An Aron Tale...

Now it is Aron's turn to have a blog entry to himself. So, he-eere's Aron!

There have been some (including myself) that say Aron does not look too much like me. I tend to agree, except the blue eyes appear to be from my side. Besides this point, this picture alone should make you believe that Aron is indeed a product of my gene pool. I mean, what other 18-month old would ACTIVELY take away his grandma's Diet Pepsi for his own consumption?

It has come to my attention that Aron has a dog food issue. The issue is that he sees dog food and eats the dog food. We have no clue as to how or even why, but we do know he cleans up after himself, stacking the empty bowls when he is through. :-)

Finally, after a day of wreaking havoc on house and home with his partner in crime, Aron is ready to fall asleep in his glow-in-the-dark Dino jammies. Awww, isn't he sweet?

A Lyssie Story...

Well, I have enough pictures for each Twinnie to have their own posting. As you can see, this one is for Alyssa, and the next one will be for Aron.

In this picture, you can count Alyssa's teeth as she appears to be just making some crazy faces. Trust me when I say that there are more pictures from the same time frame with many similar expressions.

Here, Alyssa is showing off what she has picked from her beautiful toesies. However, we can not see the sock fuzz, and suspect that it may have never existed but it was a cute picture anyways. :-)

And lastly, here is another picture of Alyssa being Alyssa. According to Daddy, she made this pose, and then right after this picture was taken, she had her blocks in the same position but had the wide-open mouth smile of the first picture. However, it is the hair that makes me laugh just as much as the face she is making. Ahh, the Lyssie Kissie can be quite nuts sometimes, but we love her! :-)

Giddyup, horsie!

So what happens when you are made to leave the house for a little while because you are about to go a tad crazy? You find out your kiddies LOVE horsie-back rides, of course! You also find out that your kids have an affinity for trying to stick their heads through the railing on your stairs... :-)

And yes, my daughter is wearing dinosaur pajamas....

The Hobbits Strike Back...

Just after I posted the previous posting, I found those rascally Hobbits in my house again. We discovered that the boy hobbit has an affinity for both unattended food and Iam's Mini Chunks (dog food). We were able to photograph him in the act of attempting to sneak my dinner away for his feasting. We stopped him just in time, but realized he brought an accomplice! However, it turned out that they did not want the dog food this time, but rather they just wanted to use the tubs as a table so they could play with the Piggy Bank coins. Their idea of "playing" with the Piggy Bank Coins was more like sliding the coins off the tub top, and shooting them across the room, making it next to impossible to find all of the coins when we cleaned up the house! :-P

Too funny...

We went to vote at the beginning of November, and got our traditional "I Voted" stickers. Since then, the babies have began to master the walking-thing. Alyssa can be found releasing off of random things and scaring the heck out of Mommy when she just shows up on my shoulder. Aron is showing a little of "Monkey see, monkey do" and tries to walk as well. He also is showing big progress and is almost walking as good as Alyssa. It seems that both are getting quite stable and can be found standing by themselves on occasion. I guess this is where the fun begins. :-)

Guess what Aron is eating....

I can honestly say that Joel and I never really put pictures up on computers or blogsites of just one child. However, we both have made an exception to this rule, because these two pictures are just way too funny. (And if you can not determine what is going on in these pictures, look back at the title of this posting!)

Che-eese!

A funny thing happened to me when I was making chilli-cheese dogs for dinner: I discovered what appeared to be a 30" hobbit standing next to me with her mouth open wide, begging for a pinch of shredded cheese. Unfortunately, hobbits are very hard to photograph with their eyes open, so we were only able to get a photo of the second before the cheese disappeared but her eyes were closed. However, we later discovered a second hobbit sitting in the office attempting to order lots of hobbit toys, and this time we were lucky enough to photograph him with his eyes open! :-)

I just can't decide....

Alyssa is helping Daddy and Mommy pick new carpeting. She can not decide between the Sutton Heather Beige or the Shaw Eggshell Beige. So many choices to play with, so little time....

And where is Aron during all of this? He is upstairs, throwing things out of his bed and pulling the plastic teething rails off of the bars...

A house divided...

What happens on a Saturday afternoon when your college alma mater is playing your favorite college football team? The answer is quite simple, really. One of your babies will end up wearing a BGSU shirt, while the other will wear an OSU shirt. Whichever team the baby is wearing loses means that that baby will be forced to go to that college. Except for Aron, he will have to go to OSU because it is closer to Mommy (or at least according to Daddy…)

Goodbye, Steve Irwin...

