CUPCAKE!

R's first birthday was fun. She even got to have two parties. But she didn't really understand what was going on, and Jeff and I didn't make a big deal out of it. We figured there were plenty of years in the future in which we could have all sorts of crazy princess parties.

Her second birthday was even tamer as she only had one birthday "party" and it just involved the immediate family and one set of grandparents. But the biggest difference between her first and second birthdays is she now understands the concept of birthdays (at least sorta) and she was very excited for all the birthday hoopla this time around.

As we were preparing for her birthday, we learned that to R, birthdays mean cupcakes. We are not quite sure why this is. R has never had a cupcake, in fact, she's barely tasted cake, but cupcakes were the theme of all our birthday planning.

The weekend before her birthday the whole family was at the grocery store. As we headed down the baking aisle, Jeff and I were debating what kind of cake to make. I had planned on being boring, healthy mommy and making a whole grain carrot cake. Jeff was fighting for cheap, processed cake mix Devil's Food. Given that I'm pregnant...with twins (I'm so gonna milk this for awhile), it wasn't that hard to persuade me to buy a nice chocolately box of Betty Crocker mix.

Once that was decided, we had to determine how the cake should appear. I figured a plain rectangle just wouldn't do (I'm an auditor, I live by the rules all week long - I need some imagination in my baking!), so I was trying to come up with an interesting shaped cake. As we discussed bunny vs. caterpillar vs. butterfly, Ree heard the word cake. She then began bouncing up and down in the cart chanting, "Cupcake! Cupcake! Cupcake!" So that was decided.

Several days later, it occurred to me that perhaps I should purchase some kind of decorations for her party. (I would've made decorations, but I'm pregnant...with twins! :) So R and I trotted off to Dollar Tree to get inspired. Elmo is still one of her favoritest things in the whole wide world, and we miraculously stumbled upon Sesame Street plates and napkins. I handed each to her and told them we would use them at her birthday. She seemed confused. So then I said, "On your birthday, Grandma and Grandpa Gene will be here and we'll eat dinner and then sing happy birthday and have cupcakes." She kissed the plates, then the napkins, hugged them both to her chest, and began the "Cupcake!" chant again. The chant continued all the way to the register, while she swung the bag all the way to the car, and all the way home. That night she said a teary goodbye to the cupcake accessories as I put them away til her birthday.

When it was time for her actual birthday, R was still obsessed with cupcakes. But she also discovered presents. Presents are fun! And they were all for her! She was very excited. She loved tearing through them. If we had let her, she would've taken hours to open presents since she wanted to try each and every item as it was opened. Toys had to be played with! Books had to be read! Clothes had to be tried on!

Once we finally moved on from the present opening, it was time for cupcakes. R was very excited. She happily sat in my life while we sang happy birthday and blew out the candles. She loved huffing and puffing and trying to blow out the candles, and I'm happy to report she never did spit on the cupcakes.

But there was no greater joy than watching her savor the first beloved cupcake of her life. You could tell she thought it was heaven. She first ate the decorative frosting, one delicious bite at a time. Then she moved on to the regular frosting. Next she ate the top layer of cake. Then she slowly moved down to the rest of the cupcake. She was so busy enjoying each and every morsel that she barely made her usual editorial comments. She was a true cupcake connoisseur!

In the days since her birthday, she has still been delighting in all her new toys. She also went to the doctor for her two-year check-up, and all is well. She remains a petite princess. She is 32" tall, which at least put her on the charts although just barely. However, she still only weighs 20 pounds, which puts her substantially below the chart since most one-year-olds weigh 20 pounds. But she is a happy girl, and clearly growing, and that's all that matters to us and her doctor. Thankfully, they are out of her reach reach, or I think she would make up for her low weight entirely in cupcakes.

And Babies Make Five

I am not quite sure when I realized I wanted to have children. It was probably some time during junior high or the early high school years. I spent most of my free time babysitting, and there were several families in which I felt like I was practically raising their children as I saw them at least weekly and often daily. I do know that it was during this time that I realized I wanted a big family. From my observations, it truly seemed like "the more, the merrier" and I loved the happy chaos that went along with families that had three or more children. My favorite family had four children when I started babysitting and six children when all was said and done, and I always loved my time with them, hectic though it was.

Jeff always wanted a big family too, and for years the running joke was he wanted enough daughters to start his own soccer team. (That's 11 little estrogen-filled munchkins for those of you who don't follow the sport.) While we were eventually able to agree that perhaps eleven was a few children too many, we did know early on that we wanted to try to have to children and if all went well, we would have several.

No matter how much we had talked about children, we weren't quite prepared to go from thinking about maybe trying to get pregnant to finding out we were pregnant with R just a few weeks later. Nor were we fully prepared for instant pregnancy a second time. But nothing was quite as startling as our visit to the doctor last week.

Throughout my pregnacy with R, Jeff dutifully went to my prenatal checkups, excited to see for himself what was going on with the development of our first-born. This time around he is happy to stay at home with our crazy toddler and has resigned himself to a cheerful "been there, done that" mentality. However, we both decided that it made sense for him to come with me to my ultrasound last week. I wanted moral support and we thought it would be nice if he could be there to "see" his child for the first time and possibly learn the sex.

When we walked into the ultrasound room, Melissa introduced herself as our ultrasound technician (UT) and Jeff worked on getting R situated on the floor with her arsenal of activities. (In typical fashion, we had already been waiting for over 30 minutes, first in the main waiting room, then in a second waiting area, and R was already getting bored with this process.) Apparently once she got started with the ultrasound, Melissa was not one for stopping her work, and she consequently began smearing about a half gallon of goop on my belly to ensure that she would have enough for the entire ultrasound. As she smeared, we chatted. Our conversation went something like this.

