More Stuff

The girls are getting really good at using forks to eat.  They use them for "easily stab-able" foods like pancakes, waffles, etc.  They still prefer their fingers for most things.

 

Spoons are a little trickier, but oatmeal is the perfect food to practice with because it sticks to the spoon.  (It usually works pretty well until they decide to switch back to using their fingers to eat oatmeal.  Uh, yeah, that's messy!)



Megan thought she'd use her fingers to smash all the peas.  Emily left hers untouched.  These two are sooo picky!  Sometimes they like a food and then the next time they turn their noses up at it.  So frustrating!



It appears that I left the open box of tissues too close to the edge of the counter.  They were having all kinds of fun here.  Megan even found Darrell's cell phone and was playing with that.



This is where the girls get their hair done everyday.  This is the only place where they will stay semi-still for me so I can get the rubber bands in their hair.  They like playing with the normally untouchable things around the sink.





Emily moved the chair over by the blockade to the bookshelf, climbed up on the chair and into Tyler's booster and helped herself to a book.  She was reading it and so pleased with herself when I found her.

Megan plays with this WAY more than Tyler does.  She loves putting cars and all kinds of objects down the tracks.





We've been playing with the blocks lately.  I'll sit down with the kids and we build towers.  The girls and I made this today while Tyler was a preschool.





 

Stuff to Remember

This post doesn't have the most interesting content or the best pictures for that matter, but it does contain things that I want to remember about our life right now.  (It seems like every time I go to grab the camera to catch something they quit doing whatever it was that I was going to capture.  And then when I do take a picture it's when the kids are in action or not looking, etc. and nothing turns out very well.)  The kids keep changing and learning new things and I'm afraid they'll have moved on to something else if I don't hurry and post these pictures now. 

All three are milk guzzlers.  They'd all drink milk all day long if I let them.  Here they are one morning before breakfast.  (Yes, Tyler still uses a sippy cup because it's just easier since the girls do right now.)



Megan likes playing with Tyler's cars and driving them anywhere she can.  This picture is significant because we've reached a milestone--the girls just sit at the table now, they don't climb on top of it.  Yay!  Below Megan is storing cars and toys in the microwave of their kitchen.




The girls love carrying the stool around and then placing it just right so they can stand on it to reach things.  (Lovely!)  Emily brought the stool down the stairs this night.



The kids love watching Dora the Explorer DVDs from the library.  Both girls say "Dora" when they see her.  Megan and Tyler are the biggest fans.  They will watch it while I try to get things done.  Emily would rather hang out with me most times.



Tyler hides cars and other toys under the couches and beds.  If he's ever looking for a specific car or truck, we always have to go check under every hiding place.



Megan, Tyler and Emily have fun crawling through the tunnel between the couch and the wall.



Tyler is NOT interested in potty training and I'm not interested in forcing him to be interested so he wears pull ups.  He put one on his head like a hat and Emily wanted to copy him.  They ran around like that and had the greatest time.




Emily and Megan can now walk up the stairs.



Megan and Emily can also get themselves up on the couch now.  You'll notice Tyler has my "wrap around tie thing" (belt?  Is that what they call it?) that goes with my robe.  A few weeks ago he would always steal it and use it to play Rapunzel.  He would hold it up to his head and pretend he had long hair.  I had to put an end to such fun because my belt was always somewhere different around the house.  I'd always have to go searching for it when I wanted to put my robe on.  Instead I cut 3 pieces of "hair" from some old fabric, but none of the kids think that those are very fun.



Emily having fun with the Sunday newspaper. 



This is the aftermath of the girls hanging out in the kitchen with me while I made lasagna.



All three kids love books.  Yay!  Megan especially loves pulling them off the bookshelf and reading them.  Tyler and I always read together on his bed before his nap.  No matter what other books we read, we always end with his Clifford dictionary followed by "In a People House."  Tyler has the whole text of "In a People House" memorized and "reads" it to me.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my parents' house.  My mom drove down so the kids and I could go up a little early.  We went in our van on Monday and Darrell drove my parents' car up after work on Wednesday night.

