tough to be five and have all the attention on your brothers. This morning he asked if it was Will and Hays' real birthday. When I told him yes, he asked "Are people coming over? And are they going to get more presents?" He was pretty relieved when the answer was no!!

Last night when all the kiddos were in bed, Matt and I reminisced about all the things that have transpired over the last two years. We've had some incredibly tough times, some amazing, miraculous times, days that we want to pull our hair out, and more love and laughter than you can imagine. Our sweet boys are such incredible blessings to us. They are our sunshine daydreams, and they make our lives so much fun. Twins were never on my wishlist, but that's only because I had no idea how fantastically fun and special and amazing it would be to be their mother. I am so grateful for the past two years, and I am looking forward to all of the wonderful years ahead. Happy birthday, my special, wonderful, precious boys.

Poopapalooza

There's a story that's been told for years in my family. It's about my twin uncles, Mack and Frank, and how one afternoon when they were a couple of years old, they used the contents of a poopy diaper to create the most unholy mess imaginable. This is a funny story, sure to receive lots of laughs from listeners. However, I learned yesterday that while it's funny to hear that story, it;s not so funny to live it. You can imagine where this is going, but I'll tell you the gory details anyway.
Yesterday after breakfast the twins went into their room to play and closed the door behind them. Never one to to interrupt a rare occurrence of playing together happily, I let them play without disruption for nearly an hour. Well, I might should have gone in sooner, because the sight that greeted me when I finally went to check on them was like something out of a horror movie. Hays had stripped completely naked, and Will had almost managed the same (he still had his feet in his sleeper and was dragging it along as he walked.) They had both taken off their poopy diapers and used its contents as fingerpaint to decorate themselves, the floor, the walls, the door and several stuffed animals. The only place the shit hadn't hit was the fan. It was awful. Unbelievably awful. So awful that my first instinct was to close the door and leave them in there. As I stood in the hall on the other side of Armageddon, I pondered several solutions:
1. Leave home and never, never come back
2. Clean up the twins, but leave the room for Daddy
3. Sell the house and everything in it- twins included.
4. Start drinking
But being the good and responsible mother that I am, I decided to grit my teeth and clean up the worst, most disgusting mess I have ever witnessed.
I had to put the twins in the tub covered in poop because I couldn't wipe it off. I had to drain the poop water and refill the tub with the monsters screaming the entire time because they don't like to be in the tub with the water running- tough luck, poop monsters! Then I let them play in the tub while I began the gag-inducing chore of scouring doo-doo off of everything in their room. It took about 40 minutes and a couple of floor moppings before the room was no longer a biohazard, but I managed. But I can assure you that I will NEVER leave them to their own devices for that long again.
Oh, and I have an awesome household repair tip for you. If you ever find that you have a terribly scratched LCD screen on your TV because you allowed your five year old to watch tv in your room and he decided to scratch the crap out of the screen with a screwdriver just for the hell of it, you can make the scratches almost disappear by rubbing a thin coat of vaseline on the screen. Seriously, it works amazingly well, and because of that, we let Mason live another day.