Todd took me out to dinner the night before (I hate crowds and would rather rip out my own fingernails than be caught dead at a restaurant on Valentine's Day, so it was perfect to go the night before when things were comparatively dead). We went to a local place that makes the best fried mushrooms and smoked rib tacos, and they sent us home with to-go cups of Diet Coke and it was just the best. We stopped at Walmart on the way home to get some flowers and decor for the next day's celebration. (And also Pringles, because one time when we went out we brought home some Pringles for the kids to reward them for doing a good job, and now Juni thinks date nights = Pringles nights. So I guess we're doing that now.)
After the kids went to bed, I decorated for the morning and wrapped presents. We don't go huge or anything, but I have enjoyed making our Valentine's celebration a little bigger and a little prettier each year. I love getting to do something special for the kids to celebrate how much we love them, and I also love that it has become a bright, sunny spot in the middle of February. We decorate, we get each of the kids a small gift, we make waffles (or, this year, pancakes) with whipped cream and chocolate syrup and sprinkles for breakfast. Like I said, not huge, but special.
My fatal flaw is that I refuse to iron tablecloths.
The younger girls got Best Friends necklaces and bracelets...
...for obvious reasons.
They younger boys got accessories for their WWE ring.
Lolo got a jean jacket she has been dyyyyyyyying for.
Penelope got a bookshelf and tiny books for her dollhouse.
Atticus got a Metallica CD.
And Oey got a new princess dress.
Ope, things are getting intense over here in the arena.
Later in the morning, each of the boys gave each of the girls a rose, and because even the babies got in on the festivities, we needed three dozen roses to have enought!
After lunch, the girls had some friends from church come join them for an afternoon of baking. They made brownies for the Psalm Sing later that evening. Their mom, Brooke, is a good friend and an esthetician and she kindly waxed Penelope's eyebrows for the first time. (Hey. I am a millennial and I have seen my share of badly done eyebrows, some of which were my own. We weren't leaving this first foray into facial grooming up to amateurs.)
That evening, instead of doing a cheeseboard like we normally do on Valentine's Day, Todd and some of the kids went to the Psalm Sing, and I kept some of the others at home. The Psalm Sing was being held out of town at a church we'd never been to before, and since I needed to stay home with the babies anyway, I kept Oey, Juni and Callista with me so Todd didn't have the youngest ones to keep track of in a new place. Penelope also wanted to stay home, so she joined us as well. We had pizza for dinner, popped some popcorn, and watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets while we waited for everyone else to come home.
The next morning, I woke up kind of congested and worn out, so I didn't really leverage my Saturday the way I should have. I just kind of laid around and read books all day, which was both delightful and exhausting. In the evening, we had our Valentine's Day cheeseboard for Sabbath dinner, which was so nice because I didn't have to cook anything. Such a lowkey weekend.
On Tuesday, the twins turned nine months old - NINE MONTHS.
It's Pork and Beans!
They are just wild lately. Since recovering from being sick in January, it's like they've been trying to make up for lost time by hitting all kinds of milestones at once. Since their eight-month update, Eulalie is now waving, crawling, sitting up, cutting lots of new teeth, and even saying 'hi' (I swear... I think). Knox is playing peekaboo and growing the longest, funniest hair by his ears.
He looks like he thinks she's hilarious. In reality, they don't really seem to pay all that much deliberate attention to one another yet, other than the cutest cutey cute habit that Beans has of turning around and looking for Knox whenever she's laid down for nap. She wants to see if he's in his bed. And then, without fail, over the course of naptime she will wiggle to the other end of her bed so she can be closer to him.
Their personalities summed up in one concise photo.
Is that not just the butteriest biscuit you ever did see?
They're still in 0-3 month clothing (Eulalie is 12 lb, 13 oz, Knox is a whopping 12 lb, 15 oz), and they're still taking three naps a day, so in some ways they still seem so little. But things do seem to be getting easier - I recently dropped their nightly baths, since it created so much chaos during dinner time, and now the evenings feel significantly more manageable. Nursing is still going well, and we're playing around with solids. I gave the babies eggs this past week, and Knox did not tolerate them well - he was barfing everywhere for a few hours afterwards (not spit up, actual real puke) and I even had to nurse him in the bathtub so I could rinse him off when he'd barf while eating. But once the egg was out of his system, he was totally fine again. He reacted similarly when I tried giving him dairy a while back, so I think his tummy just isn't ready for those things, though Lalie doesn't seem to have any issue.
Anyways. We sure do love these babykins.
Beans is on the move, on the move, alleluia! Beans is on the move in many tiny ways.
Juni LOVES holding the babies.
Now that Eulalie can crawl, she loves going over to the spot on the floor where the fireplace key inserts and stealing the metal guard. Here she is chewing on this most precious of treasures.
And speaking of girls who love babies, Callista has been in the parenting zone this week. Todd came upstairs the other day to find her "nursing" Strongdor (her special doll), and when he asked her if she was nursing, she shrugged and said, "Yeah, and I pumped earlier."
Here is a photo of Strongdor joining us at the table, with her own miniscule pancake on her own miniscule plate.
Here is a photo of Strongdor joining us at the table, with her own miniscule pancake on her own miniscule plate.
And that was our week!
