Baby's Got Bum Bum

This is how they sleep in the morning. I usually do not peek in on them until I hear them, but this day we had a lot of things to do, so I went in to make noise.






The camera is the kind of noise that wakes them up. They have gotten to the point where they realize posing for pictures is appropriate. *Snap* *shing* "Someone wants to take my picture? Why yes you may."

By the way, I am really irritated with the way my layout is publishing, but I have no interest in taking the time to play with it. You have a ton of pictures to look at, so quit complaining. I know, I am the one who is complaining, but I can project myself onto you if I want.

Is that a Skembo, or what? I don't know if it is Craig's baby picture or Consie's, but I call her Anastasia, and I pretend she's mine.

Same Box; Different Day

Sure it looks like the same pink outfit in all the pictures, but it is not.

It is better if you click on the pictures and get the full size image to see how ADORABLE these kids are, all the way down to their rosy, chapped little cheeks.

Their cutness today is only slightly minimized by nasal drip. They have what Mike and I had, but other than sinus issues and a little more neediness they are okay. We just have to keep them hydrated and their noses cleared out so that crud doesn't get into their lungs and cause problems.

Babies in a Box

I have been working on refinishing the remaining DRMO bookcases that I bought for $9 each when I lived at Ft. Huachuca 14 years ago. The lighter one has been sanded, but I ran out of stripper and coarse sandpaper, and my one-coat stain and polyurethane is too thick to work properly anymore. I guess that is what happens when you put off projects for so long. Neither bookcase is completely done, but I am just going to make use of them as is.


Of course, you would never have known about the project and its incompleteness and failure, but for the artsy backdrop it is to curious, playful babies.

They are too young to learn miming "stuck in a box" so I am training them to do it for real while maintaining the theatrical "fourth wall."

I started this post 24 hours ago, but I did not finish it because I got stuck playing Hexic. It is a bitter truth: brightly colored hexagons have taken priority of my beloved blog readers. What have I become?

Got a game I gotta play. Peace out.

Birthday Cake

As a special birthday present, I let the girls lick the frosting beaters. Between the two of them, they could not blow out a candle, though they have started blowing on their food when it is hot and they can blow simple woodwind instruments for music.

They really liked their chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. Because I am a person of integrity, I will record for history that that the Birthday Cake came a few days after the actual birthday. I refused to have anything like a birthday party for people who had no idea what birthday even meant. Yeah, this is not my first child's first birthday. We get more reasonable with experience. Doesn't mean we love the kids less. This time I am just saving up Birthday excitement for kids who appreciate it. I burnt myself out on birthdays before the kids have memories to appreciate it.

Physical Therapy

Just before Christmas, I took pictures of the girls at physical therapy. Christen does the work on Anastasia, and Lyndsay plays with Amelia. We spend about an hour there. About as much playing goes on as anything else.

You can see Anastasia's new collar as she eats grahm crackers, and Amelia as she pretends to need the head straightening collar. Actually, I have tried to start playing the game with them both where you tip your head to the side and mimic each other so that Anastasia will voluntarily learn how to use those muscles. The muscles is stretched enough to give her full range of motion, but it still too weak to help her keep her head upright. The whole point of the collar is to create something irritating that she wants to pull away from, thus strengthening that muscle. She is supposed to wear it for 2 hours, 2 times a day.

Ketchup

Just to catch you up on my week. I have not blogged because I became addicted to Hexic. My thumb hurts from using the XBox controller so much. I hate myself. I don't have things in my life that I am addicted to. I know the things I could get addicted to in a hurry, and I usually avoid them altogether. I was not strong this time. Now I must pay the price. Apart from the self-loathing, there is the knowledge that all that time spent could have been used to complete any number of projects that I have been working on or have hopes of doing.

There is a small advantage to having played the game. My spatial visualization skills have improved and I have been able to work out some staging problems with the theatrical production I am working on. Another advantage is the bonding I have had with my husband. He thinks it is funny. He encourages me because I don't get on his case so much when I am so obviously flawed myself. The trouble is, we stayed awake too long, way too many nights with one playing it online and the other on the XBox. I have had the highest score so far, but I take a lot of time to calculate my moves. He can score almost as high without taking the amount of time I do.

In other news, the motherboard failure caused the loss of all data on the two hard drives it was attached to. The good news is that we had not been using that computer for long, and did not have a ton of data on it. To clarify, that was Mike's new self-built computer. MY computer that I have had since 05 crashed when we moved and we still have not hooked up the hard drive to see if that data has survived.

One thing that is obvious is that I need to post more pictures more often so that fewer are lost should such a thing happen again. Mostly, I am endeavoring to have hard copies of all my pictures--which I had actually started doing before Mike's crash. Today, however is not the day for me to post those pictures.

