Busy, busy!

Our little Avery has been a busy girl! On Wednesday we gave her cereal for the first time. It's a little sooner than we are "supposed" to since she isn't quite 4 months old yet... however, we know our kids better than a textbook and she seemed overly ready to try "solids". Ok, the cereal was so soupy you could hardly deem it a solid... Anyway! We tried it, she did about as expected - accepted the spoon, spit out the cereal. I'm not sure she actually swallowed any of it, but it was so funny to see her face! It's just like it was yesterday that I was not getting any sleep, it's hard to believe she is almost 4 months and eating cereal! Wow! (Oh wait, I still don't get all that much sleep... not the point)

Oh, Mommy, let me do it...

On Thursday, she rolled from her back to her tummy! She has been trying SOOOOOOO hard to get on her tummy for the past couple weeks - she would get SO mad that she couldn't get on her tummy. I'd let her try a while then finally roll her over and then she'd be fine! But she finally got it, then I couldn't keep her off her tummy!!

the Aquarium

We stayed an extra day in Cincinnati after the wedding last weekend so we could see some of the sights and have a little "mini-vacation". When Dan and I lived in Cincinnati (me for a little over a year, him for around 4) we used to go to a place called the Hofbrauhaus. We wanted to go there, and also take the kids to the aquarium.

Our trip to the restaraunt wasn't so pleasant - the girls should have been taking a nap and Brynn decided to scream instead. It was rather embarassing, so we scarfed down our food and ran out as quick as we could. Hard to enjoy meals these days...

The aquarium, on the other hand, was a lot of fun. Mostly for us and Evan, not so much for the girls - they didn't really care. Here is the proof of our fun:

Can't get enough of these giggles!

While Evan was napping, Dan and I were playing with the girls and had Brynn giggling like crazy! We were so caught up in it that I didn't bother to get the video camera. Well, I finally decided I wanted to catch Brynn on camera with her full-on giggle (here is one of her mini-giggles) so I grabbed the camera. I didn't expect to hear what we were about to hear:

We caught Avery's first giggle! I was in stitches, it was so awesome!! Unfortunately, Brynn was done with her giggles - but I will keep trying to catch it on camera!

So sad...

So, I had never watched the show Jon & Kate Plus Eight until I found out I was having twins. I had several people tell me I should watch the show. So I did. I had plenty of time to catch up on the show while I was on bedrest, and the truth is, I totally fell in love with the family.

I just watched the season premier, and I am heartbroken for their marriage and family. I actually cried right along with them. I am rooting for them. One thing Kate said that surprised me at first was the divorce rate among parents with multiples is tripled! (No idea where she got the info or if it is substantiated) I had never heard that statistic before. Obviously it caught my attention as a parent of multiples. After that sunk in, I got it. It's stressful.

Now, I have no experience with multiple children who are not multiples (nor am I trying to compare my situation with EIGHT kids - or the scrutiny of the media), but with a toddler and infant twins - life got considerably more stressful. Our day is a blur from start to finish, everywhere we go is hard work. So, I get it. That's why I am rooting for them. Marriage is hard work as it is, add children and it becomes harder - add EIGHT and you've got an uphill battle. I can't imagine they have had any time to actually work on their marriage.

Anyway, all that to say - I wish them all the luck!

Adventures in Potty Training - Part 3.3

If you are so inclined to catch up on this adventure:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3.1
Part 3.2


Part 3.3

Day 3 – Yep, even after my frustration from day 2, there was a day 3. Actually, I can give Dan the credit on this one. He was up with the kids first thing in the morning and let me sleep in (LOVE him!), so by the time I woke up I had found out that Evan already had an accident in one pair of underwear, and lucky me – just had his 2nd accident right as I got going in the morning. So we scrapped the underwear and went back to our little naked boy. Only difference, today we decided to give him an M&M as soon as he was done using the potty. That seemed to make a difference. He even pooped in the toilet (for 2 M&M’s)!! I was quite impressed, and I thought to myself – alright, this just might work.

