Man am I ready for Thanksgiving!  Not to complain (well, it’s my website so I can do what I want) but I have been working a lot the past few months and have not taken even a weekend without putting in some hours.  I am looking forward to a nice long 4-day weekend and can’t wait to kick it all off with some good quality family time and lots of yummy food.  And I must admit, seeing that they’re calling for some snow tonight (ok, yeah, it’s only .01″, not even a dusting) I’m excited to get the holiday season started.  I think it’d be awesome if somehow we could get a few inches of snow before Monday.

The Christmas tree farm down the road kicks off their season Thursday and I’m actually pretty psyched to get a tree this year.  Jen and I are both pretty excited to see how much fun Alex and Avery will have this Christmas.  I think they’re at an age now where they’ll enjoy the tree, the decorations and Santa. They’ll also get excited about seeing family.  Another nice thing lately has been using the “Santa is watching” line to get them to behave.  It doesn’t work much, but sometimes if you throw enough out there something works.  It’s nice to have another one to add to the arsenal, even if it’s just for another month or so.

Jen has finished all of the Christmas shopping for the kids already, which is very cool.  It seems like we’re always running around at the last minute.  Thank god for the Internet, it really does make things so much easier and with free shipping available most of the time, it’s really a no-brainer.  I need to get my butt in gear and get some of my Christmas shopping done.  Luckily Jen handles most of it so I really just need to focus on her

I also plan on catching up on some of the pictures and videos that we’ve taken lately here on the site over the next few days.  We’ve got a few good videos of Adam and his new tricks to share too.  He somehow has developed dancing skills in tht past day or two and yesterday started to cruise around a little bit on the couch and transitioned himself from the coffee table over to the couch.  Man, he’s going to be walking soon!  It’s so cool to see how much he loves Alex and Avery and how he wants to be right in the middle of whatever they’re doing.  It’s really cute to see them run down the hall with him following closely behind doing his “turbo army crawl”.  They’re in trouble once he can keep up with them at full speed.

So if I don’t get anything up before Thursday have a good Thanksgiving and be sure to spend some good quality time with YOUR family!

The twins are VERY into telling us “No” these days.

Please go and get me a bib for Adam…No!
Do you want to take a bath now?…No!
You need to try and go potty before we leave the house…No!
Let’s go, we need to get in the van…No!
You need to pick up your milk from the floor so Adam can’t get it… No!
Pick up all the coins you dumped out all over the floor…No!

So when it’s an inappropriate time for saying no, I’ve been telling them it’s disrespectful and that they are not to tell mommy and daddy no.

A few minutes ago, Alex said he wanted to go outside. I told him no, not until he needed to clean up all the money he dumped out all over our bedroom floor. His reply? “You don’t say no to me mommy. Dat’s disdapeckful.”

*shaking head*

Last weekend Alex, Avery and Adam all spent the night at Aunt Jimmie’s house while Jen and I went to a Halloween party that evening and had another night away from the kids.  This was the first time we attempted to put Adam in a pack and play and the first time Alex and Avery got to sleep on their new kid aerobeds.  Luckily all three did great and everything was a success.  Alex and Avery kept each other up for a few hours before falling asleep, but that’s something they do every so often at home anyway.

Adam has slept through for the past two nights now I believe.  While he still wakes up fairly early, and sometimes thinks it’s time to be up for the day at 5:30 or so, I know Jen is happy to log a few nights of solid sleep.

Avery has also been dry in the mornings for the past few days.  She really has done so well with the potty training, it’s amazing!  I can’t wait for the day when we don’t have another single diaper in the house!

When you think of October, you think of fall, leafs, Halloween and pumpkins.  Well, little did we know that when you have toddlers that anything they do in October they end up giving them one (ore many) small-sized pumpkins.  Between trips to the petting zoo, their nursery school class field trip and a trip that Jen and our friend Stacey (and her kids) took to a local farm we have more little “shot put” sized pumpkins than we know what to do with.

Wow, Halloween is this Friday.  I can’t believe that October is over this week.  Time is moving at a pace that I didn’t know was possible.  I think (for me at least) part of what has been making the time go by faster than usual are the longer hours that I’ve been having to put in at work lately.  People ask me how I’m doing with my mom’s passing and all that and what I tell them is that honstly I have been too busy with everything lately to sit down and soak it all in.  Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely moments and occasional reminders that pop up that get me sad, but I think I just haven’t taken (or had) much time to sit and just think deeply about everything.  I guess I don’t know if that’s bad or not?