Anastasia was fitted yesterday for a Tot Collar to help her strengthen the muscles on the left side of her neck. Physical therapy has given her full range of motion, but she does not have the strength to move it herself.

Both of them are adorable, though as they nod their heads yes and no. Amelia goes nuts with it. Sometimes it is in response to a question, sometimes it is headbanger dancing. Whenever they are watching adults talk and they start nodding in acknowledgement of each other, the babies raise their eyebrows and start bobbing their heads as well. They are picking up on so much so fast. We were pretty sure that Amelia was going to walk first, but Anastasia is catching up.

This morning the girls were helping me wake Mike up. I put Amelia on the bed and told her to kiss Daddy. She moved to his face and made the kissie sound without any visual cues from me or him. She knew exactly what I was talking about and did it.

4 of the 6 In and Out Kids were here the extended weekend. I played Legos with Andrew and helped the girls sort out their clothes. The babies love having their siblings around. Isaac's new friend, Colton went to church with us on Sunday. They were together all weekend.

My belly is full from a big fat homemade bacon cheeseburger. That's the end of Ketchup.

First Birthday

Anastasia and Amelia are now one year old. Sunday was their first birthday. They got new Sunday Dresses. While they were sitting at the breakfast table dad and mom spoke in our high pitched voices with our smiles and eyebrows raised and said "Happy Birthday" at the same time, and the knew it was a special day. They smiled with ignorant innocence at our antics and sensed that something very special was happening. Then it was over. They returned to manipulating cheerios with their chubby little hands, maneuvering the cereal into their rounded mouths.

After church we did video instant messaging with Grandma Skembo. After their late nap they were very grumpy and remained that way most of the evening, so I just held them both in my lap in the recliner and watched Thomas S Monson on BYUTV.

The days become months, which become years that are remembered in brief moments and mostly lost to our view, but love remains.

All Day

The whole day was wasted. Utterly wasted. I wanted to be creative with my blog, but after searching hours for the right template, I realized I was going to have to redo all my gadgets and blog lists, etc., so I decided not to do it. But I had already done the lethal editing that removed my existing blog except for the basic template. I figured, what the heck, if I have to redo it anyway, why not get one I like. I searched again. However, I could not get my computer to open any of the html text that I downloaded. It turned it into ridiculous gibberish. So after endless attempts and angles that I tried from to do something a little out of the ordinary, I ended up having to go back to a basic blogger template and recreate my blog rolls. I don't know who I might have forgotten, but I had to pull it all from memory. If you want to be on the list, let me know.

I figured it would be okay to have a basic template and I could personalize it with pictures, etc. However there is not a single personal picture on my hard drive. My entire library is in four hard drives, all of which are not connected to a functioning PC. So I could personalize my blog with the sample pictures that come in Microsoft OS packages. *Sarcastic half-smile with head tilt*

Enjoy all my new features *repeat*

*Later*
I grabbed a couple of pics from old posts. I realized I don't post pictures very often.

In Case You Were Wondering

I'm still alive, but our main computer is not. My computer time has been limited, and I just haven't wanted to climb the stairs to the secondary computer. I spent yesterday in the car going to Anastasia's PT appointment, back home, and then to the other side of town, and Monday I spent all day doing dishes and laundry--7 loads to be exact. I am still trying to catch up on the house from the kids being here. To complicate, the babies have been a little fussy.

I have taken some pictures that I would love to post, but this computer is not good for that. Sure, I could do it, but it is just more work than I want to do right now.

Anastasia has two more teeth on the bottom for a total of 8 in her mouth. Amelia probably has a few days before hers come out. It seems that Amelia is one of those kids who will be regularly marred. Andrew always had a knot on the left side of his forehead. Amelia has her third black eye in two months. Even her 4 month baby pictures have a scratch below her eye.

I could do more of what I need to do if I woke up a little earlier. That would be easier if my husband would let me go to bed a little earlier. At least the babies are sleeping okay at night.

Blah blah bye blah

Vacation

The kids have been here all week. It has been blessedly uneventful. Everyone is getting along beautifully. The weather has been gorgeous, so the majority of getting along has happened outside. Isaac found a best friend down the road. Many of the neighbor kids hang out in our back yard on the trampoline. There are not very many trampolines on this block.

The babies have adapted to the commotion and are taking their regular naps and sleeping at night. They love their siblings. I am not looking forward to having to fill the void of attention they have become accustomed to when everyone is gone.

Now I have to go make breakfast for everyone so we can spend the day touring downtown Dallas for our last full day together.