Babies in the house...

I've recovered... I think!  Last night I watched my friend Kim's three week old twins... overnight...  Amerah and I LOOOOOOVE babies, so when Kim called to ask if we could keep them overnight, Amerah bounced excitedly on the couch chanting "YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!"  Well little Miss Amerah definitely got to experience having babies in the house!  Itty bitty Billy and Kaylee arrived about 7:30 pm Wednesday evening and stayed until sometime after 4 pm Thursday afternoon. 

Kaylee

Billy

 One baby is a handful.  Two babies are two handfuls.  Two babies + a nine month old golden retriever + a baby bunny who is still on formula is insanity. 

Thank heavens Dave was home for half of it!  

Dave proved that he has not lost his baby holding abilities in the last 10 years and even managed to find a comfy positition for little Kaylee while he watched television...

 

Dave was home until 4 am (when he had to leave for work) and then Amerah climbed into bed with me to help if needed.  Fortunately I was able to handle them on my own all night, they were very considerate tykes and took turns waking up for diaper changes and feedings, sleeping peacefully, if noisily, inbetween.  Amerah learned quickly that babies are noisy sleepers :-) Like myself, Amerah woke up almost every time they grunted or cooed.  Poor kid would bolt upright in bed and I would have to say "they're okay, go back to sleep."  She always looked half dazed and promptly fell asleep again. 

 

Amerah was an excellent helper with the babies, she is going to be an amazing big sister!  She never tired of holding them, even if she wasn't always sure exactly how to soothe them and her poor arms tired after a while.  She ran endless errands for me and loved on those babies like she'd never seen a baby before!

Amerah told Kim and Denise that we were going to be keeping the babies so apparently nearly 21 hours was not enough to cure her infatuation with the little people.

It still makes me smile to think that one year ago, when Dave and I married, Amerah was insistent that she did NOT want a baby brother or sister and now she is begging for one of each!  Hopefully we'll be able to indulge her wishes in the not too distant future.

 

 

As for the other members of our household...  The strange sounds that the babies made terrified Flopsy and caused the Guinea Pigs to squeak curiously.

Comfortable in her position as "Mamma's Baby," Lily was extremely curious about these new little "puppies" who were taking up her people's attention.  She sniffed them interestedly, licked their toes (not a new habit, toe licking is one of Lily's favorite activities), attempted to snatch Kaylee's pacifier (or as Amerah calls it, her sucky), and then went to one of her favorite lazy spots and lay down.

After her initial inspection of the twins, Lily ignored them except when they started to fuss.  Fussing, or crying, prompted quite a bit of anxious canine inquiry, Lily would hurry over to the unhappy infant, lick their toes and hands, and look at me like "DO SOMETHING!"  One time, before I could stop her, Lily's big old floppy tongue swiped poor Kaylee up her whole face!  It did stop her crying though haha, Kaylee got a big old frown on her face, wrinkled brow and everything as she tried to figure out if she was getting a bath or what!  (Yes I did re wash the baby parts that Lily washed).

Dave arrived home not long before Kim and her mom Denise arrived to pick up the babies.  Once the babies were on their way home and Dave took Amerah to karate and to her cousin's house to spend a couple nights, I sat down in the Lazy Boy for the first time that day and promptly fell asleep!

End verdict:  We're tired... but we still love babies :-) Even when it looks like they're flipping us off!

Girls' Night!

When the conditions are right:

1.  Amerah does NOT have school the next day.
2.  Dave is at work.
3.  We do not have anything pressing that HAS to get done.

Amerah and I like to indulge in what we call "Girls' Night."  Girls' Night is when she and I hang out, usually at the dining room table, and do "girl" stuff that Daddy wouldn't want to do anyway.  We easily ignore Shawn's presence in the house, since he's usually in the family room on his computer, not intruding on our girly festivities.

This is how Amerah feels about Girls' Night:

Note the monkey snuggie LOL

Girls' Night activities usually involve crafts.  Amerah is a die hard crafter, everything she sees (and I mean everything) has the potential to end up in one of her creations.  Dave and I are quite used to hearing her say "Wait!  I can USE that!"  We are SO used to hearing that phrase that our trash disposal technique has become quite secretive... we wait until she leaves the room and then it's "Quick!  Throw this away before she comes back!"

Among other things, past projects have included making sun catchers (thank you Mom!) and plastic bowls (thank you Ed and Lindy!).  I am including some photos of the bowl making since I wasn't blogging at that time.

Tonight we munched on homemade nachos and made sock puppets from a kit that my mother sent. 

I made a girl 

and a clown (of sorts) 

Amerah made a rabbit wearing a shirt 

and super baby (who is sporting a moustache LOL)

I'll let them speak for themselves...

In other news...

Due to Flopsy's extreme hoppiness, her feedings have gone from this:

To this:

I would be worried that she isn't very frightened of me if it weren't for the fact that she's terrified of everyone BUT me.  I put the camera inside the cage to try to get a good photo of her and she was a little too curious about it... this is what came of her photo shoot...

 

Hahahaha!

Finally I got one decent photo!

Good night all!  I'm sure I'll be writing again soon.  Tomorrow night I am watching my friends 3 week old twins... overnight... so it may be a couple days :-)

Finally...

I finally got around to loading all of the family photos we had taken (back in June) onto the computer.  I thought I'd share a few that didn't quite make the cut...

This falls under the "what the heck was she thinking?" category.  I'll start by saying that I TOLD the "photographer" that I didn't like the urine yellow background and end with... okay I understand the concept of a father/son pic but really, have you ever seen two men look more uncomfortable? 

Even though they aren't in a place of honor on our wall, these two photos were easily my favorites.  We wanted a sibling photo and this is what came of THAT idea!  How better to display sibling love than with a little choking... Amerah's idea of course... as you can tell she was very pleased with herself... not to mention that she got a genuine smile and a laugh out of Shawn who tends to have a poker face in photos.

Hands down the best family photo!  Unfortunately Dave won't let me blow it up to poster size and display it in the living room... :-(

And now for some of the winners:

 

 The sibling photo we chose... for obvious reasons.  As it turns out, this is the first real photo that Shawn and Amerah have ever had taken.  I loved it from the minute I first saw it!

Our two favorite pictures of Amerah... this kid is so dang photogenic!  She rarely takes a bad photo (unlike her step-mother who rarely takes a GOOD photo!).

Another of my faves, the father daughter photo... they asked me if I wanted one of me and Amerah and I said no.  I wish I had gotten one now.  At the time I was thinking that a "mother/daughter" photo would upset Sandy (Amerah's mom).  I wish we had just done it.

The last few pictures were our contenders for family photo:

This is the one we ended up choosing.

This last pic almost was a contender but Shawn looks so small, he looks like he was photoshopped in and he's not quite life sized!