Everything Happens for a Reason

Aiden in his "Little Monstah" Red Sox onesie from Uncle Dan...  Notice that Aiden is standing on his own... supervised of course but he LOVES to stand.  We know we're in trouble now! 

Our second "Little Monstah", Chris... Look out world, here we come... I also LOVE to stand just like my brother!

Mike and I woke up to do a 3 am feeding to find the boys in this position.  I should preface by saying that they started the night out facing the opposite direction and on the opposite sides of the crib... I guess we could call this brotherly love! (Chris - L, Aiden - R)

The view from outside the crib.    (Chris - L, Aiden - R.... not that you can tell from this picture!)

First, we want to say that we love everyones comments, so please keep them coming! We also love how all of our family and friends take time out of their busy lives to stay in touch with the development in our lives and progress with the babies. As Mike and I continue to say, the love, encouragement and support have been unending since before the boys arrival and we are so grateful!

I woke up this morning, remembering that it was Sunday and wondering what my highlight of the week was for my Sunday night post. I am pleased to say that thanks to my ditzyness or maybe we can blame it on milk brain again, I had no problems adding some excitement to our evening, giving myself the perfect opportunity to make fun of myself and blog at the same time. So... my highlight? Well, while at my parents house today for a family reunion, we had a great day. Perfect, sunny skies with great food and wonderful company. The boys did super and made us SO proud! For little tike's, they were sports all day and were gleefully transferred from one hand to another as they were introduced to many family members for the first time. Both Aiden and Chris had many talkative and smiley moments and really entertained and flirted all day long. As the day was winding down, I volunteered to pack the car and decided to be a tough girl and do it all in one trip. I grabbed the keys from Mike, headed out to the car, popped the trunk and threw everything inside. All we needed was the car seats and the boys, right? It was at that moment as I heard the car lock jingle a double beep that I realized that we also needed the keys to get home... that is, the keys that were now locked in the trunk! OOPS!!!! As my Uncle helped point out, the good news was that the car was now packed. The bad news is that we weren't going home in it anytime soon..... AAA to the rescue! If I keep up with these habits we may find ourselves turning to AA rather than AAA but for today, after an hour of waiting, the tow truck came and popped the lock in about 3 seconds. If it wasn't for special occurrences like these, life would be boring :)

Tomorrow is the start of the boys 17th week of life. It is with a smile on my face and many thanks to Umass and my co-workers that I will still be at home with the boys tomorrow as today was supposed to be my last day on maternity leave. I was scheduled to return to work full-time tomorrow, but thanks for my wonderful boss, I have been able to extend my maternity leave! Yippee! We are so grateful as I will now have an additional 4 weeks off before I start back to work 25% time for 4 weeks then 50% time for 6 weeks then back to reality. It is amazing how quickly the time has gone by. I remember when I first scheduled my leave thinking that it would feel like forever... 16 weeks as in almost 1/3 of a year off ! It's funny because when you are younger, time can't pass quick enough and now as my life takes on a whole new dimension, I can't get enough of each special moment and feel that there is never enough time to enjoy all that life has to offer.

Despite the rainy weather that kept us inside most of the week, we were very entertained by Aiden and Chris. We are hoping for more sunshine this coming week although that is not looking hopeful. We have a scheduled walk and play date tomorrow that we are very excited about and I keep my fingers crossed that the weathermen are wrong... very wrong... who wants to see a 10 day forecast with 6 days of rain?

We had a busy week but the boys seemed to love the familiar and new faces that they saw. Our visitors this week were: Grammie/Grampa Hopkins, Grammie/Dziadz Pt., Great Grammie Tag, GG Mimi, Uncle Andrew, Jess/Will, Kym, Aunt Lynda, Uncle Ken/Cousins Adria/Nicole/Garrett, Cousin Rachel/Uncle Jim, Auntie Laura/Uncle Tommy, Uncle Art, Uncle Tom/Stephanie, Bev/Lud, Rita/Jerry, Bonnie/Brian/BJ/Jonah, Tom/Sara/Amerila/Ryan, Joanne/Alec/Dan/Leah