Toddler beds for twins....

I am NOT looking forward to this transition and hope to put it off for as long as we can! lol Even though I look at J&K and they seem so big in their cribs. I feel like they both can crawl out if they wanted to but *knocking on lots of wood* they haven't yet. Gavin never did.....he never even attempted it. We moved him to a toddler bed right before his 3rd birthday!

I sold both of our pack n plays because I had them put out in basement when the hurricane came thru, just in case we needed to sleep down there. They discovered them and climbed right in.....and over....and from one to the other. They had a great time! However, I did not. I was not ready for that. I was ready to sell them and get them out of the house but where will they sleep when we go somewhere?!

So that got me to thinking about toddler beds for two kids at once. Gavin was awesome once we moved him. He stayed in his room and played until he was ready for sleep. He wouldn't stay in bed and we found him in various places throughout his room asleep but he wasn't a kid who would try to leave his room repeatedly. Jakob, I will admit...I am a little anxious to think what he will do with the freedom to roam his room. I can see him being the one to climb onto his dresser and use his room as a romper room! I know for a fact he will not stay in bed and will take a while to go to sleep. We are going to have to put safety locks on everything in his room and remove everything! HA!!! I am not as anxious for Kaleb but being that he loves to 'BIG jump' off everything and has no fear, I am little worried about what he will discover to get into. Kaleb doesn't play around with his sleep....I think he will stay in bed and go to sleep.

They are not in the same room....me, being the sleep nazi that I am, was to worried they would wake one another up. I know everyone says twins learn to sleep through it but I couldn't take the chance. We had an extra room upstairs we were using as a guest room and thankfully we had recently finished our basement with a spare room. So we did two nurseries upstairs and moved guest room to basement. Their rooms are across the hall from each other though so I envision them yelling back and forth once they figure this out, hehe

As always, should be an interesting transition (That we hopefully won't make until another year!)

sweet tea

I love the stuff! I grew up on it....I cannot remember a time in my life when sweet tea wasnt as readily available in my house as water. I suppose this is part of life in the south, hehe

So, of course, I have also always had sweet tea in my house until a couple weeks ago. It was a sad day when I realized my kids were addicted to the stuff. Seriously, I was making at least 2 gallons a week! Eh hem....way too much sugar for our already energetic boys lol Even though I always make decaf tea, the sugar is not helpful. So Marcin decided to cut back also. So I decided to see what life would be like without sweet tea in our house. Being that it hasn't been hot outside, it wasn't too hard to live without it....I missed it. There were days when I REALLY wanted a nice, cold glass of sweet tea. If it were summer....it would be harder to give it up!

Granted, we did survive those two weeks and the boys only asked for it a couple of days and then finally learned to stop asking :-P Hooray for us for surviving but I caved today and made a gallon, omg.....so good! I bet it will be gone by tomorrow!

Argan oil! BEST STUFF EVER!!!!

A friend pinned this on FB a few months ago. As with a majority of the things i pin, i pin it in hopes of possibly #1) having time to read about it later #2) REMEMBERING to read about it later,HA!!

Pinterest is a perfect way to waste time because i feel productive pinning all these fantastic things ill never have time to do, mainly because i'm wasting time pinning when i could be using that time doing more productive things, meh.

Anyways, i finally found time to get the Argan oil. Sephora had it online at about $40-50 a bottle!! Um...i dont think so:-P  http://www.sephora.com/argan-oil-P218700
So i checked on my ever trusted Amazon because I ALWAYS check there for better prices and perks of Amazon Prime!!! It didn't let me down, 1oz bottle for $8! http://www.amazon.com/ELMA-SANA-Pressed-Organic-Certified/dp/B00397XUIK/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3_rsrsrs0 HOORAY!!!

Perhaps is it because I am more aware of this oil now that I notice it now but I see it everywhere! I saw a commercial with Garnier hair products with argan oil added to it. I asked my stylist when I got my hair cut last week if she heard of it and she said yes, she loves it! Her salon sells a 2oz bottle for $55 :-P So jump on the wagon now before it starts becoming expensive lol

Did I mention I love this stuff?! It has alot of uses from skin care, hair care and you can eat it! I have been adding a couple of drops to my facial moisturizer, my skin is so soft!!! Seriously, I can tell a difference. Now I don't have good skin....I had my share of pimples growing up and I STILL get them at 34, what's up with that?! Ugh. Due to this I was a little hesitant to add an oil to my moisturizer but I did it and so happy I did! Surprisingly it did not cause a break out (yippee!!) and my face has never been softer. I have also noticed that since having my sweet children, my skin changed where it didn't heal as quickly from blemishes. It would always have a pink spot for months! Not anymore :-) The oil claims to revive your skin cells and I guess it really does what it claims....imagine that?!

