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will green hippies judge us?

If we drive an SUV?

I know, I know, we are all about being green, environmentally friendly, bike ridding, organic garden growing, line drying hippies. But in a sad reality, most cars dont fit twins with rear facing car seats, and 6′ 3″ drivers.

Nope, no station wagon, mid size car, cross over SUV works. Its down to a bigger Minivan, or full size SUV. Sure we would love to rock the prius, but its just not a reality. 

I will say I have a new understanding for families of twins or more, and families with 3+ kids. There really are not many real options for cars out there that get over 23mpg. Sure, some newer SUVs and vans can get 25+mpg, and still seat 7. But Who has $34k to go out and buy a new car. We do not. 

So please dont judge us for having to rock the big SUV. In our defense, we are still trying to get the most fuel efficient SUV possible, and we will drive it like old people, with 40psi in the tires.

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1st Baby Shower

Matt and I had our first baby shower yesterday. (I am a lucky girl and get to have two. 🙂 Matt gets to babysit for my second one, oh no he might actually have to change a diaper, Eric you’ll have to help him with that.)  The one yesterday was thrown by our church. We did take our camera, but didn’t really get any good pics, except of the cake (Matt did manage to get two bad profile shots of me, thanks honey!). Lesson: if you want pictures of your shower hand your camera off to someone!  The boys did receive some lovely gifts.  Everyone was excited to see their pictures and ask lots of questions.  We had a very nice time and are very grateful that everyone already loves our boys so much.


The Cake


Memory books and Frames


Sippies, bottles, dinnerware

Bibs 

Snugglies and onesies

Diapering accessories and pacifiers   

Bath accessories

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One Year Six Months

Today marks one year six months since we started the journey to adopt our two precious children. We are beyond excited that this journey is almost over and cannot wait to meet our adorable twin boys.

This weekend was by far the hardest for me, Matt did fine, but I was worried, yes even after we got the news Ezra made it through surgery just fine. It was so hard being so far away and knowing Ezra was in the hospital. 🙁 I did not like it at all. I know he is in good hands and I am doing much better with it today. I tried some retail therapy over the weekend, but all I bought were outfits for the boys, and it made me miss them more.

Then another mom at church who has 15 month old twin boys gave me some hand me down twin items. 🙂

I’ll be honest here and tell you about the top outfits. I pull them out of the bag and hear Matt laughing and was super confused and I am sure looking quite puzzled, all I could say was I don’t get it. Yep, Matt had to explain it said SNAP!


Carter testing out the pack and play

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The boys are excited!

I scored a lot of onesies off ebay last week and they showed up this week. What’s a girl to do with no babies to dress? Of course, try it on the cat! 

Carter being a pretty good sport, Jackson would never have allowed this

Here he is with all of the onesies, I think he was upset his mom didn’t think of tucking the tag in.

Jackson checking out the clothes my mom bought, it was hard to get him to move for the picture (he likes to roll around in the clothes)

The matching outfits my mom picked out, fire trucks of course!

The matching outfits my dad picked out, love the overalls!  (notice who is nearby)

I scored a free changing table pad yesterday and Carter just had to give it a try (it was brand new!)

 

The cats love hanging out in the nursery, they are making sure everything is just perfect for Tom and Jerry.  By perfect I mean, small teeth holes and maybe a few claw marks!  Oh, and a lot of cat hair!

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Abby's Big Arrival

Abby finally made her appearance this morning at 10:35 after a very long night.  She weighed in at 7 pounds 3.5 ounces and 21 inches long.  She is an absolute doll and already keeping Jason busy with the diaper changes!

Here are some pics, I also uploaded a few more in the photo gallery (I will upload more when I get them, hint hint dad):

Yawning must be hard work being born

Happy new family

Proud new dad

Grandpa and Abby

Grandma and Abby

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Help Save Handmade

Okay I must admit, I am addicted to Etsy.com.  I love browsing the handmade crafts, especially the stuff for children.  I dream about the stuff I can buy for Tom and Jerry when I find out ages and genders.  The sad thing is there is a new law that is about to go into effect that could end handmade stuff for kids.  The Hand Made Toy Alliance has this on their website:

The United States Congress rightly recognized that the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) lacked the authority and staffing to prevent dangerous toys from being imported into the US. So, they passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) in August, 2008.  Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number. 

For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.

  • A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
  • A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes dolls to sell at craft fairs must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
  • A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
  • And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatory testing will likely drive them out of business.
What can you do?  Well the Hand Made Toy Alliance has provided a sample letter.  Please write your Representative and your Senators.  It is easy and takes less than a minute.  They are not asking for the law to go away completely, but rather for changes to be made, so small toy makers can stay in business and crafts can still be sold.
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Baby Names

I’ll be honest Matt and I have no idea what we are doing with the kids’ names and I don’t see us making up our minds until we see them. We do try to think of names from time to time, but never really settle on anything. I came across this fun baby name site today. You can search for names by disposition!

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Tom and Jerry have a room!

Matt finished up the painting this weekend. I am very pleased with how everything turned out and so glad I married such a talented man!

Here is a quick video showing a panorama of the room:

He even added flowers and butterflies just for me.  🙂

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More nursery updates

While stephanie was busy blogging yesterday (3 in one day!!) I was painting more animals in the nursery.

We have a Family of Zebras

Some giraffes

And some elephants

The giraffes and elephants are not yet done, but coming along very cool!. I will add in some grass for all the animals to be standing in, and later some bushes, flowers and butterflies.

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In Case You Didn't Know

You can sign up at the CPSC’s website to receive email notification when an item is recalled. You can sign up for all recalls or for recalls regarding a specific group, like infant/child. I signed up when we started buying stuff for Tom and Jerry and luckily we haven’t bought anything that was recalled. It is an easy thing to do and I get about one email a week alerting me to recalls.

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More nursery pics

So I got super gung-ho excited about the nursery this weekend. I feel that progress is almost inspiration for more progress. See things happen is a good thing.

You can see all the pics here

Today I “built” up 2 large african acacia trees and grass. Looks like animals are next.

Yes, i free handed the trees, and used a modified stippling technique for the leaves. It helped create a lot of depth and color.

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Sneak Peak

Matt started working on the nursery this week. I have not lifted a brush, but somehow I have managed to get paint on me and my clothes.


Matt getting ready to start


The Sky


A nice neutral base


Dirt

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Friday Update 8/22/08

Adoption Update: Our agency didn’t have any referrals this week, it has been since the week of 7/11/08 since the last set of referrals. 🙁


Highchair I scored off of Craigslist for Tom or Jerry (of course, Jackson gave it a test run for us)

Running Update: I didn’t run at all this week. I still have been staying up too late watching the Olympics to bother with getting up early to run, but I have been riding the exercise bike this week. It is so much nicer to exercise in air conditioned comfort.

Push-up Update: We did them this week, well I still have one more set to do, but we did them! We did repeat week 2, so we are a little behind, but I thought it would take more than six weeks anyway.

Matt got a new-to-him toy this week:

Jackson was excited about the box

Carter was excited about the foam (he loves to eat foam)

Matt was excited for the new toy and that his wife let him put it together in the house because it was so hot in the garage

Random stuff from the web:

I was looking for something to do with old magazines and might have to give this a try.

All I have to say on this story is, “Seriously!?”