New Pants!

Very rarely do I pick up fabric at the store without already having a plan for the fabric, but when I was at JoAnn's the other day and saw a stretchy knit fabric that looked like jean material, I couldn't pass it up.  I LOVE jeggings (or however you spell jean leggings), and I knew I would love something else made of the same material.  Then, a friend turned me on to Lolly Wolly Doodle.  I would absolutely never spend $39 on a pair of pants, but for an eighth of that price, I so would love making my own!!!  I made the pattern yesterday morning and sewed them off an on throughout the day.  They came out super cute (and more than super comfy), and I'm more than a little bit excited.

they really are dark jean material and not black but you can't really tell in this picture.

gracie loves them too...can't you tell?

My Special Drink

Since 2008, every time I got a cold, I was either pregnant or nursing and not supposed to or comfortable with taking any sort of medicine.  So, to help calm my cough, I would always drink hot water with honey and lemon.  So, when Evan woke up last week with a cold, I told him about "my special drink".  He actually loved it, and it helped him stop coughing!  His only complaint was that the cup was too hot, so we had to wrap it each time in a koozie.  Gracie was a little jealous, so she ended up with her camelbak water bottle in a koozie.

mommy, i'm going to take little sips because its kind of hot....he is a little temp sensitive since the water was just about lukewarm ; )

Giant Coloring Pages

Gracie always tries to color on the tile in our kitchen while I'm making breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Thank goodness we only used washable crayons to make the crayons, but you can imagine how much fun it was to be mopping the floor every few hours.  So, to give them something more exciting than white pages or coloring books and less exciting than our floor, I flattened all of the boxes that we had waiting to go out for recycling and let them loose.

this is super fun!!!

which color should i use????

to eat? or to color?

evan also liked turning the boxes into cars and "driving" them around.  Gracie sort of wanted some of them to be two passenger cars, but they were just a little too small for that.

Typical Day

just a normal day at our house.  practicing letters and numbers on the ipad and sitting on the potty sorting shapes.

and the moment when you realize that you just peed, but you need to double check  to make sure.  this is also the moment when i realized i didn't put her hair back in a pony after her nap, so it looks LOVELY.

and side note, gracie isn't exactly potty training, but she isn't exactly NOT potty training.  she likes to be just like her bub, so when she realized HE was going the bathroom on the toilet, she wanted to join in the fun.  out came the little potties.  first she started going every night at the same time as evan before bath.  now, she wants to sit on the potty periodically during the day.  sometimes she even tells me when she needs to go...this is typically done by her finding a potty and carrying it over to me and placing it by my feet then sitting on it fully clothed....probably easier to just say something.  BUT, she isn't my talker (yet...we all know she got half my genes, so she probably has pretty strong chances of being at least a moderate talker).  she has a handful of words, but she really just likes to say hi, cheese (you should hear the girl in the dairy section of the grocery..not a chance that anyone in the store doesn't know we are buying cheese), tillie, uh-oh and YAY.  she resorts to signing any words that she knows the signs for right now.  we have noticed that she has started trying to repeat words that we say, so talking is probably just around the corner.  i also haven't been able to get it on video yet, but she does a fake laugh that is quite comical where she throws her head back and laughs very loudly...i think she might have been making fun of me the first time she did this.

Big Girl in a Little Stroller and Hitting the 60s in January

we gave gracie a doll stroller for xmas.  i guess it looked a little bit too much like the real deal.

"what? i don't see what the problem is"

"my other strollers are a whole lot more comfortable than this one..."

this past weekend the weather was awesome...at 3pm it was nearly 60 degrees and sunny!  all of the snow disappeared, and we took advantage of the nice day at spent a lot of time outside.

e got to bring his stomp rocket outside to see how high and how far he could get the rockets to go

blast off!!!!!

giving gracie some pointers.  she doesn't exactly leave the ground a ton when she jumps, so  she mainly just pretends that the rockets are zooming off the stand

look how far that one went!!!  gracie was also a great retriever for evan who managed to keep all the rockets in the yard or driveway

then it was off to the park!  to walk the tight rope

and swing on tire swings

and climb over walls

and swing!!!  gracie doesn't get to do a ton of swinging since evan doesn't really stand still much.  he will swing but only for a few minutes then it is off to the races!  the park borders a busy street and isn't completely closed off, so i'm not exactly comfortable letting him run free while gracie is swinging on one side of the park

this is her "oh no, they just said we have to leave face"

i think she was wondering how she was going to get down...

