Indoors

'Tis the season to spend a lot of time indoors ... at least it is at our house. Don't get me wrong, I think playing outside is important and healthy and fun in any weather - even the freezing cold - but it's just such a hassle to get out the door in cold weather. I'm pretty sure we've spent more time bundling the kids up than actually playing in the snow, and that's just not fun. So, we've tried to make our indoor play as fun as possible.
Riding the car double has been a favorite pastime for months now. It still makes me smile to watch the kids roll through the house together on it.Watercolor painting. This was a good idea and pretty fun, but Warner lost interest in about five minutes.Maren enjoyed herself but dumped the cup of water all over the table shortly after this picture was taken. That was the end of watercolor time.I just had to throw this picture in. Maren will eat anything that is covered in ketchup. I'm pretty sure the mess it makes is part of the appeal as well.Warner with Thomas, Annie, and Clarabel. They're his favorite trains.Maren using Warner as a step stool to play with his trains. What a nice big brother.

Thanks to a few trips to the Children's museum and some television marathons thrown in for good measure, we've almost made it through the month of December. Whew. Spring feels awfully far away.

New Traditions

As the kids get older, we've been trying to design new family traditions for our little family. Of course there are still traditions that were a part of Kevin and mine's childhoods that we will keep for our family as well. But starting new things is pretty fun.

I'm particularly fond of eggnog. This is probably because my Grandpa Warner makes homemade, from-scratch eggnog each Christmas. Well, years ago my mom introduced me to eggnog milkshakes. Hello! They're divine. So, this year I decided we'd make eggnog milkshakes the night the Christmas decorations are up at our house. The kids were all over this new tradition.Then last night we went looking at Christmas lights together as a family. Kevin had a great idea to put the kids in their jammies and bring hot chocolate along. I insisted we listen to The Osmand Family Christmas album (THE best Christmas album of all time, by the way, and something from my childhood that I'm hoping will be passed down). We were having a good time ... for about 10 minutes. After that, Warner said he wanted to go home and Maren lost interest in her hot chocolate. And then there are the reindeer antlers. The kids wear these at random times, and have pulled them out more lately. I'm not sure this will become a tradition, but they sure do make me giggle.

Friday nights and snow

Our Friday nights have changed over the years, but our main goal is for them to be fun and different from the other nights of the week. When Warner was younger we frequented our "pizza joint" in Hebron but it has since gone out of business. We began "Friday night pizza and movie night" after that, but we're still working out the details of our new tradition.

For instance, we don't always eat pizza. About every other week, Warner wants tacos instead of pizza (actually it's a burrito bowl from Qdoba but he calls them tacos). And the term "movie" can be interpreted very loosely as well. Sometimes we watch an episode of Mickey Mouse in lieu of a movie. The two constants seem to be 1: the kids get to eat a meal of their choice in the family room while they run around like crazy people, and 2: the television is on during the meal. Whatever the variation of our Friday nights, they're a big hit with the kids.
Saturday we got our first snowfall of the season - almost 4 inches fell. Warner built a snowman with Kevin but knocked it over almost immediately after constructing it.
I think he was more proud of the destructed snowman than the standing one.We went sledding down our backyard hill and Warner couldn't get enough of the digging/running/playing in the snow.Maren loved sledding. She must have gone down our hill 10 times, and wanted more but I was too tired from pulling her by that point. She could barely walk due to all of her snow gear so perhaps that's why the sled was so appealing. The snow sure put me in the Christmas spirit!

Squirrely

Maren has become quite the squirrel lately. Kevin's mom found a Matchbox car in her cupboards at Thanksgiving that Maren had hidden during a visit weeks before. She has also been known to hide her sippy cups, then come running to me with one in her hand that has been missing for days. I have no idea where she hides them. We really don't have a large or cluttered house where things could be easily hidden. It's quite impressive, actually.

