I don’t think the broken arm is slowing her down at all...

Little Ree is doing just fine with only one paw. I keep meaning to post pics of her completely unaffected activity level, but gee that whole buying a house, doing some construction on it, listing our current house for sale, and trying to live in a staged house with 4-3/4 year old twins seems to eat up all my free time. Go figure... Heh.

Anyhow, here’s photographic proof that the girls are still thriving, and having fun, despite the fact that they’ve only got three good arms between them:

   

Little honeys. And I guess I’ve gotten over my hovering tendencies. When Ree first broke the arm, I swear I wanted to wrap the whole world in bubble wrap and tell the girls their feet couldn’t leave the ground until they were teenagers. Um, I think I actually did just that for a week or two. But (as usual) they’ve kind of worn me down.

Oooo, and those pics remind me, there’s still one more day to enter our giveaway for a PlasmaCar!! Go here to read our review of the nifty little red cars and enter to win one of your own. Your comments have all been so fun to read!

Had to get tardy slips today. Not even kidding.

Yes, it’s true, I got my kids to school LATE today. On the eighth day of school. !!!!! I was mortified. Was gabbing away to what seemed like the hundredth contractor of the day when I suddenly glanced at the time and realized we had TWO minutes to get to school. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The poor girlies were playing on the playstructure when their crazed-sweaty-unshowered mama ripped open the sliding-glass door and hollered “WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE TO SCHOOL, MOVE IT MOVE IT, IMMEDIATELY, GRAB SHOES GET IN CAR!!”

And bless their little hearts, they were off that playstructure, shod, and in the van within about 90 seconds. We headed down the hill and the somewhat-giddy girls said “Mama, you’d better speed, haha, just slow down if you see a cop!” We arrived at school a few minutes later, went directly to the office and collected the girls’ tardy slips (really they should just say it’s the mama’s tardy slip) and the girls stealthily and quietly joined their class.

Ugh. To end on a positive note, by the end of day tomorrow we will be completely ready for the open house on Sunday. In less than a week we have lined up all the needed contractors for the new house and in our existing house have completely packed up the playroom and turned it back into a dining room, dismantled and stored the behemoth playstructure and playhouse, gotten the carpets cleaned, gotten the back fence stained, and boxed up all extraneous items from the master bedroom, walk-in closet, massive winding closet under the stairs, office, kitchen, and family room. Whew. We’re on the fast track because we reallyreallyreally want to sell quickly, and every day counts when you’re inching toward the fall/holiday “deadzone” for buying. Anyhow, the house kinda looks like it did before we had kids. Heh. Now we “just” have to keep it this way while we’re living in it for the next month (which will be the really hard part).

Bleh

Nothing big at all to report, except that today kind of bit it. And actually yesterday did too. Ro and Ree were great, I was just irritable, stressed, short-tempered, headachy, and trying to get too many things done at once. I cleaned out the office and had four different contractor meetings today about getting this house ready to sell and buying the other one, and my schedule tomorrow isn’t looking any better. I yelled about stupid things and at the end of the day told myself to take a chill pill, no one’s handing out trophies or money for being the best real-estate manager. But my kids sure will remember if I run around all grim-faced and surly for the next two months. Anyhow, a few people have asked if I ever have a bad day and I have plenty of them, it’s just that when I’m having a crappy day my first inclination isn’t to pop on the computer and start blogging. Actually it’s my last inclination. But there you go, it was a bad-but-productive day, and I’m going to bed now and tomorrow I’m going to move a little slower and smile more at my kids.

Have you tried a PlasmaCar yet? (review and giveaway)

You know when you see something and wish like crazy that YOU had been the one to invent it?! Well that’s how I feel when look at the PlasmaCar. Read our full review and enter to win your own PlasmaCar here!