18 month sleep regression

after the first few months of life, grace has ALWAYS been a wonderful sleeper.  super easy to put down for her one nap and at night.  and, she almost never wakes up throughout the night.  naps may not have been long, but she took them.  so, imagine my surprise (and horror) when suddenly a week ago she was an absolutely nightmare at nap (luckily..so far..everything has been normal for bedtime in the evening).  she went four days without sleeping more than a few minutes...and the only minutes that she did sleep were when i had given up completely and rocked her until she fell asleep.  as soon as i made the transition to put her in her crib, she would wake up and be on her feet crying.  she might cry for a few minutes, but then she would quiet down...not to sleep but to PLAY!  mind you, this child only has her bear and a blanket in her crib with her.  but, this was enough for her to occupy herself and play for hours without shutting an eye.  every single day i tried something new...going back to her room at increasing intervals to get her to lie down (no success), putting her down earlier (no success), putting her down later (no success), doing everything feasible to wear her out (no success), and finally on day 5...a glimmer of hope.  at 1:45pm (over 1 hour after i started trying to get her to nap), I manage to get her to sleep for a whole 45 minutes.  I was overjoyed.  The picture is from that day...she literally did not move for the entire time she was asleep.  The next day, I followed the exact same approach...no success.  SO, today is another day and another plan of attack.  I have learned from reading lots of info on the internet...while she is up playing in her crib that apparently that the sleep regression disappears as quickly as it came on.  some say it lasts a week (everything cross-able crossed and prayers becoming a mantra that is us because we will be at one week tomorrow) while others say their child was a bedtime nightmare for two months.  I cannot even imagine how exhausting life will be if this lasts for months.  I have never met a more emotional, unhinged, impractical, and unreasonable person than an overtired toddler, and one that hasn't napped for a week takes that one to the max!

Snow Days

after the snow fell, we had a series of very cold days.  so, we weren't really able to get out and take advantage of all of the snow.  i also didn't want to get everyone bundled, have evan be super excited, and then have grace have a meltdown and want to come inside after a few minutes.  so, when the weather warmed up and some of the snow melted away, we made a beeline outside to play

tasting the snow

hmmm...maybe its tasty?

doing some work with the wheelbarrow

all bundled up and saying CHEEEEEEESE

91 years young

On January 8th, Grandma Mary turned 91 years old!  A lot of the family got together to help her celebrate this big birthday.  Evan and Grace were BIG fans of the dessert options...as you can see in the later pics

blowing out her candles!  i was very impressed with my children's willpower on this one...they actually let her blow the candles out!

and then their willpower fell to pieces.  evan is very into the present opening.  grace only has eyes for that cake.

the moment she realized that her arm was long enough to swipe some of that icing off....which she did seconds later and immediately gazed the crowd to see if someone had noticed.  this alerted her older brother to the fact that he too could swipe icing from his current location.

In the Zone

Evan and Grace definitely have favorite activities.  For the most part, Evan's favorites are anything extremely active...ideally with a sports theme.  Grace very much enjoys pretend play and reading.  Although each child does do a bit of everything, if given a choice more often than not that zero in on their favorites!

gracie reading to one of her many stuffed animals (this one was a christmas gift from gg shirley)

and evan has recently discovered the wii.  when he is lucky enough to get to use it, he either wants to play the sword game on wii resorts or fly the plane.  he is actually fairly good at the sword game...just ask packaw who was eliminated in just a few seconds.  he really just likes to crash the plane and watch the pilot parachute out...watching him play that game is not for the faint of heart...or those who have been a victim of motion sickness at any point in their life.