Up Close and Personal

People keep telling us that these days in our kids' lives go by so fast and that we need to remember all the details.

So Sean and I took that literally and took some close-up pictures.

I believe these first two are Dash. I just love the succulent eye and perfect little nose.

And this is Liam, with his itty bitty mouth. Don't you love the soft hair all over their skin?

It's even on their ears. Everything about babies are soft and fuzzy!

Except for their nails, I suppose. Gotta keep those bad boys trimmed!

Don't you just want to reach through the screen and play with their fingers?

Then there's cute little peek-a-boo feet.

I think this calls for a round of This Little Piggy.

Heads Up

Now that you've had a chance to wager your guesses in the last post as to which babe's which, it's time for me to reveal the answer...

On the left is... Liam! Which means the right is Dash. Props to those who got it right. If you missed it, don't feel to bad, they're identical twins after all!

But we can't be friends anymore.

Just kidding.

In other news, the boys are doing great in building up their neck muscle strength.

Here's Liam showing off his head balance skills.

"Look that I can do mama!"

Dash is just as awesome.

They're also doing pretty well learning to flip themselves from tummy to back. They've each done it at least once. Dash actually did it at a week old- what a star!

They'll be walking next week, I'm sure of it.

6 weeks

I have all these pictures stored up to blog about but I can't figure out what to say. My wit's gone out the door with my good night's sleep and all I do is feed and hold babies- my day's not bursting with intrigue.

But my babies are too cute not to share their faces with the world. I'll do my best to say something vaguely worth reading. No promises.

On their one month birthday a couple weeks ago, I didn't think to take a picture until right before I was ready to go to bed. And I had to record the momentous day once the thought occurred to me, so this is what I got with practically zero light:

Sometimes Dash looks like a little balding man. Ha, if he does go bald one day, we can call him Balder Dash. Ha. He'll love it.

Liam's too good for his pacifier. Patooie.

That light on him looks kinda creepy. He doesn't actually look creepy, I can tell you THAT for sure.

And for some recent pictures, at 5 or 6 weeks or so.

Look at that chub. Liam's a healthy boy. A mighty healthy boy.

Dash is still skinnier but he's picking up the pace. Sometimes he even eats longer than his brother!

They're getting a bit closer in looks- I had to take a moment to figure out who this was. Heh. What a terrible mom.

It's Liam. I figured it out. His cheeks aren't so pronounced.

See how cute Dash is when he's sleeping?! I love to watch them sleep. Until I zonk out myself.

Alright, ladies and gents, here's the test: Can you tell who's who in this photo? Come on now, let's see you try!

Magic Dad

Dear Dad,

Mommy keeps putting us on our tummies.

And we don't like it. Not one bit!

Although, sometimes we notice each other and that's kind of fun.

But usually we end up with our faces in the floor. We want to look around at the world, not with a faceplant and a flattened nose!

Nothing will calm us down after that. Nothing. Except... you.

We can get warm and snuggly and just drift off into merry sleep.

There's nothing calmer or happier than being in your magic arms.

Thanks for loving us daddy, we love you back.

Love,

Liam and Dash

Transcribed by mommy

Skype

The internet is a most wonderful creation. Which is why it irks me when fixing an incorrect name on our AT&T DSL account somehow translates to four days without internet. Huff. But I will not tarnish this blog with further spurning of our internet service provider. I've come here today to thank a certain internet application. An application called Skype. It has fed some very baby hungry grandparents. With a quick online convo (which truly is more like 10 minutes of grandma staring at her grandkids) every few days, the long distance between our loved ones doesn't seem so far.

Liam and Dash: technologically savvy since three days old.

(No they're not three days old here, but that's when they first skyped!)

Peek-a-bum

So far

It really is hard to find the time to blog these days. I take pictures one day, edit the next, put them on flickr after that, then figure out what to write in the next several days. And that's if I want to spend my precious free non-sleeping hours that way. But today, you're lucky, because that's how I want to spend my precious free non-sleeping hours.

