28
February
2007
I took the boys to the mall today, to get out of the house and to look for a book for the book club I’m in. It went reasonably smoothly. The boys got to look at fish in the aquariums next to Tim Hortons. They got a kick out of the lionfish. Then we saw flamingoes and sealions. After stopping at the bookstore and getting a Caramel Apple Cider the boys got to steer some ships wheels, the kind you pay money to steer a boat around the water. We didn’t pay any money, they couldn’t see over the glass into the water anyway! So, we were having a good morning. Then we stopped for lunch. Drew LOVES cucumber rolls (a type of sushi made with cucumbers wrapped in rice with seaweed on the outside), so I got those and a teriyaki chicken bowl with rice and carrots and cucumber. Drew sat in his high chair and ate really well. Unfortunately Bran didn’t do so well. He refused to sit in the high chair so I put him back in the stroller. I tried twice more and eventually gave in and held him on my lap which is what he wanted, I didn’t want to give in but didn’t think everyone else appreciated eating next to a crying child! The whole time he was sitting on my lap he kept flailiing around and acting like there was something wrong with him (to another’s person’s eyes, to mine he was just being bad). Toward the end of this exciting meal, Drew decided to keep climbing out of his seat (the belt didn’t fit) and then dump the rest of his food all over the table and then push it onto the floor. I got Bran back into his stroller seat with a great deal of trouble and crying and then went for Drew. While I was cleaning our mess off of the table and putting it back onto the tray and packing away bibs, Drew decided to start screaming (a very bad habit of his that I’m at a loss as to how to correct–any ideas? Please let me know). I finally got us all out of the eating area, whew! (usually we make it through a meal pretty well so this was unusual). Then as I’m pushing them back toward our entrance they start yelling “go” over and over “go” “go” “go”. Which I can actually deal with, that is until we stroll up behind a more elderly woman who, rather than noticing the frazzled mamma behind the wheel, takes this as an affront that she is walking too slowly! As she huffs away to the side, I just want to melt into the stroller. I quickly duck into Please Mum where it’s okay for kids to be a little bit loud, it is a clothing store for kids after all. An outfit each for the boys and I’m feeling much better. There’s just something about spending money…
I bribe the boys with a video (one of those times I thank God for a van with a DVD player) to get their coats on and we’re out the door. We get home, quick diaper change, and they’re happily sleeping upstairs. If I only had another Caramel Apple Cider…
Posted: Drew & Bran
15
February
2007
We’ve been having a little bit of trouble with our insurance company. Now let me first start out by saying we have excellent care and more than I could ever imagine is covered without me having to think about it. The trouble we’re having is with our supplemental insurance. My complaint is not with what they cover (although I would really rather they forego the acupuncture and pay for massage therapy), but that, well, they (or their computers) are just stupid. This past October Bran was in the ER with pneumonia. We left the hospital at 4am and tried to get his prescription filled, the pharmacy couldn’t get it to go through and at 4am there was no one to call. The next day, in a state of exhaustion, I went to our local pharmacy. They couldn’t get it covered, either, so I just paid for it. I think it was a whole $16. Amoxicillin has been around for so long, you’d think it would be even cheaper than that. Anyway, I talked to the “people” at the University to get it fixed and they apparently did.
However, we ran into problems again last week. The boys had their first ear infections and were not happy wandering through the grocery store for an hour, simply for the pharmacy to tell me that Bran’s could not be covered again. Arghhh! (maybe I do say that alot) 
The pharmacist was nice enough to have the pharmacy eat the cost since, well, in his own words, ‘amoxicillin is so cheap.’ I called our insurance company to find out what was wrong. Because they are twins we now have to include their middle initial when filling a prescription (We used to have to give them separate birthdates… Drew was born a month earlier according to their computers… So, I guess it’s an improvement). The pharmacist put a period after the “N” and that, my friends, was the big mistake. Apparently it screwed up the whole system such that even after a phone call, they couldn’t verify Bran as the correct child and fill his prescription.
A period…
Now why couldn’t the person on the other end figure this out? Maybe it’s not just the computers… I’ll give them one more break since we’re not your “normal” family, though I may dread the next time I have to get a prescription filled for Brandon.
Posted: My Mon/Fayette Expressways
8
February
2007
Andrew is getting really good at communicating and sometimes he even helps Bran. Today I was trying to get Bran to tell me what he wanted. I knew that he wanted more of his cheerios, but wanted him to say more or cheerios or something other than nah, nah. Drew looked at Bran and made the sign for more to him. Bran made a sound of acknowledgement and signed more. Later that day I was asking the boys to touch their heads, Drew touched his and when I asked Bran to do it he wouldn’t, so Drew touched his head for him!
