Day at the Races

As parents of twins, Kurt & I are used to marathon tantrums, marathon naps (LOVE THOSE), marathon meals, the list goes on... Today we were privy to a different kind of marathon. We took Maddie & Aidan on a drive down to Hyannis on Cape Cod to watch Uncle Jon run the Hyannis Marathon (10K portion of it). He came in 2nd in his division and we were all very proud. And the kids surprised us with a marathon of excellent behavior!!

Upon arriving at the race site, M&A watched the start from their stroller - and then we let them loose! Aidan loved running down hill (wasn't so fond of climbing back up) and Maddie was obsessed with stepping up and down on the curb. Post-race, we had a lovely family lunch at the local TGIFridays, where M&A astounded us again with their absolute best restaurant behavior. All in all a fabulous day!

It occurred to us on the ride home that this is actually our 3rd annual drive down for this race. The first year we attended was the day we shared the news with Mimi, Buppy & Uncle Jon that we were expecting a baby (a baby - we had yet to be shocked with the news of twins). It is funny to think that 2 short years ago we knew nothing of the joys and frustrations that were in store for us.

Here are M&A at today's finish line:

You'd think they had actually run the race the way they passed out a mere 5 minutes later:

Here's a couple pics of last year's trip (post-race lunch) - what a difference a year makes!

Who knows, maybe 18 years from now we'll be driving down to watch M&A run!

Hearts, Ducks & Tiny Bubbles

Valentine's used to mean flowers, fancy dinners and alone time. This year Valentine's was all about spending family time with our much loved twins! We started off the morning with a free trial class at Gymboree - Maddie & Aidan had a blast! They climbed on the equipment and paricipted in the songs/dances. Aidan had a fascination with Gymbo the clown and suffered a smack down at the hands of a jumbo sized 2 year old girl. Maddie giggled with delight at the bubbles until she located the back door and made multiple escape attempts. And we all enjoyed the parachute game. Of course I was pretty shocked to find that it would cost $120 PER MONTH for us to join. Oh well, I guess we'll make do with our Willner's tot plex here at home.

After lunch, we had our Valentine's cake and as you can see, it was thoroughly enjoyed!

Of course Valentine's cake often requires a Valentine's tubby. Here they are anxiously awaiting tubby with their Valentine's rubber duckies in hand!

A very successful day for us and I am happy to report, my best Valentine's ever. Somehow these 2 make everything so much more special!

The Grass is Always Greener...

So the past couple of weeks have been pretty tough on Mommy/Daddy. The twins had a stomach bug and let me tell you, IT WASN'T PRETTY!! Recovering from the bug coupled with some more pesky teeth working their way through and you've got massively cranky toddlers. After a few 'Whoa is me' moments (okay, days really) on my part, I decided to pull out all the stops in my efforts to distract these children from their temper tantrums. I emptied out the toy box and let them sit inside and read books. Got a good 20 minutes of entertainment out of that. But who knew that simply allowing them to play in each others cribs would result in sixty blissful, cranky-free minutes. AHHHH....

Aidan in amongst the tutus and princess paraphernalia:

Maddie's latest obsession is wearing Aidan's baseball cap:

Oh and we also spent some time gazing longingly out the window at our swingset and dreaming of the summer days to come:

I am happy to report that the past two days have brought us very pleasant and generally well behaved children :)

Go-Go-Gadget

It was Kurt's 33rd birthday last week (he'll have you all know that I am exactly 3 months older than he is). One of his gifts was the Trasformers playstation 2 game (he'll also have you all know that today was his first time playing playstation since before the twins were born). So we cracked out the game for some family fun!

Aidan is our little engineer in the making and is very interested in any and all gadgets he can get his hands on. He eyes lit up when he saw the playstation gizmo:

Here he is mixing it up with the big guys:

It was adorable and he was really into it:

Until Maddie took the controller and ran that is! Being a twin is never easy:

Maddie's couture this evening was a cousin Vivienne original. She likes to remain stylish at all times!