Musical babies!!!

What should we call our new group!? Note Ethan's extreme focus and Sophia's amazing razzberries...


Ethan on piano, Sophia on vocals...


Ethan on piano, Sophia on vocals and rattle...

Eating Zwieback

Ethan and Sophia fed themselves zwieback for the first time this morning. It's their first finger food and the first time they've fed themselves!!! This was before I found Ethan's new tooth (well, tooth-bud really... it's just working it's way out of his gum...)





Ethan eating zwieback...


Sophia eating zwieback...

Sophia shows amazing dexterity...

Sophia can pluck objects from almost anywhere...

Ethan has his first tooth!

The babies are hungry, so this will be quick... Ethan got his first tooth today on the bottom left of his mouth! We were at our mothers of twins support group. He was chewing on my finger and i felt a new bump... It was his tooth! :) Sophia has alo been teething lately, so we're expecting to see teeth from her sometime soon, too! Pictures of the new chomper to come soon!

Going vertical!!!

So Ethan and Sophia are going vertical! They've decided that sitting is the best position to be in these days. They are both sitting upright rather solidly for 10's of minutes at a time. Yesterday (and again today) Ethan and Sophia sat for a solid half-hour - no wobbles, no toppling - just sat there. Steve came home to the three of us sitting on the rug and was absolutely blown away. Our babies are becoming toddlers - both wonderful and a little sad, too... You may think I'm crazy (Steve does!), but it makes me want another baby (or babies?)! For all you baby-crazy grandparents out there, don't get too excited - I'm just dreaming here - the reality is that two may be it for us...

Steve got promoted to Oracle Application Developer on the business side of PHT Corp. last week. We're so proud of him - he's only been at the company for 6 months and he's already moving up! :)

On Monday, we went to visit our friends the Bunns who just moved into a house in a great neighborhood in Needham. We're so glad that they're close by now! Oh, and I should mention that Ginger has 11-month-old triplets - Win, Wes, and Charlie. With 5 kids between us, it's always a party when we get together!

Visiting Ginger and her boys (all in overalls) and hanging out in their cool new play room. Left to right: Ginger holding Sophia and Wes, Win is sitting in front of us, Charlie's next to me hanging onto my leg and I'm holding Ethan. Ginger, I hope I got Win and Wes ID'd right... Win and Wes are not identical, but they are looking a lot alike to me in this picture... 6/22 comment: Ginger is actually holding Win and Wes is in front... like the SAT-prep folks told me years ago, I should have stuck with my original thought - when I first wrote this I had Ginger holding Win and Wes out in front, but I second-guessed myself... hopefully I'll get it right next time! :)

My stretched nerve was acting up, so I went to see Dr. Soybel this week - the surgeon who repaired my incisional hernia (that complication from my emergency c-section...). Dr. Soybel prescribed a medication to hopefully make the stretched nerve stop hurting. He also recommended swimming as the best thing to do to strengthen my abdomen and surrounding area.

So we just rejoined the West Suburban YMCA yesterday - mainly for the pool so I can swim regularly. We were pleasantly surprised that the monthly membership comes FREE drop-in childcare for both of our kids! I was so excited to get a workout and a little break - and don't we all need both? Ideally, yes... I took Sophia and Ethan to the YMCA for the first time this morning with the plan of just introducing the kids to the babysitting room and making sure that they were comfortable. When we arrived around 11am, the room was crowded with 10 kids and 2 caregivers - not a great ratio. And it was loud and felt a little chaotic. I sat with the kids in the babysitting room and wondered how I could possibly leave Sophia and Ethan there. They seemed to be wondering that, too... The babysitter folks who work there said that the afternoons are usually much quieter. So we'll try going in the afternoon next week. Hopefully it'll work out. If not we'll save ourselves some money and will be back to walking the neighborhood.

Some pictures and videos of our newly-vertical babies (toddlers??? EEK!!):

Sophia and Ethan sitting... WOW!
Ethan enjoying the new perspective!
Looking up at the rattle I was shaking...
Sophia - so, so, so proud and happy and feeling like a million bucks in all her sweet baby-ness!

Every day Steve comes home from work and says, "Where are my babies???"

Ethan takes his first bite of cell phone... ooh... treo...

06.18.08 :: Afternoons may be for sitting, but mornings are for EXERSAUCERS!!!


06.18.08 :: E eating his toes, S kicking and singing...


06.19.08 :: Sophia and Ethan sitting #1, Ethan playing...


06.19.08 :: Sophia and Ethan sitting #2 - Sophia plays with her shorts while Ethan plays with the rattle


06.19.08 :: Sophia and Ethan sitting #3 - Ethan chews on a toy while Sophia masters the fine art of losing and recovering the rattle ball... Note her use of her feet to retrieve her lost toy...


06.20.08 :: Sophia and Ethan sitting #4 - Shaking balls - what fun!

