I discovered another great benefit of twins this morning.  Both twins awoke around 4:00 am and it was my turn to feed them.  Unfortunately they didn’t fall back asleep after eating as they usually do, so I put them each in their car seats and began rocking them back and forth.  Well, they didn’t seem to like that so I picked up their car seats and began walking around with them.  They did like that and just sat peacefully while we walked around the dark house.  It was taking a while to get them to sleep though, and the thought struck me that I really wanted to get a workout in before work, but didn’t think I’d be able to since I’d been up so long getting the twins back to sleep.  Then I realized I had a 20 – 25 pound weight in each hand.  Hmmm…   I did curls, upright rows, shoulder lifts, tricep curls, and even worked my calves by standing on tiptoe and walking around the house with the car seats hanging by my side.  Sure they were a little bulkier than normal dumbbells but it worked all right.  I should have taken pictures as I’m sure it made quite a sight.  Alas, it was dark and I was the only “big kid” awake.  The babies seemed to enjoy the little workout too and by the time we were done, they were fast asleep.

Well, it’s been a LONG time since I last blogged.  Julie and I have been barely able to stay awake a lot of the last month so that’s my excuse.  I am currently sitting in a conference center on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington attending some training.  I’ll write about that a bit later.  The important thing though is that Julie is home alone with 6 kids.  And it hasn’t been easy.  I flew to Washington last night and called Julie to get the update.  Soren had drawn all over Peyton’s whale report that was due this morning.  Eden was busy throwing up and dry-heaving.  And the twins were both screaming.  Fortunately, there has been some help.  Megan came up and stayed the night, taking Maren with her in the guest room.  And then this morning Julie’s mom came up to stay for today and tonight and I guess a lot of tomorrow too.  We have received and continue to receive so much service.  We’re definitely blessed.

This morning Julie and her mom took the babies to the doctor.  We’ve been pretty excited for this visit just to be able to see how much they’ve grown in the last 6 weeks since their 2 week check-up.  I knew they’d grown quite a bit, but I was surprised by how well they’ve done.  Roman is 10lbs 2 oz and Maren is 9lbs 5 oz!  And they went from -3% (not even on the chart in other words) to 30% height and weight.  So they’re really packing it on and the doctor said they look super.

[audio http://www.netrixweb.com/OneBoyOneGirl.mp3]Oh man, I am SOOOO tired today. I swear, the twins have been up all night the last 2 nights, not to mention the time spent eating regularly every night since we brought them home, and it’s really starting to take it’s toll. Julie and I are both dragging. We were warned by other parents of twins how little sleep we would get with 2 babies, but I just don’t think you can understand or prepare for it until you’ve experienced it. My experience has allowed me to formulate my TWINS theory (an abbreviation for The Widening Increase of No Sleep, of course ). This theory states that as the number of babies increases, the amount of sleep attainable by the parents decreases exponentially to zero. In other words, we’re not getting half as much sleep as we did with 1 baby. We’re getting far less. Given this theory, I can’t imagine what it must be like to have triplets or, heaven forbid, quadruplets. Those parents must seriously be walking zombies.

Logan is 4 years old today! He wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese in Sandy for his birthday tonight, so we’ll be braving the mass of children and cheap rides and games tonight! Anyone who wants to is welcome to join us. By the way, I worked at Chuck E. Cheese in high school in San Antonio for a year or so. I could turn out a mean pepperoni pizza! But the highlight was the few times the regular Chuck E. didn’t show up and I got to BE Chuck E. Cheese! Up on stage, dancing around, sweating like CRAZY! Woohoo!!! Actually the real highlight was probably making 2 large sausage pizzas for Shaquille O’Neal who had a weakness for Chuck E. Cheese sausage pizzas. He was from San Antonio and would come in often the summer before he was drafted and believe it or not, would order 2 large sausage pizzas for himself and then challenge us to a game of the arcade basketball game that was back with all the games. You know, the dual kind, like this:

I beat him once. But of course, Shaq’s never been a great free throw shooter anyway.

