More Milk

After showing Jackson the sign for "milk" about 5-10 times, he learned how to do it on his own! Now he can say, "more milk" and he's so proud! You can see it in his eyes. As soon as he asks for more milk and I give him praise for asking properly (not screaming or yelling) his eyes were lit up and he started clapping for himself!! It's too cute.

Aiden has been doing very well with his manners. He's said "Thank You" about 3 times today without Jason or I needing to prompt him to say it! I think it helps that Jason and I are always trying to use our manners with one another in front of the kids. They see that we do it, that's it's just what's normal...and they follow what we do.

Mr. Jackson seems more social since we moved to San Marcos. Isn't that strange? He's waving and "talking" to strangers more and more these days. Today he was even flirting with a woman who was sitting near us while Aiden sat across from the table, completely unaware. It's amazing how much they change over the months.

The one thing that STILL hasn't changed is the weight difference. Jackson is clearly wearing 18 month old pants and you have to struggle to get him into 12 month old pants. It looks goofy on him. Aiden, on the other hand can hardly wear 12 month pants due to his little waist but they almost always look like capri's/high water's. Aiden NEEDS the length of 18 month old pants but the waist of 9-12 month old pants. Jackson has ALWAYS been bigger than Aiden. The closest they've ever been in weight was on June 9, 2007, the day they were born. Jackson was 5 lbs 1 oz and Aiden was 4 lbs 12 oz. That's really, really close for fraternal twins. Jackson seemed to just thrive outside of the womb, gaining weight and learning how to feed from a bottle right away while Aiden took some time...therefore Aiden was slow to gain weight. The weight difference became more pronounced as Aiden started eating less and less due to his acid reflux. Once they started eating table food, Aiden has seemed to keep up with Jackson's gain but he can't seem to catch up yet. Where at one people wouldn't believe that they were twins, the difference was so big...you can still tell that Jackson is bigger, but it seems more slight at this age.

PLEASE EMAIL ME YOUR ADDRESS IF YOU WOULD LIKE A CHRISTMAS CARD!!!! :o)

I'd better get going. Thank you all for tuning in.

Broken Camera

So I don't really have many picture to share.

We are absolutely in love with San Marcos. Everyone we've come across has been really helpful and nice. Jackson and Aiden have seemed to make a pretty easy transition. They are of course loving all of the extra space they now have.

The neighborhood is even better than we could have imagined. There's a great mix of ages and races.

The neighbors to the right are two college guys at Texas State. One of them introduced himself to me. His name is Tyler. I told him I was Teela and you know what he said? "It's nice to meet you, Ma'am."

"Excuse me?! 'Ma'am'??? I'm only 26!" *sigh* So now I refer to them as kids. Heehee. It's the little things that make me feel better. teehee Anyway, they seem very nice.

We think someone should be moving into the house on the left in just a few short days. They are nearly finished on the house so the sod should be going in shortly. We think it's an older couple that will be moving in. It's a much smaller house (like just over 1000 sq feet).

But then...across the street we have kids galore!! Almost all of our across the street neighbors have children. I don't think we've seen many kids near Jackson and Aiden's age except for...

The back door neighbors. Our yards back up to each other.

Anyway, again...it's a smaller house so our theory is...the Grandma lives there and takes care of her granddaughter/son during the days. We've seen the "Grandma" and I think I saw the daughter once. We have yet to see the little kid but we've hear her/him and we see toys out there all the time. Not to mention, the pack n play is kind of a dead give-away. We are assuming that the little one is close in age to the boys. We've never said hi to the Grandma out back yet though. She's normally had her back turned to us or something else was going on. ALSO (and the plot thickens) she's exotic!! She speaks another language and it's not espanol. Maybe she's Greek or French? Oh the possibilities!! :o) We can't wait to get to know them better.

We've still got so much stuff that needs to get done at the old place before Thanksgiving and the end of the month. SO MUCH. Hopefully we'll put a good dent in it this weekend. Wish us luck cause we are going to need it.

What else is new?

Jackson is now learning how to sign. My mom started teaching Jackson how to say "more" in sign language. I have to admit, he picked it up rather fast. Now he will sign "more" to us when he wants more food. Today I also caught him saying, "Hi Kitty." They are such little sponges at this age.

We've noticed that Aiden is the talker. He's the one who is saying new words all the time. He also loves to point to things and ask, "wus dat?" even though the w is normally silent. haha

They are both always wanting to learn new things.

They've also become more of little helpers than before. Now they seemingly want to do what you ask them to do. They like to bring things to you when you ask them to which is nice.

OH! BLOWING KISSES! (which is what they are both doing in one of those pictures above) They both learned rather quickly how to blow kisses! YAY! I love my baby boys kisses. Now they blow kisses to strangers from time to time.

