Funtastic Fourth!

Without going into great detail of our weekend, I'll only highlight the really exciting points. One of them being a visit with my good friend Nicole. For those of you who don't know my friend Nicole, she is a stay at home mom with SIX children, all her own. She has five boys and just recently gave birth to her first girl. Now, I've always had this reputation with her boys as "Mommy's friend that's my girlfriend." The boys love me and have kissing wars over who gave me the most kisses. Not a single one of them has ever given me a hard time or has rejected me. Of course, this didn't prove to be so with her first girl. As Nicole handed her off to me she explains what a good baby she is and that she never cries. She cried or fussed anytime I held her. It has to be a girl thing or a sign...perhaps I should be satisfied with my two boys and not try for a girl.

The rest of the weekend was spent swimming and barbecuing at my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's house. They just put in a very lovely pool/splash area. I honestly don't know how they don't play hooky from work everyday. I had a blast! I think we all did. You can tell in the pictures.

Brad, the boys, and I


Reese


Brady and Papa


G-ma, the boys, and I

OMG...

Lately I've been slacking in the world of blog. I've had ample time to write, but instead choose to relax. If you had twin infant boys, you'd probably do the same. So what's new here? Well, let's see...Father's Day happened and yet again keeping a gift for Brad a secret is near impossible. When a holiday with gifts gets close he searches the bank activity everyday and boxes that come in the mail for clues. He always knows what's coming and it drives me CRAZY. I was determined to avail this time by being sneaky and getting something for him from Shutterfly since I shop there all the time lately. Needless to say, it didn't work. He's a nosey snoop and I'll just have to live with it. For all of you who are curious on what the boys and I made at Shutterfly for Brad, we made a Photobook with pictures of the boys and daddy. The book was titled, "My Daddy's First Father's Day," love Reese and Brady. It was so cute and Brad was complaining how he didn't have any pictures of the boys at work, so now he does. I thought about making him a tie with a picture of the boys and I on it, but I reserve that corniness for my own father. Which, by the way, he wears proudly. He wore the tie with little Adrienne heads all over it to many of my pageants, both graduations, and my rehearsal dinner.

On a different note I'd like to address the need to get out of dodge, aka my hood, more often. This could be better stated...

Five Signs Adrienne Needs to Go Back to Work.
1) I was designing a sticker to stick on all the cars in my neighborhood who very rudely park their cars, blocking the sidewalk.
2) I created my own daytime soap opera based on the comings and goings of a very married neighbor and a very single neighbor who spend entirely too much time together at weird times of day at the single neighbor's house. Bum Bum Buuuuum.(Do I sound much like Cam on Modern Family)
3) I made a weekly lesson plan for my children and scheduled out their ENTIRE DAY.
4) I made a pie chart on my kids daily in put and out put.
5) I've been having weekly hour long chats with my local Jehovah's Witness door to door lady. I'm sure she's convinced that she has a converter on her hands, but I'm just desperate for adult conversation.

I'm sure there's more crazy I could mention, but I'll leave that for another day.

My first NIGHTS away from my babies...

This past weekend my younger sister, Sarah, was married to Gabriel. Like most weddings there was a rehearsal and the wedding. Two days of celebration and organized chaos. AND...two nights away from my cute adorable babies. They spent the weekend with G-ma and Papa B. Let's just say I'm happy my night as a glow worm is over and that I'm back with my kiddos. Weddings are stressful, even when they're not your own.

Where should I start? Well I should first state that I was without a motor vehicle. I had to rely on my parents for transportation. My dad forgot this little fact and left me at the hotel the morning of the wedding. We were supposed to be at the church for pictures at noon. It was 1:30 before anyone noticed I was missing. My gown still didn't fit well, so during the ceremony, right before the vows I had to walk up stairs to the couple carrying the brides bouquet and my own. What do I do? I step on my dress. I tore a huge whole in the dress and yanked it down in front of everyone with NO hands to catch the dress and pull it back up. Thank goodness Sarah had a huge bouquet, because it covered the things that needed to be covered until I got back to my seat. Right about now you're probably thinking, wow, what a crappy day...let me stop you there because it gets better. After the ceremony, but before the reception, the bridal party crammed into a limo and drove around town getting pictures taken. At this point I was feeling really yucky. My blood sugar was dropping really fast, which was weird because I ate a two cut up apples with caramel sauce and a Turkey Tom sandwich from Jimmy Johns prior to the ceremony. By the time we finally reached the reception location I was shaking really bad and felt like I was going to be very ill, hopefully not in the direction of the bride, at any moment. My dad thought I was drunk, probably because everyone else in the limo was, but I digress. We get inside and sit down on a platform for everyone to see. My mom and a bunch of other people rush over to see if they could help me out. What do I do? Well it wasn't pretty and I did manage to do it in the opposite direction from my sister the bride. However, everyone saw it and everyone I'm sure thought I was drunk also. I wasn't, just needed to eat. My Matron of Honor speech was terribly short. I hadn't anticipated this happening to me. I could barely stand up I was shaking so bad. I'm not even sure if my shortened speech made sense. I just wanted the food to come out asap. After I finally ate, I was perfect, like nothing happened at all. It was SO weird. I'd really like to say that was the end of my crazy day, but just when things couldn't get anymore interesting, a groomsman's wife (who was beyond drunk)gave me a striptease and TWO lap dances. The highlight of my night. I was very flattered. I was waiting for her to start making out with me because she kept telling me how much she loved me and how beautiful I am. (Did I mention I just met her.)After that my night was pretty boring. Here's a picture from the festivities...