It’s been kind of a busy couple of weeks

Let’s see, on Tuesday our twelve awesome relatives from Texas came to stay with us, on Wednesday we went to Gilroy Gardens and then the emergency room after Ree broke her arm, on Thursday we went to Monterey, on Saturday we peeked in an open house just to see how they did their big bonus room since we were considering adding on to our house and kind of fell in love with the place, on Tuesday we all met with the girls’ new Kindergarten teacher, on Wednesday the girls started Kindergarten and I signed up for the PTA, on Thursday Ree had her checkup with her ortho doc and got the so-far-so-good signoff on her big pink cast, on Saturday we entered into contract to buy the house we had first seen last week, and on Sunday we started getting our house ready to sell.

Eeeps.

How has your week been?

Some answers to your questions for our family (and perhaps the only video you’ll see of me)

Before Ree took the fateful swoop off the monkey bars and got her huge neon cast, we had started answering some of your awesome questions from this post.

We tackled five questions at a time, so these are the first three sets of video answers.

Video #1, Ro and Ree answer: What's your fave time of day, any advice for a 3-year-old having nightmares, what's your fave color, what's your fave animal, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Video #2, Ro and Ree answer: What do you like best about having a twin, what's your fave thing about Tahoe, are you excited to be starting Kindergarten this month, what are your fave places to be/visit, what do you like best about your sister?

Video #3, I answer: Are you a member of a twins group, do Ro and Ree know they are adopted, what one thing do you miss about your life before having the twinadoes, how do you handle TubaDad’s frequent travel, how do you keep your photos all organized, backed up, etc.?

Oh man, I’m really self conscious seeing myself on video. I might just have to type answers from now on, it’s way less intimidating. :-) I offered the girls a jelly bean for each question they answered, by the way, which they thought was crazy fun, so they’ve been bugging the heck out of me to be able to answer more and more questions. Anyhow, more answers coming soon, including some from TubaDad (who I’m guessing is going to require more than a jelly bean to get behind the vid cam, heh). Sorry we’re kind of delayed on this, I guess the broken arm and start of school kind of threw us for a loop.

PS: The McDonald’s family fun pack giveaway ends in five days, so there’s still time to enter AND it’s for a great cause this time. Not very many entries yet, so the chances of winning are really high. Also, that reminds me: we walked into a McD’s today and that oatmeal that we taste-tested (and I loved) is now available. Cool beans!

They’ll never again have a very first day of school

The sweet girls finished their first day of Kindergarten today and both said they really liked it. Whew! Ree seems a touch more enthusiastic than Ro, but both say they’re eager to go back tomorrow. (good thing...) I think the “Meet the Teacher” event yesterday really helped. This morning they marched right into class, stuffed their lunchboxes in their cubbies, then found their place on the carpet. All TubaDad and I got were two over-the-shoulder waves and two excited smiles. We hung around for a few minutes peeking through the tiny window to see if they needed us, but they were perfectly content in their big-girl classroom. (*sniff*)

So TubaDad took me out to lunch and I had a glass of chardonnay to help stave off the weepies. I also made him talk and talk and talk about anything BUT how fast our girls were changing and the fact that they have now started school. It feels weird, I gotta say. Like this is their first huge step toward growing up. Ahhhhhhh, ok, breathing deep and changing the subject to something easier:

Ro (left) chose a Hello Kitty lunchbox and thermos, and Ree (right) chose a Littlest Pet Shop lunchbox and thermos. The soft, insulated lunchboxes and flip-top built-in-straw thermos thingamabobs are awfully different from the metal ones I used to carry back in the day. I don’t have a first-day-of-school picture (ahem, mom!), and no one in the family remembers clearly... But I think it was a metal lunchbox with Raggedy Ann modge-podged on the front and I remember that my little bro had a cool domed-top mailbox one at some point. Does anyone else remember what your first lunchbox (or any grade-school one) was decorated with?

  

They both kept yelling “kindergarten!!!!” at random times today in the family room, bathroom, car, wherever. It was hilarious.

