Many Thanks....

for the many wonderful and thoughtful gifts we have received these last 6 months from so many. I am horrified that I have yet to write any thank-yous for the gifts received after my shower. Ever since my wedding gift thank you snafu, I have been a thank you note nazi, so suffice it say...I am sadly, a thank you note loser, once again. Here are a few pics of some of our neat gifts...

Thanks, Des! Old friends send great new gifts...


Thanks, Uncle Larry and Aunt Pam!
My babies are ridin' in style!
(And I can actually go places sometimes.)


Thank you Soldier's Angels and Operation TopKnot,
for the many lovely things we received!

Thanks...Debbi, Angi, My Mom's pals (The Prayer Family), Cheryle, Susie, Operation Top Knot, Soldier's Angels, Mom's Day Out families, Aunt Ruthie, Kim, Katy, Aunt Ruth & Uncle Sam, Aunt Gloria & Uncle Bob, Marge & Joe, Danielle, The GFWC Antelope North County Women's Club, Vicki, Kristen, Holly, Jeana, Tommye, Kristina... the list goes on! We are so grateful and so blessed by each of you.

Stay tuned for more updates soon...
love,
tiff

The thunder rolls...

and the fat boy flips! My sweet little man FINALLY rolled his stout little bootie over! Yesterday morning Charles discovered him wide eyed and spastic armed, staring up at the ceiling. So far, it is a one time thing, but not for lack of trying on his part. Sadly, I didn't get a snapshot, but I do have this picture that pretty accurately shows the look on his face! He really has the most expressive face! Way to go, little man!!!

House Hunting Sucks.

And I truly mean that. There is nothing exciting about it. Nothing that makes me giddy. Nothing, Nothing, NOTHING. As you are ALL aware, I am about one of the pickiest people on this earth, equaled only by my mother, Kristina & Debbi. SO, needless to say, trying to buy a home that some other non type A person designed and then proceeded to build with not a single thought to layout, functionality or aesthetics is ANNOYING. Add to that: my beach house is nearly an hour from the area we are looking in, I have 4 children who are SICK of the car and I do NOT like driving long distances, my husband CANNOT help with this due to his schedule, and gee golly, life sure is a barrel of laughs right now. Oh, did I mention the 2 ginormous flights of stairs I run up and down 25 times every time we are leaving? And for any of you who are going to throw some stinking platitude at me right now about anything, I will say, oh say nicely.... Stick it where the sun don't shine.
Ah, that felt better. NOW, I better find a damn house within the week or it's gonna get ugly 'round here.
And, yes I am truly grateful to have my whole clan together, but that sure doesn't mean I can't be annoyed that I can't seem to find a decent damn house.

the beach...

is a block away, I can see the Atlantic from my deck. The Intercoastal in 100 feet out my back yard. And yet...my poor bigs have only been there twice in almost a week for an hour at a time. I haven't yet figured out how to squeeze beach time, house hunting, laundry, feedings, grocery shopping, beach, park, pool, library, movie nights and LIFE in general into my paltry 24 hour day. We are on the hunt for our new home and I have a great realtor, so pray this process zips along, b/c I NEED a home. Living at the beach is great...but I need a yard and a swingset and MY STUFF! (I should probably refer myself back to my stuff post a few years ago to encourage myself to just ditch all that crap and live in a cardboard box, stop shaving my legs and only eat recycled or organic food. Okay, did I just say recycled food? Um, isn't that poop? Not what I meant and just a really a bad idea. I digress.)
SO...since I have no brain cells left to make any of you fart in your pants with laughter, I'll just give up and post some cutie pics.

The first jump of summer into the iceberg that doubles as the pool at my parents.
My children have boiling water in their veins (from Susan...)

JoJo, taking off for the shallow end


Charley bean, ringing the summer in with glee!


My sweet peas, just bein' cute!


My biggest big, snuggling miss Mercy.


My little sis, holding the littlest mac sis.


My godmother, my fave aunt, my reesie, snuggling my littlest bean.


My bigs, helping Mommy out, feeding the M-n-M's.
What would a mommy of twins do without her bigs?
Drown in barf, formula and poop. That's what.