Also being that I have fine, not so thick hair I cannot use a conditioner on my hair every day. I can use the argan oil at night on my ends and after my shower the next morning, super soft and healthy hair :-)

If you are interested, here is more info on Argan oil.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303768104577460504019108684.html

lol "You've Got Your Hands Full!"

I know I complain about this comment but in this case, I really DID have my hands full! After dropping Gavin off at school this morning, J&K like to go look at the 'flowers' before we go to the car. Of course they are cooperative until I tell them it is time to go. Kaleb is yelling, "HAND! HAND! HAND MOOOOMMMMMA!" while Jakob is yelling with arms stretched up to me, "UP! UP! UP!" So I take Kaleb's hand and pick up Jakob. Of course once I get us all situated....Kaleb wants up and Jakob wants down, oi vey! So I pick Kaleb up and put Jakob down. Then Kaleb decides he wants downs and halfway down, Jakob wraps his legs around me because apparently he doesn't want to get down anymore!!! So I just picked them both, one on each hip and started walking to car. A lady stops and tells me, "My goodness! You have your hands full!!" Now in this case, I didn't mind this comment because I literally had my hands full! :-P It's the little things that make me laugh!

Gavin is the man at his preschool!!! His friend Reese was talking about him yesterday while she was at school. She in the 3's class but has the same teacher as Gavin on Tuesday&Thursday. Today when I took Gavin, his teacher asked me if Reese and Gavin were friends. I said yes and that Reese has asked Gavin to marry her a number of times but he keeps saying no :-( Yesterday Reese was drawing a picture and informed the teacher that she was drawing it for Gavin because she loves Gavin. I asked Gavin a few weeks ago if he loved Reese, he thought about it and says, "Hmmmm....some days I do and some days I don't." Typical male answer. Apparently they start at a young age :/

There is girl in his class that loves Gavin!! They have been friends since last year but this year, I do believe their love has grown for each other, hehe!! Lately, I have not been able to leave my house on time. It doesn't matter if we are all up early or late, I stll cannot manage to leave at reasonable time for preschool...meh, one day. So most days Gavin is usually last person or 2nd to last person there. His friend Olivia will stop what she is doing and run up to give Gavin a hug. The first few times this happened, she was very concerned that Gavin wasn't coming to school that day =0 Every day after school Gavin informs me that we must wait for Olivia to walk to the car! So cute!!

Oh man......we are going to be in trouble if this continues! lol

socks

Adding these to my ever growing list of why I strongly dislike cold weather, hmph. I realized the other day that I didn't really mind so much all the laundry I was doing over the summer. Then it began to get cold outside and we all needed shoes that required SOCKS. They have always annoyed me with their disappearing act somewhere btw the laundry basket, washer, dryer and their home in our dressers.

With our 3 boys, its like they are in on a conspiracy with the socks!! Seriously! I put them on them when I dress them in the morning....within 5 minutes they are ripped off! Jakob is the champion at taking his off first, hmph. Inevitably this leads to socks all over the house....upstairs, family room, basement, pantry, trash, refrigerator. Anywhere is a 'good' place for socks to be. I try my best to pick up socks and put in laundry room before they are dispersed but as you all know "I've got my hands full!" so it doesn't always happen right away.

I also don't like matching the socks. I tried to make it a fun game for Gavin so he could find all the matches for me...he wasn't having it. Not interested, hmph. That's fine for now....he has the rest of his life to put socks away. I have 3 more loads of laundry to finish up today and I can count on there being a basket full of socks to match, ugh.

It would be grand (and ideal) if I could somehow manage to complete 1-2 loads of laundry a day....when I say complete I mean wash/dry/fold/put away. Thank god for the extra rinse cycle on washer and the 'touch up' cycle on the dryer :-P

I need to learn to build a bridge with this one though because laundry is only going to get worse with 3 growing silly boys!

