There is so much to reflect upon for 2010, but also so so so much to look forward to in 2011 and beyond!

This past year my family finally moved into a small apartment of our own and we really saw what it takes to maintain an ‘instant’ family of 4 with just me and darrell calling all the shots. Aizen and Demetri did all their ‘firsts’, from rolling over, to sitting up unsupported, to crawling, standing, walking and now running! They turned 1 this year and got baptized and also got their very first haircuts! My identical suns aren’t babies anymore; now they are rambunctious, curious little toddlers!!

But this year also brought about lots of sadness for we experienced 3 funerals for all three of their remaining great grandmothers which pains my heart so much to know that they will never get to see them grow up with us, but at least they are in our hearts and my memory so I can pass them on to Aizen and demetri when they are old enough.

This year also brought about so much excitement cuz Darrell brought me to hawaii for my first time and proposed with a gorgeous, tiffany lucida engagement diamond, and now we look forward for a year of planning and a potential wedding!

2011 will also, hopefully, bring us our very own house/home of our own ^_^ our lease for this apt if up in april, so we are planning to move into our house of our dreams.

This 2011 also means that I will also be finishing up my very last semester of my undergraduate career..and thus the next chapter of my own life will unfold. Right now, that’s heading towards a job that will pay for our wedding

I sit here by myself in our empty living room, eyes drooping, watching the New Years Rockin eve on channel 7 with my sweet, beautiful, breathtakingly cute boys sleeping soundly (miraculously) on the other side of this wall, while their dad is hard at work, earning good time-and-a-half-money to support our family.  I am so blessed. So, so blessed. G’night 2010-you had some rough edges, but also a glorious, sliver lining.

And to you, 2011 – I’ll see you in the morning.

But i just wanted to share that their current favorite finger foods is tofu for Aizen and steamed apples for demetri. Aizen will grab for that piece of tofu i just placed on his plate and stuff it in his mouth even though he still has 2 more other pieces of tofu already in his mouth. It’s like he’s afraid I will take it off his plate if he doesn’t snarf it down right away. Demetri, on the other hand, is much cleaner when he eats. he will swallow every last piece of food in his mouth before he crams in another, and when we spoon feed him and sees the spoon of food coming, he will chew is food with much gesture and take a big swallow and then open his mouth for the next spoonful of food. Aizen would open his mouth even is he hasn’t swallowed anything yet.

And another thing about aizen, he refuses to swallow his food sometimes. It really pisses darrell off.. but that’s for another post.

This evening I gave them chicken nuggets and usually Demetri is much more partial to them compared to aizen (aizen would eat all the tofu and poke at the nugget, and demetri will snarf down the chicken nuggets and squish the tofu to nasty little pieces) but they both equally liked the chicken nuggets! Yay for more protein!   I always worry that they aren’t eating enough of the protein.

For this recent thanksgiving, i have found that they love eating lumpia! They can easily eat 4 pieces each of the lumpia shanghai style. Yay for eating with no fussing!

Darrell is very strict with them, but when naptime comes, I need a nap and I’m just too tired or fed-up to exert to much discipline onto them. Darrell usually makes them calm down on the couch and drink their sippies of milk and watch their video with the curtains drawn, but when I put them on the couch, they absolutely will not sit still. They want to climb everywhere. So I’ve given up and I just do everything Darrell does except I put them on the floor and they have full reign to do anything. And I think it’s so cute.

I usually decide to begin naptime routine when I see they start slowing down, or get more clingy to me or they throw cranky tantrums over absolutely nothing. Today, they were definitely slowing down so I set up the routine and give them their sippies. They drink, and then all of a sudden they have a huge burst of energy and want to play with every little thing because they know they are gonna take a nap and won’t see their toys for a while. And at this time, they are actually nice to each other. They rarely steal toys at this time and usually share pretty well. And I used to fear that they were getting the 2nd-wind of energy due to over-tiredness and I’ve missed the golden opportunity to put them down for a nap fuss free….. but miraculously, when the video ends and I turn off the TV, they both sit down, hug their loveys (that they previously tossed aside) and calmly wait for me to pick them both up to put them to sleep.

And so I do. I place each in their cribs, tuck them in with their loveys and favorite stuffed bear, and their blanket and leave. No crying or fussiness. At all. Good days.

This seriously made me cry. I hope that one day, if ever I am to meet a situation like this, that I will face it so…so… honorably like this mother had for her son. And I will try very hard to never be like mother A, B and C.

I’ll explain more later. If I remember to come back to this post to edit.