Drew really likes to recite the letters of the alphabet with me. But the past 2 days he’s been getting stuck on what appears to be his favorite letter, “F”. I say “A”, he says “F”, I say “B”, she says “F”, until we get to “G”, then he repeats the correct letters until about “S” and then he’s bored and won’t do it anymore.
Bran has only jumped in once or twice when I do the alphabet with Drew and then only with 3-4 letters, he doesn’t seem interested. Today he was off playing by the back door by himself and I heard him start the alphabet. He got to “C”, then went back to “B”, then “A”, then said them all in order all the way to “H”! I guess maybe he was paying more attention than I thought!
Bran’s favorite book right now is a counting book. Each page has pictures of a different number of animals related to the sea all the way to 12. He can find the animals I ask him to find and then actually does a good job of counting them, if it’s not higher than 3. After 3 he just keeps tapping the page, until I stop counting. We have to read the book several times a day. It’s also becoming Drew’s favorite so we have some disputes over who gets to turn the page! Bran always seems to be the one to have a favorite book, then Drew starts to like it too. First it was Snuggle Puppy, then I Love You Through and Through, then Brown Bear or Polar Bear, then The Christmas Tree book, and now the counting book. I think Goodnight Moon fits in there somewhere too. The last 5 are still on the best reads list. As much as we read to the boys from the very beginning, they’re not big readers.
Yesterday we heard Bran counting. He was looking at a book with numbers in it and said one, two, three, while he pointed to the one and the seven! The book was upside down, so you could argue as Mike did that that seven upside down looked similar to a two! We’re reaching but what to do you expect, we’re parents!
The boys are starting to say lots of words. Drew almost always says thank you when you give him something and is getting better at using his words to say please rather than his sign. They’re also starting to repeat our words more. The biggest thing is that while they know the words, can say them, and I think even know when to use them, they don’t. They have to be prodded, or you have to say it first and they’ll repeat. For example if they want Milk, they can repeat Milk if you ask them “Do you want milk?”. But they won’t actually ask for it, instead they put their hands up to the counter and say “nah, nah, nah.” Which I confess drives me absolutely crazy, especially by the end of the day.
Once when we were going over what certain animals say I asked them, “what does mama say?” the first time the response was “no”. Jen do you remember telling me that Kylie also said that? Well they only said that once, now their response is often “grrrrrr”. Apparently I growl too much, maybe I should go back to saying no more often.
Posted: Drew & Bran
8
February
2007
Last week our good friends Toby and Chloe came for a visit. It was so great to have them here with us! We took a trip to the Science Centre with the boys, ate at our favorite restaurants (Langano Skies-Ethiopian and Haweli’s-Indian), and I got lots of help around the house with laundry and watching the boys so I could run errands. If only I had that kind of help all the time…I would have to invest in Starbucks though! Part way through their visit we got to take a side trip with Mike’s department to Jasper. They did some skiing, I took the day off, did some hiking and took photos. Sunday we went on a 3-hour hike through Malligne Canyon. Every year I never cease to be amazed by how beautiful that walk on the ice is, and how beautiful the mountains are. We saw lots of long horn sheep this year, an elk, and even a wolf! So beautiful. The boys did really well on the hike and I was glad to share some of the outdoors with them. I was also super thankful for Yaki who carried Brandon for me!
In addition to enjoying the beauty of Alberta outdoors, our friends’ visit also gave us the chance to play lots of games! And you can never play too many games! Our favorites for the week were Power Grid, Fury of Dracula, and an old standby El Grande. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Toby didn’t get to make his freaky voice overs with Mississippi Queen. Maybe next time?
Mike and I had been playing some 2 player games of Power Grid before Toby and Chloe came and were really starting to get into it. The four player game is quite different though and I had trouble keeping up! It must be the cutthroat play of our friends! The premise of the game is to build power plants and power cities, whoever is powering the most cities by a certain point in the game wins. Toby brought up Fury of Dracula and we liked it so much we bought it from him. In this game there are four Hunters who are searching Europe for Dracula, one player is Dracula who secretly records each city he goes through. It’s a cooperative game from the standpoint of the Hunters. Our first game, we were just learning the rules, took about 5 hours and we just quit because it was so late! But we were able to get the second game down to 4 hours and the Hunters beat Dracula. I feel like I’m getting a better sense of the game and having been a hunter twice I’m anxious to try out the role of Dracula. Mike and I are thinking about playing a two player game after paper deadlines. El Grande is well…El Grande, an awesome game that we don’t get to play often enough, mostly because it takes over 2 hours to play and also because we have so many other ones to choose from.
