Kimber's Navy Family

I went to my twin group meeting the other day and there were lots of questions about feeding toddlers, not to mention all the posts on mommy boards and discussions with my girlfriends. We are all asking, "How do you get toddlers to eat?" Short answer: I don't know. Toddlers are fickle. We jokingly call one of my boys a fruitarian, stolen from the movie "Notting Hill." Hugh Grant goes on a series of blind dates and one of the women turns down food because she is a "fuitarian." When Hugh Grant asks what that is, she explains, "We believe that fruits and vegetables have feeling so we think cooking is cruel. We only eat things that have actually fallen off a tree or bush-- that are, in fact, dead already." We think O wants to eat more, but he isn't certain of the origins of his food. Did the milk fall on its own accord from the cow's udder? Did these apples fall willingly off an organic apple tree? So many questions need to be an...

I had a follow-up appointment for my partial molar pregnancy today. While a molar pregnancy is far from good news, thankfully my molar pregnancy is "behaving." As I explained in my blog post " Molar pregnancy ," the treatment for a molar pregnancy is monitoring your hCG levels after the D&C to make sure they keep going down and then remain negative, typically over a span of 6 months. I did some researching and asking around regarding the wait time to start trying again after having a molar pregnancy. A friend of our family who is a doctor said that waiting for 6 months is a very conservative approach and may not be necessary. He said that he would recommend 3 weeks of negative test results followed by 3 months of negative test results. I asked in my molar pregnancy support group and was given a study called "Low Risk of Relapse After Achieving Undetectable hCG Levels in Women With Partial Molar Pregnancy." It has a long list of authors: from the Dona...

  I told one of my girlfriends when all our troubles started that I was going to cook away my misery. That's been the goal and, I have to say, it has helped. I have enjoyed keeping busy and I've enjoyed the fruits of my labor (good food!). I like talking on the phone to my sister while I chop and saute. I love giving the kids new foods to try and testing out new recipes. I talk to God while I work on my recipes; I like this focus of energy as I pray. I don't understand why I had a molar pregnancy (read my blog " Molar pregnancy "). I really expected to hear that we needed to wait for a cycle and then start trying. Instead we are looking at 6 months... and that is if we don't have any complications. So what recipes have been keeping me busy? Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's Chicken Pot Pie I'm going to include a link to the recipe online at On My Menu: Pioneer Woman's Chicken Pot Pie , however, I recommend buying her cookbook, Pioneer Woman Cooks...

I went in for my D&C follow-up appointment this past week only to find out that this last pregnancy (that ended in a miscarriage ) was a molar pregnancy. What is a molar pregnancy, you ask? I had the same question. My OBGyn gave me information from the Mayo Clinic (view it here, or Google "Molar Pregnancy Mayo Clinic" ). I'm going to use that source as well as What to Expect When You are Expecting by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee Hathaway (I have the third edition), the two sources I have used looking up molar pregnancy. My doctor said that sometimes Googling things leads to finding out really scary information and I've decided that I don't need more stress (he also told me to call him if someone tells me something upsetting that I want to ask about). I'm going to do my best explaining a molar pregnancy with those two sources. There are two types of molar pregnancies: a complete molar pregnancy and a partial molar pregnancy. I had a parti...

One of the things you hear often that first year with twins is how great it is they have each other. I would say that for most of the first year, C and O did not notice each other by any great stretch of the imagination. I do think that they enjoyed the comfort of sleeping next to each other (we had them in the same bassinet for the first couple months and then in the same crib until about six or seven months). I felt sometimes that having both of them in the same room, even when they were in separate cribs, helped keep them entertained for a bit in the mornings when they woke up and after nap. But then I would wonder if they were so content to play in their cribs because we taught them to do so; I never rushed in the moment I heard them wake up ( Bringing Up Bebe would say that is the "wait"). After they started walking, I noticed them interact more. Most of the time it would be toy stealing-- angry-- or playing quietly-- not so much playing with each other but playing ...

I wrote a blog in September about making homemade medical ID's . When O first needed a medical ID, he was 17-months old. He is now 23-months old. One of the challenges I have found when looking online for a medical ID appropriate for a toddler is that most of them are engraved metal bracelets. There is a chance that O will need his daily regulator, Pulmicort, changed in the next couple months (read my blog post, " Follow-up on reactive airways "), voiding a bracelet we have engraved with the previous medications. The pricing for many of those engraved IDs comes to about $50, conservatively, when including the cost of the ID tag, bracelet chain, engraving, and shipping. I've also found there are a lot more medical ID bracelet options for toddler girls than toddler boys. The thing about toddlers is that they can't be trusted. I don't even like putting my toddlers down to nap with a sticker on their shirt with the fear that they will shove it in their mou...

Washington DC December 2011 One of the things about being a stay-at-home mom is that you never get a break. There is no "lunch hour." I can't tell my kids, "Sorry, guys, Momma is on her half." No. It is a 24/7 job. And when things are rough is when I am needed most. My husband and I were talking the other day about what it is like when he comes home and asks "So, what did you guys do all day?" or "Have you packed my lunch yet?" He said that sometimes he thinks that I think (follow that?) he can do whatever he wants when he leaves the house, that his job isn't hard. I told him flat out no way. I think his job is exceptionally challenging. I know he works hard. I know he studies hard. I know he is under a lot of pressure. The key difference between his job now ( college ) and my job ( stay-at-home mother ) is that when he's stuck on a difficult problem he can take 5, go get a cup of coffee, and approach the problem with a cleared m...

"All of the people, So many people, Go hand in hand Through their parklife." -Blur What snuggling the boys looks like It has been awile since I posted a blog about our schedule. Scheduling a family of five is difficult. Some days we do better than other days. There is a lot that goes into a family schedule. Before I decide on a schedule for us, I think about what our family needs. My husband is busy and needs to be able to have time for his studying. Because I can't count on him to always help with bedtimes or dinnertimes, I like an easy schedule that I can do by myself. This works out well too because on those nights that my husband is home, it is nice to be able to leave him to do the bedtime routine by himself so I can have get out of the house or curl up in the fetal position on the floor-- er, I mean-- have a minute alone to read or unload the dishwasher. I really do think about the needs of myself and my husband before I start thinking about the needs of t...