Eva & Charley enjoying breakfast on the deck...
viewing the intercoastal...
I love this island.

i love my kids.
i love my marine.
i really do love my life...
even if i don't always like it.

i'm gettin' there.
someday i'll be ready to leave before 1:30 in the afternoon.
we'll eat a homecooked meal again...
sometime in 2010.

my clothes will smell like poop and barf,
i might cover my hair with a silly scarf,
my nails won't be groomed,
my hair will look like wool on a loom,
my mascara might run,
no housework is done,
but i've got 4 sets of kisses,
I'm Charles' missus,
i wouldn't trade a bit,
it's the perfect fit,
for this crazy,
sometimes hazy...
obsessed with rhyme,
never on time,
prematurely gray,
alwasy got somethin' to say...
Chick.

love,
tiff

Rollin...Rollin..Rollin...

man, my girl is rollin'! Mercy Elaine officially rolled over today, May 27, 2009!
She might be tiny, but she is mighty...

Other fun things in M-n-M world...
Giggles, giggles and more giggles! Nana has discovered their sweet spots and spends inordinate amounts of time coaxing little laughs from the midgets. She has also discovered how to get them to talk to each other. It is so amazing to see them notice and talk to each other. I have a feeling I'm in for it with these 2.

Mercy has a set of lungs that she LOVES to exercise at whim. For such a light eater, she sure throws a mother of a fit when she is ready to eat all 4 of the ounces she deigns to drink...provided it is just the right temperature. If I'm lucky and stop to reheat the bottle, she might eat 5 1/2 or 6. Where the fat rolls on her little legs come from is beyond me, but apparently she is eating enough to make them.
Now, when Mercy exercises said lungs, it scares the ever loving daylights out of my little man and he lets loose with an ear splitting wail that gives me hope that he might one day be my little rock star. Of course, his face turns a shade of red that I know cannot be natural and the ear splitting wail is proceeded by the silent mouthed O. You know you are in for it when the O appears. As for eating, I know where his fat rolls come from. And I have the very small bank balance to prove it. That child is an eating MACHINE.
More funnies...
Mercy has legs that move a thousand miles a minute. Future track star? I prefer to imagine a future Karate champ. (You all know I am SO not a sports fan. Hell on earth for me would be jock children.) As a matter of fact, I think I'll pretend sports don't even exist until my kids are grown and can then decide to hate sports for themselves. Either that or they'll decide I was a horrible mother because I didn't spend every waking moment shuttling them from one stupid sports practice to another. Hopefully I will have moved us all to a compound by then and they won't even know sports exist. Other than dodgeball, ping pong and the plate/trash can game.
SO, with these legs, she manages to scooch all over the crib, occasionally thwacking Max in various body parts, to which he responds with one slightly opened eye and a serious look. Then he drops back off the planet.

Speaking of off the planet...
Max is the cutest little bedtime man. You lay him down (ON HIS BELLY, YES I AM A BELLY SLEEPING MAMA, SO REPORT ME,) and he smashes his sweet little face into the super soft sheet, scrunches it back and forth, rubs his little hands around, then just drops off. Like that. No muss, no fuss, just a snooze.
As for my Mercy, after she has rubbed her little face back and forth several times as I am trying to shove her binkie in, she requires her butt in the air, her right hand pointed down toward her little belly and her left hand strategically placed to either push her binkie back in or knock it out. I venture to say she knocks it out more than in and I can prove it by the number of times per night I am required to stumble to her room to shove the bloody thing back in.

AND FINALLY...
Max grabbed Nana's nose the other day. As my Mom's nose is quite small, this shows excellent hand/eye coordination, giving me more hope for the future rock star.

Bars of an Officer...

Blood of an Enlisted!
WOBC 1-09

My Mustang, WO Charles A. McCawley officially graduated from WOBC at Quantico, VA on May 21, 2009! Our clan is so proud of all he has worked so hard to accomplish and are beside ourselves with excitement to have our family back together again! Congratulations to the love of my life, my marine, my best friend and the heart and soul of our family.