Then another thought crossed my mind. Hmm. We are driving to Cincinnati for a wedding in less than a week, and that will take us no less than 8 or 9 hours, but if we have to stop to let Evan use the bathroom 10 times – we’ll never make it to the rehearsal on time. Great, now what? So Dan and I kept the conversation on the table for rest of the morning, but we continued on with naked boy – did the same pull-up’s-for-nap-time routine, and got the same you-are-cutting-off-my-toes reaction after he woke up and I asked him to go to the bathroom.


I looked at Dan and once again said “FORGET IT!” The upcoming trip to Cincinnati + the horrible reaction every time we try to take off the pull-ups and ask him to use the potty + not being able to distinguish between a diaper and real underwear = the end of my Rx for patience. He’s not ready. We’re not ready. So I got in our dented vehicle and drove off to buy diapers.


What have I learned from this experience? Apparently our child is more stubborn than both me and Dan put together. And THAT is scary! I've been asking for advice from people who have "been there, done that" and I've gotten mixed responses. But the one thing that has come up most often is if he is ready, he will let us know. And really, that's what we learned out of this experience. We just have no reason to push it right now - and if we push him too hard, it will just be miserable for all of us! I’m not sure when we will "try" again, or if we will just wait it out, but eventually we will get to Part 4, and I hope to goodness there isn’t a Part 5. Stay tuned, I'm sure I'll write about it again...

The Wedding

We drove out to Cincinnati to see our friends Shawn & Stacy get married over the weekend and Evan was the ringbearer!! It was a GORGEOUS wedding, and a lot of fun - even with 3 children in tow! The oops moment of the trip was when we mistakenly thought we were going to arrive in Cincinnati with plenty of time to get to our hotel and change before the rehearsal. Nope, we forgot completely to account for the time change... Oh well, it all worked out fine!

Do I really have to dress up?

Yep, but Daddy will help!

Brynn is ready to party!

Avery is ready for her moment in front of the camera!

Ok, I'm a little biased, but are these not the cutest kids you've ever seen?

Evan and the flower girl, Clara - SO CUTE!

Evan gave Clara a kiss and one of his cars when they first got to "hang out" before the ceremony. I don't have any pictures yet :( - but Evan pulled Clara down the aisle in a wagon. ADORABLE! He did really good - Dan helped coax him down the aisle, and Clara's mom walked behind to make sure he didn't dump her out of the wagon. It was a super cute idea!

I love this picture, I took it while everyone was getting ready for the ceremony! It would have been better if I could have gotten the bride & groom in the background...

SO Gorgeous!

This was a clever cake, I was sad I didn't get to eat any...

And, lastly, how awesome is THIS view! This is the view from the reception! Again, GORGEOUS!

Adventures in Potty Training - Part 3.2

Yep, we're back!
For a re-cap, if you so desire:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3.1



Part 3.2

Day 2 of naked boy – Evan woke up sopping wet around his pants. I have no idea why since he was wearing pull up’s, but he was wet. Maybe they aren’t made for overnight? No clue. Oh well. He wasn’t in a good mood already when he woke up and he was demanding his breakfast. I told him we needed to get him cleaned up and he needed to go sit on the potty, then we could have breakfast. Well, you would have thought I cut off one of his toes, he was so upset with me.


I took a deep breath and tried very hard to gulp down another dose of patience. [At this point, running through my mind were several thoughts from the prior day: 1. I’m a little grossed out with his naked butt running around the house – especially since I knew he needed to poop... 2. I’m a lot weirded out by the fact that he now has a new toy to play with since he is now running around the house naked – ‘nough said. 3. I have figured out this experience is WAY more about my learning patience (argh) than it is about Evan learning to use the potty, and 4. He never actually told me that he needed to go potty yesterday, he just ran to the bathroom and hopped onto the toilet.] So after my deep breath, I decided we are still going to trudge forward. I took his bottoms off and we went to the bathroom.


