March on the Mall

Last weekend, Eric and I brought the babies downtown so they could meet some relatives for the first time (Eric's mom's niece and her family). It was so great to meet some new family and for them to be able to see the babies. Here is a shot of the whole group.

After some quality time with the fam, the four of us strolled out onto the National Mall to enjoy the warm weather, where we had our first ride on the carousel. Piper and Fletch were not that excited about it because that thing moved fast. Can you see the look of sheer terror in Fletch's face here?

After that apparently horrifying experience, Piper and Fletch got to walk on the Mall for the first time. Here is Piper scoping out things.

Note the Washington Monument in the background on this one. While I still am always in awe when I'm down on the Mall, Piper was more interested in the wheels on the stroller.

After a few minutes though, she decided it was time to start her march on the Mall.

However, the march was short lived, and here she is saying, "See ya later, alligator."

While all this was going on, Fletch was enjoying his time on the Mall as well.

This included taking in the sights, such as the U.S. Capitol here in the background.

Fletch is still a little unsteady on his feet, so he also took a few breaks to just sit and enjoy the scenery and collect his thoughts.

After a few minutes of sightseeing and quite contemplation about our political system, Fletch started to get worked up.

And then he too said he had enough, and signed off with, "In a while, crocodile."

A very fun way to spend an afternoon.

Gobble Gobble

I'm a little late with this post, but somehow the time got away from me. We had a fantastic Thanksgiving last week with Eric's parents. It was so fun to see Piper and Fletch enjoy their turkey dinner. Here is a photo recap.

The day started with a trip to Giant for some pie. Fletch and Piper loved riding in the Cozy Coupe cart for the first time.

We then went home and took naps. While the babies were taking their second nap, Eric's parents came home with the Thanksgiving dinner (let me tell you, not much is better than when people show up at your door with hot, delicious food).

Here is Eric's dad carving the turkey.

Here is Eric's mom with her mouth-water stuffing and sweet potatoes.

And here is my contribution to the dinner--keeping the babies occupied while preparations were underway. 

Just a few minutes later, dinner began. Fletch couldn't get enough yummy food.

Neither could Piper.

I was also pretty stuffed after the meal.

Fletch eventually decided he was done and started throwing food off his tray, which worked out terrific for Cider. 

Piper also had enough and threw up her hands and declared, "No more yumminess!"

She then went into a food coma.

After recovering from their food coma, Piper and Fletch got some good playtime to work off all that food with Grandma, after which they promptly went to bed and slept late that next morning. Must have been all that tryptophan.

That petty much sums up Thanksgiving. However, what would T-day be without shopping on Black Friday. Early the next morning, we woke the babies to go to the mall. We were there by 7am. 

There weren't that many great deals to be had at the mall, but it was nice to be there before it got crowded because that meant the play area was empty. Piper and Fletch had it essentially to themselves. 

Here are Piper and me in our matching outfits (not planned).

And Fletch checking out the climbing equipment.

After all that eating, shopping, and playing, we went home and had a relaxing weekend. What a great holiday!?!

Fun Weekend

This weekend, my mom came for a quick, fun visit. We had a great time together, talking, catching up, and relaxing. We even got to go out to dinner for some girl time, which we had done in years. She also got to see Piper and Fletch begin to perfect their walk, which is still a little unsteady and includes a good amount of arm flailing.

The weekend also included going to park and playground.

Piper wouldn't leave the side of the stroller at the park and threw a tiny-sized Piper tantrum when we tried to get her to explore the grass. Fletch wasn't much better. She is obsessed with the orange color of the stroller and strap buckles, while he loves the wheels. If I knew the stroller would hold their attention so well, I would have set it up in the living room months ago.

However, we were able to lure them away for their other favorite thing...the swings!

We also spent time watching Piper perform her tricks in the curtains:

And we tried out our new single stroller that I got for my birthday. We want to start taking Piper and Fletch out more one-on-one so they get some good mommy/daddy-toddler time, and this is the perfect ride.

All in all, it was a wonderful few days, and we can't wait to see Mom again at Christmas.