Way off topic but had to be stated ...

Crikey! You made the world gasp as you wrestled with crocodiles, snakes, and penguins. Now, we know that you and Suie have been reunited, and are chasing naughty creatures together.

Good-bye, Steve Irwin...You will be greatly missed by everyone...

More cuite pics!

I have some more cutie pics and no new updates, so enjoy!

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

...and Alyssa is driving, so watch out!

We made it back from Florida, all safe and sound. The babies did fine with the flights, really only acting up on the return flights to Columbus due to just being plain tired but who could blame them? We did the best we could to keep them on their schedule, and they were just exhausted by the end. However, they were fairly well behaved and slept pretty good in the hotel room. (We had a unique problem of violating fire codes because of requesting two cribs but the Hampton at Wellington was able to bypass that issue by giving us a suite for the price of a regular king-sized room.)

The Babies got to meet and spend time with their Great-Grandma Lillian, which made her happy. They also got to see Great-Aunt Phyllis, Sandra, and a few other people who have been hearing about them since they were born and wanted to see them in person. I know that they will not likely remember this trip but it made everyone happy to see them. We have many pictures but I am only going to post a few here just because I want to keep this post small. :-) Enjoy! :-)

Nakkie babies...

What's funnier than one baby in a bathtub? How about two babies in a bathtub?

Or how about all four "babies" in the same picture, standing at the sliding door while having their dress balloon up around her?

Of course, there is always the stand-by babies attempting to inhale twinkies and cake, which I do not have any flattering pictures of due to a little boy following in daddy's footsteps, but you can imagine that one. :-)

Its been one heck of a year...

From arriving early and not being sure of what eye color your daughter has because she is always asleep to crawling around the house without the aid of a TotWheels and the beginnings of "mamma...dadda....", I think that everyone would agree that it has been one heck of a year for the Bergers.

As I look back and think, "Wish I wrote that one down..." but later realized that I did not have time to write it down in a Baby Book, I have remind myself to be thankful that Aron and Alyssa made it through some of the more tough times they will have in their lives. After having made it through the trials of an unexpected birth and then spending a week in the NICU, they have both thrived and made tremendous leaps in forward in their development. Even now, they actively play together (if you can call climbing over one another to tug on the other's ear or to climb Mt. St. Mommy playing). The worst thing about it all is that I still see them as the six-weeks early, tiny five-pound babies that they were a year ago. I know that they are not even close to that anymore, but that does not stop me from seeing them that way. (The only time that they will ever literally fit in my hand. :-)

Anyways, with their first birthday coming up in a few days and the Berger Baby Bonaza Birthday Bash (BBBBB) coming up in a couple of weeks, the Babies will not be babies much longer. They are growing up and in some cases way too fast, but they will always be my Babies and we will all love them very much.

Sitting Pretty....

The Babies are getting more mobile, and actively chase after you if you give them a chance. Alyssa can actually move all four limbs (sort of like crawling but not up on all fours yet) while both of them can sit for long periods of time, about 30 minutes or so. They now have both top and bottom front teeth and are in the process of popping the ones next to the top left. Needless to say, they look kind of funny when they smile at you with just the four teeth surrounded by gums. :-)

Clean-Fresh Babies...

A few months ago, I put a pair of babies in a laundry basket and carried the whole thing downstairs. Soon after that, neither of the babies could fit in a laundry basket together because they grew so much. At this point in time, they can fit together in the same basket but only sitting up. Either way, it is still cute!

Foldable Lyssie...

So what happens when there is a diaper bag and a baby on the floor? I do not know but I think it looks something like this...

And yes, Aron is showing off his affinity for his new favorite pasttime, the raspberry.

Part 2: No purple dinosaurs in this house....

Okay, I just transferred some new pics off the card, and I just had to put up the cute ones. I am not too sure what Aron is doing in the first picture, but it looks really cute. As for the third picture, I almost want to say that Alyssa is like, "What, me doing something I am not supposed to be doing?"

On a side note, I was looking back at some of the posts that I have done in the past and realized that the paparazzi should be following me instead of another young mother. Some of the pictures would put B.S. to shame, since she is not dumping laundry or offering a beer bottle with a baby nipple to her children (or at least as far as we know...)

No purple dinosaurs in this house....