Only problem today was we had a couple stops to make, and I wasn’t going to walk around in public with a naked child, so I put him in training pants for a little while in the morning. Of course, when we got home, he was wet. Bummer. So again with my naked boy. The rest of the morning was about like the day before, nap time came around and we did the pull up’s again, he woke up and freaked out again when I told him we needed to use the potty.


I reminded him of the M&M chart we made and that he would earn another M&M for after dinner if he sat on the potty. [Ok, YES, I resorted to bribery – but I learned this particular method DID NOT WORK, because delayed gratification doesn’t compute in a 3 year old brain.] So he used the potty again, and he did fine with #1 until dinner.


Remember my concern about knowing Evan had to poop? Well, shame on me – I got distracted for just long enough that I didn’t react to him slamming his bedroom door shut. It struck me as odd, but I didn’t give it a 2nd thought. Well, I really wish that I had after he came out of his room and told me that he pooped and “made it into a ball.” What?!?! I grabbed his arms so he wouldn’t touch anything and we ran to the bathroom to wash his hands. Based on my quick inspection it looked like he only touched it with one finger, as opposed to actually picking it up and rolling it around – it just came out looking like a ball. Lovely.


Ok, back to dinner time - Dan went outside to grill and Evan wanted to go out also. I put big boy underwear on and jeans (because, again, not going to let naked boy run around outside). For the entire 20 minutes or so they were outside I kept sticking my head out asking if he needed to go potty, and Dan was doing the same. He did very well by not having an accident. Dinner ready, after coming inside I told him he needed to go use the potty before dinner. Ok, I got the toe-cutting-off reaction again, and I was done. I was having a bad day already (it might have had something to do with one of the “Not-Me’s” I wrote about), and I was just done. Evan had reached the pitch in his voice that overrides the dose of patience, and I figured if it’s going to be this much of a battle, it’s just not worth it.


I’m not a quitter, so this was hard – I put a diaper on him and said forget it, we’ll just try again later. I was so frustrated that when I gave him a bath later, I didn’t even give him a chance to potty (as you might remember, this has been our routine for the past year) – apparently he was holding it for the entire bath and by the time I had him in his towel getting ready for bed, he couldn’t hold it any longer. He let me know he peed on his towel. Grr. Serves me right, like I said before – this is more about me learning patience than him learning to potty.


After all that, could there really be a part 3.3?!?!

Adventures in Potty Training - Part 3.1

Ok, so Part 3 gets broken down into the three miserable er, crazy, hmm, FUN days of attempting REAL potty training. When I finally started to write about our experiences, it was just too long to put on one post... so I'll spread the joy over a few days... If you haven't read part 1 or part 2, click the link and read them first. Or don't, your choice.

Part 3.1.

Last week I decided I was tired of changing so many diapers and it was time for Evan to use the potty. He understands it, he uses it at night before bath time or bed time, and it’s high time, right? We were running low on diapers, so I thought I’d give pull-up’s a try and see what would happen. I now understand why people suggest not wasting your money… because they are a waste of money – it’s a glorified diaper. I tried the “feel wet” kind hoping that Evan would “feel wet” and get uncomfortable enough to ask me to change him. Nope. He doesn’t care. He will sit in a wet or dirty diaper ALL DAY if I would let him. A couple weeks ago when we were visiting my parents we had a breakthrough moment (which is another reason I thought maybe we were ready to start potty training). Evan pooped and asked me to change his diaper! I wish I had a picture of my face – I’m sure it was priceless. If you have ever been around my son when he has pooped you would understand why. He stinks up the entire house, so you know he pooped, but when asked about it, he gets all defensive and says, “NO!, I not pooped!” Far too much information, but hopefully it explains why I was ecstatic that he asked me to change his diaper! Sadly, that was a onetime thing, but it was progress!

