I'd take pink eye over puke any day.

Before I forget... those $1 Target baskets I mentioned in my last post?


Yeah, that's right. Race cars. You can see how Julie's is bending. Greg sent me this while I was in class last week.

Friday night was our daycare's annual Parents Night Out fundraiser for the March of Dimes. It was at a different center than we normally go to, which already had the girls a bit suspicious. Luckily, there were a few teachers who volunteered to stay with them. We finally managed to escape and had a nice, relaxed dinner. The waitress and manager kept apologizing for how long everything was taking (and paid for our drinks), and it was so nice to not care. (Although I will admit I was wondering if they had gone to milk the cow for that cheese plate.)

We picked the girls up a little past 9:30 and they were still wide awake and running around when we got there. They went to bed fine after a story when we got home. But Saturday morning, we woke up to puke in Julie's crib. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it say she (and her stuffed animals) went straight for a bath. She was acting ok, so I took her downstairs for breakfast, which she promptly through up. Not to be upstaged, Emma threw up her breakfast. So Julie and Greg skipped their swimming lesson on Saturday morning, and I took the girls up to the airport to pick up my mom. She found a cheap last minute fare to come down and visit us for the weekend. Little did she know we'd have a puking houseful this weekend. Last year, we took the girls to this same thing, and they were still awake when we got there last year, too, way past their bed time. They would not sleep for more than an hour or two at a time for like a week afterwards. It's like this fundraiser has bitten us two years in a row. On Monday, daycare mentioned that a bunch of kids were sick, so they may have picked it up on Friday, but it's quite a coincidence.

We did get outside on Saturday afternoon to play in the water table, probably for the last time this year. Greg brought out some bubbles (and they were saying "bubba"), but once Emma got hold of the big bubble wand, she wouldn't let go of it. She didn't quite get that it needed to be dunked in the bubble solution, and she kept dipping it in the pool and water table. Mostly, though, she just wanted to run around with it and beat it on the ground.

I took some pictures in manual mode. They required a bit of retouching. :)

E. I love "running" pictures right now.

This one was so dark it was barely recoverable. J, E, R.

E and grandma

Miss R.


It must have worn the girls out, because afterward I went upstairs to work on some stuff, and came back downstairs to find Greg, my mom, and all 3 girls asleep on the couch.

It rained most of the day on Sunday and I can't really recall what else happened. I'm in the process of changing out the girls' shorts and tank tops for our early fall outfits of short sleeve shirts and capris/leggings/pants left over from the spring. This in-between weather is tricky for this Chief Outfit Officer.

Neither Greg nor I have been feeling so hot since the beginning of the week. Of course, I think we know who we can thank for that. I actually ended up staying home sick today. On Monday night, I was feeling ok, so I did the clean up stuff and Greg went to bed when the girls did, around 7:30. On Tuesday night, Greg was starting to feel better and I was headed south, so Greg did clean up. I got in bed at 7:30 and did not get up again until 6:30 Wednesday morning. Still sick.

Personality and Developmental Notes 9/25/10

So, Emma is terrified of everything at the moment. She hates the bath tub. She cries if the cats get too close. If I leave the room, she yells "mama mama mama". Even when it was just her and I at home with the pink eye infestation, we'd be sitting on the couch together and I'd get up to go into the kitchen ( or, heaven forbid, the bathroom). I would leave the gate open (SO much easier to manage with just one kid), but she'd just sit on the couch and cry for me. (Did I mention she's also been super clingy?). She's also terrified of the vacuum. Normally I try to wait until they're asleep, but we had a situation where they started eating old cheerios off the kitchen floor. I know they're all not fond of the vacuum, and they seemed uneasy while I sucked up the cheerios, but no screaming fits or anything. After I was done, I picked up Emma and she was just shaking. It's almost like she just hasn't been her normal bubbly self lately.

Julie says "diaper" pretty clearly now (and "poop," too - yes, I'm proud - although she hasn't used it in the correct context yet). It's so funny to listen to her babbling because sometimes I could swear that she's swearing at me. I know she's not, but I catch myself thinking, "WHAT did you just say?". 20 months old and almost swearing like a sailor.