Me as the head glow worm and showing off one of the many holes in this dress.

Product of the Week

My tornado twins, who lately can be mistaken for pterodactyls, have been teething. To help them along this journey and prepare them for brushing their teeth I found Baby Orajel's Tooth & Gum Cleanser and brush. The brush fits right on your finger. It even fits on my husbands big fat fingers. (If anyone tells him I said that about his fingers, I'll deny it. lol) The boys LOVE it. We use it twice a day. We use it when we get dressed in the morning and at the end of bath time at night. I sing this song to them every time we use it.

The am version...
It's six in the morning
I'm out of bed
I ate my breakfast
then my momma said
to brush my teeth.
ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch.

It's six in the morning
I'm out of bed
I ate my breakfast
then my daddy said
to brush my teeth.
ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch.

The pm version...
It's six at night
I'm ready for bed
I took my bath
then my mommy said
to brush my teeth.
ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch.

It's six at night
I'm ready for bed
I took my bath
then my daddy said
to brush my teeth.
ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch.

Five Months

Because I'm so behind in blogging this post will be full of pictures!

Some five month old pictures I took of the boys! Here's Brady...

Here's Reese...

When you're the best of friends!!

Last week we had cranky picture day. I know I'm probably weird but these are actually my favorite kinds of baby pictures. I think they're so funny. Of course I wasn't being a complete terrible mom. Their needs had been met, the boys were just cranky.



Memorial Weekend!! It was hot.
This is Goose...

This is Maverick...

This is Goose and Maverick with Icemomma...

Nana, Grandma N. and Aunt Sarah came to visit this weekend too. Here's a picture of Nana and her boys...

Aunt Sarah and Brady...

My mom, Grandma N, is holding Reese and giving him a lick of a Blow Pop sucker.

After trying the sucker...



Overall, had a great weekend!

Finally Some Nursery Pics!!!

I took some pictures of the boys months ago and had them made into 11" by 14" pictures. Reese and Brady are now five months old and finally have a somewhat finished nursery. Before I post some pictures let me fill you in with the story behind the nursery theme. Brad and I decided that we did not want to find out if we were having boys, girls, or one of each. With that said, the nursery needed to be gender neutral. You would not believe how hard this would prove to be. Most infant bedding is very gender specific and if there was a gender neutral one it was incredibly hideous or yellow. I don't have anything against yellow, but it's not a color for a bedroom. Yellow in a bedroom or nursery instills anxiety...don't believe me, look it up.

I searched all over the Internet for inspiration and believe it or not I found what I wanted on Pottery Barn Teen or PB Teen. They had all these modern rooms with polka dots. I really liked the brown and white polka dots. Brown can be paired up with just about any color combination; there's blue and brown, Pink and brown, green and brown, purple and brown...etc. We chose to do a blue/green (to be exact Tiffany Blue, I took the box into the paint store and had it custom made) and brown. I surprisingly found brown and white polka dot crib linens at Target and the rest just fell into place.

Here are the pictures that I had blown up. Reese is on the left and Brady is on the right.


This is Reese's side of the room. I'm thinking of putting an IPod docking station where the radio is eventuallt an possibly a hanging bookshelf above the dresser. we'll see.


Here is Brady's side of the room.



The rocking chair and changing station. It's a little cluttered, but oh well.


Here's the famous screen door. We put this in instead of purchasing expensive crib tents to prevent the cats from joining the kids in their cribs. It's worked out perfectly. It was a $15 purchase.

Product of the Week

I know I'm a little behind on my posts but it's been a little crazy here with the tornado twins! BUT I digress...

As anyone knows, babies are expensive. Having two babies is even more expensive, so with a little hesitation I agreed to switch from the boys regular (everything is honky dory) formula to store brand. It was half the price and and the label said it had all the same great things in it and very clearly said it was comparable to what we already use. Well, as you can probably guess (due to lack of naming this formula), this is not the product of the week. This formula gave my sons terrible diarrhea and an even worse diaper rash. Super annoyed!! Did we change the formula? Well not right away. My hubby, god love him, insisted that it wasn't the formula and they just caught a bug. So we tried waiting it out. It just got worse. We are now back to our regular Soy formula and the diarrhea stopped, but the diaper rash stayed. We were already applying cream prior to the rash at every diaper change, so I invested in the maximum strength stuff to take a more aggressive approach. Bath time, which is normally all fun and smiles, was now tears and frustration due to the sore bottoms.

Now with all this said, are you ready for my shout out for product of the week???

It's Aveeno Baby Soothing Bath Treatment!


It comes with six packets that look just like instant oatmeal packets. I poured one packet into their bath water (no need for soap in addition to packet)and abracadabra...I saw instant results in healing their terrible diaper rashes. Plus its soothing, hence the title, so there weren't anymore tears. It only took two bath treatments in addition to continuing to apply maximum strength diaper cream, before their rashes were completely gone. I highly recommend this product. Even if your little one is rash free, you should have it in your bathroom just in case. It's also good for insect bites, poison ivy/oak/sumac, and chicken pox. The other great thing about this product is it was less than five dollars. If this product is not already on your grocery list you are CRAZY.