Ok, the pull up’s didn’t really work, so my next step was to strip him naked (I’ve heard this works and thought I’d give it a shot). For anyone who thinks this is a little barbaric; 1) It is, and 2) I at least left his shirt on! His first response was to beg me to put his diaper back on! That response strengthened my resolve even more. If he knows enough that he wants to potty in his diaper, then by-gosh the kid can use the toilet! I was surprised at how well it went the first day. I had done this right after his nap, so really we only had ½ a day. He literally ran to the bathroom several times, and had no problem making it there in time!

The little naked boy running around was a little weird for me, so at some point I thought I’d try putting underwear on him and making a big deal about the Cars characters on his big-boy-pants! It must have felt too much like a diaper, because he had an accident. No big deal, I had taken my dose of patience (deep breath and willing myself to be patient) when I started, so I grabbed the cleaner and paper towels and had Evan help me clean it up. When night time came around we used the pull up’s and he went to bed.

Aren't you on pins & needles for part 3.2?!?!

I love these faces!

Not Me Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.



I did NOT shave my leg this week only to realize when I was putting lotion on that I didn't shave the other leg...


I did NOT just give up potty training when I realized that we are going to be on an 8-hour car ride this week and would not have time to stop every 45 minutes to let Evan pee...


I did NOT go out and buy a jumbo box of diapers the DAY AFTER I just bought a bunch of big-boy-underwear... goodness no!


I did NOT kill a cactus that I was plant-sitting because I over watered it - especially since I have NOT been forgetting to water all my plants and maybe thought I wasn't watering it enough...


And I ABSOLUTELY did NOT scrape up the side of our brand new van and put a dent in our other vehicle because I didn't even bother looking behind me backing out of the garage one day...


Nope, I couldn't have done any of those things...


But I DID take a super-cute picture of my children that I can't wait to share!!

Adventures in Potty Training - Part 2

This is an on-going series ("series" makes it sound so official :) about our potty training experiences, read Part 1 here.


Part 2.

Sadly, I don’t remember exactly when Evan actually peed for the first time in his cute little potty chair, but I do remember the mix of emotions ranging From; YAY he did it! To; oh crap, the potty doesn’t have a little-boy-shield-on-the-front and now-I-get-to-clean up pee that got all over the place. yay. So on was our search for something else that he could sit on. We ended up going with the Bjorn potty seat that goes directly on the toilet. It was so cute, and fortunately for us, by then, Evan actually seemed pretty interested in getting to sit on the big-boy toilet. So that started the next leg of our journey. This has been the longest leg – for various reasons that I will discuss as we go.

Dan’s idea was to sit him on the potty every night before bath time. Mostly this came out of frustration when Evan would get in the bath tub and immediately pee, but hey, it wasn’t a bad idea – and it worked. Evan was more than happy to sit on his potty seat and go pee before bath time. That was some time during the summer, and most of you know, that was also the time we discovered a lot of our upcoming life changes (ie: expecting twins, Dan finding new job, me quitting my job, moving to a new state, living with in-laws, searching for new home…) So we really weren’t in any big hurry to get him potty trained at that point because we knew enough to know that so many changes for a toddler can really set it back.

So we continued our potty-before-bath-time routine as consistently as we could with everything that was going on. My plan (Think: I plan, God laughs) was to work on getting Evan fully potty trained once we got settled into our new house, and hopefully before the girls arrived. Once again, plans changed when I was put on bed rest a week after we moved into our new house in the fall – so potty training was put on hiatus. At that point we figured if he was truly ready before we were, we would know, otherwise we would just wait until after the girls arrived when I’d have “more time” to work with him.

Stayed tuned for Part 3! Unfortunately, I can already tell you there will be a Part 4, but I need to recover from that experience and finish writing about Part 3 first... ugh.

Tender Moment

Evan is really taking to his big brother role - tonight while I was getting bottles ready for the girls, Avery was impatient and crying. Evan brought his blanket over to her on the chair on gave it to her, then he sat next to her and gave her one of his "I think I'm being gentle, but I'm really squishing you" hugs. It was actually very sweet. I will have to remind him of that later in life when he is tormenting his little sisters...

