Our Kids

Okay so my apologies for going MIA for so long.  I don’t really know what happened, at first it was because we were really busy with our library classes, going to the splash pad, the park and such trying to enjoy everything before it got too hot.  Then Piper and I were struggling with a bit of allergies from all the beautiful blooming plants.  Then….if that were not enough Lela picked up a summer cold and passed it to Piper.  So now we are on the mend but it seemed to be a whole bunch of weeks squeezed into two weeks.

With the big girl beds the girls can come into our room whenever they want, which is fine.  So since they were feeling puny they came in every night and then we put them back to bed.  One night our bed was full of them both.  Lela kicks and rolls and takes up tons of room, so to protect her from getting kicked in the head, Jason slept with Piper on his chest.  She sounded like a big diesel engine with all her stuffy snottiness and I could not figure how he was sleeping like that.  But what a good daddy:)  Needless to say he wasn’t really sleeping and neither was I.  After a while Piper wanted to go to her big girl bed but no luck with Lela, she stayed until morning.  But now that all is well, they are sleeping back in their own beds with no nighttime visits.

But the nighttime visits pointed out another challenge which is that they can both reach the doorknobs and Lela can even reach the deadbolts.  So I am thinking we need to fix that up just in case someone decides to go swing in the middle of the night.  Other than that all is well, my folks are in town visiting on their way to Alaska and my Grannie is staying with us for the month of May.  It is getting hot so I see a lot of splash pads in our future and of course some new pics, LOL!

Today the girls and I packed a lunch and headed off for a new adventure.  We went to the AZ Museum for Youth and had a great time.  Unfortunately my camera died after just one photo so you will have to wait until we go again.  They have a section called Artville which is a town for kids, they can touch and move everything.  There is also a craft room in Artville, a huge tree complete with slide, an underwater submarine with fish costumes, a garden with rows of veggies to plant and pick and many other active things.  Then there is the museum that changes with the seasons and right now is in an underwater theme with lots of colorful paintings, murals and other ocean related works of art.  After you have gone through the gallery there is a craft area where you can make an underwater themed craft.  We made fish on little fishing poles, Piper was anxious to try out the scissors and did pretty good, Lela was happy to draw away on her fish and glue little pieces of tissue on for color.  Both girls made beautiful fish and spent a wonderful two hours at the museum.  Definitely a place we will go to again, especially as it gets hotter outside.

Artville was a bit overwhelming for me because there were so many kids and Piper did get bullied a couple times by some bigger boys, but I guess that is all par for the course.  Overall they really started to enjoy themselves and as long as it doesn’t get too crowded I think it is a great place for them to explore and be around other kids under moms watchful eye:)

A lot of times when I come home from work, Piper and Lela are “nekked.”  For some reason they like to air it out in the evenings after a long day… who can blame them.  The nice thing about this is that it’s slowly getting Piper to have control over when she goes to the bathroom.  She knows when she needs to go, but usually she just starts signing and saying “diaper.”  Sometimes she says “potty” and sits on it for a while without doing anything, but that’s followed up quickly with a diaper where she finally has relief.

So it was this that we were expecting last night when Piper announced she wanted to go potty.  Mystique took her in, sat next to her on the bathtub, and was chatting with me when all of a sudden Mystique had a surprised look on her face.  And so did Piper!  Piper’s mouth opened in astonishment, her eyes widened with glee… she was going potty!  We cheered and clapped… even Lela was yelling “yay” with us.  Piper was so excited… she had gone pee pee in the potty!

She actually got off the potty for a little bit and asked for the potty again.  After a little bit of sitting, she peed again!  She was quite excited about that and ran out to mommy for a big hug.

There we have it… Piper’s definitely on her way to using the potty.  Whew!  Between running around naked, seeing Lela using the potty, and reading that darn potty book at night for the past five days, I think we may have convinced Piper to take the next step.

Ok… Apparently Piper and Lela have started reading this blog and have decided to mess with mommy and daddy. This morning at 5:30am we heard rumblings from the girls’ bedroom. 5:30am! Mystique popped out of bed, went to their room, worked some voodoo magic, and came back within ten minutes without any children. That lasted until 6:05am or so, at which point we heard the quiet sounds of feet heading our way. Then we had two cute little girls in our bed, one cuddling, one “asking” for milk.