So anyway, sorry for getting off track! I doubt Shaq will be there tonight, but WE will be, to celebrate 4 great years of our little boy. They got off to a rough start. I will forever have awful memories of seeing our little baby boy a few weeks old, literally just skin and bones, hooked up to tubes and monitors as he suffered with RSV in the hospital. It was a scary experience (and the main reason I’ve said we’re not taking our twins out of the house, except to go to the doctor, until spring). But he pulled through and has always (well, ALMOST always ) been a delightful little boy to have in our home. Here are some of my favorite pictures of Logan through the years. We love you Logan! Happy Birthday!

So this is my response to Jenny and David’s blogs about embracing winter. David, I like your positive thinking there. However, as a fellow Texan, I REALLY struggle with this. As I mentioned in the title, the only embracing of winter that appeals to me is the really tight, right around the neck, kind that would render it non-existent. Actually I really don’t mind it for 2 days — Christmas Eve and Christmas day. I like having a white Christmas. But then I want all the white stuff to go away and not return for 363 more days. Or at least stay up in the mountains. It’s pretty up there. However, it is not pretty piled up by the foot all over my sidewalks and driveway. And the last month has been especially crazy with snow. We’ve had a TON of it. And it isn’t warming up so it can melt, so instead, it just keeps piling up. This morning is a prime example. At 4:00 am this morning I woke to the new double alarm clock we have (aka “the Twins”). When I went downstairs to get a bottle, I noticed out the windows that we’d had what looked like a few inches of new snow sitting on top of the walkway I had just shoveled yesterday. Of course. Well later, I went out to shovel. By the way, all this shoveling would not be required if a certain Texan who dislikes the snow — ok, fine, it was me– hadn’t tried to start his snowblower without checking the oil level first, thereby seizing the engine and causing $400 worth of repairs that are currently being undertaken at the mechanic while we receive foot after foot of snow. Anyway, when I went out to shovel and opened the garage, not only was it snowing quite a lot, but there was actually ALMOST A FOOT of very new, very wet and heavy snow awaiting me and my surgically repaired back. The truck is parked outside on the driveway and with all the accumulation, it now looked about 8 feet tall, the bed is filled up and the snow on the ground was up ABOVE the tires. Our mailbox now looks like it is about 8 inches off the ground. And to top it off, we have a 4-FOOT TALL berm of snow running clear down the street, blocking our driveway, leftover by the snowplows during the night. In the backyard, the 3-foot tall fence we put in dividing our yard from our neighbors has about 1 foot of fence visible on it. And the big hole we dug for our trampoline is almost filled to the ground level with snow now. It’s crazy! It took about an hour to clear a path to get the cars out of the driveway. I also cleared the walkway leading to our front door. And I’m happy to report that 2 hours later, we now have at least 2 more inches covering what I’d uncovered. Isn’t winter great!!!!

Now honestly, we REALLY DO need the moisture. We’ve been at or near drought conditions the last few summers here in Utah and our water levels are extremely low. So it is nice to get this. However, we’ve had big snowfalls in previous years and almost always, in the spring it warms up too fast causing all that snow in the mountains to melt too quickly, which leaves us with hyper-saturated ground and flooding and mudslides. So my preference would be to instead have a spring with TONS of those AWESOME South Texas rainstorms where the rain isn’t really falling, it’s flying horizontally and not in drops, but in SHEETS of water. Add in the huge thunder and lightning and it’s an amazing spectacle. I could live with a month or so of that to get our water supply.

