Gift Giving From Twins

Everyone,

The boys were invited to a birthday party.  It's their first birthday party for a "friend" (they are newly 2, how friendly can they be?)  We ran to the store to get presents and suddenly I was confronted with a huge dilemma.  One gift or two?!  So I left the store without getting anything and asked the lovely people of twitter what they thought I should do.  I had 6 people respond...3 for one present from both boys and 3 for 2 presents from each boy. 

So what's the right thing to do?

There are a few things you should consider when giving gifts from twins:

1. The age of birthday child.
2. Your budget.
3. The nature of the invitation.

Now both boys and Butterfly were invited to this party.  It's a joint birthday for a friend of Butterfly's and the friend's baby brother.  Who happens to be a week younger than my boys.  We are going to a bounce house play place and they are giving us dinner.

In the end, I decided to get the birthday boy 2 presents, one from each of my boys.  What brought me to this decision?  Really it came down to this:

• If I want people to view my twins as two separate people (and I do), I also need to treat them as two separate people.  

I thought about it from a singleton mom's point of view inviting twins to a party.  If I needed to have a head count of the party goers, I would count the twins as 2 separate people.  Not one.  I would have a gift bag and treats for 2 people, not just one.  The only thing I would probably do for them singularly would be to send the invitation. 

So we'll be headed off to the party this afternoon with 2 gifts for the birthday boy.

What would you do?

Safire

Busy HOT Day

Everyone,

I don't know what happened to the weather but it got HOT all of a sudden. The morning was beautiful, but the rest of the day kept getting hotter and hotter. By tonight, we're all roasting and enjoying our first taste of mugginess. Which makes Juice rather cranky. Okay, everyone is rather cranky.

Butterfly has had one busy day. First off, she went to the Home Depot with Daddy and built a planter box. (They do free clinics the first Saturday of every month.) She was beyond thrilled that I actually had seeds and potting soil to put into her new platter. I even had enough for the boys to make their own little pots of growing stuff (although no cool planter). They were happy.

Then, Butterfly and I went off to a birthday party. This is one of many this month, as Butterfly has many many friends born in May! We went to a paint your own pottery place which was lots of fun. Butterfly and her friends made some pretty cute stuff. She painted a turtle brown and green and black.

We had to stop by a grocery store on the way home, and then had dinner. Everyone went to bed (the boys yelling "Buzz!" "Woody!" for their new cute pjs from Nana). Now I'm ready to spend my first night at home in about a week! Yay for movies!

Safire

Birthday Eve!

Everyone,

I can't believe tomorrow I will have 2 two year olds. Crazy! Tonight we had a little party with friends to celebrate their birthday eve. We had cupcakes, ice cream and opened a few presents.

2! They are going to be 2!


Safire

Fun with Friends

Everyone,

We went to another birthday party today. This time it's for my good friend AJ (Lolli's last baby). She and I actually became friends because of these two little kids. We were pregnant at the same time and had our babies 8 days apart. (Yes Splats, his birthday is Strong Bear's birthday too.) We spent a lot of time talking in the nursing lounge at church. I was a brand new mom and looked up to her to see what she was doing with #5.

Now I still look up to her and Butterfly and AJ play well together. Probably because they have been playing together from very early on. Either way, I hope these two stay friends. (PS- This picture is of them over a year ago...they have grown up so much!)

Since it was AJ's birthday this week, we had a party. Lolli invited 3 other kids AJ's same age (Butterfly being the only girl, didn't stop her!) and of course, my boys and another younger sibling of one of the boys (I think she is almost the same age as the boys) and an older sister (much older, 11 I think...she is home schooled). We went to the park by their house and the kids played so much! We had cupcakes and little snacks and opened presents and swung on swings and ran and ran and ran. Butterfly had a ball.

Thanks Lolli for another fun day together!

