Meet Stripe

Stripe is Ryan's blankie. He is attached to it big time. This little love affair began around September. I never gave them blankets until we went on vacation at the end of August. There was a pack of two fleece blankets--a light blue one and Stripe. I only took the blue one on vacation and I saw that he really liked the feel of the fleece. When we got home I put both in the crib. So from then on he has grown a love for Stripe, while still sleeping with the blue blanket as well. Sometimes both come out of the crib. He lets Kaylie have the blue one, but Stripe is THE ONE! THE ONE that he cries for. THE ONE that Kaylie can't touch. I do not want to find out what happens when we don't have Stripe for sleeping time. Thus my rule that Stripe does not leave the house.

Ryan gives Stripe hugs, kisses and pets it. He says he loves Stripe and says that Stripe is nice. He loves the "shiny side" and it has to be facing up when he gets covered with it. Ryan is also known for whipping it around and hitting people too--oops! (Sometimes Stripe gets taken away because of this and you can imagine the tears). There have been some tug-o-wars with this blanket as well. I have actually caught myself calling this blanket a "him." Saying things like, "Where is he?" as we are searching all over the house before bed and naptime. Washing Stripe is difficult. It has to be done with stealth and a lot of prayer that "he" (did that accidentally so I left it) isn't missed. This means that unfortunately it doesn't get washed too often. I dread the day when it falls apart and cannot be repaired. I'm curious to see how long he will have this infatuation with Stripe. For now, it's the cutest thing in the world to see Ryan snuggle with his lovey.

February Happenings

Aside from the snow we had this month we've been doing our best to survive winter. We do our usual weekly trips to the library, continuing speech sessions, errands, and we finally had a few playdates this month!


The kids are officially enrolled in Nursery School. I don't know what else to say about it. Obviously I have the feeling of "My babies are growing up" and then I have the feeling--well I will finally get some time for just ME! I hope that doesn't sound selfish but I don't get much time for myself and I am looking forward to finding Liz again. We are still waiting to find out if they qualify for the public school preschool program due to their speech delay but in the meantime I needed to secure a spot for them elsewhere.


As for their speech delay, we have made leaps and bounds. They may not even qualify for services after their March review which is scheduled for this week. So we shall see. I will say that this month I found them having more and more conversations with each other. It's really cute.


Here they are baking cookies. They love to help, but they HATE waiting for them to bake. Don't we all? My kids pretty much think every cookie we make HAS TO have sprinkles on it. Here are chocolate chip cookies getting topped with sprinkles.



I actually haven't taken too many pictures this month.

March for Babies

I am participating in the annual March of Dimes March for Babies fundraising walk. March of Dimes is an organization dedicated to fighting to make sure all babies are born healthy. It's a cause that hits close to home obviously. If you would like to help me reach my fundraising goal, then just click on the purple rectangle to the right. All donations are appreciated!!

Here I am after last year's walk:

Snow!

New Jersey has gotten a lot of snow this winter. We recently had two storms come through dumping a minimum of a foot on us each time and we are currently having a "Snowicane" which is supposed to drop another foot. This is the most snow I have ever seen. We took advantage and tested out their new sled and built our first snowman. Kaylie really got into building the snowman, but Ryan could have cared less. He was ready to go back inside at that point.

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Enjoy this little video of them being accidentally dumped off the sled by Daddy, which happened twice and then they were pretty much done with the sled.

Potty Training Update

On the potty training front: I think it's going pretty well. I often think to myself, "Why can't they just come trained already?" It's not an easy process--just imagine it doubled. I have to say they are making progress, but they are not yet trained.