Emma is trying to repeat lots of things I say to her, like "graham cracker." Or "Costco."

I think Becca is trying to say "Julie," but it kind of comes out like "JJ," so that has become Julie's nickname.

They all know that juice comes from the refrigerator.

Every time Emma says "juice" or "shoes," I swear it is sounding more and more like she's saying "duuuuuude."

They are moderately proficient with spoons, but don't get the idea of forks.

They (especially Becca at the moment) still love clothes and trying to put them on. Becca will get her arm through a couple of pieces - shirts, pants, dresses, doesn't matter - the more, the better - on an arm or leg. Emma, on the other hand, wants to put everything on like pants, including squeezing both legs through the neck hole of a shirt. Julie prefers wearing everything on her head.

I still can't get enough of them holding hands. Melts my heart. I hope I never get enough of it. No pictures yet, though, Beth. I'm working on it!

We've been burning through the strawberry buckets we repurposed for holding toys (and standing on, wearing as helmets, using as seats, using as carrying cases for our stuffed animals) so I got some super cheap $1 baskets from Target this week, and all they want to do is sit in them and be pulled around like race cars (or southern triplet sledding, if you remember those rubbermaid containers). But, like I said, they're super cheap and bending all over already. The girls don't quite fit in them without them bending. Becca tried flipping it over to sit on it, and started crying when it collapsed and she fell off ... twice. And I had to laugh into a pillow when I was home with Emma this week - she was getting in, but then sitting down kind of crooked - just crooked enough that every time she sat down, she tipped over. I probably need to invest in some sturdier bins. Of course, I don't know if anyone makes anything sturdy enough for my 3.

Julie also says "push" and is obsessed with belts lately - the kind that snap together on the high chair, changing table, or car seat. She wants to "push" the buckles together herself.

Exciting "me" news

I know this blog is now largely about the girls, but every now and then I get to remind myself that I am still useful as something other than an office-chair-holder-downer, diaper-changer, pink-eye-vigilante, chief-outfit-officer, etc.

So it's with great excitement that I can finally announce... I've been invited to be on the design team at Coordinates Collections! So, I'll be working with one of the kits each month (unless I can't help it and order both!) to create some projects and provide ideas on how the kits can be used. I'll also be running some of the online crops, and just helping out in general.



I found CC when I first really started scrapbooking in 2006, so it's my scrapbooking "home." The community there is my scrapbooking family, and the kits are incredibly versatile and flexible each month. I'm really looking forward to the new challenge.

I really had to take a break from scrapbooking when the girls were born ... but I never took a break from taking photos (ok, except when I dropped my camera on the concrete floor) ... uh, or from collecting scrap supplies. I've really been getting back into it for a few months now, and I think the break was good for me - refreshing, really. And I appreciate it a lot more now, after being away.

The Good, The Bad, and The Junkyosaurus

We went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner last Friday night, partly because we're out of ideas if they won't eat quesadillas anymore. Anyhow, it was actually a great, very family friendly experience. I was pleasantly surprised for a fast food restaurant. But people came around to see if we needed anything and refill our drinks and take our trash. Another family switched tables when we got there so that we'd have more room (and warned us that they had just super sanitized the play area because someone puked, not that we were going to let them out there yet anyway.) And we talked to a nice family next to us with older twins.

Greg took Julie swimming again on Saturday and said that she was starting to enjoy it more and get a little more comfortable. She still won't go to the teacher, and they haven't dunked her yet, but I think she'll be fine. I haven't taken Emma swimming again because she is terrified of the bath tub right now, and I can't understand. Just a couple of weeks ago, they fought over who got to go first ("bah? bah?"). But now she screams before she even gets in the water. I'm afraid our swimming trip scared her. She is scared of everything at the moment.