After the party, Juice was home and I went grocery shopping. And then I came home to the house in chaos. The boys were screaming for me, Juice was feeling ill (stomach thing) and Butterfly was cross. I got everyone fed, changed (not Juice), soothed and back in order. Guess I'm doing okay at this mommy thing so far. Once the boys were in bed, Butterfly and I went off to buy more birthday presents for our last party next week.

We also stopped by the mall because the camera store there is closing and I wanted to see what they had (next to nothing). We got some milk shakes and came home. It was nice just to have some time with Butterfly and not have to worry about who else to take care of.

It was a great day but I am beat!

Safire

Birthday Party!

Everyone,

When Butterfly was first born, I was kind of desperate to have friends. Now that I would no longer be working, I needed someone else to talk to. Our birth class instructor suggested I join the hospital class for new mothers when I wrote to tell her about Butterfly being born. It stuck in my head and I joined the class at the last second. Boy am I glad I did! There are about 6 of us that are still getting together on a fairly regular basis. We all had babies around the same time.

Actually, between the 6 of us, only one had a baby out of the month of May. So what does that mean come birthday time? BIRTHDAY TIME. In the past we have done a big combined birthday but this year, everyone is doing their own thing.

Tonight we went to one of our friend's party at a place called "Bounce-U". It's basically 2 huge rooms filled with inflatable bounce houses. The first room had a huge slide, an obstacle course, and something else I can't remember. Why can't I remember? Because Butterfly spent the entire time going up and down that slide. It was funny to watch the terror on her face turn to happiness at the end. So funny.

The second room had a regular bounce house, a ball bounce house, a tee ball area, and a really tall climbing thing with a slide at the end. Guess who wanted to do the climbing thing? And guess who had to go up and get her when she got stuck? I see why Butterfly got stuck though. That thing was hard to climb up in! The slide at the end was fun though. She ran and ran and ran and screamed and ran and played with her friends. She had them all going at one time pretending there was water somewhere and they had to go to a different area to get away from something. That girl and her imagination....

After making them worn out, we went into their party room and had pizza and cake and watched our friend open presents. It was really a fun party! So thanks friend for inviting us!

Safire

Birthday Parties

Everyone,

Now that all birthdays are done until next year (except my own, but that's low key) I thought I'd talk about the parties.

Let's start with the boys'. It was a great party, although stressful at the beginning. (There was a food issue. As in, the lady who took my food order forgot about it. It all worked out though and there was too much food!Yay for leftovers!) Because of the food problem, we didn't get started until later than I wanted. The weather was perfect and we had so much fun visiting with friends. Thanks to my good friendLolli for taking these pictures so that I could enjoy their party. The boys each got their own 1 year old shirt to wear (Butterfly had one for her birthday too). Pirate's was blue. It says, "I think it's been a good year. But I don't have anything to compare it to." And Professor's was yellow. It says, "Put down the cake. This is my first one and it looks like you've had plenty."

They each had their very own cake to smash compliments of my good friend Lavender. Pirate's was blue and Professor's was yellow. Professor dug right into it. Pirate took his own sweet time. But in the end, they got cake all over themselves like they were supposed to. I had everyone sing happy birthday to each of the boys individually. Pirate first, and then Professor. It was somewhat emotional for me to see these boys sitting up so big in their chairs getting sung to.
After everyone ate sandwiches and had cake (it was really good cake! I recommend Safeway bakery.) we moved inside for presents. They boys were very spoiled and got some great gifts! It was also really fun to haveLolli's kids help me open all the toys and take out all the little twisty ties, etc.

We got them the little people pirate ship (for Pirate, of course) and Noah's ark (for Professor). Both were a big hit, especially with Butterfly. She asked to sleep with them the 3 weeksin between her birthday and theirs. They also got some crayola stuff from Lolli's family, a tug boat and a train and cups from my parents, cars from Grandma and Grandpa, a fish bowl and a drum from Butterfly, a shape sorter fromLala and her family, dump trucks from Anie and her family, $20 each from Nana and Papa Great (which went into their college fund), trucks from Uncle MusicMan and Aunt Angel.

