Sunday Afternoon Nap

The bigger kids are increasingly less likely to take a nap. After lunch the neighbor kids were out so ours wanted to play as well. After they came in they wanted to play a game. A wanted them to have their candy canes and a stuffed animal. I suggested that we make it a game to see who falls asleep first. GMan increased the game by adding a blanket to the mix of things he wanted. He even shared with Big Sister. However, I'm thinking that Big E won.

Sweet Boy

As I'm on maternity leave and unable to do "strenuous" exercise, I've been going to the Y for yoga. I take GMan with me while the twins scream at Chris for letting their food source leave. They don't understand that I'm coming back and I figure giving them a shorter duration before I go back to work is good for everyone. This morning driving home from yoga GMan told me, "Mommy, when I'm your age I'll take you to the Y so you can go to yoga class. I'm going to do yoga class too." He's really started saying things like this a lot. They are regularly highlights of the day and some of the best ones begin, "when I was a puppy..."

This week has brought lots of frustration for A as we challenge her to read. Her sight words are repetitive and easy so we found some easy readers that are at least 50% sight words so she can see them in context. She'd rather do the simple stuff but is getting better at the reading books and realizing just read for us. It normally takes her 2 or 3 times reading through the book to memorize it, so we will be visiting the library a LOT to keep her challenged I think. Maybe this summer we can start her with the library reading club.

This week A lost her 2nd tooth. We think it is because she's got the first one coming in and it made the 2nd one loose. It came out as she used her teeth to rid herself of her gloves one of the cold days here. She forgot to tell the tooth fairy about the tooth though when she put it under her pillow. Last night she very adamantly reminded me that she had lost the tooth and the tooth fairy better come to give her something, anything, just like it did for a girl in her class.  We hadn't really discussed doing anything as after the first one came out she lost it and never even thought about putting it under her pillow. She said she didn't care what the tooth fairy brought her, just anything.

Expanding Family

For those of you unaware, I've been a human incubator for the past ~9 months to the newest set of twins in my family. Wednesday, January 11, we doubled the number of children 5 and under in our household. So far we are all adjusting to our new roles. We are working on the sleeping bit and doing okay. I think it is more us adjusting to lack of sleep than anything.

The birth went amazingly well, much to the entire hospital staff's dismay/disbelief. Both came vaginally, with the second one being breech. They tried to turn him, but he wouldn't budge.

Happy New Year

The middle of last week Chris and the kids went to OK for a wedding.  It was a good wedding and everyone enjoyed seeing them. I was sad to miss it, but had fun finishing the quilt tops. Hopefully I'll get a chance to finish the quilts in the next week or so.

A has decided that she likes school enough that she is done with being on break. Hopefully she'll do well over summer, but no bets on that. We have several carboys that I get from work so hopefully we can get some container gardening going for the kids and will help her do something.

Right after Christmas we got a display table from Hobby Lobby as a train table for GMan. He got some tracks and trains for Christmas and we wanted to have a place for him to lay tracks and not always pick them up. They got the table set up in the basement today and the kids were super excited. Excited enough to want me to see it before I even took my coat off after work today.

Here's hoping we get some cold weather soon and all is going well with you.

Quiet Christmas

For the first time EVER we stayed "home" for Christmas.  We typically have a tour of the midwest/south and this time we just stayed home.  It was fun and not quite as quiet as we originally thought it may be.  We went to church on Sunday and it was a nice service.  The kids sat around the pastor and he tried to keep them all engaged as opposed to sending them to children's church.  The kids kind of let us sleep in and woke us up by telling us Baby Jesus was in the manger.  All month (through Advent) they kept wanting to open the "last" box on the calendar and put Baby Jesus in the manger.  They finally did it and were super excited. :) I personally like how the calendar changes a bit every year.  We get random things like camels in the sky. This year A was significantly more concerned about making it "right" though which kind of makes me sad.  G still didn't care if he put a star on the ground or a camel in the sky. :)

A's favorite present this year has been a snowflake waffle maker.  The kids have been asking for snowflake waffles since then.  Hopefully tomorrow we will get some made.  She keeps exclaiming that "This was the best Christmas EVER" so that's nice at least.

G's favorite present was the train tracks and trains that he received.  He also got some Jake and the Neverland Pirate sheets and had to sleep on those Christmas night.  We also managed to find a killer deal on a "train" table that G desperately wants us to bring inside the house.  It was a display table for Hobby Lobby and they are trying to get rid of them.  They are like 6' by 2.5' with a small ledge and just G's size for reaching the middle.

We made "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake.  I made a spice cake and then added carrots for Chris and me since the kids won't eat food with "stuff" in it.  We can tell them that there is "stuff" in the food and they won't even touch it.  No we don't use it to our advantage ever.

For those of you who are unaware -- G did get glasses the end of November.  We had both kids' eyes checked and he really needed them.  He really likes them and takes them off to eat and play.  We've finally convinced him to wear them and they definitely help him see.  

Christmas Baking

Well, not really Christmas baking but the weekly baking so that we have some easy snack for everyone during the week. It just happens to be around Christmas.

So far Advent has gone remarkably well. We are counting down days to when baby Jesus is born like fiends. A is really getting into it and G is simply following his big sister. Big sister also only has one day of school left this year so we will see how that goes. We aren't sure that her being off for 2 weeks is really a good idea. Since we aren't traveling for Christmas this year we are going to try and do some fun things. It is just weird to not have several places to be all at once.

Anyway, Chris has finally gotten the kids to bed so I'm going to go say hello.

Christmas Pageant

Last weekend the kids were in a Christmas pageant at the church we are currently attending.  A was an angel and the angel chorus had a few lines. One of our advent calendars has the lines in them so A will say them most days.  G was a I'm going to wait until the very last minute star. He practiced as a star, but come Sunday morning he decided that he didn't want anything to do with the costume. Then when everyone lined up to go on stage he decided that maybe her did want to wear the costume.

A is wrapping up her second term of kindergarten. We will see how it goes. She has started asking if she can read books instead of doing the work set her by the teachers. Realistically since it is simple things like letter sounds and recognizing words in sight, we are okay with this plan. We get kind of bored with the work she gets sent home with. G won't even sit with her to do it anymore either. Tonight he was going to sit and cuddle with A and me, but when he found out we were doing her homework he went to help Chris finish dinner.

The Christmas party for work was last Saturday. It was quite a party and Chris got to meet a lot of the people I work with. There is always a bit of self segregation based on job function, but for QA people it seems to be even worse. I suppose it fits our personalities, but we all sat together for supper. We had fun.