Happy Father's Day! Seven Months Old!

Instead of having a Father's Day celebration, we had a Father's Weekend celebration. We kicked it off on Friday night with a special dinner and drinks. Usually Steve gets up early with the kids since I get up with them at night if needed. As a gift on Saturday I took care of the kids in the early morning and let Steve sleep as late as possible - which turned out to be 11:30am! He slept a whopping 11.5 hours in a row and woke up looking both a little groggy and rested. We had brunch together, played with Sophia and Ethan and then took them for a long walk in the neighborhood. It's a big place and we're still having fun exploring and meeting neighbors as we go. We ordered out for sushi on Saturday night and watched a movie. It was a great day.

This morning we went to church and said goodbye to our dear friend Natalie who is moving to Chicago to be closer to her children and grandchildren. We will miss her. It was also Rev. Anita's second to last sermon at First Parish in Cambridge. Anita has been our interim minister for the past two years and we will miss her also! When we arrived home, Steve played with Sophia and Ethan while I made one of our favorite meals - paella. It's a combination of spicy sausage, chicken, pork, scallops, and shrimp on saffron rice. Yum. After dinner we somewhat grudgingly did work to get ready for the week. It was such a nice weekend it was hard to get back to our usual routine!

Our Father's Day gift to Steve was a set of 3 connected frames with pictures spelling out "D-A-D"
Sophia and Ethan - Seven months old!!!
The dynamic duo...
Ethan is teething... on Sophia... sign of things to come??

More teething...Sophia gets in on the chewing...
Both Sophia and Ethan are now proficient rollers - we often find them like this... Note that Ethan has rolled off his activity mat!
Ethan's hair is FINALLY coming in! I am thrilled that it actually shows up in pictures now!
Sophia has had a full head of hair for awhile...
Sophia plays on her activity mat...
Yup... that's our Sophia!
Ethan plays on his activity mat...
...and gets a little wrapped up in it! We may be outgrowing the activity mats!
Now that Ethan can roll over on his own he can *finally* sleep on his stomach again (he almost always did when he was in the NICU and has missed it ever since). Warms my heart to see him sleeping so comfortably...
Out for a walk in the neighborhood on Saturday... Picture taken in front of our house...Sophia eating... she likes to hold her own spoon!
Ethan prefers to be fed most of the time, but will sometimes hold his own spoon... Steve and I were surprised to see this picture. Ethan is usually a very neat eater who sometimes has messy parents...
Reverend Anita gave her second-to-last sermon on Sunday...Steve with Ethan...
Sophia was lulled to sleep by the singing...
06.12.08 :: Ethan Sitting


06.13.08 :: Sophia & Ethan in exersaucers


06.14.08 :: Sophia singing in her exersaucer

Double Trouble? Seriously? Yikes...

This article called "Double Trouble" was published in Boston Magazine this week. Reading it left me feeling like I'd been sideswiped by an angry, depressed, vindictive mother of twins. Her opinions, viewpoints, and general state of mind could not be further from my own...

Apparently, I wasn't alone. My mothers of twins listserv has been posting volumes about it since the article came out last week. And no one seems really happy about it.

The main thing that really bothered me about the article is that someday her kids might read this article and in the meantime they must FEEL all of that negative energy from her. How will they react when they see that she equated having them to getting bubonic plague? A proverbial pox on her life? That she wished one of them had died? Which begs the question of which one is that? The one who she now labels as "the troublemaker"? Unfathomable! Yikes! Her poor kids!

During all of the crazy things that happened while I was trying to have Sophia and Ethan and now that they're here, I've found the best way for me to cope is to try my best to put a positive spin on things. In that spirit, this awful article did help me to reaffirm how strong and good my own feelings are about being a mom. From the moment I found out I was carrying twins I loved and wanted them both. They are my greatest joys. It would be untrue to say that I don't ever wonder what life would be like with just one baby, or wonder what it might have been like to have a less complicated pregnancy, but I also wonder what being an olympic athlete or surgeon might be like... Doesn't keep me up nights - I'm glad about my choices. Every day I am so, so, so thankful for my reality - I am so lucky to stay home with my two happy, healthy babies, lucky to have such a strong marriage (and wonderful partner!), and lucky to live the life that I do. I wouldn't trade it in or change it for anything.

A few excerpts from postings that I liked from moms of twins who are much more articulate than me are below.

One of my favorite responses is this one from Jane Roper's Blog.

