Little Black Dress...

It is widely known that all girls need a little black dress in their wardrobe.  It is that go to dress that you can throw on for any formal or fancy type event.  Over the course of my life I have had many little black dresses.  Piper and Phoebe are no exception.  They are lucky because they got their very first little black dresses when they were super young.  I love how cute they look in them and the bows just make the outfit (at least I think they do).

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Piper and Phoebe wearing their very special onesies made by Grammie to celebrate my special day

The birthday celebrating actually began on Monday and will continue all week long. Man am I a lucky girl!!!  James watched the babies in the morning so I could get a pedicure then my amazing mom watched the babies in the afternoon so James & I could have a day date at Disneyland.  It was SO great to be back there. It had seriously been months since our last visit.

This morning (my actual birthday) I woke up to breakfast in bed instead of crying babies. James makes the best cereal ever! He knows how to pour just the right amount of almond milk! ;-)  Later that morning my dear friend Theresa came over to help me feed babies and to take me out to lunch for my birthday.  I had such an amazing time!  Thank you Theresa such a great afternoon, you are such a great friend!

When I got home Piper and Phoebe got some sister play time in.  Here are a few cute pictures of what my babies like to do to one another when they are "playing".  Poor Piper was such a good sport.  This time she was on the receiving end but sometimes she is the one dishing it out to Phoebe so it all evens out.

After play time I was hungry so I made James and I some pizza....YUMMY!

James pizza with Pepperoni and Olives--My pizza gluten/dairy free with peppers and black olives.  

Too good if I do say so myself!

My awesome birthday night ended with delicious gluten free lemon cookies (I think I ate a dozen) and delicious See's Chocolate care of my sweet heart James (he bought me all my favorites).

I enjoyed being 32 years old and can hardly wait to see what this next year has in store for me! <3

The backside of the onesies are just as cute as the front!

Our New Friends

On Thursday Piper, Phoebe and I got to meet our new friend Robert (AKA Wu Ju or Little Rob).  We have been waiting to meet this handsome little guy for such a LONG, LONG time.  Our dear friends Rob and Julie adopted Robert all the way from Korea.

Our visit with Robert was such a joy!!  As soon as Robert laid his eyes on the babies (especially Phoebe) he was hooked.  I LOVED watching him love on the girls.  He even gave them little kisses on their toes.  Talk about a melting heart.  We can't wait to play with Robert again soon!

Today, was a VERY special day, not only because we got to spend the day with family at an awesome beach house on Balboa Island, but because we got to met a new member of our extended family baby Cash.  Cash is my cousin Clayton and his beautiful wife Kristen's first son.  We can hardly wait for more visits with this handsome little guy and for the arrival of another playmate, my cousin Katie's baby boy Jayden.

We love our dear friends and family!!!

3 Months Old

WOW, time sure does fly when you are busy mommy of twin girls!  I can hardly believe that Piper and Phoebe are 3 months old today.  Happy Birthday girls, mommy and daddy love you so very much.

James and I are truly blessed to have such wonderful baby girls.  They hardly ever cry (unless they are hungry or want to be where the action is) and will travel anywhere.  So glad we splurged a little bit on the stroller, it was worth every penny.  As the girls are getting older it is very fun to see their little personalities forming.  I love how different each girl is and I can't wait to celebrate those differences as they grow older.

A little mommy milestone occurred this week that I am proud to share.  After having a wonderful lunch with my old teaching team I took Piper and Phoebe to the grocery store.  Something that seems small, but to me it was a huge deal.  Instead of pushing a grocery cart I brought the girls in the store in their stroller.  I packed the stroller full of as many groceries as I could, I even did the self check out.  I was in and out in a pretty decent amount of time.  Go me!  Who knows what else I can conquer.  The skies the limit! :-)

Bows, Parenting and Mommy's Blonde Moment

Bows, parenting and mommy's blonde moment don't seem like things that would go together but for the sake of this post they will.

First starting off with bows...

So... this past week James thought it would be fun to open up the bow debate to our Rancho Capistrano Church family via his mid week message. He insists that the bows are awful and I should not "make" Piper and Phoebe wear them.  I on the other hand think they are not only precious but serve a purpose too.  Since Piper and Phoebe do not have much hair a lot of people automatically assume they are boys.  By wearing a headband there is no way anyone could think my adorable girls are boys.  Also, being a bald baby myself I know what it is like to be mistaken for a boy time and time again and it is not fun! :-)  At this point James has received hundreds of responses to his email and will be revealing tonight at church who won this debate, me or him.  I have heard its a close race and I myself do not know the results.  I can hardly wait to see who won.  I am pretty confident in my side and would love to gloat over a hair bow victory soon.

