The Twinados hit!

I don't think we will ever be invited back to an indoor birthday party, again!

We stopped next door this afternoon for the most important birthdays of all birthdays; the 1st birthday! Little baby Logan turned 1 and, aside from my son, I do have to say he is probably the cutest little boy I've ever laid eyes on. Our neighbors make cute kids. ;) So, they've got an older son that is 3 and he is the most charming little guy - he'll be a real heart breaker when he grows up. Anyway, my point is, their home is child proof. Or, so they thought! *evil laughter* The way our homes are set up, you enter in the foyer and there is a long hallway in front of you. Immediately to the right is the kitchen. To your left and up the hall, is the first flight of stairs, leading to the bedrooms. The people that owned the home before them put in a wooden banister, otherwise, we all have the standard white wrought iron banisters. They have a baby gate up, to prevent the kids from going up and down the stairs. That should be enough to stop a child from going up, right? Well, apparently, not MY kids. At some point during the party, I realized Ethan was out of my sight and I stood up. I called his name and heard this little, "Uh oh!" coming from the hallway. As I walked in, The Professor was standing mid-way up the steps! None of us could figure out how he did it, until I caught him later crawling UNDER the banister on the side. There is *just* enough room between the base of the banister and the step, allowing a particularly adventurous child enough room to crawl under. He disappeared again, later, as he followed Miss K upstairs. LOL! Apparently neither of their kids have ever done that or even thought to do it. Great! Leave it to the twinados. I'm trying to decide if I should e-mail K and see if their house is still standing and if we're still welcome in their home after Figgy was done with it. Between chasing The Professor from the staircase and picking up partially eaten food from other guests (because Figgy decided she didn't want what she picked up and the nearest person to her would love to hold it for her), explaining to Ethan that we don't scream at other kids, and cleaning up the soda that Figgy grabbed from the table, I felt like we couldn't get out of there fast enough. We came back to our house and the kids proceeded to have major meltdowns. They've had such a jammed pack weekend and it was really just time to unwind, but they weren't quite sure how. They were in jammies, had their milk, and were fast asleep by 8:00.

Saturday was an even busier day! First of all, we took the kids to the park on Friday evening for an hour. That wore them out, royally, and they proceeded to sleep until 9:15 on Saturday morning! That's a record! I needed them to be up earlier, though, because we had so much to do. Imagine my surprise when I rolled over and looked at the clock at 9:15 and realized that mommy and the kiddos had overslept. I bounced out of bed and ran into their rooms to get them up. We got dressed and I made breakfast, then gave them milk while they played. I browned the meat that had been in the fridge for 2 days, while making 2 batches of cupcakes for my niece's birthday party. I got Jason up at 11:30 and he showered while I cleaned up the kitchen. Then, he came down and I ran upstairs to shower and change. Since the kids had not gotten up at their usual time, they were nowhere near ready for naps, so we hit the road to Fredericksburg for my sweet niece's 8th birthday party. We learned that Figgy has picked up some new words and phrases. We told her several times that she should probably close her eyes and go to sleep like her brother. After a few times of being told that, she matter of factly looked up from her seat, sighed, and said, "Noooo." We told her that we thought it might be a good idea and she responded with (what distinctly sounded like), "I do not think so." Jason just shook his head and said, "What have we gotten ourselves into with her?" It took us FOREVER to get down south. I swear, I hate I-95. The speed limit is 65 and people sit in the left hand lane doing 45, leaving half a mile in between them and the car ahead of them. It's a disaster and I want to kill every person that gets in front of me and refuses to do 65. It took us over 2 hours to get to my brother's house, but once we got there, we were good. The kids were happy to see their cousin (their favorite person in the whole world). They played for several hours outside, running back and forth, jumping in the pool (Ellie), and just being generally fun kids. We stayed for a few hours, until Ethan laid down on the deck and started to fall asleep. We packed up our car and braced ourselves for the miserable trip home, back up I-95. The kids were sound asleep within 15 minutes, by 6:15. Once we got home, the sobbing began. They were so exhausted that they just didn't know what to do. We changed them into their jammies and they curled up with mommy on the couch, where The Professor passed out in my left arm and began snoring in record time. Figgy, on the other hand, was so tired that she just couldn't close her eyes. She laid on my chest for 45 minutes, just quietly breathing. Every few minutes, she would lift her head and whisper something to me, then lay her head back down. It was one of the sweetest moments I've ever had with the kids and I relished the time we spent laying on the couch.

So, the kids are partied out and we will not be doing this again, anytime soon. Right or wrong, they are very much routine centered kids, and we worked hard to get them settled into a schedule and routine. It's the best thing I've done with them, so far. We've had other twin moms in our local support group begging us to help them with scheduling and sleep, and it makes me feel as though I've been a success.

Vacation is coming up at the end of the week! I have 3 lists made! THREE! LOL! There is so much to be done, but I think I'm going to make one thing easier on myself. I think we'll probably rent highchairs when we get there. It's two less big things to put in our small vehicle and they'll even bring them to our beach house for us. I'm going to put up the pack-n-plays tomorrow night to see if they'll sleep in them for us. They wouldn't sleep in them when we were in Boston and they were even in our room with us, so I'm afraid that's going to happen this time around (especially since they'll be in a different rooom). If that's the case, then it's two less things to pack and we'll just put a twin mattress on the floor in our bedroom at the beach where they can sleep. I think we'll need to rent a small U-Haul to bring everything else.