I started just by having them try at night before bath. Ryan was consistent with that but Kaylie wasn't doing much. Then I started having them go first thing in the morning. Again, Ryan showed more of an interest so I stepped it up with him and we would try before nap. I asked him to go a few times throughout the day and he goes. Sometimes he tells me no, he doesn't want to go. He still doesn't TELL ME he has to go. That has only happened a few times, so I'm not sure what that means. He does say, "Want to try potty," which I think means the same thing as, "I have to go potty." Today we had a MAJOR breakthrough. Ryan POOPED for the first time!!! I can always tell when he is pooping because he goes into the other room. So this time, Bob caught him and took him to the potty. He did just the littlest thing, and said he was done. Clearly he was not since he didn't poop the day before. He got off and less than a minute later he yelled, "Have to go pee-pee!" (I'm ignoring the fact that he thought he was peeing and he really pooped.) and ran to the toilet. Ok yeah I know that was too much information for a lot of you. Sorry!

For a few weeks there, Kaylie refused to even sit on it. But she has come around since and has peed more. We of course have to do the Pee Pee Dance and give high fives and even an M&M here and there. She gets excited after she goes and is proud. So I am just encouraging that. I think she is deathly afraid of pooping on the potty, besides that fact that she stands up to poop and it takes her 15 minutes--or at least she doesn't move for that long. I'm not sure how to get her to poop. She was afraid of peeing at first.

This week I switched over to pull-ups but to be quite honest, they just treat those like diapers too. Although Kaylie is really into not letting the picture on the front disappear (it disappears if they pee in it). At times I just let them hang out in underwear. They like this but I am constantly worried about the couch! Ultimately, I think I'm going to just have to do the underwear thing and clean up the accidents. Hopefully it will only take a few and then they will get it. But for now, I will say that they are progressing nicely.

January in a Nutshell

The kids had colds on/off all month. It seemed to be one right after the other. We would get a few days reprieve and then the wiping started again. We went to a few birthday parties this month and have been trying to make the best of winter.

Something I wanted to blog about was something Ryan did. One day he was in the basement with Bob. I was upstairs with Kaylie. He came upstairs and said, "Daddy hit head. Sleeping." At first I didn't understand what he said so I asked again. He repeated it. I yell out to Bob. No answer. Now I panic and go flying down the stairs only to find Bob on the floor (perfectly fine BTW). Turns out Ryan had thrown a Thomas train and it did hit Bob in the head. Bob laid on the floor, probably exaggerating the pain as he is known to do, but he wasn't saying or doing anything. I guess Ryan had thought he was truly hurt and came up the stairs to tell me. I was so proud of him for doing that, although Bob thought he just left him for dead. LOL. It's good to know he knew enough to tell someone what happened. My hero!

Some pics from January:

Here they are at a place called R Bounce. We were there for a party. It was a fun place and they had a great time jumping on the inflatables there. I got quite a workout myself taking the kids through the obstacle course and down the huge slide. The kids were too cute in the "jousting" area.

A way to amuse a 2 year old (& develop fine motor skills): BUBBLE WRAP!!

Happy girl

At another birthday party. This place was called Let's Pretend. It had different rooms set up in different themes like, school, beach, beauty parlor/dress up, music, etc and a jumping inflatable. They had fun! I hope I am able to save the picture of Kaylie "teaching." Maybe she will follow my footsteps one day and become a teacher, although I hope she goes into an occupation that makes more money.

The Holidays

My apologies to anyone who has me in their blogroll and had to look at Merry Christmas for over a month! I'm really slipping with this blog thing. First, I was waiting for my husband to get the pictures off his camera and fix them up. Then I started doing Wii Fit during naptime so there went some of my free time. Then there is the just plain old tired excuse.

Anyway, for posterity's sake, our holidays were nice. The kids 'got it' this year. They left milk and cookies for Santa and woke up to a slew of presents. They enjoyed visiting family and of course opening more presents. Some of their favorite gifts were dress up clothes, remote control cars, toy laptops, a piano/guitar and a train set. I'm sure some of the details have faded already and I am kicking myself for waiting so long to write this. It was a very nice Christmas and they still mention the things that Santa gave them. I'm sure next year will be different, but this year we had to coax them into opening the other gifts. They were happy playing with their first gift.

Pictures may be added at a different time. Sorry.

Next post: January Recap