Thanks Chloe and Toby for the fun times, all the help with the boys, and giving us so many opportunities to play games! We really miss our times together and it’s fun to recreate them every so often. Love you guys, you’re the best!
Posted: Friends
8
February
2007
The night wakings have gotten worse, but that’s mostly because they have ear infections. So I have to give them some grace on this getting me up in the middle of the night nonsense. However, we’ve had another wrench thrown into our getting them to sleep wihout their cribs. Not only is the room an adventure in itself (they’ve taken to climbing in and up the dresser drawers), now they can open their bedroom door. We have a gate across the door so they can’t get out, but this means they do two things, first they throw all their toys out into the hallway, including soothers and then they play with the door. The biggest fun is waiting until the other brother is standing unawares between the door and the gate and then trying to close the door really hard on him. It creates many crying episodes and little sleeping. Ever since Bran got his finger pinched in the door in the living room, I get really freaked out when I hear them opening and then slamming their door. Unfortunately we’ve had a hard time stopping it. Which means no naps and late bedtimes.
Today I was finally able to get a device that locks the doorknob in place. The door has one of those pull down handles rather than a knob, so this device attaches to the handle so that it won’t pull down and open. Mike is right in the middle of paper deadlines, but graciously put it on for me tonight while I got the boys ready for bed. We smartly attached it to the outside of the door so that we could flip the switch and lock it in place from our side and then unflip it when we wanted to get in (we had a brief moment of insanity when we thought we should put it on the inside). We brought the boys up to bed and I closed the door to keep them in…unfortunately the knob was in the the locked position. So there we all were in the boys room with no way to get out. Toby…remember the time I rescued you from a room? It was pretty much just like that. I noticed that Connie’s car was next door, but couldn’t figure out how to get her attention from the back of our house into hers, it was afterall -16C and she was unlikey to have a window wide open. So Mike took on the role of MacGyver and after a LONG while of using an old door knob, and eventually that wooden lightsaber, as a hammer, he got the hinges off of the door and we got out! It was quite a little fiasco, and I’m still chuckling over it.
But I have to say after all that…it worked! The boys tried a few times to get the door open, couldn’t, and went to sleep! YAY!!! Hopefully naptime tomorrow will be as successful.
Posted: Drew & Bran
8
February
2007
It’s actually now Day 17, I wrote this at Day 14 and never put it up.
WOW! I really thought I would make this a more consistent post. Maybe for me this is consistent! Well, it’s been 14 days and a lot has happened. By day 4 the boys seemed to be getting things down. We realized that we had to put them down a little bit later (1/2 hour or so). Normally they might chat or play before they fell asleep, but with the whole room available to them, it was just too exciting to fall asleep. By the fourth day they fell asleep right away and slept the whole night through! Woo Hoo! That was a Thursday, Friday we left for a weekend in Jasper. The boys did well in the cribs there, except that Sunday morning I awoke to Drew tugging on my foot. He had crawled out of his crib, barely 3 feet from me and I didn’t even hear him! Unfortunately it was also 6:45 am. 
The boys came home from the weekend with colds and have been sick ever since, so that’s completely thrown off their sleeping. We’ve been going in to them at least 3 times a night, often more. I realized how used I had gotten to getting a full nights sleep! We’re tired! Hopefully as the boys get to feeling better, they’ll sleep better too. Although we do have some funny stories…
Their room doesn’t have a closet, so when we originally set it up Mike built a little add on between their dresser and the wall. It has a top shelf and a bottom shelf, and a rod right under the top shelf where we hang coats and sweaters, there is no door on it. One night they weren’t going to sleep so I went to check on them. Bran was hiding in the closet holding all the clothes still on their hangers while Drew was running around the room with a short, thick, wooden rod. It kind of looked like he was waving a light saber! It was both hilarious and scary, while I was laughing all I could think was “I thought we babyproofed this room!” Apparently not, a few mornings later Mike went in to get them and found another surprise. We have a wooden, giraffe shaped shelving unit in their room. It’s about their height and has two shelves with 3 cloth boxes on each shelf. The top has a small shelf for books, etc. We didn’t attach it to the wall because it’s not heavy and they’ve pulled it over without incident before. When Mike walked in, the shelf was about 2 feet from the wall and Drew was shaking it back and forth…and Bran was sitting on top of it! I think they could make a hazzard out of anything.
Posted: Drew & Bran