While Julie was swimming, Emma, Becca, and I went to Michael's, which was a bit of a disaster (but worth the 45% off albums and storage and my 50% coupon on an adhesive tape gun) because there's no such thing as a double cart at Michael's. I had to put Becca in the back of the tiny little cart, which left room for nothing else. They were throwing stuff out of the cart, so I was trying to hold stuff with one hand, and steer the tiny (now heavy) little cart with the other. Sigh. At least it was early enough that there were few witnesses.

We did make it to Costco next and survived that a little better. They had samples of gelato and sorbet that Emma was all over, but Becca wouldn't taste any more of after her first spoon of mango sorbet. I think she didn't like the cold.

Greg did some work in they yard in the afternoon. We've still got a round indentation where the above ground pool was (that we got rid of as soon as we moved in), so he was trying to level that and plant some grass seed. We're trying to catch up on house projects that are overdue. I'm tasked with checking prices of replacement windows. We'll be needing a roof soon, too. Lots of little things, and lots of big things.

On Sunday afternoon, we went apple picking again, with 2 wagons. All of the close-by trees are looking pretty empty, so we treked further than we ever have before, up and down big hills, and found lots of apples. It was certainly a work out!

The girls have only recently decided that they like apples again. Greg and I had picked a couple of apples on Sunday, and my back was turned for a minute. When I turned around, I saw this:

She had just reached into the bucket and helped herself.

Of course, then the others had to have some. Emma, going in:


Becca taking an almost-smile break:


What do you think, will this one be allowed to ride in the wagon with the basket of apples again?


She threw the exact same fit that Emma did when I had to take the basket of apples out of the wagon to put them in a bag.

This week has been pretty crazy so far. As I was putting Emma in the van to go apple picking, she had some junk in her eye that I just wiped out. She seemed ok while we were there, but it gunked up pretty good on the ride home... so I pretty much knew on Monday morning that she had pink eye. Again. Conjunctivitis. Or, Junkyosaurus as I like to call it. We started drops after a trip to the doctor. She still had some junk on Tuesday morning, so I stayed home with her again. On Tuesday afternoon, I noticed a huge swollen patch on her belly that basically looked like she had been attacked by a swarm of mosquitos. But it wasn't bothering her, and when I looked later, it was gone.

So, of course when she gets up on Wednesday morning, she's covered in welts ... arms, legs, back. But the ones that she woke up with were gone by the time we got to the doctor, and new ones had appeared. Apparently I've never seen hives before, because the doctor said that this was typical - the appearance, moving and disappearing. But he said the hives were most likely due to the virus that caused her pink eye... meaning she was still contagious and I had to keep her home again. It's been nice to really get to hang out one-on-one with her the past few days. She's been very clingy, and has been like my shadow. Thank goodness for a fairly flexible work situation.

Personality and Developmental Notes 9/19/10

Becca can reach the switches for the light and the fan from her crib now. We started finding the light on, thinking that Greg or I had turned it on.

Emma started insisting we play the "nap game" over the weekend. We had spread a blanket on the floor and Greg and I were laying down. Becca and Emma started bringing more blankets over and laying them on top of us. Then Emma sat in between us and patted (well, slapped really) our backs. If we tried to lift our heads up, she pushed them back down. (I'm a little disturbed by her pushing our heads down because I don't know where she's getting it from. Surely they're not pushing heads down at nap time at daycare, right?)

Emma and Julie say "door" and know what it is- car doors, house doors, etc. Emma says it with the same southern accent that she has for dog (dow-ug) ... "dough-uh.". Emma also says monkey - "moe mah."

Julie had a little situation at daycare on Monday where she stuck her hand into her dirty diaper. Nice. Then she got upset when the teacher told her she couldn't have "mah bay-uh" ("my bear," this little pink bear she carries around constantly) back because he needed to be washed. Anyhow, they changed her clothes and put a pair of jeans on her. It's the first time I've seen her in pants since the spring, and my goodness, her legs look long (and she's my shortest!) and she looks so old!

We've pretty much given up on the exersaucers and have moved to the high chairs for breakfast. Every morning, Emma stops when we are trying to get out the door to pick up cheerio crumbs off the floor and put them on the counter for me.