So this afternoon I gave Maren a little bowl of Goldfish crackers and Cheerios for a snack. About two minutes later I came back to the family room to find the bowl empty. Maren has been eating a lot lately but I couldn't believe she would have put away the whole bowl in just a few minutes. So, I started looking everywhere to find where she dumped the food. After searching high and low, I finally gave up, assuming she had eaten them. Later in the evening I went to put on my Uggs and suddenly hear (and feel) a large crunch.

Mystery solved. I'm going to have to keep a better eye on this girl.

Pictures

We had Warner's 3 year photos taken today and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Since I'm his mother and it's my blog, I get to gush about how stinking cute he is and post lots of pictures for you to see.Maren even cooperated for a few shots. What a nice surprise.

Sorry, Dr. Atkins

Maren is what I fondly call our carbaholic. If she had her way, her diet would consist of animal crackers, goldfish, saltines, cheerios, and pretzels. Well, to be fair she does also like yogurt, bananas, peanut butter, raisins, lunch meat, and cheese ... but, you get the idea. Getting her to consume a healthy, well-balanced diet is a battle each and every day. Don't even get me started on vegetables. This is a common sight in the morning: Maren carrying around a sleeve of saltine crackers, hoping someone will open them for her. It hasn't happened yet, but she's holding out hope.
And, here is where she gets it from. Well, at least the saltine cracker thing. In Kevin's defense, he does eat fruits and vegetables, but probably because I make him. I'm such a pain to live with. Like father, like daughter!

Abuse, I tell you

These are the faces of our sweet children on our way to run errands today.
Apparently, this wasn't their first choice for how to spend their Saturday.

Vacation

Kevin has been off all week for vacation, but we haven't done much vacationing. Although we stayed in town and didn't do much out of the ordinary, we've had a good time. We went to the zoo Wednesday. The weather was glorious and we did all of the important zoo things. This includes riding the train and the tram, eating a picnic lunch while shooing the peacocks away from our food, and seeing the elephants, manatees, monkeys, and cows (among other animals but these were the ones requested by Warner).
Warner has thoroughly enjoyed his dad's undivided attention. In fact, on Monday night he went to dinner with Kevin and some of Kevin's friends from work for a guys night out. They also built the Careful game tower a few times (and then Maren would knock it down of course).
And here is Maren hard at work taking appointments on my calendar and talking on Kevin's phone (actually it's his iPod but she thinks it's a phone).

Maybe one day my sweet husband will get a real vacation again. Until then, I'll enjoy his company at home during these pretend vacations.

Hang with me here.

I think my hair bow/hair accessory obsession began about a year ago. My mom made a few bows for Maren and a whole new world was opened to me: I could make the exact bows I wanted to match (each of) Maren's outfits. Genius! And so it began.
After spending more than I cared to know on ribbon, the next thought that crossed my mind was to sell a few bows to help finance the bow obsession. Thus, Fancy Flair. To date, I've sold about 80 bows and flower headbands. They're at a few retail stores and then I did my first craft fair this past weekend. I teamed up with two MOPS girlfriends who sell tutus and flower hats. Here is our adorable table:
I've only made a nominal amount of money and realize I'm most likely not going to make buckets of cash with this business. But, I find the whole thing really fun. I enjoy crafting things and feel like I've gotten a small piece of "me" back with this little artistic outlet of mine.

I mention all of this here, on my sweet family's blog, to get the word out for my little business. If you or someone you know is in need of a hair bow, flower headband, or hair bow holder (I just started making these and am in love with them), then please let me know! You can take a look at my "stuff" at www.facebook.com/fancyflair and send me an email with your order.
Okay. That's it. I promise the next post will be about the kids. Thanks for hanging with me.

Finally.

Seeing as I blogged about Warner's potty training last winter, one might have assumed he was potty trained months ago. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. He completely lost interest in the spring and refused to use the potty. Frustrated and exhausted, I decided to drop the issue for a while. I fought the battle intermittently, sometimes telling Warner he had to wear underwear, to which he would respond "No! I wear diaper!" and then a fit would ensue. It was not pretty.