So what happens when Mommy goes to Wal-Mart for the weekly baby food stock up? Well, if she is passing by the baby clothing area, and just HAPPENS to find a dinosaur t-shirt in Little Boy's size, she buys it. (This is why I am banned from shopping alone now.... :-)

A lot has happened since I last posted. Both Babies now have two bottom teeth, with Aron's coming in the last three weeks. Alyssa's came in about a month and a half ago, so this is truly the grand scientific experiment. A parent who has a few children (AT DIFFERENT TIMES) cannot help but compare them to each other. For example, "So-so did this at this age but Cha-cha did it a little earlier..." and so forth. In this case, I have two completely different individuals of each sex (one who is currently sleeping in mommy's bed guared by Kira because he did not want to sleep in his own bed and cried until he got his way while little sister slept through it all). Aron is army-crawling through the house and rocking on all fours, not to mention sitting fairly well on his own and doing all of this for the past month while Alyssa is just figuring out that she can scoot across the floor to avoid the leg thrashing by brother if she puts her mind to it. It is all so funny to watch and enjoy, I am not sure if I could ever just have one more....... >:-)

Teething babies....

Alyssa started to sport her new toofers recently and, when she opens her mouth wide enough so you can see them, they are darn cute. Aron has been acting weird so we think that he FINALLY may be catching up in the tooth department. Both babies are now constantly rolling over from both sides as well as saying the standard, "babababa" and "mamamama" sounds. Aron has even scooted across the floor in a successful attempt of crawling. He has not done it constantly but has jumpe ahead a few steps on all fours. (Barney and Kira, BEWARE!)

The babies went in today for their 9-month check up. Aron clocked in at 19lbs 10.5oz and 28 inches, while Alyssa was 18lbs 11oz and 29 inches. Once again, a far cry from 4.5lbs. Once again, the Dr. is very happy with their progress and says that these are the healthiest twins that he has had the pleasure of seeing in a very long time. Prematurity is no longer a concern and has not been for some time. Even though they are behind in some areas, they are ahead in others. Dr. B. says that each will do what they want to do in their own time and not to be concerned about the dumb "our babies should be here" wheel. Yea, babies!

Go Browns!

Okay, we are starting the kids off right! Alright, so the Browns have not been to a Superbowl ever but at least they are prepared to cheer for them regardless!

Anyways, not too much has happened lately. Alyssa is cutting her first toofer, and has finally figured out how to roll over (a little TOO well if you ask me). Aron is actively chasing us around the house in his little walker. He loves toes and shoelaces, which causes houseguests to laugh and say, "NO TOES!" Other than those minor things, we are all doing well. Barney and I have fully healed, although another Berger dog will forever carry scars to remind us of how close (less than half an inch close) we were to loosing him in my own house. And to think I was worried about all the mess that was left behind to begin with!! Animal Control never found them, and I am SO glad that somewhere along the line my tax money pays for their services when I am in dire need of them. (Yes, that was a little bit of saracsm!)

Well, that is it for now. Time to go and see about getting some badly needed sleep....

Barney the Beagle...

"Meet Barney the Beagle..." says Erin Tate of NBC4 in Columbus.

We made the news on Saturday night at 1130p and again on Sunday morning. We even made it on before the unfortunate news about a infant passing away after getting caught between the bed and the mattress. (Must have been a *REALLY* slow news night.) After about twenty minutes of talking to Ms. Tate, the footage was basically cut down to a few good shots of the photogenic Barney romping around the backyard, giving kisses to me, and "trying to get back to normal" (which for him is pretty much laying on the big pillow). Essentially, the basic plea of anyone finding these pooches to call Animal Control (not to mention lock up your dogs if you have any) was what got across. (See NBC4 website for the text version of the story ran on 2/25/2006 and 2/26/2006 at http://www.nbc4i.com/news/7467739/detail.html or http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11575822/ for the same story with a picture).

Since the attack, everyone is slowly healing. Barney has a massive amount of scabs forming on his neck and head area, mainly on his right side, and will be going back to the vet tomorrow for the drainage removal. Next week, he will have the stitches removed. Steve C. from next door seems to only have a small bite on his right hand as well as some bruises but that is also healing, while I am confused sometimes because I can not tell if I am looking at a bruise or a diaper mark on my hand in addition to my various bites. We are all very sore, and poor Barney did nothing but moan all Thursday evening.

On a side note, I want to thank EVERYONE who helped us out again. I am so lucky to have family and friends that are concerned for us and are willing to help us. I can not think that anything worse can happen to us, but knock on wood when you read this sentence. (I know I just did.)