First Stroller Run

I took the kids out for a run in the running stroller.  I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.  I confess, I thought I’d be taking the kids home from the hospital, plopping them in the stroller, and hitting the trails.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way because of stuff like “head control” and “too small for the seatbelt”.  Anyway, the run went well with only a few fussy moments.  Here’s a spur of the moment video I made of the occasion.  I have to say, it’s harder than it looks to hold my phone camera, talk, and run with a stroller at the same time.

 

Twins, By the Numbers

Tomorrow is the big day!  We (and everyone else) are looking forward to finding out if the twins are boys or girls or both.  With that in mind, let’s look at some statistics and see what we can figure out.

How Common Are Twins?

According to the CDC, in the USA in 2010 there were 132,562 twin births, 5,153 triplets, 313 quads, and 37 quintuples or higher.  The twin birth rate was 33.1 per 1,000 live births.

Identical or Fraternal?

Our twins are dichorionic/diamniotic, which means they each have their own placenta and their own amniotic sac.  This is the most common type of twins, and the type with the lowest risk.  All fraternal twins are di/di, but they can be identical if the egg split very early.  So, the likelihood is that ours are going to be fraternal.

Many people have asked us if twins run in our families.  Some have even asked if twins run in my family, specifically.  My genetic history has nothing to do with twins.  For fraternal twins, a family history on Mandy’s side would indicate that she has the gene for hyperovulation (multiple egg release), but my genes have nothing to do with that.  There is no known hereditary component to identical twins.  As far as anyone knows, that’s totally random and can happen to anyone at any time.

Boys or Girls or Both?

People often think that there’s a 50/50 chance of getting a boy or a girl.  In single pregnancies it seems the odds are skewed a little bit in favor of getting a boy (about 5% more likely).  With our twins, we have a 75% chance of having a boy, and a 75% chance of having a girl (ignoring the 5% preference for boys).  Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Hey, smart guy, that adds up to 150%!” Yes, it does, but that doesn’t matter.  Here’s how it works.

Thing 2 Boy Thing 2 Girl
Thing 1 Boy Boy/Boy Boy/Girl
Thing 1 Girl Girl/Boy Girl/Girl

So you can see that there is a boy in 3 out of the 4 situations, and there is a girl in 3 out of the 4 situations.  We have a 25% chance of getting two boys (and visiting the ER more often), a 25% chance of two girls (and being broke), and a 50% chance of one of each.

There you have it.  We have a 50% chance of a boy and a girl, most likely not identical.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any solid numbers on the odds of one of the twins being an evil twin.


If you ever feel like you have a lot of children, here are some people you can be glad you aren’t.

In 1853, peasant Iakov Kirilow, 70 years old, was presented to the Empress of Russia for having 72 children. His first wife had given 57 children in 21 pregnancies; including ten sets of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. He remarried, and his second wife bore him 15 children: six sets of twins and one set of triplets. Thus, he had 72 children in total, and amazingly, all were alive at the time of presentation.

And prolific couple #2…

The documented record for most children is held by Feodor Vassilyev (1707 – 1782), a Russian peasant from Shuya, and his first wife (name not recorded). In a period of fifty years, from 1725 to 1765, they had sixteen sets of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets, That’s 69 children in total. And, Feodor remarried to have six sets of twins and two sets of triplets with his second wife.  That’s another 18 children, and thus, 87 children in total.

 

All births were registered in the local Orthodox Monastery. In 1782, only three children had been buried, and 84 survived. Empress Catherine the Great was informed about the family, and supported the family with numerous gifts.

Two doesn’t seem so bad, now.

The Twinsies Room

To make room for the impending twinsies we had to move Mandy’s office into the space we were using for a dining room (really, a breakfast area off of the kitchen), move my desk into the living room, move our dining room into the actual dining room (that we were using for… nothing, really), and move our bookcases into the new dining room (of course).  We had the painters paint the room “Optimistic Yellow” (Aside: Paint names are crazy.  It’s amazing how many ways they can come up with to say “yellow”.) so we could have a nice, bright room.  I spent a day putting together a dresser, two cribs, and a kegerator.  Oh, uh… the kegerator is for a different room.  These pictures show our initial setup for the kids’ room.  I did put a number of things in the closet to make the room look better (my strategy for room cleaning since I was a kid).  We also have a rug ordered, and we’re trying to figure out a storage solution for diapers and accessories.  We’ll probably get some bins to go under the table, but we haven’t looked much, yet.

Before

Cribs

Curious Cat

Couch, Changing Table, and Dresser

As I was removing the old ceiling light fixture to replace it with one a bit more up-to-date I found that the old light fixture was screwed directly into the ceiling joist with one screw and no electrical box.  What was supposed to be a one-trip-to-Lowes simple project has turned into an I-don’t-feel-like-going-back-to-Lowes-right-now project.

Ceiling Light

 

Living Room: Done

Our living room is finally done!  For the past two years, Mandy has been itching to get the outdated wallpaper removed (I just ignored it), but I really didn’t want to do the job myself.  If it was a normal sized room I might have tried, but the ceiling slopes up to about 16 feet and I wasn’t interested in tackling that challenge.

Picking paint colors was a challenge.  Mandy was originally planning on painting the whole room some sort of brown color (she called it Portobello Mushroom, but it’s brown).  We used the Sherwin Williams app on the iPad to paint pictures of the room, which was very handy, but nothing really looked good.  After repeated trips to the paint store to get samples we concluded that all of our choices were just “fine”, but we didn’t want to go through all of this and end up with “fine”.  The day before the painters showed up we finally came up with a plan, got one last set of sample paint, and finally found something we thought we would like.

It took two pros a total of 7 days to de-wallpaper the whole room, repair the walls, texture the walls, and paint the walls and ceiling.  It would have taken me forever and not looked nearly as good.  We were very happy with the painters we hired, and found that we are pretty good color pickers.  They also painted the future kids room, but we haven’t finished putting that together yet, so no picture today.

Before and After

Cats and Ladders

Vince is quite a helpful cat.  Whenever you start doing something, he just has an instinctual drive to help.  But, like any good micromanager, he has to be right in the middle of whatever it is you are doing.

A couple of summers ago I was climbing up the rickety pull-down ladder to our attic when I heard a curious scratching sound behind me.  Sure enough, Vince was climbing the ladder right behind me.  I had no idea he could climb a ladder, especially since he’s not the most graceful cat around.  He’s built more for lounging on a pillow by a throne than being a silent, resourceful hunter.  Now I have to shut him in a bedroom whenever I need to go up into the attic.

Vince’s Attic Adventure

This past week, we’ve been painting our living room.  Well, let’s be honest, we’ve been lounging around reading the paper and drinking coffee while a couple of guys removed lots of interesting wallpaper, repaired the walls, textured the walls, and painted the walls and ceiling.  It’s taken them a week to do, so far, so I think I would have finished it around the time the twins graduate college.  I’ll leave you in suspense and post painting pictures once the job is done.  Anyway, whenever the painters would leave for more than a few minutes, Vince would start exploring and checking on their work.  Imagine his delight at finding both a ladder and scaffolding in his own living room!  He quickly made his way up the ladder, lept to the scaffolding  and was eyeing the upper window sills when I had to end his inspection tour.

A Quick Scamper Up

Fingers Crossed

A Magestic Leap!

A Mighty Roar of Triumph!