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Every since they were about 5-6 months old, whenever their grandpa (my future FIL) would hold one of them, he would always give them back after a few minutes and proclaim that they “were wet and need a diaper change” but they didn’t poop. I would smell their diapers and look inside and even pat around their diaper to feel for some fullness. I guess it felt kind of full. Whatever- I would change them cuz sure, they’ve been in their diapers for a an hour or two, and sure, it could be full. But every time I would change them, their diapers were barely even peed on. And eventually Dad and I would think “dang, what a waste of a diaper -_-”

So then one day I decided to change them right before I gave one of them to their grandpa. And sure enough, within a few minutes or 1/2 and hour, he would give them back claiming that they were wet and needed a diaper change. So again, I would smell their diapers and look inside and even pat around their diaper to feel for some fullness. And again, I guess it felt kind of full. And then I started thinking about it. So then I changed him into a fresh diaper and started patting around the diaper to feel for some fullness. And sure enough-it kind of felt full. But how? It is a fresh diaper-surely there was not time for him to pee!

And then I thought- it must be their butts! They must have big butts! And consulted with my sister and with Dad and yes. We all skeptically agree-maybe they do indeed, have big butts for their age and that is why their diapers always feel full-because of their big, squishy-apple bottom butts

The one on the floor is when they are 8months old, and the one against a window they are almost 10months. I think both times, Aizen is the one I made show off his butt

Aizen’s doing way better than Demetri.

I’ll explain more later. If I remember to come back to this post to edit.

Aizen is on the left, enjoying his sippy straw cup, and demetri is on the right- showing how hard it is to keep his straw in his mouth.

I think there was a baby boom around the time Aizen and Demetri were born back in September of last year. I swear: everyone’s friend was pregnant when I was pregnant. And distant friends I sorta knew in HS were pregnant. And 4 of darrell’s cousins were due the same time we were. So we all had our kids around the same time…and therefore..it’s really hard to avoid comparing all of those full term singletons to my preemie twins. I know, I know, I shouldn’t ever compare kids, and it’s hard enough trying not to compare between the two let alone with all those other singleton kids, but still – deep down, in a cage, my competitive nature come out.

My boys are always behind in their developmental milestones — compared to all the other kids. They are on time according to the Doc’s records and all, and they are especially on time when you adjust your expectations with their adjusted, prematurity age…but my heart kind of tremors ever so slightly when I see or hear that the singleton kids are already rolling over or crawling or talking or reading and especially – walking. And it also tremors when I see or hear that they are so much bigger/heavier/taller than my boys at their well baby check ups. The only thing my boys have on all of those kids combined is- the amount of teeth they have.

But I’ve come to realize something. When “they” (developmental charts, online parenting websites, doctor’s visits) say when to expect babies to walk, they always say there is a range. Most kids will hit the milestone at this age or that age but some kids will hit it faster or later and not to be worried bc all babies are unique and develop at their own rate. I realize that if your baby is born at their due date or past, then they will hit those milestones ahead of most. And that if you have a preemie, you have to adjust their prematurity age and they will hit those milestones later than the rest. That’s why there’s a range. But anyway….

I always felt like walking is such a huge achievement. It’s always in all those new parenthood commercials and videocameras and all that, that’s it’s really hyped up for me. I then I started feeling pressure that they should be walking by their 1st birthday. That didn’t happen. But once i realized that they were going to be last again in the imaginary development race, I kept saying to myself and hearing from other mothers that walking isn’t all that awesome. It gets way harder on mom and dad and that I should enjoy the non mobile phase as much as possible because, oh man, once they start walking – all hell breaks loose! They get into everything and run away and it’s all so much harder once they walk. And besides, they have all their lives to walk and run from here to there, but they only get a few months if anything (their older cousin walked at 9 months -_-) to be cute little rugrats. And man, they were fast little rugrats! but…

Aizen is walking now ^_^ He took his first independent steps a few weeks ago. I want to say on Monday Sept. 20 (i think bc their ninong came over for lunch and we all saw aizen take 2.5 steps!) And I want to say that Demetri took 1 step on his own a few days later. Then 2 weeks later, I come home from school and Darrell tells me that Aizen can now walk from the couch to the table when placed a few feet from the couch! SO exciting! I got a video posted on youtube of him doing it the next day.

We have been spending a lot of time with Darrell’s side of the family because his grandmother passed away exactly 2 weeks ago. So we’ve been all hanging out with the cousins and there are a few of the boy’s cousins who are toddlers and they all play together. (A&D are the only ones still crawling) And the aunties and uncles (lolos and lolas to the boys) are always taking the boys and holding them up so they can walk supported and it was on the night of the funeral that Aizen took some really strong, solid, slow steps on his own! No more of this rigid stepping and stumbling, now Aizen toddles and will squat and lower his knees so that get can start crawling again He’s getting better and better everyday. He now can cross half the room. Demetri is right behind him tho, still a little lazier with jellier legs, but still, he can toddle a step here and then. I have yet to get a video of Demetri and I need to get a video of Aizen walking for longer than a few steps.

