2 Month Well Child

Poor little guy sleeping it off with his big boy band aids on

A real nursery, finally!

My hunky chunk tipped the scales on Monday morning at his appointment with a whopping 15 lbs, 10z!  He's in the 97% for weight, 95% for head circumference, and 87% for length which was 23.25".  I think it's all the ice cream and frozen yogurt I'm eating and putting into his breast milk. Mr. C. also impressed me on Sunday and Monday nights by sleeping 10 hours!  He'd been sleeping 7-8 hours since July 4 (which I was happy with) when we put him in his own room, but I certainly wasn't expecting 10.  He snapped me back into reality this morning, not once, but twice - at 1am and 5 am, so I guess it was a fluke.  Ah, well.  At least I have a taste of what life - okay, sleep- will be like again soon. 

Liz's Awesome Photos

I've got this amazing twin mom friend, Liz, whose name I'm using because I'm showing you some awesome photos she took of our boys back in May.  (The delay in sharing them is my responsibility alone.  SHE is professional and on-time, much UNlike my blogging!)  You can see Liz' work at http://lizsiebenalerphotography.com/. It's beautiful!

I'm also going to brag on ANOTHER twin mom friend, Erin, whose handiwork is modeled by my little Mr. C. in the last photo.  Her small business is called Marigold Baby, and you can see HER work at http://www.etsy.com/shop/MarigoldBaby. Also? Beautiful!

I've got some VERY talented friends, no? 

In no particular order, here are the best of the bunch.  Thank you, Liz and Erin, for making my kids look so fantastic!  Now I have to go feed Mr. Hungry, who got his two month immunizations today, but now you'll have to wait for those (not as awesome) snapshots.  Enjoy!!

Catch Up!

Whoo-wee!  Do I have a lot of blogging to catch up on or what?  Having a third child just does not lend itself well to large chunks of free time for uploading photos and blogging.  That's why you've been getting lame-o iphone posts with poor grammar and punctuation and lousy photos.  But something for the clamoring public is better than nothing, I figure.

I know, I know, you're not exactly clamoring.  But you probably would like some decent - or halfway decent - photos.  So here are a few shots taken two weeks ago (sheesh!) at Delta's annual family picnic day (or whatever they called it).  It was quite a spectacle, complete with multiple food vendors, a beer truck - which we skipped of course but is worth mentioning because it was a beer semi with TAPS on the outside of the truck!  I thought it was pretty neat, despite totally NOT being into beer.  Anyhow, we spent most of our time at the kiddie playland which had a dozen or more blow up thingys to climb and bounce on.  But first we toured the airport snowplow on display, which I also thought was pretty stinking cool!  So did Daddy and N, but not so much M....

Up, up...

and away!

Can you see them both in there?

I do not like this, Dad-I-Am. 

But I do!!

Here is where we begin the fun bouncy house type things.  It wasn't until we were leaving I saw the back end of the first one, a dragon, where the kids slide out of a hole right beneath his tail.  Yeah, you read that right.

You're gonna be dragon poop, kids.  Don't be afraid.

They liked climbing this one, despite appearances.

This is worth including because it's proof they can wait in line.

I'm not even sure what this was, but N loved it.

Whee!

M IS having fun being trapped in a giant netted bounce house with strange large kids, I swear he is.

Kemps' itty bitz ice cream was a blast from the past, when we could only get Dippin Dotz at Cedar Point. 

Stand by the tire! Turn around! Smile! 

because this will be a cool picture, doggone it.

It was a family fun day on the airport grounds, and I'm sure they will be looking for the bounce houses when we fly out again in a couple of weeks, next time we head up to the airport.

Stay tuned for some very recent snapshots and some excellent portraits.

Potty training update

I'm a master chart maker. Not really, but I've heard sticker charts work so I made two. The green one for N has two goals: make pee pee on the toilet ring and make poo on the toilet ring. I knew he could do the first, so he'd earn stickers for it, but old habits die hard and he still goes "standing down" if I don't strongly encourage otherwise. That means straddling the commode backward and naked, which was a great trick to get him to go on it at all 6 months ago, but I'm sick of stripping nude, especially in public, and especially for false alarms. After two days, he's earned 6 stickers so we are making progress toward the ice cream he chose as his reward. The second goal? Not even the iPad games reward he chose can convince him it's worth it to make number 2 on the loo. But at least he'sitting on the potty facing forward so maybe that will help? M was copying N's "standing down" behavior which really made me batty, so his first goal is to go standing up, which he can do and N totally refuses to do which explains the goals. He's doing well and has also earned 6 stickers toward ice cream. His second goal is to keep underpants dry all day, which he was already doing. I'm trying to reinforce good behavior. He probably doesn't need sticker rewards as much because he's intrinsically motivated to do these things but I'm hoping that his enthusiasm (he really loves the stickers) will rub off on N.We are 6 solid months into potty training. I think I can safely say that M is trained. Not nighttime of course. I'm not going to go there for a long time. I'd say N is 40% trained. He will pee if I take him in there and is more cooperative about it, but if I am busy or forget, he just goes in the pull up. And he's in a pull up becaus of the poo issue, which now is random and often multiple times a day, not to mention quite...manly? Let's stop there. I also ditched the little potties, they've been cluttering my bathrooms and I detest cleaning the man-poo out of them. The boys hardly blinked when I told them they were gone because they are three years old now. You just never know what's going to be acceptable (removing the potties) or unacceptable (putting the wrong color lid on a sippy cup). Two days into my second attempt at sticker charts and it's going ok. I didnt tell you about the first because it was not very successful. If you don't hear anything, just say a prayer because it probably means we have stalled out again. It took a long time to recover from the regression caused by baby brother's arrival.Speaking of, he's rivaling the brothers for nasty poos! This morning's blowout was the end of a certain sleeper, and I'm moving him up to size 3 as soon as this box of 2's is used up. Tomorrow is his two month appointment where he gets his shots:( poor buddy.

Our Life in Eggs

Twins and a singleton. Meant to be.

Independence Day

Nothing says independence like moving a baby out of your room! On his 8 week birthday C got his nursery. It was more than just taking down the pack and play, though. It involved moving a lot of furniture and clothes, much cleaning, and two trips to Target for the highly anticipated new alarm clock. M has been Occupying Nursery Street for 6 months in an attempt to get the boys to sleep. It mostly worked but created the nursery issue. So C was with us for exactly 8 weeks. Which was 7 weeks, 6 days longer than we shared a room with the twins! Several things convinced us it was the right time to tackle the move:
1. C grunts. Like a little piglet. All night.
2. He is over the max weight limit of 15 lbs for the bassinet. And I'm breaking my back lifting him in and put of that!
3. M has asked several times to move back in with N.
4. Hubs had the 4th off to move heavy stuff.
5. It was literally 100 degrees outside so we had to keep the kids inside anyhow.
6. He's sleeping about 6 hours now so I only nurse him once around 3 or 4 am.
How did the first night go? In a word, FANTASTIC! C now has a safe place where his brothers can't (quite) reach him, I have a cozy nursing space (imagine actually nursing your baby in his nursery...brilliant!) and I can turn the monitor down low enough to hear no grunting. Ahhhh....

Not to mention the three bedrooms are CLEAN due to all the moving about.its a wonderful feeling. Short lived, I know, but Everyone functions better in a clean house. Most importantly, me.

The two boys sharing a room again? Ask me next week. Hopefully I'll have a glowing report for you then.

Super Shoppers

Sam's Club day, then and now.