At 5:15am this morning, Nicholas started making noises. We figured he was just talking and were hoping he’d go back to sleep. Ten minutes later, Joel left to check on him. Nicholas was not talking, but breathing. He sounded like Darth Vader on speed. The little cough he had the night before had morphed into something scary. I started to freak out a bit and Joel and I both stated “let’s neb him” at the same time. Nicholas, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice that his voice was gone and he sounded absolutely horrible breathing in as well as breathing out. He was totally smiley this morning when I left for work. Dexter wasn’t awake when I left.

As Joel monitored the situation at home, waiting for 8am to arrive so that he could call the doctor, I sat in meetings at work, cursing myself for not charging my cell phone. Joel managed to force an appointment at 10am. More waiting. I finally got the call at 11am. Nicholas has a strain of influenza that affects both sides of the breathing equation. Dexter still just has a cold. I really hope this bug is not passed onto Dex too. Talk about major freak out. Anyway, after a nebulizer treatment at the doctor’s office, the wheezing subsided. We are on a 4 hour neb treatment plan. If this doesn’t work, we need to head back to the doctor. Why do these things always seem to happen on Fridays??????

I’m not a big fan of this side of parenting……..

The bi-annual SNOMOMs (SNOhomish county Mothers Of Multiples group) sale is this weekend, and Katie is going to help set it up so that she has a chance to buy things before it opens publicly, for the expressed goal of buying rain gear for the boys.  I wanted to let everyone know this just to prove that we listened!  I’m sure Katie and Laura weren’t as stuck in the wrong mentality on this point as I was, but I’d been very anxious to get the boys out in the muck (due to the ordeal involved in getting them cleaned up, especially if there’s only one adult on hand), but I give up.  Now I’m just trying to find rain gear for them so that they’re at least marginally dry when you get them back home, so we don’t encourage any more colds or the such.

At the same time, does anyone have any suggestions on what sort of things Katie ought to be looking for?  The boys are walking very confidently now, and in order to make it possible for Laura to go on walks with them on her own we were going to look for those backpacks with extended handholds (I refuse to say leashes).  Also, the boys are starting to get better about playing with shape toys, and opening and closing containers (even screw tops), and pushing things together and pulling them apart (like those giant legos).  Which means that most of their toys are becoming mostly uninteresting to them.  What sort of things should we be looking for to keep them challenged?  Are there any larger toys we should get for them to use in the garage?  Things to drive around on or the sort?

Oh, and we have a child-sized basketball hoop out in the garage, for as soon as I get that all set up.  I’ll also look for one to put inside.

And now the second question.  The boys are starting to show all the signs of sibling rivalry, with Nic slipping effortlessly into the older brother role.  Primarily, this means that Nic has a habit of *appropriating* all of Dexter’s toys (they don’t have separate toys – but I mean that Nic tends to take whichever toy Dexter is playing with at the time).  I’m just wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to address this, especially with pre-speech babies?  We know that it’s perfectly normal, but we’re trying to figure out how to appropriately discourage it.

Mostly we try hard to keep an eye on them, telling Nic when he reaches for Dexter’s toy “Nicholas, don’t steal from you brother.  It’s his turn.”  He usually listens when we say that, by which I mean he pulls his hand back and looks at us, then immediately tries again.  When we’re out of the room, well, better left unsaid.   On Sunday, I saw Nic pull Dexter over to get at Dex’s toy, which is even more worrisome.  One mistake I think we’ve made is to encourage the boys to take toys from us – we’ll pick one up and “play” with it, and the boys will see this, come over, and take it from us.  I’m trying to stop this, encouraging them to say “please” (or sign it, by rubbing their palm in a circle on their chest), but it only occurred to me to try in the last few days.  <sigh>  Any thoughts?

Yes, yes, the much awaited post.  We won’t tease you any longer.  I’ll keep this short and then let you all go look at pictures.

The attached photo album starts off with a picture of the au pairs (Left to right: Jasmin from Germany, Marte from Norway, Melissa from Brazil, and Laura from Australia) all dressed up in Halloween attire.  You see, not very many countries celebrate Halloween the way we do in America.  Thus Laura’s regional coordinator, Lucia, invited all the au pairs she oversees to dress up and come on over for some good old-fashioned pumpkin carving.  In true pumpkin carving fashion, Melissa sliced her hand and required 3 stitches.  Oops.

The next set of photos are taken from a trip out to a Snohomish pumpkin farm the weekend before Halloween with Robyn, Barry and little Alex.  You might remember Robyn and Alex from the boys’ swim class.  Anyway, we managed to hit a sunny morning and fields full of fresh mud.  But before we could pick out our pumpkins, the boys needed to navigate their way through the corn maze (in the form of the state of Washington).  So, we got on the tractor and headed out to WSU in Pullman.  It was then up to Spokane and over highway 2 to the Grand Coulee Dam.  We tromped through mud puddles, which Alex adored.  The boys had not had much exposure to mud yet but got plenty that morning.  So did Joel’s and my jackets and pants.  :)  We took the North Cascades Hwy over the mountains,  jumped onto I-5 headed north and walked through the Peace Arch into the pumpkin patch.  Nicholas walked the whole way.  Dexter enticed Joel to carry him in western Washington.  Not to shabby for their first big walk and in boots no less.  Then it was off into the pumpkin patch where we all admired pumpkins and some of us ate a little mud.

Finally we come to the costume pictures and Halloween.  Nicholas channeled his inner lion and Dexter buzzed around in a little bumblebee outfit.  Seriously cute these boys.  Somehow, I ended up as the lion tamer (and did a poor job of it at my folks house because this lion did not want to be tame) and Joel suited up as a bee keeper.  He must have blown smoke Dexter’s way because that little bumblebee was as docile as could be.  Anyway, you’ll see some cute pictures of Laura with the boys taken prior to last night (smart girl), and the boys entertaining us  in their costumes last night.  I felt bad for my parents.  By the time we had all suited up and headed their way, we had only an hour left before the boys’ final bottle of the night.  Nicholas and Dexter roamed their living room like a caged lion and a bee in search of honey.  All my dad wanted was a family photo and you’ll see what happened.  All the boys wanted was to play with the TV remotes, pull pages out of my mom’s crossword puzzle dictionary, and pull CDs off of the shelf.  After trick-or-treating a couple of houses on my parent’s street, we came back to our cul-de-sac and walked around, visiting the neighbors.  By this time, my little lion was tired and gnawing on a monkey he’d snared along the way.  We picked up some candy in the rain, and then Joel swapped out with Laura so she could trick-or-treat a couple of houses with Dexter.  Oh, you should have seen the smile on Laura’s face.  It lit up the night it was so big.

And that’s about it.  The boys did great.  Joel, Laura and I survived and the remaining candy is still in tact.  Well, a few pieces have gone missing so we’ll have to look into that.  ;)

Hope everyone else had a safe, a sane, and a very HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Halloween 2009