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Not a Lot of Time To Post

For a few reasons…

The good reason:
The What A Card family came over to play today!! We had a great time in the back yard – the kids were all playing together and Burke gave a running commentary for who was who, and who was playing with what toy (and who actually owned the toy). Mike grilled up some grub: Pork chops, kielbasa, hot dogs, chicken, green beans, zucchini, and Potatoes. YUM. What A Card herself brought some very yummy cup cakes for dessert. A wonderful afternoon. 🙂

The not-so-good reason:
I’m off to try to finish up Breaking Dawn (Book 4 in the Twilight Series)

Thursday Theater

Goddess hosts Thursday Theater. Wanna join in? Go add your name to the list!

This week’s theme is supposed to be Food – but I’m going to be a rebel. Simply because…I can 🙂

These are not the best quality videos … they were taken with my cell phone and YouTube has just the one size (which is a lot bigger than necessary with these). I tried Vimeo, but the wait to upload one 11 second video was over 100 minutes. For real??

Anyway – here’s the fearless Logan going down the slide in the back yard.

(11 seconds)

This one is Logan again, but you can also see Burke and Maggie on the see-saw in the background.

(11 seconds)

Towers and Sunshine

The kids had a blast making Lego towers with Daddy the other day.

Cheese!

Cheese!

Concentrate...

Concentrate...

Look!

Look!

Do you like my boat?

Do you like my boat?

They also provided a little bit of sunshine with some Easter themed dress-up hats.

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Long Overdue

Mike and I rarely go out. If we do, it’s always a family member (*ahem*,  Cathy) who looks after the kids.

Part of our problem is the guilt we feel leaving three kids to someone else to put to bed. It’s not an easy task for the two of US, so we don’t feel right about leaving it to someone who isn’t used to it.

Part of the problem is finding a sitter. I suppose we could interview people found on care.com or craigsist or sittercity or something…but that feels so….nanny-ish – and we already have one of those! And since I was a babysitter growing up, I know the sense of community that comes with it – so finding someone we sort of know through the community seemed like the right way to go.

Our neighbors right across the street have two daughters; one who is so incredibly busy with school/work/social life that she’s never home. The other is still a little too young to be left alone. Especially with 3 kids. (I so need to start hiring her as a mother’s helper so when she gets a little older she’ll be perfectly groomed. *grin* )

Our church also has some very lovely ‘tweens who would be perfect mother’s helpers. Again, don’t think they’d do very well alone with 3 kids right now.

One of my twin mom friends (Hi Anna!) has an older daughter who came over to “play” with the kids today. She’s GREAT!! Built-in twin experience. The kids really loved playing with her. I could hear lots of giggles for the time she was here. She’s pretty busy as well, but I think she’ll be able to squeeze us into her schedule every now and then 🙂

The plan, right now, is to have her come over after we put the kids to bed and rush out for a late dinner somewhere. Wish us luck!! 🙂

Long Day

It’s just after noon, and it’s already been a long day. Mostly because it was a long, long night. We actually got to bed early for a change (11:00…I know, what the heck?! We need to start going to bed earlier). But Logan woke up somewhere between 11:30 and 11:45 for at least 15 minutes of solid crying until the Gas-B-Gone kicked in. (That’s two nights in a row…gotta monitor his intake over the next few days to see why he’s been so gassy.)

Then around 1AM, Maggie woke up crying. She was complaining – at first – that her legs were hurting. And then that she’d had a bad dream. And then back to her legs hurting. And then that she was going to throw up. *sigh* Have I mentioned that she’s somewhat of a drama queen? I have to imagine that the nights she sleeps on her stomach, her legs fall to sleep…it freaks her out, so perhaps THAT is the bad dream? And she got a lot of attention the week she was throwing up, so I imagine that she’s using that as a last-ditch effort to gain the attention she thinks she should be getting at such an hour.

She woke up again at 2AM and 3:30. The 3:30 episode woke Burke up … who didn’t want to go back to sleep without Daddy staying for a while (like he does when they’re first falling to sleep.)

