Hello world.

We are, in fact, alive and well.  I can't believe it's been a month since my last blog post.

I started going to the gym again about a month ago, and I think that's eaten into my blog time.  By 9pm, I can barely keep my eyes open.

I was already a month behind, and now another month has passed.   Because I was so far behind, I was getting frustrated trying to remember all the crazy stories that went along with the pictures - - and that was a big reason for me to keep up with the blog.  I'm not sure yet how I want to catch up.

Bear with me.

In the mean time, here's a picture from dessert last night.

Ladies Weekend

Back in February, we sent Greg away for a weekend to go skiing, and had a crazy ladies weekend.

After dinner on Friday, we went in search of some more of these Disney MagiClips dolls.  (You can see the package for Merida on the table with Emma and her doughnut.)  We got a few of the mini princess dolls for Christmas, but they came with rubber clothes... which a) tear, and b) the girls' cant put on themselves.  But the MagiClips?  The dresses are kind of like clothespins.  You squeeze the bottom of the dress, and just stick the doll in.  Magic, indeed.

Anyhow, we picked up some doughnuts for dessert back at home.

On Saturday, I took the girls to the Children's Museum.  Had to stop for coffee on the way.  Turned around in the drive through line, and this is what I see.  I probably should have just turned around and gone home.

Uh, that's a lot of fiber, Bec.

Climbing.

Pulling herself up.  That's a giant stomach behind her, in case you were wondering.  We got close enough to look inside, and someone went down the little slide, but all of the "stomach noises" freaked Julie out and she wouldn't go near it.

Balance beam.

Working together on a puzzle.

Taking care of (?) a teddy bear.

Cruising around on crutches.

Teamwork, once the boys finally got out of their way.

Love the looks on Julie's face in these two.

We also tackled Valentine's Day cards this weekend, which seemed like a good idea at the time.  I found this idea on Pinterest, and it seemed easy enough.  (The purple was a different brand of paint, and sometimes it would make a "bubble" to actually fill in the heart shape, which was pretty cool.)

The problem I quickly ran into was that they were producing much faster than I could find drying space...  and they each made 25-30...

So, um, yeah.

And then I started worrying about the cat stepping in wet paint.  (All water-based, but still.  A mess I really didn't want.)

And of course, all worth it in the end.

Birthday Miracle #2

Randomly, in the middle of the week before their birthday, Becca decided she wanted to wear underwear to bed.  Never one to back down from a challenge, Emma declared that she didn't need a diaper, either.  And Julie, as usual, was happy with things just the way they are and wanted to keep her diaper, thank you very much.

Becca didn't make it more than a few hours, after several attempts, is back in pull ups.  Every week or so, she will try again, but without much success yet.

Emma, though, pretty much flipped a switch.  We knew she'd pee in her diaper while she was still awake because she was just too lazy to go to the bathroom.  But with the underwear now, she rarely has an accident.

So, after three nights in a row of waking up dry, I took Emma out for a "big girl" morning.  We went for doughnuts.

Then we went to Toys R Us to get a big girl present.  She chose this Cinderella carriage.

And just how jealous were her sisters?  Not jealous enough to stay dry through the night.  But this picture was after Julie wiped Emma's nose because she was doing whatever she thought it would take to get a turn at that carriage.

Thanksgiving '12

So, the only photos I have from Thanksgiving this year are from going our for donuts in the morning.

I saw this picture of Julie and it immediately made me think of the pictures of her from back in the NICU - - same wrinkly forehead.

Looks like fun, right?  But of course there was drama.  Mommy only let them get one bottle of chocolate milk to share (because I'm tired of throwing out milk), and Emma got pissed when someone finished it.  Greg had to take her out to the car because she was so upset.  In fact, she was so upset she didn't finish her donut.

The rest of Thanksgiving was pretty quiet.  The girls actually watched a good chunk of the Macy's parade.  They're not used to watching tv with commercials, so they kept asking "Is this the parade?"

I did actually make a turkey and a few side dishes, but nothing major.  Which is good, because of course the girls didn't eat it.  Becca kept asking me all week "Are we going to have turkey with eyes?"  She was really concerned that our turkey was going to have eyes, and she kept saying she didn't want to eat it.

We stayed here for Thanksgiving this year, and in the end, I think it was kind of lonely.  We did a bunch of fun stuff over the weekend, but we really missed our families.

Donuts

This all started last Friday afternoon.  I wanted to stop for coffee on the way home from picking them up from daycare.  I told them they could get donuts for a snack.  So we get to Dunkin Donuts, and they literally had like 4 donuts left.  None of them had sprinkles, and therefore just wouldn't do.  But when I told them they didn't have donuts?  Oh, they wailed.  Emma was the worst, practically moaning "donuts .... donuts...  donuts..."  We stopped at McDonalds instead to get a frozen strawberry lemonade, which made it only slightly easier to swallow the tears.

I told them we could go get donuts for breakfast sometime over the weekend, so on Sunday morning, we went to Krispy Kreme.  We got a dozen donuts and sat down.

I opened the box.

Do you see the problem here?

Mama ordered the chocolate iced donuts without the sprinkles.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  I thought they were going to revolt.

Greg went back and ordered three more donuts WITH sprinkles.  And peace was restored.

So, um, then, they finished their donuts with sprinkles.  And wanted another donut.

And suddenly those chocolate iced donuts without the sprinkles?  Why, they were perfectly adequate.

Crazy ladies.

Special Days

I took July 5 and 6 as vacation days, partly because I wanted a break and partly because I've guilted myself into thinking that part of the reason why the girls' behavior is so bad lately is that they get almost no "alone" time with us.

I kept Julie home on Thursday, and when I asked her what she wanted to do, she said she wanted to go see fish.

Go see fish.