Big Steps

As you can see from these videos, the kiddos have taken some big steps lately—they’re walking. Of course, right now, they are mainly stumbling around like they just left a Colgate party at 2am and had a few too many, but I guess that’s why they call them “toddlers” and not “walkers.” They are getting better every day, although I think only Piper has actually discovered that she can use walking as a method of transportation. Fletch, on the other hand, is still at the stage where he thinks taking a few steps is just a cool trick to make Eric and I go crazy with clapping and excitement, as you can hear in these videos.

In addition to walking, here are some other fun things they are doing lately:


--Piper loves to share things with you. When she’s eating, she’ll hold a bite of food out for you to eat and giggles when you eat it out of her hand.

--Piper also loves to play games. Sometimes when she’s sharing her food, she’ll pull her hand away as you go for the food and then cracks up laughing after she’s tricked you.

--Fletch loves to give kisses. If I call him from across the room and ask for kisses, he scurries over and plants big fat, wet smooches all over my face. --They both love to “read” their books and will sit and look at them for minute at a time. They also love to be read to. Few things are better than when Piper brings me a book and crawls into my lap so I can read it to her.

--One of their favorite books is “Doggies.” Fletch loves to make the Nnnnnn sound from the book. Piper loves the page that says, “Nine dogs on a moonlit night…OOOooooooo.” Whenever we read that page, she makes the howling sound before I’ve even finished the sentence. They also love “Mama’s Home.” I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read this over the past few weeks.

--Fletch can point to his head when asked. He also responds correctly when you ask him what noise a cow makes, and occasionally when asked what noise a sheep makes.

--Both of them can give high-fives, clap, and point. They especially love to clap when they are done eating. I think they are applauding my fine cooking. Piper also is into waving lately. Fletch waves every so often, but not as much.

--They both just got their second haircut. Their hair grows so fast.

--They are eating three good meals per day as well as a wake-up cup of milk, two mid-day cups of milk with crackers, and a bedtime cup of milk.

--Both of them love to eat and, so far, are only occasionally picky. Every once in a while, they’ll decide they don’t want their veggies or a dish we’ve made them before, but for the most part, they’ll eat just about anything.

--We’re occasionally trying utensils with them. Fletch isn’t so great at understanding what they are for, but it looks like Piper is quickly catching onto the spoon.

--They are still taking two 90-minute to 2-hour naps per day at 10am and 2:30pm. They go to sleep at 6:45pm each night. Piper sleeps right through most nights until 6am. Fletch has been waking a lot lately but hopefully he’ll go back to sleeping through soon.

--Fletch’s favorite toy is his ball. He loves to throw it around and chase after it. Piper still loves anything orange, particularly the Ernie puzzles pieces from the puzzles that were mine as a toddler.

--They don’t really say any words with regularity, but Piper babbles a lot. I think she might be saying words but we just can’t understand them yet. Fletch doesn’t babble as continuously as Piper but it seems like he tries to say a lot of individual words after hearing Eric and me say them. The other night, he kept trying to say “banana.”

As you can see, they are doing a lot and changing every day. I can’t wait for them to be walking full-time and think that will be any day now. In the meantime, I’m going to rest my legs before I have to start chasing two toddlers in two different directions.

Halloween Challenge

As I said previously, we’ve had a few crazy weeks, and Halloween was no exception. I had all these great intentions of getting home early, dressing the kids up, taking some terrific photos, them toddling up the stairs to all the neighbors’ houses, etc. It didn’t turn out quite like that, but it was still fun, just like last year.

I ended up working later than expected and then when Eric and I attempted to rush home, we got stuck in traffic with all the other parents rushing home. When we finally arrived at the house, it was late, so we zoomed through dinner and costume changing. As you can see, Fletch was fine with it.

But this did.not.make.Piper.happy. I do believe that’s the stink eye that she’s giving me.

After everyone got in their costumes, we attempted a photo shoot on the front steps. Trying to wrangle two toddlers who only want to eat leaves and who haven’t quite learned how to walk is a lot like herding cats but cuter (because you know how I feel about cats).

After realizing we weren’t going to get the perfect picture on the front steps, we ToTed to a few neighbors’ houses. We live in such a great neighborhood and have wonderful neighbors.

