What a great weekend!  We had a lovely time with Giz and family visiting.  Giz is an old buddy who I went through IVF with.  We once even miscarried on the same day.  Isn't that special?  We both wound up having twins on our fourth fresh IVF attempts; hers were born 8 months before mine, as she was always ahead of me in the process by a couple of tries.
 
I haven't seen the boys since they were 4 months old, and she had never met my two, since she had moved out of state shortly after my two were born.  But she came up for the weekend with the guys, and it was so wonderful to see them.  They're the kind of people you really want to live next door to.  So fun, down-to-earth, non-snobby, smart, fun, and sincere.  Rhys didn't know Giz that well before (our friendship was largely online--she was an original BIW), but she loved them just as much as I do.  It was a wonderful visit.
 
Rhys and I had a chat after they left about how watching Giz (and DH, Gizmo, not their real names, LMBO), was really good for us.  We learned a thing or two, and they helped me, at least for the moment, get over my mean mom phase.  I think they helped the kids check their tantrums a bit too--it's always good to have the influence of slightly older kids around.  Being with Giz and watching her with her boys reminded me to stop trying to do so much when I'm with them, and to try to be more collaborative with them in finding solutions. 
 
I think I came into it all with such high hopes, and then we had such severe biting, etc. problems so early (around 12 months), that all my high ideals about working with the kids, talking things through, and helping them find a solution that works for them, kind of went out the window because NONE of those things work to help stop a 12-month-old biting.  Really, I'm here to tell ya, I tried them all.  So I sort of gave up on all that and became much more authoritarian than I would have liked.  It was the right thing to do at the time, but they are so much more verbal and able to understand things now, and I think some of the tantrums we've been going through lately are a matter of them telling me that they're ready to participate more in discipline.  I've had a lot of luck with giving choices and talking things through, whereas as little as a few months ago those things only fed the fire of the tantrum or aggressive behavior.  We'll see how it goes when I'm solo on Wednesday and trying to do laundry and housework (though time with Giz reminded me that even at this age, when there are two, you really can't get much housework done except when they're sleeping).
 
Anyway, they're awesome role models for us, and I'm really glad she got pg first so I can learn from her and not feel like a total dork that she's so much better at this than I am (ok, so I do feel like kind of a dork, but I can rationalize it, which is good).
 
Back to work.  A colleague/friend of mine who's an economist is going to come over this week and make sure I don't hurt anyone while trying to do regression analysis, a tool which I am entirely unqualified to use.  I'd better put away the nice easy qualitative project I was supposed to be working on and get down to remembering what the heck that data set was all about.