2/3 of the clan mac celebrating daddy!

Daddy and his big girls, basking in the freedom of
Family Time, finally here for our clan!

Mom, the Dads, Aunt Sammy & the bigs!

WO Mac and his EXTREMELY proud parents.
Don't ever forget that he is who he is because of ya'll.
You were and are the most amazing parents!!

2 very proud Dads and one sweet little munchkin!

1 more day...

until my hubby is DONE with TBS! Praise God for this time that has flown. I cannot wait until tomorrow morning at 10 am!!! I am so proud of my sweet soulmate, he has excelled! Just 24 hours until my family is whole again.

Just a few weeks until we hit Jacksonville, NC, running like crazy to find a new home. Please pray that we get base housing on Le Jeune quickly. Mama is running out of patience for family separations.
Finally...

The M-n-M's are doing great, smiling, giggling, grabbing things and growing like weeds. The big g's are settled into this new life pretty well, if I do say so myself. (Well, I do say so, then Charley starts acting like the spawn of Satan & Eva trots out the whining... and well, I guess that's life.) I have about a million pics to post, so please be patient with me!

Ok. I'm off to clean or do laundry or feed a baby or...
something.
love,
tiff

May 4, 2009

On the 4th of May, two thousand and six...
you joined our crazy clan mac mix!
Out you came with a scream and a sigh,
oh, sweet love, mommy cried!
You've given us all such joy and pride...
a world without you I could not abide!
We celebrate you today with such glee...
today you are the queen of our family!
Babytime and Toddlerhood are long past...
the Preschool years are here at last!
Do you think you could learn to potty...
so mommy doesn't grow even more dotty?
In a big girl bed you now sleep...
sometimes it makes mommy weep!
trucks, trains and blocks make you smile...
you can push and build for such a long while!
throwing a ball and running some laps...
lead you take some very long naps!
numbers and letters are your favorite task,
for a sweeter child I could not ask!
So, on this day of celebration...
I declare this a Charleynation!!

Happy Birthday my sweet girl!
We love you!!
Mommy, Daddy, Eva, Max & Mercy

Return from the land of no nod...

Our first Easter outnumbered... the bunny is getting pricey!

the big g's and the cousins

The first celebration O' the Irish... with our future green beer drinkers.

SO, I haven't posted simply because I'm lucky to get time to pee. or shower. or eat. THEN I started thinking that I had to do a bunch of catch up posting. And I was overwhelmed. Well, sorry about your luck, but I'm just starting from here. "I don't have time for that crap" is my new motto, so suffice it to say that I'm gonna sum it up quick and move on.

Since my last post...

• We moved out of our house.

• Stuff in storage.

• Crashing in random houses.

(just kidding, I'm with the parental units for a while.)

• Stopped lactating, started artificial nutrition.

(for those of you who knew my goal to get to six months of exclusive breastfeeding, suffice it to say that the need for sleep and sanity won out since I am the only parent around for a while. i made it to 3 months and that is pretty damn good!)

• Started working out to save what few brain cells I have left.

• Have no earthly idea where in the bloody he-- we are going to live in 4 weeks, when the spousal unit checks into armpit, NC (aka, Camp LeJeune.) Housing is a pain and the market is retarded down there. No worries, though, God is Good and he will provide!

(are you listening, God? I NEED A HOUSE. 4 beds, 2 baths, fenced yard, playroom, 2 car garage, playset outdoors, lots of good CLEAN neighborhood kids with excellent manners and a good school where not one child knows what bratz are. Oh, and a Gas range. Electric bites.) :-)

• And finally, I may have lost my bloody mind. I have actually started contemplating adopting a little boy. Not now, but maybe in year or two. The body is CLOSED for business, but the heart is wide open. We'll see...

SO, the M-n-M's are reigning the world in twin fabulosity. They are SO bloody cute I can't stand it. Cooing, starting to laugh, eating like little champs, staring with great wonder at patterns, people, light and other fun stuff.