I thought I'd share how things have been these last four weeks. Four weeks! It doesn't seem that long. It feels more like one long, giant day. It all runs together when there's no big sleep session to designate one day from the next.

So, sleep. It hasn't been too bad. It seems like they have one or two good nights then one or two bad nights. A good night is when they stay asleep in between feedings. A few glorious times they slept for three hours! Then there were a few nights a couple weeks back, during a growth spurt, when I only had about 45 minutes to sleep in-between nursing sessions. It was... hard to function those days.

Nursing is going pretty well. They eat at the same time, which is great. But in the last week, they've been taking at least an hour to eat their fill! They just pack it away. We've tried weighing them with our Wii Fit (though I don't totally trust it's accuracy) and it says they both weigh at least 8 pounds! Chunkers. Liam has a nice double chin to prove it.

I'm feeling pretty well physically. It took me about a week to stop walking like I was a figure in the Evolution of Man and feel kind of normal. Nowadays, I'm just a bit sleepy all the time with a forever sore back.

I was certainly up to watching the Lost series finale. How great that I got to watch it with my new family!

And let me just say a word of praise for DVRs. Six hours of Lost does not work on a three hour nursing schedule.

We also had our babies blessed over memorial day weekend since both sides of the family were here. It was wonderful wonderful wonderful. I don't know what our deal was, we never got a picture of everyone that was there. So take this photo as a sampling.

Oh! During the blessing, one of our friends' car was towed! That was lovely to discover. Not. Times twenty.

My mom was here for the first couple of weeks. THANK GOODNESS. She was a lifesaver. I would not have slept, ate food, or had clean clothes to wear without her. Nor would Pogo have been taken care of.

Speaking of Pogo, she's a little weirded out by this whole baby thing. The first night was the worst- we came home from the hospital during a thunderstorm and Pogo, who hadn't been outside for hours and hours, would NOT go out the door. No matter how much food with which we tried to bribe her. Things are a bit better now but you can tell she's sometimes a little jealous of our two new attention hogs.

Back to mom. She was great and loved our babies sooo much.

And they loved her back. (Doesn't that look just make you melt? MMM!)

And she misses them dearly.

My dad got to come for a few days. It's just so tender to see my pops holding my little baby.

Sean's family came too, except for Kyle and LIndsay (missed you guys!). Grandma and Grandpa Bradley thoroughly enjoyed their new titles, loving and tickling their first two grandsons at every chance.

Yep, that's a gen-u-ine smile there!

While the boys went back home after a few days to attend to normal life, Grandma Bradley and Rachel picked up where my mom left off (aka, doing everything they can to let me get more sleep). They've been magnificent.

And today's their last full day here.

Tomorrow I'm on my own.

Oh dear.

Another guest!

We had friends Kim and Nicole come visit yesterday and Nicole snapped a few photos. I can't tell you how much I LOVE the above photo! Perfect representations of their cute expressions. And given the fact that they're a few seconds from screaming, their cuteness is particularly impressive. Look at the others at her photo blog!

Also, I had once promised to give you some more thoughts on the name choosing process. I had planned on putting it in a post, forgot to include it initially, then tacked it on an hour or two after I posted the original composition. So some people may have missed it. So here it is again:

"I promised to give you a little background on choosing names. There's not much to tell actually, we picked Liam and Dash because we liked them a lot. But Sean wanted Liam to be a nickname for William and Dash to be a nickname for Dashiell (how it's traditionally spelled). I wanted Liam to be it's own entity and Dash to be a nickname for something like Dashel. So we compromised and stuck with Liam on it's own and Dashiell spelled its traditional way. I just know people will be mispronouncing Dash's name all his life..."

Tummy

Hey Dash, daddy's on the other side

Whoops, faceplant! Keep turning!

There's daddy! You found him!

Ah, looks like Liam wants a turn too

You waited so patiently for your turn

Hey, you can find daddy, too!

And do a push-up or two!