Julie bit Becca's arm pretty hard this week. Becca was sitting in Greg's lap and apparently Julie wanted to sit there and didn't want to share daddy with Becca. So she bit her. Julie is just a handful lately, with the hitting and the biting and the throwing things. One of the daycare teachers said Julie was sitting in her lap when another kid came over and wanted to sit in her lap, so Julie hit the kid. It's so hard to discipline her, because she either just laughs, or doesn't seem to understand that the punishment is a result of her behavior.

I'm noticing that the girls are scared of the cats. If Dusty is sitting on the stairs, they don't want to go up. On bath nights, sometimes one of the cats will sit outside the bathroom, and the girls won't go down the hall.

Becca slept in our bed one night last week after waking up with a dirty diaper (and really wanting to watch Leno). She has new morning tactics to wake us up, though. She used to just sit there and wait for us to wake up, but now she's like the cats - if she sees our eyes open up, she's all over it. She'll sit perpendicularly to you and put both feet on you and try to push you out of bed. She pulls the sheet off of me. She pulls up my shirt. She shoves her stuffed monkey in my face and makes kissing noises until I kiss it. And as much as it disrupts my sleep, I just love snuggling with her. Love how she curls up next to you.

Likes & Dislikes : Week of September 12

Likes

• The slide
• Potato skins with chicken, BBQ sauce, and mozzarella cheese
• Crispix cereal
• Climbing the stairs
• The corn popper toy

Dislikes

• Eating food that is different than mom and dad are eating
• Apple crisp
• Baths (E)

I've been feeling horribly worn out lately, like I'm just in a daze and trying to get through the day. I feel physically run down, mentally exhausted, and emotionally drained. I kind of feel like I've been run over by a truck. I just need a vacation ... hahahaha

The girls have been continuing to terrorize the fireplace, and I am at my wit's end. I am seriously about to buy them a big heavy kitchen play set to reward them for not listening. We did start using the pack and play for a thinking spot, and while they don't like being in there, I don't think they are getting that what they are doing is bad (although Emma has started trying to repeat me when I yell -- "BA!"). Now, if I'm in the kitchen and yell at Becca, she keeps banging on the doors until I have to go in there, and then she raises her arms to me to be picked up. It's kind of heartbreaking to know she's doing it for attention. To know that she thinks I'm not giving her enough.

Sigh.

Daycare drop offs are going down hill again. Because just starts screaming and bawling when we walk in the door of the room. Emma hangs on my legs and cries "mama mama mama" until one of her teachers rips her from my legs. Them she just keeps crying and reaching for me. (Surprisingly, Julie is ok at the moment.). It's killing me to leave them there anymore. The other kids there aren't doing this, which throws my "it's just this age" theory out the window.

I barely remember this past weekend. Greg took Julie to her first swimming lesson, and said she was ok only so long as he didn't try to let go of her. She wouldn't go to the teacher and had to be able to see Greg's face. I took Emma swimming on Sunday afternoon and she was pretty freaked out. Hopefully they will both warm up.

I think it was this past weekend that we all went to Atlanta Bread for dinner. It went fairly well. The girls each got their own spoon to eat some potato soup. It was pretty empty because we have to eat so early, so I was a bit annoyed when these women sat down close to us. Do I need to warn them? There are a ton of empty tables. But they were really nice and just wanted to sit next to us to admire the girls. They must have been on their best behavior, because the ladies stayed there the whole time.

I finally got around to making an apple crisp this week with some of the apples we picked over Labor Day weekend. It makes the house smell so good when it is cooking (especially when you are used to the smell of diapers).

One of our quick dinners involves a cheese/veg soup and some potato skins with chicken, BBQ sauce, and mozzarella cheese. I made the girls a really yummy (seriously I think it tasted better than what we ate) mush of potato, cheese, chicken, and pureed vegetables. They ate some of the mush, but really wanted to eat the potato skins. I hadn't planned on them eating them, but I think they ate more than Greg or I got. They continue to surprise me with their food choices. No one liked my apple crisp, either.