They still have that wild streak. That stubbornness toddlers are so good at. We've had to start doing time out's every now and then. Most times they are really good children. Happy. Loving. But sometimes something gets in them and they can flat out be mean. When they get really frustrated they like to pull each others hair, yank on their clothes, and hit them on the head. Part of me knows that this is mostly the age but the other park of me knows that I need to stop that behavior now so that I don't have two little spoiled brats in a few years, ya know what I mean? I guess most of parenting is spent trying to find that happy medium. I do not want to be a militant overbearing parent but I also don't want to be a push over that allows my children to call the shots.

And I thought most of the worries would be over after pregnancy! HA! That's when the real tough work starts!!

Well, I know I could talk on for days but I need to get some things done before the kiddos get up from their nap. I'll post more updates later on. Love you ALL!

It's Official!

We are homeowners!

Friday was CRAZY. Not only was it Halloween, but it was also the day we did our final walk through and signed on the house.

I woke up at 4 am and started the day with a BIG pot of coffee. We got the boys up and dressed, gave them their Dink of Milk and then we went out for breakfast together, which is really rare. We normally never eat out for breakfast. The boys loved it. They ate lots of pancakes, biscuits, sausage, chicken, and hash browns. They still don't like eggs much. I don't get it? I thought all kids liked eggs? Even I liked eggs as a child.

Then they went to Oma and Opa's so that Jason and I could go to our final walk through. We were shocked that they got 99% of the "issues" we found corrected already. There were just a few very minor things we saw and there was a touch up painter who followed us around to correct all the mistakes. When we were done there, we left to go to the title company to sign on the house. Once we got there, it took about 2 hours for them to actually GET all the paperwork but once it was there, it took us less than an hour to sign it and go through it all. Simple!

Then we went back to the old house to pick up the dogs and went to Oma and Opa's to pick up the boys. We got to OUR house, Jason dashed off to grab us some dinner, we ate, got the boys dressed up in their costumes and took them trick-or-treating. They weren't in the best mood to go trick-or-treating, that's for sure. Man! Jason and I ended up having to carry them around ourselves for most of the night so needless to say, it was a very short trick-or-treating experience. But it was really neat to get to meet some of our neighbors...and take candy from them. LOL. We got pretty good candy, too. None of that generic stuff.

It was SUCH a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG day.

After we got the boys undressed, into their PJ's and into bed we decided to start painting the boys room (it was about 9:00 p.m. by then). We ran out of paint before we ran out of energy, shockingly enough.

When we were done with that, we decided it was time to blow up the ole' blow up mattress. We took out the mattress and pump and I asked Jason, "where's the plug?"
"What plug?"
"For the mattress pump." I said.
"There IS no pump. It said it came with batteries."
"I don't see any batteries either."
We searched our empty room high and low for these batteries that were included until I re-read the box and it said, "Batteries NOT included."

Grrrrrrrrr. At this point, I just wanna lay down and pass out and Jason, being the amazing husband that he is says that he will drive up to a gas station to buy some extremely overpriced batteries. At this point, it's probably 10:30 pm or so.

While Jason was driving all over San Marcos trying to find some batteries I thought it would be the perfect time to take a long hot shower. I turn on the tub in the master bath and it's COLD. I decide to let it warm up while I do something else and when I came back...it was still freezing cold.

Come to find out, we don't think it was ever plugged in? We called Our Man Fernando who said he'd get someone RIGHT on it, which he did. As soon as we got home from the store, the sales guy's car was blocking our driveway so we parked down the street. The sales guy went in and checked out the hot water heater and that's how him and Jason came to the conclusion that it was never plugged in.

It's a HUGE water heater. It's 55 gallons. I'm assuming that's why Jason and the sales guy didn't just plug it in themselves...I still don't know for sure...but we were told that they'd call out an electrician. Wait...I think the words that were used were "emergency electrician." Ok. We'll sit around and wait. Meanwhile, Jason got three phone calls from random people apologizing for this.

We waited. And waited. Until we simply couldn't wait anymore and we had to take the boys to eat dinner. And since we still have no hot water, we called Our Man Fernando back and said something like, "We need to bathe not just ourselves but our kids too and we can not wait around here anymore today (it was about 5 pm...we called him initially at 10 am). It seems someone has dropped the ball yet again.

Let's see....so far we've got and added $1000 because they made an error and never notified us that our floor plan would be flipped. Then just recently we got an added 10x10 patio out back because they didn't call us like they told us they would. What now? A garage door opener?

Anyway.

Today we had Nana, Grandpa Mark, Aunt Cheryl, Uncle Dale and Aunt Laurie over to see the house. It was soooo nice getting to see everyone and having them come over to check the place out. Everyone is so proud of us and it makes us all the more proud.

Now we are back at the old house because this is the only place with hot water and two cribs. We will be going back to OUR house tonight to sleep but we needed to freshen up so we thought we'd sop to watch the UT game. We are about to turn off the TV though because the way the Longhorns are playing is making us sick.

I'm going to end this blog now because it's already much longer than intended. Goodnight everyone! I hope you all had a safe and fun Halloween!