Another favorite response from Jenn:

Wow, I hope no expectant moms of twins reads that! Talk about negativity-wow! Sure we all have bad days but thank goodness, it's not every day... I've read the article twice and I'm still not sure what the point was. I do feel really bad for the author though not because she has twins, but for the fact that she must really be lacking some support to feel so negatively. Sad, really :(

Rachel B. rocks:

I was horrified by the article primarily for one reason, which is that the author seems to be advocating for more restricted infertility coverage. We are VERY lucky to live in MA, which has the best infertility laws and coverage in the country and it pains me to see a woman speaking out against this wonderful progress. I'm hoping that our society will evolve and that all 49 other states will adopt such appropriate coverage for infertility. The author clearly doesn't understand the pain women/couples go through during infertility and the miracle that fertility treatments can bring.

I moved to MA just under a year ago and am now 7 months pregnant with twins, which quite possibly may not have happened if we lived in another state. I know about 20 women in Boston and throughout the country struggling with infertility in one way or another who would be infuriated, to be gentle, to hear this woman is suggesting limiting a woman's access to fertility coverage.

From an economic perspective, I don't think society should rationalize that $12,000 is an exorbitant expense for a treatment (IVF) when it can create one or two lives with life expectancies of approximately 80 years each. Insurance carriers currently cover cancer treatments in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars for people with the possibility of 5 to 10 years life expectancy or even less.

From a health perspective, there is no question that there are risks to prematurity. However, any mother who has been through fertility treatments is likely going to ensure that she takes the best care possible during her pregnancy to prolong the pregnancy as long as possible. Perhaps, the author's energy might be better spent solving the poverty/drug crisis in this country that no doubt results in a larger population of prematurity and birth defects due to mothers' deleterious habits than the mothers of twins population.

From a societal perspective, the author seems to be struggling with her inability to "have it all" since her twins have arrived. I would argue that this lady would have just as much trouble working in her magazine editor job with two singletons as she might with her twins. It is the reality of raising children that holding a demanding, time consuming job may be too stressful for some women given the demands waiting at home. While she seems happy to blame her twins for the demise of her career, I think she'd do better by admitting that sometimes we just cannot "have it all." Myself and my closest friends (many of us with very successful business careers) were fortunate to be raised in an era where women could expect to have it all. However, we seem to all be realizing that "having it all" may not be manageable and tradeoffs must be made and accepted.

...and, finally, Kip's response which sums it up nicely...

I'll let y'all judge it for yourselves, but zoinks! I certainly feel
like I'm on a different twin planet.

Summer is here!

The Red Sox are doing so well this season, we decided to wear our team shirts... Go Sox! Ethan was a little worried that Big Papi's arm might keep them from continuing to do well, so Sophia tried to let him know that there are other strong players on the team too!


This past weekend was sweltering hot - 95 degrees and humid!!! On Sunday we thought it would be a good idea to introduce Sophia and Ethan to our new wading pool. Unfortunately, the water didn't heat up as quickly as we'd hoped. When we checked the water at 5:30pm it was still freezing cold. We were also rapidly approaching dinner time for the kids and as you may know, hungry children don't make great explorers. We'll try it again earlier in the day next weekend!Sophia all dressed up and no pool to swim in...
Ethan was lookin' good, but you can see the glazed look in his eyes - he was a little too tired to enjoy something new...
One thing we're always ready for - eating! Ethan and Sophia are rapidly outgrowing our twins nursing pillow. We'll need to switch to bouncy seats soon! I'm not sure who will miss the nursing pillow snuggle-feeds more - Sophia, Ethan, or me!

Six and a half months

On Monday night, Steve and I had our first night out together (just the two of us for fun) since August 2007 when I went on bedrest. We couldn't believe that it had been that long! It was wonderful to get out by ourselves... We're planning to make it a weekly thing from now on.

I've been going to a Mothers of Twins support group on Wednesday afternoons. There are about 8 moms (and one stay-at-home dad) who come to the group on a weekly basis with their twins. We all spread blankets and sit on the floor with our kids as we discuss everything from sleeping to feeding to new products. This past week the Boston Chronicle TV Show producers came and filmed our group. I don't know when it'll be airing, but will let you know when I do...

On Wednesday night, my cousin Cindy and aunt Jo-Ann came over for dinner. They were amazed at how much Sophia and Ethan had grown and changed. It was wonderful to see them.

On Saturday Steve's sister Gail and her husband Mike came for lunch. Sophia and Ethan enjoyed meeting them and playing. We hope that Gail and Mike's daughter Jessica (born 3/31/08) comes home from the NICU soon!

Sophia catches up with Aunt Cindy...
Sophia, Aunt Cindy, Ethan, Aunt Jo-Ann...
Ethan and Sophia...
Sophia, Ethan, and Daddy play on the rug...
Yesterday we went to a semi-retirement and birthday party for our friend Susan...

Sophia, Steph, Steve, and Ethan at the party...
Sophia, Steph, Ethan, and Steve...

This morning we put Sophia on the activity mat on her back. When we came back we found her on her stomach... Hmmm.... may be time to start thinking about baby-proofing! :)

06.01.08 :: Ethan has started talking! Translation: Bottle please!!! :)