Emma has become terrified in the bath tub. I hope going to the pool didn't traumatized her. I think she doesn't like water on her head because washing her hair has been a struggle for a while now. But now she freaks out a minute or so after getting in, and just screams and stands up. I've been trying to do 2 of their baths at the same time, and her standing and yelling really complicates things.

9/15/10 10:55am

Location where the incident occurred: classroom
How did the injury occur? Julie tripped over a toy and fell and hit her head on the floor.
Part of body injured: head
Type of injury: bruise or swelling

No pictures of this one because by the time we picked her up, we couldn't see anything. But they said she had a pretty nice bump on her head.

Personality and Developmental Notes 9/12/10

Emma is testing the range of her voice lately, and likes to talk and growl in this low, deep voice. It's really funny to listen to her.

Becca still doesn't have as many words as Emma and Julie, but she talks just as much. She carries on conversations in her own little world.

The girls are all still in love with pictures of cats in books. They get all excited and shriek and point and then start kissing the pictures of cats. They like to find the cats on all of the pages of Goodnight Moon.

We saw some people out walking their dogs while we were getting in the car one morning, and all we kept hearing about was "dow-g?".

Emma likes to come in from outside, sit on the bottom step, and take her own shoes off and put them in the shoe bin one at a time. She's been big on picking things up off the floor of the van lately, too. Sometimes I ask her to pick stuff up for me and sometimes she just decides to do it herself. I swear, if she weren't so scared of the vacuum, I'd have her in training.

I took some of the girls, 12 month clothes in to give to one of their daycare teachers who has a baby, and the first thing she said was, "I didn't know The Children's Place had bags that big.". Um, yup.

Julie had been working on her duck walk, kind of squatting/hunching down while she walks. Becca's got something similar where she walks kind of bent forward, but wit her arms outstretched behind her, kind of like she's flying.

We've been letting the girls climb up the stairs at bed time. They love it! Late last week, Emma started actually walking up the stairs, not crawling. She was on the side without the railing, too, but she just kept leading with her left foot and getting herself up each stair without her hands on the ground.

I've purposely been trying to give them some more freedom lately to walk, say, from the kitchen out to the car in the morning by themselves. I think it makes Greg very nervous. :)

The girls understand when I ask them to hold hands. Usually I'll do it when I'm trying to get them both to go in the same direction, like from the living room to the kitchen. And they do it and walk into the kitchen so proud and it's all I can do to not die from the cuteness. They are starting to hug each other more, and kiss each other. Becca has been really big on hugs lately, and has started actually putting her arms around my neck to hug me.

Becca is also into things with layers right now - she loves to take a folded up blanket and unfold it by pulling apart the layers. She also likes to take stacks of papers and pull them apart (usually, their daily reports are stapled together and stuck in the bag with the sippy cups that Becca still insists on carrying. As soon as we get in the car, she pulls them out and starts pulling them apart.).

For some reason, they are very into running into the director's office at daycare when we're trying to leave each day. I guess they're too young for going to the principal's office to be a bad thing.

Likes & Dislikes : Week of September 5

I know, I know. I skipped last week. But I was running short on both time and ideas. We'll see if I can keep this up every week, or I'd I'll move to every other week or every month.

Likes

• String cheese, in stick form, not in string form
• Chili (j, r)
• Playing with boxes and packs of diapers
• Trying to drink from regular cups
• Eating yogurt with their own spoons (I load it with baby oatmeal to thicken it for them)
• Exploring (and by that I mean running away from me in public places)
• Sour cream

Dislikes

• The inflatable kiddie pool
• Quesadillas, all of a sudden (E, J)
• Being the last one in the car in the morning
• Sitting in any other car seat than the one all the way in the back (E)

Big Week

It was a weird sort of week here. We had good and bad moment. We had ordinary and extraordinary things going on. And I'm just exhausted.

The girls had their last EI session with Catie on Wednesday. Completely bittersweet. I loved that they enjoyed their time with her. I loved reading someone else's report about how wonderful they are. I loved that they were getting some really dedicated one-on-one time, because as much as we try, they don't always get enough of that. But, wow, how far we've come! The girls are right on track, and it seems like every where we go lately, people keep telling me how great and healthy they look. More than anything, I want them to be healthy and happy.

