In Great Britain, it’s called “Boxing Day,” in Germany it’s the “Second Christmas Holiday,” but this year at the Vance house December 26th was “Independence Day.”  Yesterday marked the completion of Jenelle’s most ambitious project of 2009 (well, next to having twins): cleaning and organizing the entire house.  Jenelle calls it “The Purge.” 

Vance Family Christmas Card 2009 (pdf)

Building on a long tradition, everyone in the Vance family receives a new Christmas ornament each year.  Here’s a picture of Jenelle’s new ornament.

As the mother of three kids under three, Jenelle thinks it’s the perfect ornament for her life right now.  To better understand why, we should explain that the ornament winds up.  Below is a video of it in action.

Jenelle and Jonathan, reluctant to let their three-kids-under-three status keep them from enjoying the Great Outdoors, decided to take their family camping.  Since this would be the first camping trip with newborn twins, they were reluctant to go certain places.  For example, they were reluctant to go anywhere that would require spending the night in a tent.

In November 2008, Jenelle found two infant monkey costumes on clearance at Target.  By this time, she and Jonathan knew that they were expecting twins, and they hatched their costume plans for 2009: the little girls would all be monkeys (i.e., Curious Georgias), Jonathan would be the man in the yellow hat, and Jenelle would be the Woman in the Yellow Hat.  (Literary purists will point out that there is no “Woman in the Yellow Hat” — but don’t you think that the Man gets a little lonely with just a monkey for company?)

Here are some examples of what Annika regularly gathers into her arms before she deems herself ready to go off to bed.  Typical items include bears and blankets (both plural), a doll, and her bouncy ball.

Women get a lot of hype about being “Supermoms”, but I’m pretty sure I’m married to a “Superdad”.  This is what I saw when I came back from cleaning up Annika’s bath paraphernalia.  And yes, Jonathan was reading a story out loud to Annika, not just looking at the book with her. . .

Sometimes people ask how Annika is handling her new role as Munchkin-in-Chief.  The answer is, she has slowly become more comfortable.  A few days after the babies came home from the hospital, this conversation occurred:

Jenelle: Annika, do you like the babies?

Annika: No.  All done.  Babies go home.

This is not a posed photo.  We don’t know how two non-speaking infants can coordinate like this, but they repeatedly do.  Now if they would just coordinate their feeding times.

The twins are now just over one month old.  If Jenelle and Jonathan can survive the next 17 years, 11 months, everything should be fine.

This week the Vance family welcomed into the world Clara (formerly known as “Baby A”) and Nicolyn (formerly known as “Baby B”).  The labor was easier than expected, and the babies are larger than expected (both over seven pounds).

Everyone is healthy (but we should note that “healthy” is different from “well rested”).