I had no idea what she meant.

So, we went to Petco.  We looked at the fish, the ferrets, the birds, the frogs.  But do you know what her favorites were?  The mice.  Gives me the chills just thinking about it.  But she stood there watching them and narrating forever.

After that, I figured she needed a few suggestions for things to do.  So we walked through REI where she got a huge kick out of the bikes hung from racks - they were "upside down."  We walked around the craft store for a bit.  Then, she wanted to go to the burrito house for lunch.

I took her to Chipotle and got her a taco, and she went on and on about how good it was.  "This is delicious!  It has all my favorites!"  And when she tells the story, she likes to say, "And I had two drinks!" because we were carrying around a sippy cup with water that day, and I wanted to refill it before we left.  Apparently, a sippy cup + apple juice box = most awesome lunch ever.  She also was excited about the bag of chips.  She insisted on saving it to share with her sisters and her dad.

After lunch, we went to the bookstore to play with trains.  She said she wanted a train book, so I coaxed her in to The Little Engine that Could.  We went and got some ice cream, did a little more shopping for something for the wall for their room.  And then we headed home for a nap.

For Rebecca's day, I took her to Krispy Kreme first.  The first thing she wanted was a hat, and two for her sisters.  Then she declared that I must wear a hat.

For her, anything.

I talked her in to going to the other craft store with me, where she picked out little wooden birdhouses for herself and her sisters.  She started trying to get me to buy everything.  I talked her out of the package of stickers that she wanted that said "pregnant," but did let her pick out some flowers for her outdoor play house.

Next, she wanted to go bounce.  Luckily for me, she got bored with it after about an hour.

For lunch, she wanted to go to the chicken nugget house.  I tried really hard to make this be Chick-fil-a, but when we got there, she said, "No, the chicken nugget house with the tree in it."  I'm still not sure what this meant - if one of them has a tree in the play area or what - but she was satisfied with McDonalds.  After we ate, she played in that play area for a while, and then, even though it was 100 degrees out, she insisted she wanted to go to the playground.  I told her we could go for a little while, but then we'd have to go home and take a nap.  She agreed.  Of course, by the time we got to the park, she was sound asleep.

She woke up as soon as we got home, but we put on some Mickey Mouse Club House and crashed on the couch.

Greg stayed home on Monday and kept Emma home.  She spent all weekend planning her special day. She wanted to bounce, too, but apparently they got there before it opened.  So they stalled by going to Walmart.  She got bored of bouncing after not too long, and wanted to go to the park.  All weekend, she had been planning to go to the macaroni and cheese house (Panera) for lunch.

They went to the book store, too, and came home with what Emma calls her "favorite book," a Max and Ruby book with flaps, about costumes.

Definitely want to do more of this in the future.  It's so hard to find alone time with them, and I think it's really important, for them and for us.

Random Bits from Last Weekend

The girls really wanted to go to the hardware store with daddy (he's building book shelves for their room... pictures when it's done), and I wasn't sure I want to go to Costco on my own with three yelling "I need to go potty!", so we did a family trip to take care of both.

Emma about threw a fit when we got to Lowe's and we didn't get a shopping cart.  I had to buy her off with the little pull carts that they have now.  They're perfect for the toddler size.

We went out to dinner that night, and the girls essentially had corn bread, mac and cheese, and sweet potato for dinner.

Of course, it wasn't without drama...  Julie was carrying a styrafoam cup of lemonade back to the table when she essentially walked into a wall, fell, busted the cup, and was then screaming, wet, and sticky. 

Awesome.

And then you know what I did?  I forced Becca to use the potty in the restaurant.  She's got this terrible fear (that I later finally heard her say was a fear of "falling in") of potties other than the one at one or the portable one in the car.  First I just convinced her to come in the stall with me, and by "convinced," I mean that I carried her in.  

And then, it was all about the bribes.  We had some coupons for free doughnuts that we were going to use, and I told her the only way to get a doughnut was to use the potty.  If anyone else had been in the bathroom, I don't know that I would have wrestled with her.  But once I got her on the toilet and held on to her, she was fine.  And then she was all, "That wasn't so bad!"  "I told you I could do it!"  A small victory.

And of course Krispy Kreme was packed.  We waited in line for probably half an hour.  At that point, we couldn't leave without Becca's reward doughnut.

No sprinkle (or chocolate frosting) left behind!

Ladies Day

Last week, I took a day off from work and we had a ladies day.  In the morning, we went to a moms of multiples play date at Krispy Kreme.

making their cheese faces

Then, like everyone does on a good Ladies Day, we went to Target.  For new toothbrushes.  Julie picked out "Tigger the Tiger" and Emma and Becca picked princess (sigh) toothbrushes.  

It was way past nap time by that point, but I decided to push it and went into JoAnn's.  Oh, what a bad idea.  They were AWFUL.  Running all over the store screaming.  And I only have two hands.  They were quite a spectacle.  I tried to ignore it, I tried threatening ("Do you want to go out to lunch or not?"), I tried dragging Becca toward the front of the store with Julie following screaming only to get to the front of the store and find out I had no idea where Emma was.  It was bad.  So bad that the lady in front of us in line to checkout let us go ahead of her.  And then, at the checkout, Emma runs out the door.  I almost lost it.  Luckily, she ran right back in the entrance door and back around to the registers.  But oh was I mad.  In the end, I knew they were tired.  I knew they needed a nap.  Lesson learned.

We did go out to lunch, and then headed home.  They were asleep in the car within about 10 minutes.

Catching up, part 2

On the way home from Zoo Atlanta, we stopped at Archivers, and by then it was time for dinner.  And then it was time for dessert.  I can't remember the last time we had Krispy Kreme, but there it was...

Becca decided to eat around the outside of the doughnut.