Max is quite a fat little man. He is tipping the scales at 11 1/2 lbs, eats like THIRTY THREE ounces a day and is trying super hard to roll over. He smiles to the side just like my pop and my bro, knits his little brow in great concentration, gets quite upset (we're talking bright red face and silent scream when startled,) spends much time staring in the mirror of the bouncer and is trying to start using his little hands for grasping something other than my hair. (guess he decided giving mommy a bald spot would not be nice and might result in a very embarrasing old yellow station wagon for his first car.)

Mercy is my petite little Eva clone. She's even dainty when she burps. She weighs in at 10 lbs 10 oz and is still solidly in tiny little newborn clothes. What a difference a pound makes! Snuggling, staring at the aquarium bouncer fish, gazing in the mirror, cooing, laughing and grabbing are her most favorite activities. She's got a bit of a squirrely central nervous system, so we have to be most careful not to let her get overstimulated. She is a champ of a night sleeper and has to be woken up most mornings to eat! Praise God for those clan mac genes that seem to permeate the sleep patterns of my many mini macs.

Charley is zooming towards 3, talking like she's 5 and fighting mightily for her place. She has finally decided she loves the M-n-M's to death and subsequently tries to kiss and hug them so hard they just go berserk. It's super fun when you have to get mad at your 3 year old for kissing
too hard and loving t0o much.

BUT, it's certainly a nice break from her trying to beat them up. :-) She is so smart she frightens me and I swear she'll be writing a novel by the time she's five. I copped out and sent her to school 5 days a week right now, while I'm adjusting to twindom. (Thanks so much to Paigee-Paigee for having the best school ever and for making a place for my baby!) She LOVES it and is totally psyched about moving to the 3's on monday and learning more letters, numbers, spanish, music, ETC.... She already knows all her letters by sight and sound, most numbers up to 20 AND memorizes just about anything you can think of. Her recall of things past is einstein like and I know I'll be paying for this for years to come.

Eva is, as usual, my little helper bee. What a sweet child to always be so willing to be Mama's right hand. She loves helping with the M-n-M's, housecleaning and cooking.

Her patience for Charley is tested moment by moment, as Charley is certainly a whirling dervish of insanity, BUT, she is a stupendous big sis and puts up with a ton. (Hmmm...she must get that from me, since my mom said Charley is a lot like Sam was.) School is her favorite part of the day and she is amazing me every day with all she learns, says and expresses interest in. Reading is the order of the day and I'm so bowled over to hear her reading to me! Her intellectual freedom is impending. She is definitely interested in growing up too fast, but I'm quick to distract from that! (still considering moving to a compound and raising my kids without that crap they call media.)


Charles is less than 3 weeks from graduation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm literally counting the days until we are together again. (suffice it to say it won't be for long, but at least the separation after this one will be quite short, just until we get a dwelling in the armpit.) He is proceeding along swimmingly and I'm SO proud of him!

As for me.... I'm gettin' there. Life with 4 is definitely crazy. Don't know how I'd have done it so far without my Ma and Pa. They have given up sanity, private time and most of their house to help me and my brood. I've said it before and I'll say it again. They are the best 'rents a girl could wish for.

And a huge shout out to my in-laws, Susan and Al, my sis Sam & girls, my sis in law, Melissa & niece Dara, my gal pals Connie and Jennifer and all my pals out west for helping me stay alive, clean, fed and semi sane for those first 3 months. Praise God for the helping hearts and hands each of you blessed my clan with.

SO, signing off with the best of intentions for lots of new blogging to come...
crazy...
crabby...
happy...
healthy...

tiffers and the many mini macs

Snippets of my Charley...

THIS has not been a banner year of blogging for me. You'd think I had twins or something. Or a deployed hubby. Or a hubby at school instead of with me. Or a cross country move. Or, well, WHATEVER.
Since I have failed miserably at chronicling this last year of excitement AND Charley is fixing to be 3 on May 4, I'm gonna regale you with my favorite Charley moments of her most recent year. Brace yourself, cuz' I'm not censoring. :-)

1. FART, pronounced with long r, like a true bostonian. Kind of like... FAAAAAAHT. I plead guilty to encouraging the use of the word and attempting to video record it just for my own amusement. This pronunciation also reminds me of my pal Jodi...I'm not telling why.