And the very next day after they graduated from early intervention, we went back to the hospital for the NICU reunion. The event itself was ok - kind of crowded, not much for toddlers to do, and we had really been hoping to see some familiar faces -- but symbolically, it was huge.

Huge.

We are so very grateful for the care and attention I got while I was pregnant, and the high level of care and love the girls got in the hospital. We went through so much fear and worrying, and we couldn't have imagined everything working out so well. Don't get me wrong - life's not perfect. But there is just so much that could have gone wrong. I can't even really think about it anymore.

So after this heartwarming event where the girls were so well behaved, we went out to Moe's for dinner, and it was just one thing after another. Becca did NOT want to sit in her high chair. Julie wanted to stand in hers. Emma wanted to spin 180 degrees in hers. Julie and Emma refuse to eat anything there but chips at the moment. Lots of screaming, throwing of food and sippy cups. A sympathetic woman offered me a beer on the way out and I told her I'd be needing more than one.

Normally we'd go out to dinner on Friday, but this week we decided it would be safer to stay at home.

The girls have been sleeping better with the help of some benadryl lately. Their noses had just been running nonstop (particularly Julie - we couldn't keep up with her drip), and they were all coughing all night long. They're sounding a lot better, so we'll take our chances tonight.

This week was also our cats' 4th birthday. They got lots of treats (tuna flakes and lettuce), so it wasn't really all that much different than a normal day. But we were reminded that we are very happy to have them in our lives. I really think it's true what they say about animals, how they can help lower your stress levels. I don't blog about them much anymore, and then tend to get whatever is left of me at the very end of the day, but we love them so much. Their personalities changed so much when the girls came home. Lefty used to be our social cat, but she wants nothing to do with the girls. Dusty was our stranger-phobic cat. When the girls first came home, Dusty was afraid of everything - she'd bat at everything and back away, not sure what was going to attack her and what was safe. When we were doing all of the late late late night feedings, Dusty would come in the room with us, just to keep tabs on everything. She's kind of become a mother cat - she wants to be around all of us, but she's a little scared of the girls still. But she will come into the living room if they're their (to get pet by us) and short of the 2 scratching events within 30 minutes of each other, she keeps enough distance from the girls to evade them.

EI Report 9/8/10

Rebecca
When EI came into the room, she came over and grabbed my hand to go play! Mr. Potato Head - She accurately places the eyes and ears on him. She gives him a "high 5" when he is all done. She also tries to put on his glasses. Legos - Rebecca would hand a lego to EI for her turn. When the tower fell over, she let out a big sigh. :)

Emma
She is so please with herself when going back into the room after EI. Legos - Emma worked hard building with large legos. EI encouraged her to say "up" when building higher and higher! Bowling - Emma would pick the pins up when EI would knock them down.

Julie
She was a giggle box today! She was laughing at everything! :) Legos - Julie would stand on her tip toes to reach to put on the next block. EI encouraged her to say "up" when building. Bowling - she would try and hold all the pins so EI could not knock them down with ball!

Labor Day Weekend

We went out to Moe's for dinner on Friday night and had our first "I don't want to leave" meltdowns. It wasn't too bad, mostly just what I like to refer to as the pink strike. You're holding their hand and walking, and they just stop and sit on the ground. It happens all the time on our way out of daycare. There was a bit if yelling involved, too, partly because I sat them on regular chairs when we were trying to put the high chairs away, and they love sitting on chairs and did not want to get down. They were ok by the time we got to the car.

Julie and Greg were supposed to start swimming lessons this week, but it got canceled, so we did our first family Costco run in a while on Saturday morning. The girls sampled some chewy granola bars and liked them. Can you believe we bought everyone winter gloves while we were there. The girls' match mine.