Things here are doing well.  Adam is doing something new every day and is crawling around like a rocket and is even starting to pull up on things.  Today, for example, Jen went in to get him from his afternoon nap and he was standing in his crib.  That’s a first.  I got a call from her telling me “guess what your son did…”  Usually that means Alex did something and somebody has a new bruise.  Luckily this time it was something new Adam did, which apparently he was pretty proud of.  I’m sure Jen snapped some pictures of it, which we’ll get uploaded this week.

Speaking of pictures, if you haven’t already checked out the October album you definitely should.  You can see the kids with lots of farm animals and those lovely pumpkins I was taking about.  We have a ton of videos too that I am going to get uploaded to Google in the next week or so.  I’ll post them up here as soon as I do.  There you’ll see fun clips of Adam crawling around, Alex chasing around chickens, and all kinds of wacky stuff.

Let’s see, what else is new….

Oh, Avery decided she was ready to be potty trained and just picked it up like a champ.  Now both kids are wearing under pants and regular old potty pros.  Avery picked it up so quickly it’s amazing.  She also seems to have a much better ability to hold her pee in, which helps.  Also, she has switched to a big girl bed.  Geeze, a big girl bed, going potty, she seems to have changed overnight from a baby to such a big girl.

Where does the time go?

You have to love the mind of a 2 year old boy.

Yesterday as I was getting the twins ready for their nap, or maybe it was up from the nap, I heard Alex say pee-pee. He had a run a couple of weeks ago where he decided he wasn’t potty trained anymore, so I’ve been more alert than usual for potty words. He was sitting in his bed, and I asked him if he needed to go, and he said, “No, my flying monkey pee-pee on my milk.” He has this toy from a Happy Meal Pop-Pop got for him:

I asked how his monkey was peeing on his milk. He held up the monkey and showed me. The monkey’s head was turned totally backwards so the wings and tail appeared to be in the front. The tail didn’t look like a tail from that angle. And sure enough, my son said, “See? There his penis, pee pee on my milk.”

Then there was the incident two weeks ago when we were headed into a store, and Avery and Alex were getting out of the back of the van. To do that, they have to sit down and hang their legs over the bumper before jumping down. Alex was first and Avery sat down behind him a little too quickly, accidentally kicking him in the back. As we were walking in to the store, with both of them holding on to Adam’s stroller like good little angels, Alex unmistakeably looked at Avery and said, “Aisy knuckle sandwich.” His usage was a little off - he was calling her a knuckle sandwich rather than offering to give her one, but I realized it’s definitely time to start watching what I say around them!

As I’m writing this, I am listening to the twins on the monitor, beginning a third hour of general insanity and non-sleep. Alex has learned to remove his clothes and pee in his potty in his room, which is cool about 5% of the times he chooses to do it. He’s been naked about 4 times tonight and had his diaper duct taped on at one point,but then he peed in it and needed it changed. It’s hard because I know he’s confused when I am proud of him for using the potty in the morning or after his nap, so then at night he does it and gets in trouble. This morning I made a big deal about how he was a good boy because he put his peed through pajamas in the laundry basket before I even got into his room. Guess where his dry, clean pajamas were tonight every time I found him nude… He also likes to climb into Avery’s crib, invited by her or not. Don and I are exhausted and frustrated and feeling clueless. Any consequence will happen tomorrow and seems too far removed to make sense to a 2 year old. Why don’t the sleep experts ever seem to address kids who have to share a room?

On to the Kitchen child who IS actually behaving nicely this evening. Adam turned 6 months old on Saturday. He continues to surprise me with how quickly he learns new things and how easy he is in general. He is still full of smiles and happiness. He’s mobile now, rolling and spinning 360s with ease, and as of the last couple of days, creeping forward to get to something he wants. He’s not always into toys, though he does like the piggy bank. He far prefers paper to eat and the crinkly sound of the wipes package. He’s babbling “dada” among other things, which is adorable. Luna’s his favorite pet and Alex is his favorite person, with the rest of us coming in far behind. I cannot believe he’s been with us for 6 months already. I say it all the time - he’s growing up way too quickly and I just want to keep him little for a while longer.

I started him on cereal on Sep. 12, and he took a few days to warm up to it, but now he gets very excited when he sees me start to mix it and I put him into his high chair. Tonight was the first night that he ate all the cereal as well as some squash and peas.