Twins Update
Anyway, like I said, I did finally get the snow cleared enough to get a car out. But by that time I had given up on actually going in to work today. The snow continued (and continues) to fall and it would take a LONG time to get in. So I’m working from home. But I did have to take the twins in to be weighed. Last week, at their 2 week checkup, they were still almost a half pound lower than their birth weight. So the Doctor gave us some special formula and wanted to see them back in a week to be weighed hoping they would gain 5 to 7 ounces by then. Well, they pulled through with flying colors! Maren went from 4lbs 15oz to 5 lbs 9 oz, and Roman went from 5 lbs 11oz to 6 lbs 3 oz, putting each of them just above their birthweight!

Roman Kent and Maren ???? were born last night.  Maren came first at 10:07 and Roman followed at 10:17.  Both are very healthy, 8s and 9s on their APGARs.  Roman was 6lbs 2oz and Maren was 5lbs 7 oz.  They each have a good amount of hair, but Roman wins there.  He’s kind of got a bit of a mullet actually!  I would say that Roman looks more like Julie and Maren more like me, at first glance.  And Roman even has 2 webbed toes like his big brother Peyton – the same 2 toes in fact.  I had thought that was an anomoly with Peyton, but maybe Julie and I have some  funny little gene thing there I guess.  It’s pretty amazing and overwhelming to see 2 little babies laying there together that you have to take care of.  Already we’ve experienced some of the awkward juggling to get babies back and forth to Julie for feeding and stuff.  It was one of the highlights of my life to see these 2 come into the world.  Truly an amazing experience.  You can check out their pics on our flickr section to the left.

Well, the delivery date has changed.  The doctor called this morning and asked if we can reschedule to TONIGHT!  I guess there are a bunch of inductions scheduled for tomorrow morning at the hospital and so the dr. wants us to come in early.  Whoa.  So most likely they will be born today, on Aunt Jenny’s birthday!  We go in at 6:00 tonight.  That’s crazy.  I’m at work right now and was planning on working until 2 or so, then going home and getting some things done before having a long night’s rest before the babies would come tomorrow.  But I guess those plans are changing!  I’ll now be leaving here shortly.  Thanks to Aunt Meg and Jill for helping us tonight and over the next couple days with babysitting, etc.  We’ll DEFINITELY need it!

The mudroom

The covered gap

The mouse hole and glue board

Mouse caught!

Be thankful you are not me.

This morning, I woke up as usual, bright and early at 5:00 am and got dressed to go to the gym. I recently finished the mudroom in our house and when I reached in the cubby to pull my shoes out, a little furry thing brushed my arm as it raced out. Apparently I’d spooked a mouse out of it’s nice, warm, sweatsock smelling new home. He raced to the left and under the door into the closet in the mudroom.

I’m glad it was me because if this had happened to Julie, the twins would have been born on the spot. Being the cool, calm, collected man that I am, I knew that if I opened the door and tried to get the mouse with a shoe, he would probably be much quicker than me and get away some other place. I also knew that if I left at all he might get out and end up who knew where. It was only 5:00 am so I was the only one up. Julie was in the recliner in our room and it’s a monumental task for her to get out of it so I didn’t want to call her to come help. Somehow I needed to secure the mouse while I could get traps. What to do, what to do… Lucky for me I’d watched plenty of MacGyver growing up. I looked around and there just happened to be some wrapping paper in the mudroom. Also some tape. Hey it’s Christmas! MacGyver got lucky sometimes too! The gap was too tall to be covered by the tape alone. So I grabbed the wrapping paper and tore off a piece long enough to cover the bottom of the door. Then taped all around the wrapping paper to seal the gap completely. Then I went to see if we had mouse traps. No luck, so I went to the Wal-Mart down the street and got a nice flat glue board.

When I got back and walked in the mud room door I heard the wrapping paper rustling a bit. He was trying to get out. I knew that paper wouldn’t hold up long against mouse teeth so I had to hurry. I taped the glue board to the floor right in front of the wrapping paper and then got a knife and cut a little perfect sized mouse hole in the bottom of the paper so there was now a way out. Then I waited. He didn’t come. Too smart for that I’m sure. So I turned the downstairs lights off, but turned on the bathroom light so some light would spill over into the mudroom and through the mouse hole, letting him know there was a way out. That did the trick. 5 minutes later I had our mouse! So that’s my excuse for missing my workout today!