 Next onto parenting...

This week I had to go back to work to do Kindergarten assessing (All day Thursday and Friday).  It was SO hard to be away from Piper and Phoebe all day.  Not to mention getting NO sleep and then working with precious little Kindergartens all day.  The thing that made it easier was that they were left in good hands.  On Thursday our dear friend Anne (from our small group) and my high school friend Erin tag teamed the day with the girls.  Then on Friday Phoebe and Piper were super lucky to have a daddy day...wahoo!!!  We are all so blessed to have such an amazing man in our lives.

Friday night is date night in the Valencia house so despite the fact that I was beyond exhausted James and I fed the babies and then hit the road to get some yummy food at one of our favorite spots...PF Changs.  I made reservations so that we could get in right away, eat, walk the mall a bit and then head home to do the next baby feeding.  As we were sitting waiting for our drinks to come (poor James was SO dehydrated from a day filled with salty food that I thought he might keel over) James and I were sitting in dead silence, both starring at one another, too tired to even talk.  All of the sudden my gaze shifted from James eyes to his forearm.  There on his arm was this weird gray stuff.  I right away asked him what was on his arm.  He looked at me with a huge smile and said it was desitin.  I immediately started laughing so hard.  You know you parenting is a hard, busy job when you don't even realize that you have dried desitin stuck to your body!

Mommy's blonde moment exposed...

Exhaustion is my new middle name and I am sure James would say the same thing for him as well.  With that exhaustion comes the greatest blonde moments of my life.  I am constantly saying and doing crazy things as well as forgetting important things like getting soap at Target or putting bills in the mail. All of these moments seem minor compared to my BIG blonde moment I had on Thursday.  So just like our PF Changs experience this moment happened after a LONG day of Kindergarten testing, this time it was Thursday.  So Thursday afternoon rolls around and I was done with Kindergarten assessing for the day.  I was in desperate need of caffeine stat.  I ran into Sprouts to pick up something with every intention of getting caffeine and I of course left the store forgetting it.  I then drove to a Chick-Fil-A with the intention of getting my favorite Diet Dr. Pepper and they were closed due to a power outage.  By this time I was running late to Piper and Phoebe's appointment with the dermatologist (which went well by the way.  She was just checking the red spots the girls have on their bodies) but I NEEDED the caffeine.  Lucky for me the gas station close by had exactly what I needed.  So with my caffeine in hand I finally made it to the doctor's office.  Like I said above the appointment went great and we are just going to watch the red spots to see how they are growing and changing.

So here is the blonde moment...after the appointment I decided to take the babies home to give James a little daddy alone time break.  We hopped on the 405 freeway only to be met by my worst nemesis, 5 o'clock traffic!  I knew I was going to be in for it.  It was quickly approaching 6pm and that is the babies next feeding time.  Filled with fear of the impending screaming I thought I would get from Piper and Phoebe I drove on.  After about 15 minutes sitting in traffic I had a revelation...I thought to myself on my goodness I have two babies in the car, do babies count as "people" for the carpool lane?  In hind sight I can not believe I actually questioned this.  Duh, Melanie, of course babies are people and count but at the time I was SO tired and not thinking straight.  I tried to call James to ask him, he did not answer, and then I called my sister Natalie.  She laughed so hard and told me she needed to put this on Facebook. Natalie and I both laughed SO hard together as I merged into the carpool lane with great joy, happiness and relief.  I am happy to say that I got home just in time to feed Piper and Phoebe with few tears and I had a funny story out of the whole event too.

Sorry for the length of this post but I still have not recovered from my sleepless working days and I could not stop rambling on and on and on. ;-)

The End!

Infant Kick Study

Today was a BIG day for Piper and Phoebe, they got to tour their future college campus! ;-)   Go Trojans!!