The kids LOVED playing with their cousins.  The girls especially loved playing with the little tables and chairs.



Our Thanksgiving meal was yummy as always.  We missed Derek and Tansy (and their wee baby boy who is due Apr. 3)

 

Tyler loved sitting with the big kids at their table.

 

Brooke made the cutest little turkeys.  That was the first thing Tyler ate for his Thanksgiving dinner.  The girls ate earlier and were napping during our feast.  They are such picky eaters that they wouldn't have appreciated all of this yumminess anyways.



One day we went swimming at the local Y.  This is where Tyler took swimming lessons last summer.  He was sometimes a little stinker in the summer and would tell me, "Just say no!"  when it was time to get into the pool.  So, I was a little apprehensive about what he'd do this time.  Happily, he was very excited to get in and climbed right in.  Emily wasn't so sure this was her idea of fun, but Megan LOVED the pool.  I eventually took her out of the float tube and put her in the "flotation device" while I held on to her.  She loved floating on her back.





Megan had fun running down the hall of the Y with Nathaniel while we waited for everyone to get dressed.



I helped my mom put up the Christmas tree one day while the kids were napping.  Megan kept saying, "Oh!  Oh!"  when she saw it all lit up.



Tyler loves my parents' "appliance garage."  He and Doc (from Cars) had a grand time playing with the garage.



Emily's hair is getting long enough to be in her eyes so she gets to have her hair done everyday now.  (Note the bare feet.  This cute little stinker likes to take her socks off during her nap and her socks and shoes off in the van.  She threw a right royal fit the other day on the way to church because she couldn't get her tights off.)



Being big just like everyone else.  (Notice the stuffed animals that the girls can't get enough of.  Because the kids have SO many toys that don't even get played with, I pack 1/2 of the toys up and then rotate them with the other 1/2 every now and then.  The stuffed animals were all packed away until one day I got the box out and "love was in the air.")



Darrell, Brooke, Kimberly and I went on our annual Black Friday spree.  Since we had to travel 2 hours to get to any good deals, we left at 7:30 p.m. Thanksgiving night.  We arrived at WalMart around 9:30 or so--just in time to stake out our first bargains that were available at 10:00 p.m.  Despite the many signs that said, "Do not touch until 10:00," there were still people stashing their items right by them and by 9:53 everyone was grabbing anything anyway.  Darrell was proud about grabbing his two $2.84 waffle irons.  He even had some words with a fellow customer who was cutting in line to "look" at the boxes.  I didn't get the sheet set I wanted, but I did get the sheets in white (even though it's a king size set for our queen size bed.  Oh well.)  We got a bunch of other deals and then staked out our spots at 11:20 p.m. for the 12:01 a.m. deals.  Around 11:55 everyone was grabbing things.  We got the things we wanted--a cell phone car charger, a 8GB flash drive and a portable MP3 speaker--although no one was really going for those things anyway.  We then had to stand in line and wait for 12:01 a.m. to "arrive" before they would let us buy our items. 

We got to Target at 1:00 a.m. and still had to wait in a small line to be allowed to enter the store.  We got most of the things we wanted even though the store opened an hour earlier.  Our last stop was Kohl's.  It had just opened up in the area and it was CROWDED!  The line to check out went along the entire aisle snaking around the whole store and probably would have taken 1-2 hours to check out.  We weren't THAT desperate for any deals.  We decided to call it a night since there weren't any other stores that opened until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. (as Darrell said, "That was SO two years ago.") and we weren't going to hang around until then.  We made it back to my parents house around 4:15 a.m.  Thanks to my mom and dad who hosted a cousin sleepover so the crazy parents could go get their Black Friday fix!  No, we don't have any toilet paper stories to tell this year.

That's What I'm Talkin' About

The girls are talking and it's so fun to see them learn new things all the time.  Tyler was very fluent in his own language when he was the age of the girls (17 months), but he didn't really connect with English until a few months later.