I found out later that Mystique turned on their nighttime music and said “it’s time for sleep” when she went in their room. Unfortunately their nighttime CD is only ~30 minutes long. I will be finding the repeat option on their CD player for tomorrow morning!

It seems the girls have taken quite nicely to their “big girl beds.”  Our new routine of reading each of the girls a book at bedtime has been neat… Lela loves her “potty book.”  It’s all about a little girl who is learning how to potty and the trials and tribulations she goes through.  Both Lela and Piper really get into the story — they say “Noooooo” and shake their head and appropriate times, and clap and say “Yay!” when the little girl finally uses her potty.  We also get a few “like nyah nyah (Lela)” and “like Piper!” when the book talks about going potty and using a nighttime diaper.  Too cute.

Piper has a couple books that she likes to read… the first is a book about five little pumpkins.  It’s a really short book, but Piper loves it.  The other is an even shorter book, ‘Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy.’  All it contains is five different textures and three-word sentences like “Rough rough rough.”  Turning that into a bedtime story that lasts more than a minute is a challenge, but we power through it.

The girls have only been using their beds for less than a week and we’ve already switched from waking up with some crying and confusion to the girls just getting up, walking out the door and finding mommy and daddy asleep in their big girl (and boy) bed.  That’s great… we like the girls happy in the morning since there’s no guarantee that the other two folks in the house are happy

However… the girls haven’t quite figured out the joys of sleeping in.   This morning the feet-stomping (Lela sometimes stomps out of her room) was at 5:50am.  Yikes.  Even Otto didn’t want to get up.  We were able to con them into laying in bed for 10 minutes or so, but there was a lot of wriggling and not much sleeping, so at 6am we began the day.

I keep forgetting to post about the girls language skills.  They are doing super and can repeat any word that you say to them, we like to say big words like “continental” just to see how they sound.  They are talking a lot and not using signs so much anymore, although they do bust them out when I am not getting the picture.  I would say that I understand them the first time about 80% of the time and understand them if they repeat what I initially did not understand 95% of the time, the other 5% I just nod my head and agree that they are indeed very smart (and they like that).  Both of the girls talk with a bit of a lisp but they each lisp in a different way.  I have heard that will go away in time but it is cute.  They still have trouble with “Lela” but can say “Lion” just fine.  I am afraid that Lela is going to be called nyah-nyah by Piper for a long, long time.

We are attending a four day workshop. Each day a different professional comes in and discusses her area of expertise and entertains the kids for 30 min, then they stay around to answer any questions you may have.  The classes are held in a huge room and it is filled with all sorts of developmental toys.  Today the theme was music and movement, a music therapist entertained us and the kids with songs and ideas of how we can use music in our everyday lives to help us provide structure to our environments.  After this it was time for free play.

I was happily playing with the girls when Lela decided she had to go pee.  Piper told me that she would like to stay so I took Lela and left her with the lady in charge.  When I returned she was still playing in the same spot by herself with the alphabet letters.  The lady in charge was playing with her and when I went over to check on her I told Piper it was time to go and change her diaper.  Piper put down her letters and started to follow me, the lady in charge said, “that is one mellow kid.”  I just laughed, after all she was right.

Well we did it, we transitioned to big girl beds.  I was not sure if they were ready but I knew I was.  At 60+ pounds these days (together) they are getting to be a might bit heavy to be heaving in and out of their cribs, especially when I am holding them both and performing said task.  We left the cribs in there and my plan was should they give me any getting out of bed nonsense I would put them in their cribs.  But lucky for me they have been true champs and took right to their beds and have not once gotten up and come out of their rooms even though the door is not closed.  I have been mightily impressed.  We continue to play their bed time music and we read a couple books, then they lay in their beds and go to sleep.  Sometimes we have to go in to a call from one or the other right when they lay down but that is it.

I don’t know what we did to get so lucky.  Some folks think it is because we have been working off the same routine for over a year.  All the things I have done with the girls were to make my life easier so I can’t claim too much credit.  If the end result is that all of our “transitions” have been easier then that is just icing on our two layered, two flavored cake:)