And we made signs for the first day of Kindergarten, and then I almost forgot to get them out. Oops (I was a little frazzled today). They were so proud to decorate them and hold them up “for a peeshur, mama!” I thought it was cute that Ro held hers so she could read it. And Ree was a little vexed by the one-armed coloring. She’s usually dead-on within the lines, but I think the paper kept scooting around on her:

Here’s what they took in their lunchboxes for snack today. I packed a lot since I didn’t know if they’d be starving or not (turns out they weren’t very hungry). They’re in the afternoon Kindergarten, so they eat lunch at home before we go to school, and then have a snack and recess break somewhere in the middle of their three-and-a-half hours of school. Ree picked the bunny egg and Ro picked the bear one. They both ate most of the hardboiled eggs, all of the mini oranges, and only a couple of pretzels and cheese cubes. Oh, and they’re the ones who wanted to have bento boxes. I thought they’d be hard to open and too much of a pain and tried really really hard to sell them on a simple ziploc bag or just one square tupperware container. No dice. They were extremely determined, and even ran to the bento drawer and pulled out what they wanted. Fine, fine... that’s what they got.

PS: School Decisions: A whole bunch of folks asked how we made the decisions about whether to start the girls in school this year or next (because the CA cutoff is Dec 2 and they have Oct 6 birthdays) and whether to keep them in the same class. Regarding starting this year: it kind of all came down to Ro and Ree. They were SO ready to go. I think being in preschool and then pre-K for a few mornings a week the past couple of years helped. My mom (who ran Kindergarten admission testing at her school for 17 years) has been telling us that they’ve got the academics, attention span, motor skills, and maturity down pat. The area I want to make sure they’re really well adapted in is the social area, so we’ll be keeping an eye on it. I was always a year younger than my classmates, by the way, and went to college at 17, so I’ve got firsthand experience with being on the young side of the classroom age span. And it never bothered me at all. The other things that helped make the decision were blog commenters, believe it or not. I was kind of agonizing over this and commenters pointed out that I wasn’t making a decision for the rest of their lives. If anything doesn’t work out, we can just have them repeat Kindergarten. There’s no stigma at this age. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about that option before, but it was such a relief! So anyhow, we’re starting them this year, and they’ll turn 5 a little over a month after school starts, and then we’ll watch everything. With the twins in same class vs. different class thing, we had the gut feeling all along that we wanted to keep them together, plus Ro and Ree were adamant that they wanted to be together. Then we talked to a whole bunch of folks and heard that Kindergarten and possibly even first grade are really good grades to keep twins together (because everything is so new and kind of a little scary for them at first) and it’s easier and less traumatic to separate them when they’re a little older and more confident and secure in school. Anyhow, so that’s what we’re doing. Basically we made both decisions for now and will reevaluate both of them at the end of Kindergarten.

Yikes, here we go, the twinados are going to Kindergarten!

The little babes had a short “Meet the Teacher” meeting today in their very own Kindergarten room with their very own Kindergarten teacher. Oh the excitement!!

Wela, Maggie, and JaJa all stopped by before the meeting to give back-to-school hugs:  

And Ro and Ree picked out very special “Meet the Teacher” outfits today. As always, the various origins of the pieces cracks me up. Ro (on the left in the below pics)(oh wait, I don’t even need to say that anymore do I? sheesh) chose a polkadot pink and purple Boden top that was handed down from her friends H2 and S2, a hairbow that the granddaughter of my childhood neighbor made her (Hi Mrs J!), a skirt that she bought at Target this summer, last-year’s Valentine’s Day leggings from Target, Hello Kitty socks, and her new silver sparkly school shoes that she picked out herself at Nordstrom a few days ago. Ree went back and forth this morn, then settled on a bright striped Hanna Andersson dress that we found at Costco (did you know they have some Hanna Andersson stuff at Costco now?!), some stripey Carters kneesocks that Wela bought her, a star headband that our foreign exchange student from the 70s gave her at Christmas, and her new patent leather school shoes that she picked out at Nordstrom. Their outfits just made me grin!