Speaking of silly boys...Kaleb is cracking us up!!! He will now pretty much repeat anything we say and he says it so clearly!! Last night I excitedly (and sarcastically) said after they were finished watching Little Einsteins it was BEDTIME!!! Kaleb shouts, "BEDTIME"He said something else that Marcin had said, I can't remember but he is just too funny! Jakob is watching and imitating Kaleb which is fantastic for his speech! not so much for his physicality. Kaleb is very agile and not much deters him from jumping off the couch "big jump!" he will say. Mind you...it normally IS a big jump, one that makes my heart skip a beat because I feel like it is too high. Not for Kaleb. Kaleb will land on his feet softly like a cat or roll into the fall. Jakob does not lol If we don't make a big deal out of it, he doesn't either but my goodness that child is going to have a lot of emergency room visits lol Poor kid seems to have inherited his mama's gracefulness ;-)





 

HA!! no snow here!!!

thank you, thank you mother nature!! i really wasnt ready for snow yet. im still pretty disappointed that it would seem my favorite season was cut short,hmph:/

Today was a dreary day and i was so tired!! i am still tired with my eyes barely open:-P kaleb has a terrible sounding cough:/ i just want to go scoop him up out of bed, snuggle with him and take it all away so he feels better. You wouldnt think from his silliness and playfulness that he feels bad but the cough sounds awful! All 3 boys have had this cough for almost 3 weeks....all of them started antibiotics monday and going back on their allergy meds!

i should probably get some sleep in case im woken in middle of night by a coughing child! good night!

Will the Redskins predict our new President?

 

The Redskins Rule, as it's known, goes like this: if the Redskins win on the Sunday before Election Day, the party that won the popular vote in the prior election will win the Electoral College in the next election. If they lose, the party out of power will triumph.

Back to 1940, the Redskins have been won nine times before Election Day -- and the incumbent party is 9-0 in those years. The nine times the Redskins came up short, the party out of power is 8-1 (the only outlier is the 2004 election, where the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers but President George W. Bush defeated Sen. John Kerry).

 

I am not a big football follower but if you know me, you know that Marcin is a Redskins fan....a true fan because season after season he continues to cheer them on. While they are doing better this season....I can't say as much for the past few seasons (sorry babe...) Marcin was at the game this past weekend in DC where the Redskins lost, this would predict that Romney will win.

 

I took J&K with me to vote today. They were fine until I stepped behind the curtain and Jakob couldn't see me. He was screaming "MAMA!" The poll worker was trying his best to make him happy...little does he know how futile his efforts are :/ Jakob is Jakob....he just either needs to see me or become distracted to be happy again.

 

If anyone has any good books on disciplining 'spirited' or strong willed children, please send me your suggestions! Yesterday I was looking at various books and reviews. They all said one similar thing, that spirited toddlers can be a challenge when they are young but they often grow up to be motivated and successful adults. Interesting yes but this isn't very helpful to me now. Basically we shouldn't 'break' his spirit at such a young age or he will be unsuccessful. Hmmm.... there were also some suggestions on the way to discipline such as not starting sentences with the words "don't...." or "no....." Let me tell you how hard the 'don't' part is. We do use "no" sometimes but I have always tried to provide an alternate activity instead of always saying no.  I remember from my school counseling days that we were always encouraged to redirect. It isn't too hard to redirect a toddler..the hard part is for ME to remember to be patient (because this is the probably the 1000th time I have asked Jakob NOT to stand on the chair) and redirect. I have been trying very hard because I am noticing that the ways we use to discipline Kaleb and Gavin do not work for Jakob. He obviously needs a different approach....he doesn't like time out but it doesn't work for him. I am more concerned for his safety. Usually if you ask Jakob not to do something....this guarantees he will do it. So instead of asking him not to do something, I have also been trying to redirect. For example, if he throws a car. Usually I would say, "We don't throw cars." I try to remember to tell him, " Cars are for racing!! let's race!" Then he gets distracted from the fact that he is mad at Kaleb for not sharing and moves on with a new activity.

 

He likes to smack things when he gets mad or frustrated. I feel like his lack of speech also leads to alot of his frustration. He is getting better with his words but we don't always understand him, which is frustrating to him and us :-( It is ok for him to express his frustration...he can hit a pillow or a stuffed animal, just not people. So instead of saying 'Don't hit," I have been saying "Hands are not for hitting. Hands are for playing...let's go play with your blocks" Wish me luck....is isn't the easiest thing to do, especially when I am trying to take the time to discipline Jakob while Kaleb and Gavin are arguing over whose turn it is with a toy *sigh*

 

Must go get boys antibiotics :-( They have had a persistent cough for almost 3 weeks....sinus infections? Everyone is going back on their allergy meds to see if that makes a difference. I take mine year round so maybe they need to also.

I don't like giving my kids meds every day. Then I get my hair cut/highlighted tonight, YAY!!!! Followed by some yummy apps with a great friend...talk about a good evening!