My kid’s easier than yours! My kid is so easy, she makes the ABC’s look like university research. My kid is so good, it would take 2 of me to be more relaxed. That’s right, yo!

I’m talking about Eden. Man, I swear she is the best baby/toddler ever. We were certainly blessed with her when we were as we went through some difficult things and having this hard pregnancy. She slept through the night basically from the start. She sucked her thumb like it was candy – when she was a baby and it was nice for her to have a “binky” of sorts. But then she quit completely overnight all on her own when she was 8 months old and we were kind of starting to want her to quit. She has always been able to play very well on her own, which made this pregnancy so much easier for Julie. She’s always so happy and easy going. She’s always been so easy to put to bed — just go in her room, lay her down in her crib, put a blanket on her and she just lays there with this cute angelic expression when you leave and she goes right to sleep.

Well, last night was another example. We’ve rearranged bedrooms to make room for the twins. Even though the twins probably won’t sleep in their cribs for the first couple of months, but in our room, we still wanted to get kids rearranged now. So Soren moved in with Peyton and Eden gets to move in to Logan’s room on the bottom bunk. One of the reasons we wanted to do this a while before the twins move into the nursery was so that Eden didn’t feel like she was getting kicked out of her room by the twins. So anyway, last night was the first night in her new “big girl” bed. So we went in, I laid her down on her new bed, and put a blanket on her. The look on her face said she was a little concerned and she even said “no” a couple times. So I sang her a little song, then walked out. She cried for about 5 seconds and I thought “well, maybe it’s not going to work tonight”. But then she stopped. I was expecting her to get out of the bed and walk out since the bedroom door was wide open and the hall lights were on. But she didn’t. A couple minutes later there was one more little cry of about 5 seconds and then that was it. I went in and took these pictures about 10 minutes later. She didn’t wake up until 7:00 am, about her usual time. So easy! I hope the twins will be half as easy to take care of as she has been, because we’ve certainly been spoiled with her.

Peyton and I made a deal about a month ago. If he reads 12 “chapter books” and writes a book report for me about each one, then I’ll take him to get a banana split. The banana split with dad deal has kind of become the reward for special accomplishments in our house I guess (It’s very bad for my personal training I know, so we definitely have to reserve such a treat for special occasions!). Peyton and Soren each got a banana split when they learned to ride their bikes without training wheels. So when Soren got his for riding his bike a couple months ago, each of them wanted to know what they could do to earn their next banana split with dad. So that’s how we got Peyton’s deal. My motivation for doing it was just that I have always LOVED reading. One of my mom’s favorite stories about me is when she took me to the eye doctor for my pre-kindergarten eye exam and instead of saying the letters on the eye chart, I read each line like it was a word. I am always reading 2 or 3 books at a time and for me it’s about the most relaxing thing I can do. And I just feel like there’s probably no attribute that can better prepare someone for future schooling and learning than to have a love of reading. Peyton was a pretty good reader but he hadn’t “caught the bug”. Well, now that’s changed almost overnight. He’s working on his 6th book report right now and reading about 2 books a week all of a sudden. Friday night is a “sleep-out” night. The boys get to sleep out in the family room and watch a movie. Well last Friday, Soren and Logan loaded up the DVD player while Peyt went to his room, got his blanket and his book, and curled up on the living room couch for a long evening of reading. Julie and I were very surprised and very pleased. It’s also carrying over to his schoolwork, which is what this post is really about.

He brought home a test the other day and told us he was the only one in his class that got a 100 on it. I had to laugh when I looked at the test. What a great object lesson! I think the kids probably learned very well the importance of reading the directions! They must have thought Peyton was crazy when he just laid his head down on his desk.