UT: You're big for 20 weeks.
Me: Yeah, but it's my second pregnancy, I'm little, and I was measuring right for one baby at my last appointment, so no one seems to be concerned.
UT: Do you think it might be twins?
Me: We haven't ruled it out...

I smiled and realized that Melissa was ready to get on with business. She places the wand on my belly, then looks at the swirly blob on the screen. Melissa then freezes and holds up two fingers. I see some really crazy unfocused blobs on the screen and think she is holding up two fingers meaning to wait, like other (normal) people hold up one finger meaning "wait a minute." Apparently the thing was just not working.

Time passes and she is still holding up two fingers. I still see blobs. I start to wonder if she is giving me the peace sign.

More time passes and she is still standing there, holding up two fingers. I still see blobs and seem to remember my ultrasound with R being a whole lot clearer. I wonder if the two fingers is some code that I was supposed to have learned. I am awfully lazy about reading up on baby stuff.

I finally decide to break the silence.

Me: Two?
UT: Two.
Me: Two???
UT: Two.
Me: Two WHAT?
UT: Two babies.
Me: Huh?
UT: Twins.
Me: Ohhhh.

With a look of complete panic on her face, Melissa then says, "Hold on. I have to find out what to do." She then starts shuffling around and then bolts for the door. Right before she gets there, she turns around and tells me, "Usually they don't want me to do ultrasounds of twins. The docs don't handle twin cases. They pass them on to high-risk doctors." I then noted that if it made any difference as to whom she would consult, I wasn't a patient of the OBs in the practice. I was a patient of the midwives in the practice. Her look of terror went up a couple of notches and she silently high-tailed it out of the room.

As the door slammed shut behind her, that left me and Jeff staring at each other each realizing that we were suddenly leaping from our nice, sensible family with one child into the crazy world of "big" families. And R just kept on coloring.

Summer Fun

I blogged about R for the better part of two years, but now that our family is growing, R will have to learn to share the blogging time just like she is going to have to learn to share everything else. (And the poor girl has no idea how much "sharing" is in her future!)

Our summer was split into two parts. The first part was devoted to vacation. We traveled to Athens (Ohio, not Greece, as a friend likes to say) and to New Jersey to visit family and friends. Then vacation came to us when my family rented a condo on Wrightsville Beach and we got to live like spoiled tourists for a week. The second part of the summer has been about our family and just enjoying time together during our first summer on the coast. We have averaged a trip a week to the beach, and only a tropical storm has kept us away for more than 10 days straight.

R has taken to the beach. She loves the beach. She is a little fishy. In fact, one of her favorite activities is laying in the sand on her belly facing the shore, letting the waves crash over her. For several weeks she did this, and we could not figure out why. Finally, we asked (duh!) and she replied by making her fish noise. (Only R could make a noise for a fish. It sounds like gurgling water.) So I asked if she was pretending to be a fish. She casually said, "yeah" as though everyone pretends to be a fish at the beach.


Each time we go to the beach, R generally comes up with a new activity, although some are frequently repeated, like pretending to be a fish. Some days she likes to sit near the water and cover herself with the wet, muddy sand, although she gets even more pleasure covering me with sand. One day she threw a ball into the water over and over again and gleefully chased it when it washed back up on shore. Two weeks ago another mom let her play in an inflatable pool while her boys ran in circles. (I'm not joking. It was like watching two dogs chase their tails.) R sat in their little pool and played with the boys' toy boats for the longest time. She was a happy girl. She even looked for the pool on the next trip to the beach. Last weekend she took her cups down to the water and "washed" the hair of a very patient Jeff over and over. (She didn't ask to wash my hair, and I thought it best not to offer. Jeff could be the hero of the day.)

However, there is nothing Ree loves more than to be in the water. She is brave, perhaps a little too brave, and happily runs straight out to the water. With each passing wave, she grows a little braver and heads a little further out. She is happiest when she is standing in water that is at least waist high and she gets pummeled by waves. She tries to venture into chest deep water. After getting blasted in the face two or three times, she is ready for us to hold her and let her play "up down up down" and jump over the waves. The catch is she wants to do it in water that is at least waist deep for us. This is normally not a problem, but a few weeks ago while we were doing this, she and I got hit by a monster wave. I had to hold her over my head superman-style as we rode the wave for 10 - 15 feet. She screamed "Wheeeee!" the whole time and thought it was the greatest thing ever. When we got done, she was so excited, she forgot her words and just started frantically signing "More!" I wanted to go collapse on the beach!

Early in the summer, Jeff made the mistake of stopping at Wendy's on the way home from the beach after two consecutive trips. A ritual was born. As soon as she sees the Wendy's sign, R now starts chanting, "Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat! Pleeeeeease!" We don't always stop, but the ritual is there. (There are actually commercial developments from the beach all the way to our house, and this ritual is also repeated at an ice cream shop, Chick-Fil-A, and On the Border.) Last week as we were leaving the beach, Jeff and I decided it was a good day to stop at Wendy's, and we asked Ree if she wanted to go there. We were expecting an enthusiastic, "Yeah," but instead she started babbling in crazy toddler-speak. I finally realized she was saying "bok bok" (chicken) and "oranges." She knew what she usually ate at Wendy's and was placing her order!

Our lives this summer have not been fancy or crazy. Our vacations were spent with family and friends. Our weekends involve cheap trips to the beach and fast food when we splurge. And ya know what? It's been wonderful.