The weather has just been so nice lately. Greg says he can tell a difference in the humidity levels because he's had to pull out the chap stick again. Anyhow, since swimming was canceled, we took the girls to the park on Saturday morning (and ran into another mom of multiples) and they had a blast. Emma and Becca both took almost identical spills where they took steps down that they thought they could make. Emma and Becca are loving the slides right now. We are working on getting them to sit on the slide. There's a slide that you have to step up maybe 2" to get into, and they can't figure out how to sit down once they get in. A few times, Emma pretty much walked and tumbled down the slide. Becca tended to get her feet caught under her and do some sideways tumbling. Julie, in the meantime, is much more interested in collecting pieces of mulch and carrying them around in her fists.

Aunt Jen and Uncle Elliott came to visit us over Labor Day weekend. I think we showed them a crazy, er, I mean, a good time. We went out for pizza on Saturday night, and for the first time in a long time, the music man wasn't there, so we had to make due with the 80s XM channel.

On Sunday afternoon, we went apple picking again. It was another gorgeous day, and the place was packed. We brought both wagons this time, and luckily there was more riding than pulling. After a little while, Emma ended up in my wagon with the basket of apples. She got VERY upset when we had to take the basket inside and put all of the apples in a bag. She was ok when she got the big bag of apples back, and then we also got a small bag on another variety. She was diligently taking the apples out of the bag, and putting them back in. We let the girls run around for a bit, but Emma DID NOT want to get out of the wagon. She wanted to stay with her apples. She also got very upset when Julie came over and wanted to play the "taking the apples out of the bag and putting them back in" game.
E and the basket


J, more interested in taking shoes off and putting them back on.


R


E and the apple game


Monday morning brought another trip to the playground. Lots and lots of sliding (and some more mulch collecting).
J and Dad


J


E


E, sliding!


Getting ready for another slide


Sweet R


Mulch? For me? Really?


E trying out the other slide


R and Aunt Jen


R, balancing


I put some ribs on to cook for dinner, so we stayed around the house during the afternoon. We pulled out the water table and let the girls run around the back yard for a while. We also got out a small inflatable pool that my parents had brought down, but they wanted nothing to do with getting in the pool. They always fight over the little "cup" that came with the water table, so I had the brilliant idea of getting them some plastic solo cups. So now I have an afternoon of pictures of my kids looking like they're at their first keg party. Yeah, they started trying to drink out of the cups more than anything.

E


R


J


J


R


Attempt at a group pic

J dumping water

Another attempt at a group pic, but I kinda like how this one came out.

What's that, daddy?

Woulda been cute except for that water drop on the lens.

The ladies


We did have ribs for dinner on Monday night, and they turned out really well! Our last experience with ribs was pretty bad, because I didn't know what I was doing. But I think we've got it down now. Becca and Julie just inhaled them. I think the two of them got more than Greg and I got, since we fed them first. I was telling Greg that I always used to look for the small packages of meat at the grocery store, and I've got to start looking for the bigger ones.

We've had a hard time getting back into the swing of things this week. I crashed in bed at 7:30 on Tuesday night. I was up and down all night. The long weekend just wore me out. Sigh. I'm thinking of trying to schedule myself a vacation day to mentally try to catch up.

Personality and Developmental Notes 9/6/10

Julie loves to say "ball" ("baaawwww") and we are starting to be able to distinguish it from a new word, "bowl" ("bowwwww").

Julie and Emma were trying to say "banana" ("nah nah") at dinner last week. Emma recognizes bananas by name in a book.

Julie seems to be starting to combine two words. Unfortunately, one of the words is usually "mine."

A few months ago, we saw Becca doing the sign for "more" - pointing at her palm. We hadn't seen it again until a week or so ago when they all started doing it and saying "more" ("mow"). They also like to point at their high chair trays and say "mow," as if to say "This is where the food goes."

They are really doing well with the spoons, just still having a hard time getting the food onto the spoon. (No problem getting it off the spoon, though.) Sometimes they will pick up food with their hands and put it on the spoon. One time, we didn't give them spoons for something, and Emma was really whiny and wouldn't eat until we gave her a spoon.