A few weeks before his third birthday, we started talking about potty training again. Kevin and I would talk about how three year old's wear big boy underwear and use the potty. We told him that on his birthday, he wouldn't wear diapers anymore. I'm not sure why, but this approach worked. For the potty part. It was like the light bulb went off in Warner's head. After only a few accidents, he was soon running to the potty whenever he had to go, wearing underwear at preschool, during naptime, and even during the night. Amazing, right?

Well, the poop part wasn't so easy. Warner would tell me when he needed to poop, but once he got on the potty, he'd either say he didn't have to go anymore, or he didn't know how. We agonized over what to do, but something finally worked. When he needed to go, we put a diaper on him, then told him he could poop in it, but he needed to do it while he was sitting on the potty. Two nights ago, he did just that. So yesterday when he announced he needed to go, I told him to do what he did the night before, but this time he wouldn't wear a diaper. I left him alone in the bathroom, assuming it wouldn't work. 60 seconds later Warner yells "MOM! I pooped!"

I screamed. I jumped up and down. I cried. Warner wanted to save his poop to show Kevin when he got home from work, but thankfully he agreed to take his picture with it (don't worry I won't post that one) and then flush the poop. He got "a lot" of stickers for his potty chart and a whole bowl of candy corn for a reward. I'm sure he'll have a few more accidents, but he has pretty much sworn off of diapers, wanting me to put them away even. So I think I can safely say this boy is potty trained. Whew. One down, one to go.

Definitely a treat.

I've decided that I really like Halloween. I'm not into the scary part. In fact, I'm thinking about instituting a scary-free costume rule for the kids in years to come. But really, what's more fun than carving pumpkins, dressing up in costumes, and getting candy from your neighbors?
Warner decided a while ago that he would be a cowboy for Halloween. He relishes every opportunity he gets to wear his cowbuddy boots (as he calls them) and hat. You can see the boots a bit better in this picture:I wasn't sure what to dress Maren as, but since she had a tutu, I figured a fairy would be easy enough. She didn't mind the wings and seemed to like the tutu.Maren was all business with the trick-or-treating. She would walk straight up to a house (with or without Warner or parents to help), choose a piece of candy (or a handful), and carefully place it in her bag. Warner got off to a quick and excited start, running ahead of us to get to the next house, but he fizzled fast. It was cold and he was ready to go home before we got to the end of the street.
He really enjoyed handing out candy to the kids and would say "you're welcome" as he placed a piece in each bag, regardless of whether or not the recipient said thank you.
We carved pumpkins earlier in the day on the deck. Maren liked the seeds and goo and Warner thought they were disgusting. Warner did tell me what shapes to make the eyes and noses and thought that was pretty cool.

This was taken right before he caught on fire. Kidding! Kidding! Kevin was ready to kill me when I handed our son the flaming pumpkin. It's a great picture though, huh? I have fond memories of taking inventory of my loot with Meredith after trick-or-treating. We would plop down in the entryway of our home, dump out all our candy, tediously sort it, and then trade with each other. I think the whole process took over an hour.
Maren isn't big enough yet to take part in this activity, but I think Warner enjoyed going through the fruits of his labor from the evening.Happy Halloween!

Big girl

Maren truly believes she's as big as her brother. I suppose it's this way with most younger children. She plays trains and tools with Warner (when he's in a sharing mood) and even prefers Clifford and Thomas books to her more age-appropriate board books.
She can now climb up the rails of the swing set without assistance (I of course still hover behind her with hands ready to catch if needed) and thinks the clubhouse is the coolest place on earth. She spins the steering wheel and looks through the spyglass just like Warner, then turns around, gets on her belly, and zips down the slide solo. Warner will then say "Maren so big. She growing up." And he's right. Where has my baby gone?