Burke also woke up at 6AM requesting his “4.” (He’s been playing with the candle shaped into the number 4 from their birthday cake.) I groaned and told him it was too early – he could have it when we woke up for the day. (Mike had already re-set the alarm around 2:30 or so.)

I really, really hope they all sleep through the night tonight!!

Progress Reports

The twins got their very first progress reports from preschool yesterday. I have to say that I’m not that surprised by the results.

Well, let’s preface that with: when I opened them up and saw all “Gs” on Burke’s, my first thought was “uhmm….lower than an F?” heh Apparently G means “Good Progress” while W means “Working on Skill.”

Burke even got a G+ *grin* (Proud mommy here!) But that didn’t surprise me either because it was in the Using Crayons category.

If you missed his coloring in a previous post, here is a sample from December:

burkescoloring

I was also not surprised by 2 of the W’s in Maggie’s. Categories: I communicate in sentences, and I can use language to express my wants and needs. Yep – we knew this. Remember that whole “Does Maggie ever talk?” thing? She’s better, but she still grunts at Mrs. Teachers when she wants things. (She does this to us as well, but we’re doing our best to ignore her until she uses the words we know she has…) The one that surprised me with Maggie was the W in the category I can count Jan (1 – 5) …I’m pretty sure she CAN…but then I figured that this might go hand-in-hand with the OTHER two she’s currently working on … hard to count for Mrs. Teacher when you won’t talk to her 😛

So…all in all, I’m not too worried and I’m not too surprised.

Logan’s progress is good and bad. His breathing is sooooooo much better now. And he’s back to a happy kid. Except that he threw up all over Mike and the car and things yesterday afternoon. Looked better toward the evening, but then was up for about 45 minutes around 1am throwing up in bed. (I had to change the sheets and his outfit twice!) He’s looking better this morning…hope it stays that way.

Rice Box Wonders

Since I’m continuing to “play” stay-at-home-mom for the next week, I needed some ideas to keep the kids entertained. A big Thank You to Goddess for the Rice Box idea!!

I got a $5 bag of rice from Costco and filled two separate boxes with rice. (Yes, we are at the stage where it’s much less stress/mess/yelling/fighting/etc. with separate things.) Pulled out some various sized cups and bowls, a spoon or two…and the kids are having a blast!

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Is it bad that I told them that there may be something hidden in all that rice…?

P.S. The sheets with the half fitted top sheet that I got for the kids are from Walmart:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9874996
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9874995

Toddler Sheets

If you read regularly, you know that I bought new toddler sheets for the kids for Christmas. When I went to make the bed, I thought to myself…”Now, how the heck are the top sheets going to stay on?? The kids are usually all over the place.”

Two seconds later, I had my answer. The genius minds who created these sheets made the top sheet HALF fitted. That’s right, there’s elastic on the bottom two corners. So while the kids may thrash about and lose blankets, the top sheet has stayed “tucked in.”

So NOW my question is – why don’t they make the ADULT sheets like this? I sure could use some.

P.S. The sheets are from Walmart:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9874996

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9874995

This is How We Roll

I usually don’t take the kids shopping with me to the regular grocery store, but they occasionally head out with me. When they do – it’s usually for a quick run, so all three fit in the cart with the food. (Twins in the back, Logan in the front.) Not this time. I had to go out because we were running out of everything, Mike was working, and there was a snow storm predicted for later on. (ya, piddly little thing THAT was.)

Anyway…about 1/2 way through, I realized that the kids were not going to fit with all of the food I was grabbing from the shelves. They were more than happy to hop out and help mommy push the cart. I’m sure the other shoppers got really tired of hearing “Don’t push too fast – we don’t want to run into anyone!” over and over.

Toward the end, Burke got tired of pushing, but remembered my threat of “If you leave the cart, we leave immediately and we don’t take ANY of this food with us!” So he took matters into his own hands:

Scared the bejezums out of the bagger

Scared the bejezums out of the bagger

The Search is Over!

…no, I’m not going to break out into a Survivor song … and no, she wasn’t with me all along … but…

WE HAVE A NANNY!!!!!!!

She doesn’t start until the 20th, so Mike and I will have some creative work schedules for the next two weeks…but there is an end in sight!

WOO HOO!!! 🙂