Old MacDonald Part 2

OldMacDonald_Pt2 a video by katieanddan on Flickr.

For real this time! (I hope!) :)

Happy weekend!

Old MacDonald is soakin' hot

This has been a slow week for us.  Noah has been sick with a fever and cough/cold since Sunday evening. Though today (Thursday) he seems to be mostly better, he stayed home from preschool just to play it safe. (Noah has started "going to preschool" two mornings a week at the same great preschool Eliza has been attending for the past three school years, though at this point I am still in the room with him as he gets acclimated.  The idea is that we'd rather have him get used to preschool now, before the babies are here.)

Anyhow two highlights of the week:

1) Dan and Noah play and sing Old MacDonald together, after Noah insists that they actually turn to the correct page in the piano book:

Honestly, I think that is the cutest part of the "performance", but if you'd like to see the actual song, click here.

2) Eliza-ism of the week: "Soakin' Hot".  Defintion: being really hot and sweaty, as a result of exuberant jumping/running/dancing/etc preschool craziness.  Use: "I love to bounce on the mattress and pillows in the basement. I love to do it with Daddy and Noah while you make dinner.  We get soakin' hot!"  [editorial note: we recently moved Eliza's old (and totally trashed) crib mattress down to the basement playroom, where it now functions as a trampoline).]

Mat sat on Sam

2012-02-19 001 a video by katieanddan on Flickr.

Eliza is learning to read! In all honesty, she has read this book once or twice (or thirty times) before, but we still think it's really exciting.

TCoB

That is, "Taking Care of Business".  There's nothing Dan loves more than getting stuff done.  It's a quality that has rubbed off on me during our marriage, which is definitely a good thing because pre-Dan I was more of a LJDIT ("Let's Just Do It Tomorrow") type.  So this weekend, thanks to Noah's sports class (if you can call a dozen boys between 2 and 3 attempting to play indoor football, hockey, and basketball either "sports" or a "class") being cancelled for the long weekend, we have decided to get some of our backed-up house projects taken care of.

1) Cleaning out all the random boxes of stuff in our room.  Our master bedroom is big, something we really like about our house.  At the same time, its size means that it tends to become the repository of crap.  So we finally went through that this morning -- boxes of my non-maternity clothes, boxes of cloth diapers, boxes of random junk I threw in a box before having people over, etc, and can actually walk comfortably around our entire room again!  Good thing because before long we will need to set up a co-sleeper and changing area in there!

2) A trip to Ikea! Eliza and her good friend A are both fighting colds, which means that we cancelled their swimming lesson this afternoon. So what could be more fun than driving an hour and wading through huge crowds, in order to procure this lamp?  I really want this lamp for the top of our piano and haven't found anything similar elsewhere.  I hope it's worth it!  We may also check out some new bedding for Noah's toddler bed, given that one upcoming TCoB project is moving him into Eliza's bedroom, in anticipation of the twins needing the smaller bedroom.

3) Finishing up our overdue house updating projects.  If you've glanced at our Flickr account recently, you might notice shots of some new light fixtures (or the horrendously ugly ones they replaced) or some particularly lovely monogrammed cabinet pulls (the previous owners' last name started with S, which ours does not, which is actually not even the most compelling reason to change those babies). We haven't taken a picture of the new cabinet pulls yet but here is a link, for those who are still reading! I'm having a little buyer's remorse about those but they're still a heck of a lot better than what they replaced.  Still left to do: spray paint the white painted hardware on this kitchen light and the cabinet hinges with Rustoleum "oil rubbed bronze spray paint" (really works well, I used it on some 1980s bright-brass lamps with great results!) and paint that annoying circle of off-white ceiling paint above the kitchen light, white.

4) If I have time/energy, I ordered some really pretty modern-ish blue-paisley upholstery fabric when it was on sale at Joann last month, and I want to replace the ugly red-geometric pattern on our dining room chairs (also purchased from the previous owners of our house, who apparently really really liked dark red) with that.  I'll post a picture once the chairs are done -- the picture of the fabric on the Joann website doesn't do it justice.

Springtime in Chicago!

2012-02-16 013
Originally uploaded by katieanddan

Apparently, there's no time like mid-February to make mudpies in the backyard.

Haircuts (and other news)

Long time, no blog!  The unfortunate side-effect of us starting to use Flickr is that we rarely (i.e. never) post to our blog anymore.  And given how many big changes (well, 2 small ones if we're being sticklers) are coming our way, it seems like a good time to take up a new hobby.  No seriously, we are just amazed by how fast time is passing by and how much of a blur the last 5 years already are, and figure that adding 2 more small children into the mix will pretty much completely annihilate our memories.  As such, it seems like a good idea to try to be somewhat more regular about documenting this time.

So, yeah, as alluded to in the previous paragraph, we are expecting again!  And oh, are we ever.  I (Katie) am 20 weeks pregnant with identical twin girls.  Twins do not run in either of our families (and identical twins are not hereditary -- just a random and rare fluke), and so you can imagine our shock when, at an early ultrasound back in mid-November, we found out that there were two little hearts beating in there!  We were both very surprised, but also quickly (I'd say within about 3 hours) became extremely excited about the whole thing.  That excitement pretty quickly turned to worry once we started googling "mono-di twins" and learned of all the potential complications that can befall twin pregnancies in general, and monochorionic twins (this means "sharing a placenta") in particular.

But, we are now nearly 21 weeks along, and after our "big" ultrasound today (the "Level 2 anatomy scan", which is is normally where you find out the sex, though we have been having bi-weekly ultrasounds due to some concerns specific to the one-placenta situation and already knew that we were having girls) with great results, we are feeling really positive and optimistic.  My due date is June 30th, though I have been told that they would probably like to induce around 36 weeks (which is June 2nd) if I haven't already gone in to labor.  I guess that the fact that 2 babies are sharing one placenta means that it won't reliably last as long as it would otherwise.  Another interesting factoid that we have learned is that twins' lungs actually mature a bit faster in the womb, and thus twins are considered full-term at 37 weeks (as compared to 40 weeks for singleton pregnancies.)  So 36 weeks is not as early as it would otherwise.

But anyway -- that is our big news.  In other equally earth-shattering news, we decided that Noah was starting to bear too close a resemblance to George Washington and got the two "big kids" haircuts this weekend. So here are some pictures of that:

BEFORE:

AFTER (during a Valentine's Day Dance Party):

And just for fun, here's a little video of said dance party:

More new pictures and videos on our flickr page...