NY Trip Part III, and her last day of being ONE!

First, let me say how amazed I am that today is Mairead's last day as a one year old. Tomorrow is her second birthday! So, today is our last day with three kids under two.... now we will just have three under three... piece of cake. We love our little girl to pieces and are having so much fun with her every day. Of course, I will be posting lots of birthday pictures and some sappy mom comments about how big my baby girl is getting!

For now, here are some pictures of our trip to Adirondack Animal Land while we were in NY. Grandma took care of the boys so that Dave and I could take Mairead and Rachael for a special day. We had a great time! Mairead loves animals and pointed them all out to us, along with yelling the sounds that they make. Ducks were among her favorites... Quack, quack!


She had no fear of any of the animals. If she didn't know what they were, she just said, "Hi, dog." Kind of like Mark Wahlberg, for you SNL fans...


Once again, half the day was spent with Dave chasing after her.


See what I mean about no fear? You can see the top of her little head amongst all of the deer who were vying for some crackers.


Rachael did a great job showing Mairead around and giving her a ride in the stroller. Mairead is lucky to have a cousin like that!

Thanks to everyone in NY who made our trip a great success! I promise to update with pictures of my TWO YEAR OLD soon!

New York, Part II

As promised, here are more pictures from our trip to New York. I still have one more set, but this group covers our day with family and friends at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They were generous enough to host a BBQ for us so that all of the cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents could get together. It was the first time that the twins met most of their New York family, so that was pretty exciting!

We had a gorgeous day and it was so great to see everyone. Thanks to all of you who took time out of your busy summer schedules to spend the afternoon with us!

Mairead loved playing in the 'puddle' with her cousins.


This is Noah- believe it or not, he is not even a year old! He is super cute!



Cousin Rock spent some quality time entertaining the twins.


Mairead found Grandma's Friendship Garden that has millions of rocks to play with.

Mairead and Noah taking a leisurely float.

Nathan and Noah discovered each other's toes!

Aunt Sue was a big hit with the babies. They were laughing their heads off at her.

Mairead showed Grandma her coloring skills.

Then she practiced a little more on her own. She LOVES coloring. She asks all the time, "color? color?"

The boys were incredibly well behaved and very social for the day.

Mom spent some time blowing bubbles with Mairead and Emily.

Again- thanks to everyone who spent the afternoon with us- it was so great to see the next generation of cousins playing together.

4 Month Appointment

Last week, the boys had their 4month checkup at the pediatrician, and they looked great! According to the scale in the office, Ben edges out Jack at 14lbs even. Jack was 13 lbs 15oz, so he is only one ounce behind! Not bad for a baby who was an entire lb behind his big baby brother at one point! They are in the 25-27 percentiles for height and weight now... they still have a way to 'grow,' but at 2 months they were in the 12-15th percentiles, so they are doing great! The doctor was very happy with their development, too. She said she would never even think of looking at them on the preemie developmental/growth charts- they look and act like 'normal' 4 month old boys. Great news!

Just a few recent pictures-- Jack is modeling the cute little pirate outfit that Ms. Pat gave to him.


And here's Ben in his matching outfit. Cute, huh?


And here's more fun with cereal and fruit. Ben has much improved the whole act of keeping food actually in his mouth, so that's good.


Jack LOVES eating. He laughs and shrieks at us the entire time we are feeding him.

I guess all of this eating is paying off- we're so proud our our little preemies! They are a long way from 4lbs 9oz and 5lbs 3oz!

Trip to NY- Part I

We had a great time on our trip to see our family in NY, and I have so many pictures that I need to spread them over a few posts! Our drive out there was relatively uneventful and the kids were awesome. We were so relieved that no one had a meltdown on the Mass Pike. Jack got hungry about 10 minutes before we made it to the house, and he made that fact very clear to all of us, but other than that, it wasn't too bad!

Let me preface this story by saying that there are only two shows that Mairead watches- Miss Spider and Blue's Clues. But, man, does she love those shows! Anyway- on our first night at Grandma and Grandpa's, Mairead kept walking around saying, "A clue! A clue!". We couldn't figure out what she wanted since Blue's Clues was not on tv, and she wasn't asking to watch her show, etc. She just kept repeating it. Finally, we saw that she was looking at Rachael's vet set- on it is a blue paw print, and most of you moms know that a blue paw print signifies a clue on Blues Clues. We thought it was so funny- she was trying to tell us that she saw a clue and we had no idea what she was talking about.