They are so proud of their new school shoes it’s adorable. And the huge difference in styles is SO them:

Adorable little honeys. Your daddy and I are so proud of you and SO excited for your Kindergarten year. You two are going to have the BEST year:

The end. Well actually it’s just the beginning, seeing as how tomorrow is the FIRST DAY of Kindergarten (squeal!), but this picture just screams “the end” doesn’t it?:

PS: We chose to put the girls in the same room for Kindergarten, which is especially good now that Ro is Ree’s bathroom buddy for as long as she has a cast. :-)

Where have all the Texans gone?

Ro and Ree are kind of in disbelief that their cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents left us and went back to Texas. It is WAY too quiet around here, and we’re all missing the awesome cousin hugs, the kids piled in every room for sleepovers, the fun games, and all the neat things we did. Luckily school starts soon to distract the girls from the fact that it is just us rattling around in this quiet ole house.

With four photographers at the ready (me, Ma, Aunt Rejeana, and Aunt Kate) we ended up with quite a few grin-worthy shots of everyone together. Here are a few collages with all of our pics (click any collage to enlarge).

Twelve extra relatives (16 family members, including us) to hang around with meant that the backyard was always teeming with love and fun:

Who doesn’t love swimming? We snuck in a quick trip to the pool while we were waiting for the boys to arrive (they roadtripped here with the grandparents):

Gilroy Gardens (up until the fateful run-in with the monkey bars) was a blast. If you look closely in the last one, you can see that Ree’s fave Wela Wear dress had to be cut off her (none of us were going to bend that arm to try and get it off, that’s for sure) and we used surgical tape to hold it together until we got home:

Ree said if we bought her a stroller and pushed her around all day that she wanted to go with everyone to the Monterey Aquarium. And the little sweetie rallied and really enjoyed herself (with the help of some frequent pain meds):

On the last day, we hung out at a fun local park that has a massive oak tree – perfect for climbing or playing under:

Come back soon Texans! We miss you already, and we’ll try to avoid any hospital runs next time.

An update on little Ree and the big pink cast

Miss Ree gets the trooper of the year award. She has been so brave and is adapting so well to the injury and the cast. (I’m not adapting quite as well, I think I’m becoming one of those helicopter parents, but I’m sure everything will even out a little with time). She’s figuring out what she can and can’t do with one arm (which is kind of sweet and sad at the same time). Her favorite things in the world right now are swimming, going to the beach, and playing on the monkey bars, and those things are just plain out for the moment. I shudder everytime I picture sand down inside that cast, ugh. But I’m ordering a waterproof cover called XeroSox off the internet today and that should take care of the swimming and the beach and also help with baths and stuff. The outside of her cast is waterproof, but the soft inside isn’t. Has anyone used something like this?

I took a few pics of the girls today because Ree is still sweet, cheery, charming, and cute as a bug, even though she’s in pain and sporting a gigantic pink cast. Little sprite. And Ro is still being such a great sister (hard to do when your twin is sucking up massive amounts of attention). She even agreed to be Ree’s bathroom buddy when she starts Kindergarten next week and said we’d better practice this weekend. Awwwwww!

I guess there’s no need to identify who’s who in pictures for the next little while? :-( Hate to say this, but the Kindergarten teacher is going to bless that little cast when she can easily tell the girls apart.

Sweet baby girl. Always has a smile on her face and a hug for her mama, even with two broken bones.

We have hundreds of awesome pics with the fun Texas relatives this week (I wanted to do a post titled “The Texans are coming, the Texans are coming!” but ran out of time -- we had 8 cousins and 8 adults staying in our house, plus 2 more people when my folks came over!!!), but blogging got a little sidelined by the brutal snapping of bones (side note: will the sound of her screams ever stop ringing in my ears? Oh my gosh, I swear I can still hear them.). I’ll post the pics soon. In the meantime, thank you SO MUCH for all the good wishes and good thoughts for our baby girl.

Going to Kindergarten in a cast

Sweet little Ree broke two bones in her left arm yesterday and we spent the afternoon and evening at the hospital.

