The Terrible Two's??

Avery seems to have suddenly entered the world of "the terrible two's." I'm puzzled because she's not two yet, but it sure seems that way. I can't help but wonder what turned my sweet, darling, easy to please little girl into a mad hatter almost overnight. She screams "no," points her finger at me, runs in place, stomps her feet, and throws herself on the floor. Yep, sounds like tantrums. BIG ones. It makes me realize how much my Garrett has grown up. Now he is the reasonable and rationale one. That makes me proud.

I do have to share my favorite thing that Avery says. She says "w" for "l" (here goes the speech pathologist in me...) and she says, "wook at dat, mommy!" (look at that, mommy!) She shows me things all day long. This is especially cute when we are driving in the evenings and she is watching the Christmas lights!

Eat Your Broccoli

I've tried to introduce my kids to a large variety of vegetables. This is pretty easy, considering that I like most vegetables myself. Greg on Garrett on the other hand, well that's a different story. As I sat the broccoli on the table at suppertime on Wednesday night, Garrett says, "I don't eat broccoli for you." I said, "Oh...do you eat broccoli for Lynette?" (our daycare lady). He replied, "Yeah. Yum."
Oh well, at least he eats broccoli for someone.

Snow Days!

We LOVE snow days! With somewhere between 8-12 inches of snow, we've had three snow days in a row. That doesn't happen often. Poor Avery hasn't been outside since Sunday! Yikes. She doesn't want to go outside in the snow. Garrett on the other hand could stay outside all day. I'm always ready to come in before him! With the strong wind, we have BIG drifts in the backyard and most of the yard is covered in snow that is almost knee deep! Casey is pretty cute bouncing through the snow. Sometimes it takes a little snow to get us to really slow down and enjoy what is important. No running around, no shopping, no eating out, just sitting down and enjoying the day with my kids!

Thankful Thursday

I intended to post this last Thursday on Thanksgiving, but we were visiting the Stohs family so I was away from my computer. Here is a list of the things I am thankful for this holiday season:

1) my incredibly supportive husband who puts up with my wild mood swings and crazy ideas
2) my darling little people - Garrett & Avery - they can always bring a smile to my face and never cease to amaze me
3) our loving extended family - we wish we lived closer to you so we could hang out all the time!
4) warm winter weather
5) snuggling by the fireplace in the evenings
6) Christmas lights and the look on the kids' faces when they see them
7) hot chocolate and apple cider
What are you thankful for?

Growing up too fast

Garrett is all about being a big kid lately. He really admires the school-age kids at daycare. He tells me that he wants to go to school and he wants to do homework. Hopefully he'll still feel this way in a few years! He's excited that he is "older" since his 4th birthday. This is our conversation the other night as I was tucking him into bed:
Garrett: I'm a lot more bigger when I'm 4. Can't I stay up later?
Mommy: Maybe you can stay up later when you are 5 or 6.
Garrett: Ugh.
Nice try.

This was a night when he was being particularly silly. He also said, "I'm older than you." I said, "I'm 31. How old are you?" He replied, "34."
He was full of giggles that night. I'm not sure where this came from, but he kept asking me to "Shake my sillies out. Shake my sillies out!" I obliged.

Making Progress

What we thought would be a one-week potty training trial is turning into the "real deal." We've made some progress. Avery has not had a (for lack of a better term here) #2 accident all week. She's been telling us and making it to the potty, including when we were all the way across town visiting Toys R Us! She kept telling me she had to go #2, but when I would try to sit her on the adult toilet in the bathroom she would cry. This happened twice, so we hurried out of the store and drove the 20-30 minute drive across town. She made it home to do her business on the potty! #1 is taking a little longer to figure out...

Potty Training: Day One

The good news is that Avery did pee on the potty once yesterday. The bad news is that she peed on the couch too. Lynette gave Avery a lot of water to drink yesterday to help this potty training process along and I think it kicked in last night. We're using underwear rather than pull-ups because in our experience, pull-ups just don't work. So that means cleaning up some accidents. And yesterday evening, there were a lot of accidents! Luckily, other than the couch, all of the others were on the vinyl floor. But Avery wasn't telling us she was having accidents, we were just discovering big puddles. We'd clean it up and discover another one about 20 minutes later. We discovered that she peed on/in Greg's lunch box while standing on it to try to reach her Halloween candy! Greg wasn't so thrilled. After each accident, we'd take her to the potty and she'd sit while we got clean clothes and undies. Then she started to get a little silly. She'd strip off her underwear and come tearing out to the living room naked. She'd start laughing when she saw me and then go tearing back into the bathroom and sit back down on the potty chair. I just ignored it.
Turns out our "easy to clean" microfiber couch isn't always so easy to clean. It smells terrible. And it turns out that upholstery cleaning companies can't clean microfiber because the heat of their equipment is too hot for the fabric. But a very helpful upholstery guy gave me some great tips on a baking soda/peroxide combo that should help. And Greg is headed to Target to buy some "plastic" training pants after work today!