Making cards for Daddy

David's birthday is coming up this weekend and I tried to find him a card from the kids when I was shopping for a card from me and I came up with nothing. I HATE shopping for cards. I never can find one that says anything interesting. Or I'm just not good at it.

 

Anyway, so I ditched the plan for a cute Hallmark card and decided to have them make their own. That's what you get to do when you're a kid, right? Homemade gifts!

 

So after work/school yesterday, I set their table up in the living room and let them pick out what color of paper they wanted and handed them a few crayons.

 

 

Chloe was content and probably would have colored and watched cartoons until it was time to eat dinner. But Connor was over it after a few seconds.

 

 

Then they started fighting over the crayons and paper so we headed outside to take a few pictures for a back up plan for the card. And I actually got some really good ones! I'm not going to post all of them yet because I'm not sure if I'm going to use one for a card for David or not and I don't want him to see it yet.

 

It started out like this...Connor ran and sat in Chloe's chair and that upset her. She is very in to what is hers and what is Connor's. She goes around and says "Sister's Chair" or "Bubba's Chair", or points to something and says "Sister's" or "Bubba's".

 

 

But after we got over this, I actually got them to BOTH look at the camera AT THE SAME TIME and SMILE!

 

 

I'm not sure how this happened, but I just started making all kinds of loud funny noises and talking in weird ways and they were cracking up. I swear I do this every time though! But something about my act today really got them going!

Lake Eufaula

This weekend, we went to Lake Eufaula to visit Papaw and GiGi. Connor and Chloe LOVED riding on the boat and playing in the water. Watching Papaw get the boat out and hooked up.

 

They had so much fun driving the boat!

They preferred to play in the bucket that we wash our feet off in rather than playing in the lake.

 

Connor ended up laying down and taking a little nap in the boat but Chloe refused to miss anything that was going on.  She stayed awake all day except for falling asleep for about 5 seconds while we were riding on the boat.  She was exhausted by the time we left to go home and was asleep within a few minutes.

Woohoo!

Day of Fun

The school was closed unexpectedly on Monday because of a water main break. So I took a vacation day from work and just enjoyed my kids (and pretended I was a stay at home mom!).

 

We got up early(just like every day!), and ate breakfast and then got ready to go to the park. I knew it was going to get up to at least 100 degrees that day, so I wanted to beat the heat and play outside early and play inside in the afternoon. That turned out to be a horrible plan! It was like 90 degrees and 100% humidity at 9:00 am! So we didn't play for very long.

 

Chloe loves doing down the slide. By the way, it's extremely hard to focus on getting my camera settings right and watching 2 wobbly toddlers run around on a toy that seems as tall as a mountain!

 

Connor just runs back and forth across the bridge.

 

After sweating it out on the playground, we headed for the swings.

 

 

It was SO hot! All I could think about was jumping into a pool! But after deciding that I wasn't sure if I could handle both kids in a real pool all by myself, we opted for blowing up the kiddie pool on the back porch.

 

Chloe figured out how to put the fish on the fishing pole, so I would tell them to go fishing and she would put a fish on.

 

I'm not sure if she is worried that Connor will take all the toys away from her (because he usually does) or what, but Chloe has starting showing signs of hoarding! She will grab as many toys as she can hold and either just carry them around or put them in her shopping cart and push them around.

 

 

After swimming, we ate lunch, the kids napped while I did some things around the house and then we watched movies and played inside until it was time for dinner. They played together REALLY good and I just sat back and enjoyed watching them play.

1/2 Birthday Celebration

Chloe and Connor turned 18 months last Friday, so we decided to have a mini 1/2 birthday celebration with cupcakes.

 

We taught them how to fist bump or give knuckles and they think it's hilarious. Here they are giving knuckles to each other, like they're saying "Happy half birthday to you!"

 

Before bed, we settled in for a movie. This has become our nightly routine on the weekends. They are really starting to get in to the movies.

 

I told them to take their binks out so I could take their picture and this is what I got.

 

It must have been some kind of half birthday miracle that I got a picture of both of them looking at the camera AND smiling! Yes, they have binks in their mouths, but I will take it!

 

Yes, I told them to hold hands. I tell them to hold hands all the time and they only listen maybe 2 out of 10 times. But isn't this just the sweetest. We're also trying to get them to hug each other good night. Hopefully it will help out with the fighting? Not really sure. I'm just making this whole parenting twins thing up as I go!