Adventures in Potty Training - Part 1

I have decided to share Evan's story in a 3-Part series, maybe a 4-Part, we'll see - it's an on-going "journey"...

Part 1.
The first part of Evan’s potty training started before he was 2. We had the little potty chair that sits on the floor and we left it in the bathroom and made sure we talked about it with him. I wasn’t really aggressive with discussing it all the time because I’ve been told boys take longer and often times aren’t fully potty trained until they are 3 and older. So I figured I wouldn’t push it. The weekend before his 2nd birthday he started talking about the potty, so we started the conversation! It took some (gentle) prodding, but we finally had convinced him to just sit down on the potty chair – with all his clothes on. We figured that was a pretty big step for him, so we were happy with our progress. Weeeeelllll! Our daycare at the time had other ideas. [Let me give some background by saying approximately 5 weeks after he turned 2 we yanked him out of that daycare for more reasons than only the revolving door of teachers in the 2-year-old room – but that’s a WHOLE ‘nother topic.] The Monday after our “big step” he moved into a new room at his daycare. Some dumb girl who we didn’t even know decided it would be a good idea to yank off his pants and diaper and slap him on the potty (I might be exaggerating the forcefulness a little, but who knows, I wasn’t there). This wasn’t a cute little potty chair on the floor, this was an actual toilet – at least it was a kid size toilet – but a toilet none-the-less. Dan had picked him up from daycare that day and they casually mentioned to him that Evan had a bit of a traumatic experience on the toilet today. Hmmm… IMAGINE THAT. Wouldn’t you be a little traumatized if you had JUST sat on a potty for the first time, YESTERDAY!?! Needless to say, we were quite upset since we had never discussed this with the daycare – but again, we had other problems at that daycare than just their inability to give a hoot about our son’s individual needs regarding potty training. Anywho – that’s the low down on how we began our crazy ride.


Stay tuned for Part 2! More excitement on the way!

Two Words:

GO CYCLONES!

hee hee... I need to get some red bows to tape to the girls heads...

Houston, we have another roller!

Brynn rolled over today from her tummy to her back!! I didn't have the camera with video, but luckily I had my super-cool, super-fast camera...

She was pretty pleased with herself, each time I put her back on her tummy, she rolled right back over!

Tulip Time!

We had a lot of fun at the Tulip Festival over the weekend. We met up with some friends of ours who we haven't seen in some time! We took the kids over to the Kid's Corner for them to explore - it was a gorgeous day minus the wind, felt good to get out of the house and into the sunshine! It was kind of funny to watch total strangers taking our picture when we put the girls into the shoes...

New Experiences

Brynn & Avery got to experience the bouncer!

Evan got to experience why you don't stand on the SIT and spin!

And the kids got to experience a beautiful morning outside on our deck.

**disclaimer: No 3 year old was hurt in the making of this blog post...

Grandma's Post & Updates

The girls are constantly changing their schedules. Yesterday they dropped a feeding. It totally threw me off, but it worked out nicely. They had been eating 6x's a day, and I was offering 6oz, but they weren't eating everything. Yesterday they ate 5x's and pretty much finished their bottles every time. It also means they are sleeping longer (yea!), from about 9pm to 5:30am-ish. This is how we found them one morning a couple weeks ago - it's not easy to wiggle out of a miracle blanket, but somehow they both managed to do it...

This is about the guiltiest look I've ever seen! Must be why they are calling for their Grandma's already...

Brynn is getting much better at lifting her head up.

Avery is our little roller girl, I think rolling from her tummy to her back has officially become a regular thing for her. And Evan is still a little cheese-ball.

My Week in Review

What a fun week! Me and the kids went to my parents house in Omaha for the week and my grandma flew out from AZ as well, then Dan came to get us at the end of the week ~ we had a lot of visiting to do, as well as playing cards (my Grandma kicked my butt), doting on the kiddos, playing at the park, watching my niece graduate from pre-school, seeing Jim & Valerie's house, taking a 4 generation photo, going to my dad's work open house (with a REAL NASCAR)... and on and on!!