Twinsissippi Mama

Ooh I’ve slacked off posting here.  What can I say? I plead The Holidays.  We stayed home with Butch and Sundance this year, instead of traveling to see family, and it was glooooorious.  Butch asked Santa for “presents.”  He didn’t feel the need to be more specific than that and, funny thing, it was an effective approach. He got presents, lots of presents, as did Sundance.

But now it’s the New Year, the twins are officially Two And A Half now (God help us), and let’s see what we’ve got in the on-deck circle for 2007.

• Potty-training.  They say nono Mama, Mama says OH YES.  Battle of the Wills Royale.
• Preschool or not to Preschool?  Well, they will eventually do the Preschool Thing, but all the schools in town require full potty-training (see above).

That’s it? Well, it’s plenty for me, thanks.

As I mentioned earlier, this is really the first year that the twins “got” Trick or Treating.  Sometimes it would take a fair bit of persuasion to get them to leave the candy in the little pumpkin bucket after receiving it at a house instead of immediately eating it, wrapper and all, but for the most part, they were finding it exciting to watch their Haul increase house by house.

We got home from Trick or Treating and allowed them to eat one piece of candy (I think they might’ve split a KitKat) and then packed them off to bed, while I “hid” their pumpkin buckets on top of the dining room tables.  They haven’t asked for the candy since then, and since we’d looked through there and noticed the buckets were pretty full of stuff they might not yet be able to handle (Tootsie Rolls, jawbreakers, gumballs, etc.), we were more than fine with this.

And then last night I woke up and wandered out to go find a drink of water, and found Mr. Twinsissippi sitting on the floor with the contents of one of the buckets of candy spread out in front of him.  He was feasting upon the twins’ candy! In the middle of the night, like the Grinch or something!  I was shocked.

Until he handed me a bite-sized Three Musketeers.  I’m a sucker for those things.

This was technically our second year taking Butch and Sundance Trick-or-Treating (we only hit four houses last year, and we [they] needed our [their] pacis for the last two, as it was so traumatic), but it’s the first year when they’ve actually caught on to the whole, glorious  people-give-you-free-candy-just-for-knocking-on-their-doors! part of the gig.

And it was such a tremendous hit with them that they were knocking on store windows that we passed by, hoping that mannequins and ghosts would give them Tootsie Rolls.

Candy, Please

For a few weeks now, Butch and Sundance have been complaining about the set-up in their bedroom.  Their (toddler) beds are where their cribs had previously lived, on either side of the room’s single window.  It worked in their crib days because they could look out and see each other and that was enough to make them happy.  Now, though, they want more.  They want to fall asleep holding hands or, more often, have one fall asleep while the other one sits on his back and sings loudly to try to keep the sleepy one awake.

So they’ve been complaining about it, and after the 907^th time I found them lying together on one bed, I thought, well, what’s the big deal?  I pushed the beds together and, in a flash of brilliance, realized that if I positioned the headboards against the window, perhaps that would help prevent them from climbing onto the windowsill—first climbing underneath the full-length curtain and room-darkening shade—and that would be an added bonus.  As I thought this, a second thought fleetingly hit me:  maybe they’d actually climb onto the windowsill more often.  But then I decided that they hadn’t done that in over a month, so maybe they wouldn’t start it up again now.

Well, apparently Sundance, at least, can read my mind.  Not twelve minutes after shutting off the light and saying our many good-nights and shutting the door, I heard wild, raucous laughter from the nursery.  I opened the door and…huh, only saw Butch (who was giggling) lying in bed.  Where was Sundance?  Just then, the curtain giggled.

This is one of those times when I wish Harry Potter wasn’t made-up and that I really could do a spell to keep the children in bed, or at least to block them from reading my mind, for the love of all that is good and holy.

Chocolate Explosion

While we were traveling last week, we went by a Carter’s Outlet and I stopped to get some nice warm long-sleeved shirts for Butch and Sundance.  I was so thrilled with them…not only were they a great price (cheaper than Old Navy!) but they were so soft and slightly too big so that maybe we’ll actually be able to get a whole winter’s use out of them.

And then yesterday, I put them on the boys.  Within minutes, Butch demonstrated that he knew how to twist off the top to his sippy cup, thus liberating the chocolate milk inside. On the new white shirt.

Sigh.

I’m more than a little behind here, but this was one of the funniest Twins-Having-A-Disagreement moments we’ve had in a long time.  Butch and Sundance couldn’t agree on who got to ride the little car and they ended up having a wreck, complete with lots of shrieking and even some tears.  Goofballs.

Fighting over the Car

Rollover

Although I have to say I do hope they can work out some sort of sharing system before they get their drivers’ licenses, because if they think their father and I will be giving them EACH a car then…they have got another think coming.

Apologies for the month-long Radio Silence.  We’ve been traveling and that makes it Tough Stuff to keep the blog updated.  However, traveling with Butch and Sundance also means good blog fodder.  When I’ve recovered, I’ll post again.  Deal?

Oh okay, I'll post, but it's a quick one for now. 

Funniest thing these days is that if Butch has an owie or touches a mushy banana or something, he turns to me and says "kiss it!" Now I know that he means kiss it to make the owie better, but I'm already cringing in anticipation of the day when he might say that to someone not me, someone like the minister at our church or their teacher at Kool or a policeman who might pull me over for speeding or something.

Today I was at WalMart with Butch and Sundance and someone stopped us to say "are they twiiiiiins?" and I said yes, and she said "I've got twins" and then proceeded to tell me her life story. I am not joking, she told me about how she met her husband and about their first date and about how he proposed and how they got married and then when she found out she was having twins he was all "I knew it, I knew it!" and THAT is when she tells me that, by the way, she is a twin and so is her husband. And yet she was all shocked when she found out she was having twins.

Anyhow, I swear, she kept us there talking for a good ten-twelve minutes (meanwhile the boys have finished their juice sippies and half a box of animal crackers and are flipping out and my ice cream is melting...). I told Mr. Twinsissippi about it when we got home, and he was like "oh, so it was like your mom."

Which is kinda true, except I think she would've stopped after the first date story.