2. "You do it Mom, I'm busy." Enough said.

3. "...last day." This is Charley speak for yesterday. IT is so stinking cute.

4. "Mommy, I have some Mo-chin?" Charley speak for Motrin. The punk figured out that I was totally concerned about the back of her head from when just about cracked her skull open on my Mom's bathroom floor, so she milked it for about a week until I caught on. Nothing quite like being outsmarted by a VERY cute 2 year old. Punk.

5. Putting her to bed and discovering that she knows all the lyrics to my favorite hymn and can sing them with me... ON KEY.

6. "Mommy, I have free minutes?" Bargaining from a 2 year old? This frightens me. By the time she is Eva's age, she'll be milking me out of Charles' paycheck. Crap.

7. "Mommy, you go on pirate ship with me? Me: What kind of pirate ship? "Pirates of the fru bean, Mommy. Your clothes get wet?" This followed a trip to Disneyland with Charles and Bec (I was too HUGE to navigate the home of the Mouse, so I got the rundown after they got home. Pirate of the Carribean was a fave.)

8. My girls singing to the moon and dancing in the soft light...

9. Charley sleeping in a Eva's bed for a nap for the first time. She looked so grown up...I cried.

10. Charley sleeping in her big girl bed at Nana's house, squeezed into a tiny segment of mattress since she had about 90 stuffed buddies in the bed with her.

11. "You dump it out Mommy." This follows her command for water just before bedtime. Yet, another tactic in the postponement of bedtime. Other tactics include:
"you sing one more song?"
"Don't shut the door yet!"
"You rock me, Mommy?"
"One two, buckle shoe, pick up sticks!" (demand for favorite song. must be sung just before i exit the room, leaving the door cracked.)

12. "Look, Mommy, I make a TV for you." This is after she drew a box around the edge of a mini magna doodle. This level of pretend from my 2 year old frightens the crap out of me. She is SO going to pull one over on us ALL THE TIME. Well, I guess if I don't know what she is up to, I can tool around life in a fog of stupidity. Oh, I do that anyway. Well, Ok.

Life...outnumbered!

Since I have about 2 brain cells left, I'm going to use one of them to post an update of the clan mac happenings since we multiplied...

Daddy and his 2 big girls watching Scooby (their absolute favorite...)

Charley loving on Daddy
In her eyes, he is 10 feet tall, bulletproof AND his hugs cure all!


Daddy and Max, just the boys hangin' out!


Twin snuggle time!


A tiny folded up little mini mac, warm and cozy.

the other mini mac, snuggled tight on mommy's bed!

I am SO far behind on posting! My poor mini macs are going to have like this huge chunk of childhood with no crazy mama notes. I guess I can chalk it up to life with tons of kids and no hubby. More updates are pending... but a quick rundown of the early weeks with my munchkins...

Breastfeed
Change Diaper
Drink Water
Eat
Sleep (HA!)
Pay attention to other kids for 30 seconds. Other kids melt down.
Pee
Leak, Rinse and Repeat above, like 8 times a day.

PRAISE GOD for my Aunt Deb, (Marge in Charge) who stepped in and took over for the first 6 weeks of: feeding, bathing, not sleeping, cooking, cleaning, driving, listening to me cry, ETC.ETC.ETC..... (She also rocks because she is the TOTAL laundry fairy, to include cloth diapers!)

I cannot begin to express how wonderful it was to have Aunt Deb, Uncle Ted, Rebecca & Kyle so close to me, so willing to help and so loving to ALL of my children. (We are all still alive, fed and clean thanks to all of them!)

So for an update on the first six weeks with twins...
they are great nursers, great snugglers, crappy sleepers, have tiny butts (that don't fit in cloth yet,) hate baths and love mommy.

I am TOO brain dead for any other type of info. It doesn't even penetrate my lactose lobotomy.

OH, Eva and Charley are hanging in there, adjusting to life with double the number of sibs and missing Dad. More later. (i hope.)