We had a great time and I can't believe they are 1 year old!

Butterfly's party was fun. I made a bunch of pizza crusts in small baking pans and had all sorts of toppings on the table. The kids were able to make their own pizzas with their own toppings. Butterfly put a ton of cheese on and some pineapples. One of our friends put a bunch of mushrooms on (which she then picked off). Each one was really unique. We played a few games (freeze dance andSimon says) while the pizzas were cooking. Mostly everyone wanted to play with Butterfly's toys and go down our indoor slide. That slide was a huge hit. At one point, there were 3 on the slide and 4 waiting to go down.

Once we had lunch (pizzas and fruit salad) we had Butterfly's ice cream cake. She wanted Cinderella on it because Cinderella is blue. After cake, we played a very fun treasure hunt game where I hid little toys around the house and took pictures where I put them. This was fun except Butterfly INSISTED on getting all the blue stuff (see a theme here?) and that caused all her friends to want blue stuff too. I had 7 little things and I think it was a little too many. Or I would just take the blue stuff out of the pile and then there wouldn't be a problem.

We opened presents next and she got some really fun things! She got 2 horses, an I Spy game, Little Miss Giggles book, and a princess magnet booklet thing.

On her actual birthday, we had fruit tart (which we sang and blew out candles again), and she opened all the presents from her family. From us she got an electronic work book, from Pirate a singing dog, from Professor a little people van and twin boys, from Nana and Grandpa a little people camping set, birthday motorcycle set, and a cup, from Grandma and Grandpa a magnetic fish puzzle, from Uncle MusicMan and Aunt Angel a sing along book, from Lavender a princess towel, a pink piggy bank, and a princess car toy tote. (My personal favorite present...thanks Lavender!)

4 years old is turning out to be great! Easier than 3.

All in all, I think the birthdays were a hit. Butterfly has been sleeping with ALL her presents for the past few days. She is very entertained and I've been able to get some emailing done. But for now, I'm glad I have one whole year to enjoy these kids and plan the next parties. :)

Safire

A String Of Days

Everyone,

It must be me because I've been having a string of hard days lately.  Today started out nice with Juice home and entertaining Butterfly instead of her jumping all over me.  So I got to lie in bed for just a moment longer.  That moment didn't last as I remembered that we had a birthday party to go to this morning and I had to make sure that the boys napped on time.  (Juice was going to help someone move so he couldn't watch the boys.)

Of course, the boys did not nap on time.  Oh I tried.  They talked and babbled and shuffled in bed while I ran around the house getting everything ready.  Butterfly was a gem and very helpful.  I didn't hear the boys about 10 minutes before we had to go and sure enough, they had just fallen asleep.  They were side by side in the crib with their arms linked facing each other.  For how dissimilar they are, they sure do love to be next to each other and doing whatever the other one is doing.

So now I'm headed out the door with two tired and whiny boys and Butterfly to the party.  It started out great.  And then I noticed where Butterfly was sitting there was a puddle.  Uh oh.  When I went over to see what happened, she simply said, "I peed."  She went back to decorating a bag.  Boy she got in trouble.  Everyone was great about it at the party but we left.  I can't have her not caring that she peed somewhere.  Arg!  I was mad. 

On the way home I did see a bald eagle over my house!  (Totally unrelated I know.)

After we got Butterfly cleaned up and I went for a walk looking for that bald eagle to take a picture of, she asked to go back to the party.  I figured she had been punished enough so we called to make sure it was still going on.  We went back (without the boys, they napped for Juice for about 3 hours) and had a nice time.

Home, naps all around and dinner.  I just got back from grocery shopping by myself.  So although this day had it's low and high points, it ended fine.

Maybe this is why I shouldn't write every day in December.  I do remember my last December being much the same.  But no one else has to remember it if I don't post it.  Sigh...

Safire