But this post isn’t to say that my boys are so perfect when we go out– oh no. they will throw their tantrums and crying fits. We went to BJs once for a friends going to the monastary party, and demetri cried for such a long time and nothing would sooth him maybe it was molars coming in. And then when we go out to parties on the weekend and they don’t get their long 3 hour nap, they used to be so horrible! so inconsolable and crying forever and so not fun. Always cuts our outings shorter than desired.

I have to mention, though, that when we got seated in the non busy restaurant, the hostess obviously saw that we have babies and I told her we needed two high chairs. And she sat us but then she didn’t remove two seats from the tables and didn’t even bring high chairs to replace them. And she walked back to her post and I had to walk to her again and ask for high chairs. Eventually a dude/waiter came over and gave us highchairs. It might not have been her job, but she totally seemed like she forgot about the high chairs.

It’s interesting cause on my facebook for mommies, i saw a post on my twins group that a mom encountered a twins-unfriendly establishment that refused to give her two highchairs cuz their policy was like they can only give one incase another family comes in and they don’t want to run out of high chairs…. but the restaurant was very empty. They even brought out the manager and he said the same thing about their policy. The waitress even suggested the parents switch off holding one and eating while the other baby is in the high chair! The finally gave in to giving her another high chair when she grabbed all her things and was heading out the door. They even told her that they would make that exception that one time but that for future visits, they would only grant her that one high chair. This was at outback steakhouse, by the way. I dunno what state though.

Busyness-I’m back at school taking a larger course load with a more demanding study schedule, Darrell is back at work and the boys… are becoming a handful. They are very demanding now which makes it more difficult to find time to get on my laptop to type away about them-especially since as soon as I open this macbook, they perk up and come running and whining that I join them, away from the dining table, and to the floor space where they play. And if I bring the macbook down, they will come and try to run all 20 fingers across the keyboard and pull at the screen and try to gnaw at the sides. -_-

my absentee-ism is due to vacation and the laziness that comes with it. Darrell and I took a vacation to Hawai’i – just the two of us. The boys were left with family for 6 days. He proposed and I said yes. And we came home to cranky, overtired boys who were thrown completely off their routine and nap/sleep schedule. As Darrell put it – we came home to them ‘broken’. LOL – it still makes me chuckle when I think of Darrell trying to elicit a laugh or a giggle out of one of the boys by throwing him up in the air, but getting absolutely no cheer and instead we hear whines and cries and I can hear Darrell jokingly, but not really, exclaim “What happened?! They’re broken!”

Once we settled into routine again from vacation, it was party planning time as we prepared for their coming 1st birthday and baptism during labor day weekend. Darrell was on vacation again too, so a lot of our free time went to watching movies from netflix or getting decorations done or me being in school and work – not really time for blogging.

And now it’s almost been a month since their birthday and I realize that I need to document it soon or else all will be forgotten.

I want to blog about: their birthday/baptism party, their actual birthday, their 1st haircuts and Aizen taking his first few steps the other day. And I want to back-blog about Demetri finally catching up to Aizen and being able to pull to standing and stand independently for a while. And also about how much they babble and talk, how they love to clap when I saw “YAAYYYY” and they can wave both hands now. They love doing the ‘indian sound’ with their mouths and hands, how Aizen has bitten Demetri multiple times, hard enough to leave bruises and scars all over his body-even his face. I want to blog about how much they weighed in at their 1 yr doctor’s check-up and how they got the MMR vacine and now they both have had colds ever since and they both vomit a lot now. I want to whine and complain about how much they whine and complain around me because of how bad their separation anxiety is now that I’m leaving them for school when they are awake in the morning and sometimes won’t be home until dinnertime-and how much this kills me that I have to leave them for hours at a time-and how this affects Darrell sleep schedule- and how they are becoming difficult toddlers that give me hell with all their tantrums around me. I want to blog about how much they eat and drink now, how they use sippy-straw cups now and are only on 3 bottles of cow’s milk a day (hooray, no more formula!) I want to backlog about how they only take one nap a day right at noon and how long they can stay awake for. I want to blog about how they love their lovies, and steal each others, and how they laugh at each other and can also silently watch each other play and cheer each other on.

I want to record so much down…but alas, these topics won’t be in this log. I have an exam on Friday and I need to study now. This was just another distraction away from study time. I’ll take any excuse not to study

Aizen can now successfully drink from his sippy cup. I know because i put the same amount of water or juice in both cups, and after they’re done, I see that Aizen has taken half to a full oz of liquid. Demetri is still not into it.

We also went to the park on Tuesday, and I started noticing that Aizen will test out his balance – he always stands up holding on to something, but lately he’s been letting go and can stand on his own two feet for a half second or two, and then fall on his butt. This is exciting! Demetri–still nothing. He barely stands on his two feet holding onto something, but this is the way it always has been.