Mairead LOVED Grandma and Grandpa's house- mostly the fields and all of the fun things to explore outside. She had a great time running all over the place, enjoying her freedom. You'll see that several of these pictures are just the back of her head because she was constanly on the go!

Ry, Dave, and Rachael came over to play and we all had a great time with the bubbles and bubble toys.

Is this what pure happiness looks like?

This expression came right after she dumped the bottle of bubbles on her pants.

Grandma and Grandpa's house has a little puddle to play in and Mairead wanted to jump right in. This child has NO fear. Pros and cons to that... Anyway, she loved the puddle and the ceramic frog that sits nearby.

She was so happy to be able to run without someone trying to hold her hand and make her stay in one place. She did fall a few times but she is such a good sport. She falls down and says, "whoa, whoa." Then, before she stands up, she asks herself, "You ok? You alright?" And then answers herself with, "Yeah." I love it- it is my favorite thing that she is doing right now. The other day, someone on Miss Spider fell down and she said the same thing. "You ok? You alright? Yeah." Love it!

Grandma has lots of flowers at her house. Mairead likes to sniff them all- whenever she sees flowers she just sniffs and then says, "ahhhh." So funny.

Daddy was a trooper during our trip as he spent most of his time chasing after Mairead, trying to keep her out of the puddle, and later taking her in the puddle even though he was freezing. As I said, we do have a ton of pictures, so I'll post more in the next couple of days!

We've Been Busy!

First, another milestone has come upon us- the boys are 4 months old! They are getting SO big. Ben is about 14 1/2 lbs, and Jack is about 14 1/4 lbs. They are just about triple their birth weight-- not bad for preemies! Our next pediatrician appointment is on the 16th, so we will find out about their overall health, percentiles, etc. I think they are doing great! They are actually chubby- Mairead never had the little 'rolls' and double chins that these guys have-- I think they are going to be big boys.

Ben at 4 months


Jack at 4 months


Jack on the left, Ben on the right



Now that they are 4 months, they have even bigger appetites. So, we decided to try giving them some cereal mixed with bananas. They LOVED it. They literally could not get enough, and they cried between bites because they wanted more. I was glad to see that we have a new way to get food into these growing guys.

Jack was pretty neat about it...


Ben was not...

Mairead had a great 4th of July weekend since it was finally nice out! We set up her baby pool and she had a blast playing in there.

Of course, playing outside can tire you out, so we had to be sure to relax for Miss Spider time with Daddy. Ben is watching, too. He loves tv.

Ben and Jack had their 4th of July outfits on.

We took Mairead out for ice cream and she discovered m&ms. Those were her favorite part. You can tell that she is half asleep while eating.

The ice cream place also had some coin-operated rides that she tried out. She had fun, but she was not letting go of her Dad! She was saying, "neigh, neigh!".

Note the writing on her shirt. It says, "Miss Independence." I know it is for 4th of July, but it applies to Mairead pretty much all the time.

These are Jen's sunglasses. I think she looks a lot like Jen in this picture, too.

We also tried out the playground near Nana and Grampy's house. She likes the slide the best and runs toward it yelling, "slide, slide." She can climb the steps and get herself onto and down the slide without help. It probably helps that she is so tall! I think she had a growth spurt because she is growing out of some 2T clothes, and she did not stop eating for pretty much the entire weekend. She is getting so tall! We actually took her to a playground today and another mom asked how old she was. When I told her that she was not quite two, the mom couldn't believe it. She thought she was 3! WNBA here we come!

We are having so much fun with all of the kids right now. Mairead is a constant source of entertainment. Her favorite phrases right now are, "Where'd it go?" "There you are!", "Gotcha," "Set, go!" and a few others. She also 'counts,' which means she points to things one by one and assigns numbers. Usually the numbers are 'free, four five, six.' I don't know what happened to one and two.

Anyway, I hope this catches everyone up on what's going on with us. The only bad news is that the offer on our house fell through after the buyers kept making more and more unreasonable demands. So, we are starting over with that. I hope something happens quickly so that we can move on. We'll keep you posted!