Thinking that maybe a change of scene might encourage some better pictures, we tried to get some photos on the curb in front of our house. This only resulted in Piper trying to toddle away into the darkness and Fletch sitting on the street like a little lost boy.

Finally, we went and collected a few more pieces of candy. Piper picked out a KitKat because that girl loves anything in an orange/red/yellow wrapper.

While the evening wasn’t perfect, we still had fun, and Piper and Fletch were adorable.

Marathon Madness Recap

I apologize for the late post. It's been a crazy few weeks. First, we were in Boston and then the next weekend, Eric went to Paris for the week, so I was flying solo at home. Actually, the week was really easy because Piper and Fletch are so good. They went to sleep easily every night he was gone and slept late every morning. But, it was tiring, not just for me, but also for Eric who was working hard while away. Anyway, this post is to recap the marathon, so Piper and Fletch will know later in life that at one time, their mom and dad were runners who did cool (crazy) stuff like marathons.

Eric arrived home the Friday before the race. We've been training all summer and were glad the big weekend was finally here. Marathon weekend started with rain, sleet, and snow on Saturday. It seems like every year, the weather is bad the day before the race. Despite the conditions, we ventured out early with the babies to get to the Expo and pick up our race numbers.

After browsing the Expo, we went home for naps and relaxing. Thankfully, the weather here wasn't as bad as in the rest of the Northeast, where many friends and family were without power for days on end.

On Sunday, we woke up early and dropped the babies off with Eric's mom around 5:30am. Eric and I then boarded the Metro for the race. Here I am panicking that we were going to be late, so I placed a last minute call to our running partner, just in case. Of course, we weren't late at all.

Arriving at the Pentagon and making the loooonnnggg walk to the Runners' Village was very cold (I swear, the MCM ends up being at least 27.2 miles with all the walking at the beginning and end). The temperature outside was in the low 30s—definitely the coldest marathon start I've ever done. We met up with our running partner (Lillian) and made our way to the corral to use the body heat of all the runners to keep warm.

After about a 30-minute wait, the race began! By the time the gun went off, the air was still very cool, but the sun was warming things up. The first 10 miles through Arlington and into Georgetown went by fairly fast. We saw friends on the course and maintained our slow pace. After Georgetown, we headed down to the Kennedy Center and then onto Hain's Point. That's where I lost it. We got separated from our small group, and I just didn't want to be out there anymore. I was simply having a bad day.

Hain's Point is always hell, no matter where they try to sneak it into the race, but this year it felt particularly bad for me. By the time we crossed under the 14^th Street Bridge to get off HP, I was beat and nearly in tears. I told Eric to go ahead without me, and I seriously considered stepping off the course. But, I kept going and about 0.50 miles later, I ran into the husband of a friend on the sidelines who had Gatorade and water. Dan replenished my supply (thank you so much!), and I started to get some energy back.

A few minutes later, around mile 14, I saw a runner wearing a shirt that said, "I had twins last year; I'm running a marathon this year; I can do anything." I caught up to her and chatted for a second, while we came around by the Lincoln Memorial. That conversation gave me the energy I needed, and I started feeling great again. Plus, we were now running along the Mall—my home turf. I put everything I had into it, and around mile 19, I caught back up with Eric. It was so wonderful to see him again.

The next few miles were on the 14^th Street Bridge, which is always hard. It's a bit of a death march across the bridge, and most people near me were walking. I kept to my intervals and ran much of it. Then, it was onto Crystal City around mile 22. Once you get there, you know you're going to finish. I was getting tired, but the end was in sight. I pushed through the next few miles, and finally rounded the corner and ran up the hill near the Iwo Jima Memorial and crossed the finish line. It was so great to be done.

My overall race time was much slower than I'd like it to be, but given that we didn't train this year like normal, that's ok. For the first few days after the race, I was saying that that was my last marathon but now I can feel the bug to do another one again. We'll see.

Of course, throughout the race, the one thing that kept me going was the idea of seeing Piper and Fletch when we got done. Nothing felt better than getting home to them and letting them play with our medals.