Emily is into one syllable words, while Megan can say one and two syllable words/phrases.  Here's a sampling of Emily's words--da (daddy), bah (ball), no, milk, mo (nose), eyes, boo (book), boo (boot), bear (for any stuffed animal), bah (bonk--when she bonks her head on something), shoe, sock, pone (phone), ban (banana), bock (blocks), door, uh oh, and joo (juice.)  Megan can say cracker, car, apple, Daddy, shoes, ball, uh oh, ah puppy (for any stuffed animal and for her blanky), pop pop (popcorn), pop pop (bye bye), good girl (when she is done having her teeth brushed), toot (whenever she toots or someone else does--yeah, so glad she proudly learned that one), and thank you.  (It just melts my heart to hear her little voice say thank you whenever I give her something.)

Although Tyler was delayed in speaking English, he is going gang busters over learning the letters of the alphabet.  Every day we read his Clifford dictionary before his nap and he learns more and more letters all the time.  It's so fun to see him spy letters E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E.  Here is what he knows (and the word he associates with the letters):  T and t for Tyler, M and m for Megan, E and e for Emily, O for Olivia (his cousin), A for Aubrey (another cousin), R for Ryan (his friend), D for Daddy, I for ice cream, J for Jonathan (another cousin), S for Sam (a boy from school), and V for vacuum.

I feel so blessed that I am able to be a stay at home mom and that I get to teach my children things and be the first one to see them learn knew things.

Winter "Fun"derland

We got our first snowfall of the season last night and we took advantage of it today.  It took me 20 minutes to get the kids all dressed in their winter gear (and only 1-2 minutes to get it off.)

Megan and Emily weren't too sure that they liked the snow at first because it was deep and hard to walk in.  Here is Megan with tears.  (Emily's wearing Tyler's old mittens.)


But once we got over by the playground where it wasn't so deep, both girls got the hang of it and had fun. 




Megan wanted to swing.  I was barely able to use my cold fingers to loosen one strap on each baby swing so they would fit over their snow clothes so we could keep the girls strapped in.


Tyler loved, loved, LOVED every second of being out in the snow and tromped all over the yard.  He and Darrell stayed out for a long time after I took the girls in.  Tyler wanted to got out again and play after dinner tonight, but it was getting colder and dark.

Halloween

We had a great Halloween at our house.

The festivities started last Thursday when Tyler had a Halloween Party at preschool.  He got to wear his Lightning McQueen pit crew costume.  (It came with a hat, but he refused to wear it.)  The girls and I showed up a little early to pick Tyler up from preschool so that we could hear the kids perform their Halloween songs.  Here is the 3 minute video.  The kids were so cute.  Tyler was a little distracted and didn't sing (even though he DOES know the songs because I've caught him singing them).  (I think he was looking for my parents in the crowd.  They had stayed with us the night before as they were heading to visit Derek and Tansy for the weekend.  They headed down the road while Tyler was at preschool, but he was thinking they would still be in town.)

I think it's hilarious (kind of) that Tyler jumped off the porch at the end of the 2nd song and a bunch of kids followed him.  Then he did it again when they sang the song a second time.  Ah, that's my boy!

Saturday we carved pumpkins.  We grew our own pumpkins this year and got 8 smallish ones.  The kids watched while Darrell and I carved the jack o' lanterns.  Tyler colored his with Crayola washable markers.  (The girls held their markers until Emily figured out how to get the lid off.)



On Saturday night we went to the church for a soup and pie dinner followed by trunk or treating.  The kids had fun wearing their costumes, and Tyler especially had fun getting candy, but I didn't take any pictures that night.

Yesterday we went to Darrell's work to go trick or treating.  The kids had a blast going from office to office getting candy.  The girls were fairies like they were last year, but this year they could go get the candy themselves.

Here's Darrell trying on his boss' talking and dancing witch hat.

Here's Megan yesterday afternoon playing with the buckets like purses.


Last night we all went to a neighbor's yard for a few Halloween games and then Darrell took Tyler around trick or treating (until Tyler got scared by some dressed-up yippy puppy at someone's house and decided he was done).  The girls and I handed out candy.  I wasn't sure how the girls would do with their wings, but they really liked wearing them.

Emily's waiting for the next trick or treaters.  Below she's knocking on the door.