The biggest news is that he is now sleeping in the crib. Hooray! I had been dreading Sunday, which I’d set as yet another mental date when, come hell or highwater, he was getting out of the swing. I was mentally preparing myself for hours of crying like we had last time we tried, but instead, Adam really surprised us. He cried for 30 minutes at bedtime and then slept for hours, waking up at his normal feeding times ( 10 and 2ish) and going back to sleep in his crib with no crying at all. I had planned to wait on naps and keep him in the swing for that, but he did so well that I put him in the crib for those as well, and it was the same - minor crying and then 3 naps of his normal, hour or so length. Since then, he’s gotten himself to sleep faster each night and is even getting better about not waking up so early. He likes to think 5:30 is a good time to begin the day, but I’ve been putting him back in and he’ll babble for a while and then go back to sleep until around 7.

I’ll post his 6 month stats and picture soon. His original dr. appt. was postponed this week, and I can’t take his 6 month photo in the rocking chair until I figure out where I’ve misplaced the camera. Mommybrain…

Apparently, there’s a learning curve to this game that I just never knew of until now. The twins LOVE the idea of playing hide and seek. But no matter how many times I try to explain or show them how to play, they just haven’t quite nailed the concept yet.

Today we were playing outside and took a walk down to their tree, which is at the far end of the yard. Someone mentioned the game and I decided to take another stab at it. I told them I could count and they should go and hide so they thought Mommy couldn’t see them (and all the while I am thinking in the back of my head that someday in a store I’d be cursing the day I ever taught them this dumb game because they’ll finally get it and make me have a panic attack by actually hiding.) Then Adam and I would try to find them. I covered my eyes with my hand and counted to ten. I opened my eyes. They were standing about 3 feet away from me with their hands over their eyes.

So I tried again. I told them to hide and gave them some ideas, like behind tree trunks. I did the eye cover and count again. I peeked while I counted and they did both run to the nearest tree and “hid” by standing directly next to the trunk on the side nearest to me. So I kept counting and turned around so at least they’d be behind me and I could pretend to look for them at another tree first. I called out the whole “Ready or not, here I come!” thing and as I turned around, Alex came running toward me. Avery stayed put at the tree but was in plain site giggling like crazy.

I thought maybe it would work better if Adam and I did the hiding. So the twins counted and I hid on the far side of a tree trunk from them. They got to 19, 20, 19, 20, 19, 20 and came running for me. With their hands over their eyes, of course. Strike three.

I decided to go back to them hiding. We played about four more rounds of the version where they stood next to a tree on my side of it and then came running at me as soon as I said “Ready or not, here I come!” They don’t get the game AT ALL, but they were laughing, happy, silly little things and we were having a blast, and that’s what matters most.

So I packed up the kids and drove to the local party store today hoping to find two cute cow costumes, since that’s what the wondertwins have declared they’d like to be for Halloween. (Well, first Avery wanted to be a giraffe, but a cute giraffe that looks like a giraffe costume is even harder to find than a cute cow, so I nipped that in the bud.) And on the way to the store, we passed by a new Mexican restaurant where we ate last weekend. The food there was awesome. I had steak fajitas. The twins had a chicken quesadilla, some tortilla chips with guacamole, and several bites of a seafood paella they begged from Daddy. Adam just had a bottle of milk. The building for the restaurant is sort of distinctive, but I never would have thought they would recognize it after only one visit. But sure enough, when we were driving past, Alex pointed out the restaurant and we had a fun five minutes of them asking what everyone ate and trying to pronounce foods like fajita, guacamole, quesadilla, and paella. Fast forward a couple of hours to when we got home and I asked them what they’d like for dinner. Of course, his very serious sounding reply was, “Paella.” Clearly he doesn’t know who he got for a mom. He got leftover chicken and scalloped potatoes from a box! Yesterday we were at Uno’s for lunch and Don asked Avery to eat a pepperoni on her pizza and she looked at him and said “Actually, Daddy, the pepperoni is kind of spicy.” We both cracked up, and Don had to ask me if he had heard her correctly! Do normal 2 year olds speak like these two???

Oh, and the party store had no cow costumes in their size. I’d very much like this one but it doesn’t seem to be available in their size, and I don’t really like either of the two that do seem to come in their size (2T or 3T,) so if you happen across a cute one somewhere, please show me!