The girls have pretty much outgrown the exersaucers. We've been using them exclusively for week day breakfasts for the last 6 months or so, but we're about to give them up altogether. Part of the reason we're giving them up is that they girls are getting too big for them. They could probably get out of them if they wanted to. But, we also recently moved the pack-n-play out of the living room, once the outgrew the changing table max weight. This has left the fireplace doors exposed ... and it has been a constant battle. The handles are zip-tied closed, but they can still rattle, shake, and bang on the glass. (We'll be asking Santa for a kitchen set to cover this again. We were hoping to make it to Christmas, but we might have to call in a Santa favor because Greg and I are going crazy.) Playing with the fireplace is the only thing we've had to put them in the "thinking chair" for, but they the other girls cry because they just love chairs right now. We are going to try pulling the pack-n-play back out and using it for a "thinking spot,' but the only place we can put it is the place that is currently occupied by 3 exersaucers, so it's time to give them up.

Punishment has been a particular challenge lately. They don't seem to respond when we sound mad or yell at them to stop, and they don't even really seem to understand when they are being punished, or for what. I'm trying to avoid hitting them... I don't want to do it, and I don't want to do it because *I'm* mad. I'm at a loss.

Emma knows that the horse says "nayh." All of the girls have picked up fish noises, too, which has to have come from daycare because I don't know that I could have come up with a fish "sound" if I tried. But they make these cute kissing noises.

The girls LOVE to play airplane with daddy. Whenever they catch him laying down on the floor, they actually start a line. And once their turn is over, they get back in line.

They are starting to want to wipe their own mouths. For some reason, I tend to notice them wanting to do it more when we're out somewhere. It might be that we're more likely to give them dry napkins if we're out. At home, we wet them first, and they hate face/hand clean up time. They do like getting to run their hands under the tap after a particularly messy meal. I did get Emma to wipe some milk up off the floor a couple of weeks ago, and if you give her the wet paper towels after a meal, she'll start wiping her tray (and then her mouth... nice, I know). If all goes as planned, I'll have them doing all the housework in another year or two.

Emma calls bibs "bibby" right now.

We've been letting the girls in the kitchen a bit more, and at some point, I had all three of them around while I was getting a meal ready. Emma saw that I was putting stuff in their bowls, and she was hungry. I had my back turned, and heard a crash - she was trying to pull the high chairs out and it fell over. She was fine - it just scared her (and me).

They are really starting to go into "helper" mode... Becca gives out toys when her sisters are upset. I was trying to get the girls out the door last week and Julie's sippy cup tipped over on her exersaucer as I was getting her out. Emma stopped, stood it back up, and kept walking for the door.

Julie loves ducks. For a few days, she was carrying around this little duck puzzle piece. She just keeps things balled up in her fist and carries them around all day. (When we go to the playground, she constantly has a handful of mulch.) Then, she found this little maybe 4" tall promotional Aflac duck. She just carries it around constantly, and we let her take it to bed now, too. The other girls already seem to know that it is hers. It used to say "Aflac," but just today I noticed that it has stopped talking. Probably a good thing.

Emma can put on her own shoes now. She doesn't always get the right feet, and she blows a gasket if she has a shoe on and you take it off.

EI Report 9/1/10

Julie
Julie point to ball, duck, cat when EI asked to show her. She named "cat" on numerous pages. Bells - EI would sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and she would shake the bells - she wore the bells during the rest of the visit. :) Stuffed dog - EI would ask her where his body parts were and she would point to her own. She would show me her feet!

Rebecca
Pointing to pictures - shoes, cat, keys. Puzzle - she does great with transportation puzzle - she would turn the pieces until fits correctly (no handles). Play phone - EI would ring phone and she would pick up and put to her ear and say "hey." :)

Emma
Pointing to pictures - cup, duck, shoes, spoon, bib, socks, cat. She said "ball" when looking at them on her own. Bean bags - Emma would throw in bowl. EI would have her imitate motions - put on head, put on tummy. She liked the head - she thought it was funny. :)

9/1/10 9:15am

Location where the incident occurred: Classroom
Equipment involved: Chair
How did the injury occur? Emma was walking and tripped over a toy and hit the corner of the chair.
Part of body injured: Corner of eye (left)