Before we went on our campus tour we first started our day off at the Development of Infant Motor Performance Lab in the BICE Clinical Research Center (WOW, what a drive!).  My friend Cassie from CSUF set us up with a colleague of hers at USC who is conducting a study on infant kicking.  During the study Piper and Phoebe were laid on their backs and hooked up to a ton of motion sensor monitors
(I thought it was pretty cool).  Using a motion analysis system the babies kicking motion was captured and then analyzed to determine the forces that infants generate while kicking.

Both girls were really good during the study with only a few tears towards the end.  They both pee peed on the table during the test, which I guess is normal but that was NOTHING compared to what Piper did to me after the study.  Right after Piper was done with her turn I put her diaper and clothes back on.  It was time for her to eat so I was feeding Piper and Barbara (the wonderful lady who is conducting the research) was taking some measurements of Pipers legs.  During that time Piper was making some pretty loud noises from her tiny tushie.  We all laughed and thought nothing of it.  Well when I stood up I discovered that somehow Piper managed to poop through her diaper and I was covered in baby doodie.  I could not help but laugh SO hard.  Thank goodness for the extra onesie I had packed in the diaper bag.

So one of the best parts of the study was that Barbara weighed and measured the babies, wahoo!  I am SO excited to say that Piper is now 8lbs 10oz, 21" long and Phoebe is 8lbs 1oz, 20" long.  Both girls keep amazing me at how well they are doing.  I love my baby girls! 

Right after we were done at the lab James and I enjoyed a nice lunch (we were starving) and then we drove over to the main USC campus.  We had a great time walking around!  One of our goals today was to make it to the bookstore where we spent way too much money on some fun USC gear.  One of the items we bought is a surprise for our friends Rob and Julie.  As I am typing this message they are both in Seoul Korea meeting their son Robert for the first time.  We can hardly wait to meet Lil Rob and to give him his special gift that we bought for him today!

Another stop we had to make was in Heritage Hall so we could take a picture next to a Heisman Trophy.  Even though the girls "appear" to be sleeping they are actually super excited to be here.

Multi-Tasking

So I have always considered myself a multi-tasker, I think all teachers have to be, until now.  After having twins I have turned into a turbo, amazing multi-tasker.  I have gotten so good (if I do say so myself) that I can feed two babies and pump all at the same time.

Phoebe is waiting patiently for me to take the picture so I could feed her too

I love the face Phoebe is making in this picture, too cute!

I love the cute little smile Piper was giving in this picture.

It's amazing to me how much Phoebe and Piper are growing.  Every day they are doing new things.  My most favorite thing that they are doing now is smiling, especially first thing in the morning.  When I am dead tired and wishing I was still in bed their little smiles melt my heart and get me through.  I love my daughters and thank God that he has trusted James and I with these precious little miracles.

What a Weekend!

This weekend my Auntie Laurie threw a surprise retirement party for my mom.  It was SO much fun!  Many of my mom's co-workers, former parents and life long friends were able to be there. The best part of all was that my sister Natalie was able to be there too.  What a treat!

My sweet cousin Katie, Phoebe and baby Jayden (who will arrive in September)

Thumb Sucking

Ok... so some of you might think I am crazy but I would really love it if Phoebe and Piper learned how to suck their thumbs. I'm not sure if it's because I was a major thumb sucker or just a great way for a baby to self sooth (all kids get braces these days anyways).  Right now Piper and Phoebe both take a passie and when they spit it out on accident they cry and cry until we put it back in their mouths.  If they would only use their thumbs instead we wouldn't have to worry about missing passies.  That's my crazy logic. ;-)

So with that being said my mom caught Phoebe today with her thumb inside her passie.  It was too cute for words!  I think I both girls are getting closer, only time will tell.

I had to add this picture in just because.  So blessed to have such a loving family that helps me and love me and my babies SOOOOOOO much!

Shooby Dooby Lunch

Today Phoebe, Piper and I got to meet some of our friends for lunch at Ruby's.  It was SO much fun!  This was the girls first time meeting kids!!!  The kids were super great & respectful of my crazy mom wishes.  I can't wait for the girls to be bigger so I don't have to be so careful about germs and being around others.

We have Haley, Kennedy, Piper, Phoebe and baby Chandler.  Haley and Kennedy LOVED playing with their stickers!

Little Caleb was SO cute (and such a great sport since he was the only boy in the group).  He told me,"Auntie Melanie, I like your babies."  Talk about melt your heart!  I can't wait to have another lunch dates with this awesome little group.