18 Months!

My babies are 1 and a half today!!! I can't believe it! I tried to have a photo shoot this morning before school/work, but I wasn't very successful.

 

 My darling little Chloe was all about it. I asked her after breakfast if she wanted to go outside and take some pictures and she very happily nodded!

 

 Connor is a different story. He couldn't understand why we weren't getting into the car to leave. He also didn't want to sit down anywhere and was too distracted by all of the cars driving out of the neighborhood leaving for the day.

 

 

And when I did finally get him to look at the camera, Chloe wasn't looking and was out of focus anyway!

 

Connor:

He is my big Momma's Boy! He loves his momma and doesn't want to share me with anyone!

  He waves "bye bye" to everyone, even if no one is leaving.

He nods his head "yes" to almost every question I ask him.

He is starting to repeat more words and surprises me all the time with what he says.

He's starting to give more kisses to everyone.

He has started telling us when he has gone potty in his diaper. He will grab his diaper and say "uh oh".

We have said "all done" and done the sign for it ever since the babies started eating solids in their highchairs, but for some reason, Connor has just now picked up on it and says "all done" and does the sign when he is finished with something.

He is outgoing and will wave to people but then gets shy when they wave back. He will smile and try to hide his face.

 

Chloe:

 

She is starting to fight for my attention.

She follows Connor around everywhere but then gets her feelings hurt if he pushes her away. It's so sad!

She nods "yes" to almost everything but you can tell when she really means yes because it will be an excited nod.

She is a little momma and loves babies and stuffed animals. Recently I thought we weren't going to make it out of the doll section at Target alive! She kept saying "Baby! Baby! Baby!" Toy shopping is getting harder to do with them!

She can point out a lot of the animals in their animal picture book and knows most of the sounds they make.

She is very content entertaining herself most of the time.

She still has an internal alarm clock that wakes her up at 6:00 am every morning, no matter what time she goes to bed.

Connor isn't mean to his sister all the time. Sometimes he just goes up to her and hugs her out of the blue and I was lucky enough this morning to catch him trying to give her a kiss.

 

Our schedule at 18 months goes like this:

Weekdays:I get ready before I wake the kids up.

 

6:00am: I get Chloe up (she's usually awake anyway, just sitting in her bed). I get a few minutes of snuggles in with her before I get her dressed.

 

6:10am: Get Connor up. He's a little harder to wake up because he is NOT a morning baby. I get a few minutes of cuddle time with him while he watches cartoons and tries to wake up. Then I get him dressed.

 

6:20am: I make them breakfast while David puts them in their high chairs.

 

6:30am: This is the time I'm supposed to leave for work, but that rarely happens.

 

6:45am: I leave for work.

 

7:00am: David takes the kids to school.

 

4:30pm: I pick the kids up from school and we go home and play a little before I try to figure out what to feed everyone.

 

5:30pm: I started dinner. I usually feed the kids between

 

5:30-6:00 so we have a little play time with Daddy before bath time.

 

6:30-7:00pm Bath

 

7:30pm: Start heading to bed.

They are so good about bedtime. I wouldn't say that we are lucky with this because it was work to get here. But we started a bedtime routine way in the beginning so the transition to getting toddlers to go to bed hasn't been that difficult.

We usually watch Little Einsteins while we put their jammies on and then snuggle up on the couch until it's over. Then we say "Ok, are you ready for bed?" Connor will usually nod "yes" and Chloe says "no" in a sweet little voice. But we ignore that and start gathering up binkies and blankies and we all walk down the hall to their room.

We put them in their beds, give kisses and say night night and I turn on a mobile that I have turned on since the beginning and we walk out of the room and close their door. Most of the time, they fall asleep within 15 minutes, but if they don't, they either just lay there and play with their blankies or whatever little toy they have in their cribs or jabber to themselves and eventually fall asleep. It's all very painless, but there are a few nights every once in a while when one of them is wound up and it takes a little more to get them to settle down.

Then David and I either catch up on housework/yard work or just sit down and clean out the DVR and are in bed by 10:00 so we can get up VERY early and do it all over again.

 

The weekends go almost the same way since Chloe wakes up at 6:00 am but a lot of the time she will fall back asleep if we don't go in there and get her up immediately. We call ourselves lucky if we make it to 7:30 without having to get out of bed. And on the weekends, we're a little more laid back about the schedule and what time they go to bed. I think we keep hoping that if we keep them up a little later, that they will sleep in a little more. Never happens though.