Chatterboxes

The kids have pretty decent vocabularies, and every so often they surprise us with something.  Last night I was watching Curious George with the kids after supper and the neighbor was fixing George’s front bike wheel.  Jessie, out of the blue, said “hammer.  hammer.  hammer.”  Not sure where she saw a hammer and learned its [...]

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Santa Claus Giveth…

…and Santa Claus taketh away.
We’ve been telling the kids that Santa Claus will be coming soon. And he’s going to take away their binkies (because they’re big girls and don’t need them any more) and give them to the little babies at daycare who DO need them.
As soon as you mention Santa now, if Sam [...]

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Treehuggers

Tree’s up!
We haven’t had a tree up and decorated since 2005.  In 2006 we had a very crazy little kitten who threatened to undecorate it for us, so we set up the tree but didn’t decorate it.  2007 we had two little infants who wanted bottles every couple of hours.  They pooped a lot, too.  [...]

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Bring on the Holiday Season!

This’ll be the first year we really do Christmas for the kids.  It’s their third Christmas, but the first one they just drooled through and last year they were old enough to reach the tree and just young enough to undecorate it, so we put up the tree (pre-lit) but never decorated it.  This year [...]

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The Land of Nod

Sammie has inherited my sister Marci’s sleep gene.  When she gets tired, she just loses the ability to function and needs to go to bed. Immediately.
Last night Matt had to work until 9pm, so I had to pick the kids up alone from daycare.  They’re used to that because quite often he’ll work until 6pm [...]

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like

One of the things we did this weekend with the kids was take them to Menards to look at the Christmas trees. They have their artificial trees set up inside with all kinds of landscaping and decorations. Last year we took them through in the stroller to kill some time one weekend. This year they [...]

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Ta-Da!!

Big breakthrough tonight.  Both kids put clothes on All By Themselves tonight.
It started with Sammie and socks.  The kids take their shoes off after supper if they’re sitting on the couch.  For some reason they have it in their head that if their shoes come off then their sock must also come off.  No amount [...]

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Miss Manners

Last night’s supper was apple and toast with hummus.  Sam was only eating the apple, not the toast. At one point when she asked for more apple, we told her she had to eat some toast first. She said no.  We said yes. She got that defiant little look she gets when she just doesn’t [...]

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Ants!

So, the other night after we picked the kids up at daycare, we took them to the “park.”
There’s a school we go past just about anytime we go somewhere that has three different big playground thingies.  Swings, slides, and climbers galore. We’ve taken them there three times.
Thursday night after work we had to pick up [...]

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What’s New?

Just a couple of quick pictures so y’all don’t think we’ve vanished over here.
The kids are getting big.  They’re starting to talk more.  The big word lately is “helicopter.” One flew right over us the other night when we picked them up from daycare.  It sounds more like “keliloper” when they say it, but at [...]

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Ni-night.

Our little girl – all grown up (sob).
Jessie put herself to bed tonight.
All by herself.
Usually each of the adults takes a kid and reads a few books to her, gives the kid a sippy cup of water (they don’t usually drink the whole cup, just a few sips), and the kidlette sits on our laps [...]

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Boo-boos

In addition to having completely opposite personalities, the kids have opposite reactions to boo-boos.  Jessie can go bouncing down a flight of stairs without any significant trauma, but Sam gets a scratch and it’s a major crisis.
Sam tends to blame Jessie for every little thing, regardless of whether Jessie is even near her or not.  [...]

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Time Out

I should start this by emphasizing that the girls are really little sweeties.  They are very well behaved.  However, they’re toddlers and trying to find out where the boundaries are.
They did some good testing this weekend.
Food-throwing is always a good one.  Biting is another.  We’ve gotten a couple of bite reports from daycare – that [...]

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Chutes and Ladders

Now that the weather is nice, we’ve been spending a lot of time outside trying to tire the kids out. We take a lot of walks.  Those are “fun.” (Sometimes like a root canal)  The kids are distracted by every little thing.  We take a wagon along and sometimes they’ll ride in it. They like [...]

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Stop the Addictions!

It’s tough to be small. You’ve got no control over anything.  Your parents start you on these little addictions and then stop you and you can’t do anything about it.
Pacifiers.  Again.
We’re doing pretty good with those. They don’t use them at all at daycare. It’s home that’s the problem.  By the time they get home, [...]

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