She jumped for those trapeze-ring monkey bars at Gilroy Gardens, missed, and came down on her arm, completely snapping her radius and ulna bones near the wrist. It was so horrible!!!!! Oh my gosh, I have never seen an arm zigzag-bent like that. Ugh. She was screaming from the pain. I grabbed her and a cousin's stroller, headed directly for the car, and called TubaDad on the way (he was strapped into the rollercoaster with two of the 12 Texas relatives who are visiting this week and told me he would run to meet us the instant the coaster stopped). We drove to the nearest hospital and checked into the ER. (It's Saint Louise, in case anyone is at Gilroy Gardens and needs medical attention, and they were incredibly wonderful with both girls.)

Ree had xrays, got two hideously painful shots of morphine in her thighs, and then they called in an orthopedic surgeon and put her completely out for the resetting and casting (they said it would be excrutiating if she was awake). I was outwardly calm until the moment she went under and they wisked me out of the room. I took one step into the hallway and started sobbing. They must see that all the time, because the nurse gave me a massive hug, took me immediately to a chair, and brought me a cold washcloth, a box of kleenex, a diet coke, and a handful of chocolates. Then she said to take as long as I needed to pull it together to be strong for Ro who was waiting outside with TubaDad and sat and talked to me until I pulled my crap together.

Ree now has a neon pink cast from her fingers to her upper arm and last night was still in so much pain that she woke up every hour-and-a-half to two hours crying. It was a rough, rough night.

PS: Ro is being so sweet and helpful to her sister. She was really hungry in the ER waiting room that night so I tried to give her some food and she said "No, if Ree can't eat then I'm not eating -- I'll wait for her." My heart!

PSPS: TubaDad took one pic with his iPhone if anyone wants to see Ree’s arm before it was set (I know my family members wanted to see it). Don’t click it if you don’t want to see a horrible break. Seriously.

How do you make the most of family time?: introducing the new McDonald’s “Every Minute Counts” widget

This is the second and final part of our McDonald’s trip review and I’m excited to talk about family time and charity. Read more about what we do with our family time and enter the giveaway for a McDonald's Family Fun Prize Pack.

Happy hatchday Gus!

We were lucky enough to be invited to Gus the Galapagos Tortoise’s hatchday party again this year, and were so excited to attend, especially after seeing the cool bash he had last year.

Gus turned 25 this year – a quarter of a century old (and only a quarter of his expected lifetime of about a hundred years). Wow! Gus and his buds live in a private residence that has been turned into a tortoise wonderland. We got all gussied up for the occasion -- the girls in their new Wela-made turtle shirts, and I in my best party flip flops (I know, I know, no one wears white pants to a tortoise habitat – it’s just that I had a baby shower immediately following the hatchday affair and no time to change).

The girls looked so cute (for heaven’s sake, I always say that don’t I!!). Ree in white shirt, Ro in yellow.

We brought flowers for Gus’s parents (we looked for those pecan and caramel turtle candies but couldn’t find them, darn!), and two heads (stalks? bunches? What the heck do you call them?) of celery for the party host and his mammoth reptilian buds.

We’re happy to report that no fingers were lost during the festivities. But please notice that this enormous tortoise had actually climbed up on the fence and was leaning wayyyyyyyy toward the girls in his extreme enthusiasm for that banana. Yikes!

I liked this double-celery feeding. Twin tortoise treats, if you will. Heh.

Just to give you an idea of size, here’s Gus, the birthday boy himself, next to our bitty babies. Gus is well over 400 pounds:

And here’s a teeny little mite named Francesca. (Note the girls’ effortless crouch, which apparently is good in any situation, even tortoise feeding):

One tortoise decided the fastest way to the other side was through this lady’s legs and gave her a firm nudge. Who’s going to argue in that situation?

Ree was pretty brave, darting into the pen and petting any tortoise who ambled by:

One of the tortoises was named #8 (I think it was that guy at the end) but we called him Ocho Cinco the whole time and cracked ourselves up. Hee:

Mmm, they didn’t so much go for corn-on-the-cob as corn-on-the-face:

Happy hatchday Gus, and thanks for inviting us to your crazy-fun party again!