Crafty

I'm constantly trying to come up with new interactive adventures to show the kids.  I mean we have a season pass to the museum and lot's of toys, books, & puzzles, but I like to find inexpensive ways to entertain the kids at home.

Cody went with his friend Eric to ride bike trails in Grapevine and I got a bright idea to make homemade finger paints.  L & M are still in the stage where everything goes into their mouths, so I wanted to make finger paints that would be okay if they got consumed :o)

I used the Cornstarch fingerpaint recipe that I found here.

Cornstarch Fingerpaint

Ingredients

3 cups water
1 cup cornstarch
food coloring

You add the cornstarch to boiling water and heat it till it becomes a clear paste.  It seemed like it took forever for the Fingerpaint to set up, but when it finally did I added some NEON food coloring and it was GO time.

I taped down some paper (in my dreams they would keep it solely on the paper). I don't know who was more excited, me or the kids. The rest of our experience can be seen in the pictures below:



How do you get the kiddos clean without taking them in the house....strip them down and nearly pop a lung blowing up this:








Overall...Such a fun day!

Easter

We took the kiddos to Arkansas to visit my Papaw for Easter. Anyone that knows me, knows that I ♥ my Papaw! I talk to him at least 1 a week and send him pictures of the kids every couple of months. He is such a wonderful man and I want my kiddos and myself to spend as much time with him as possible.  Since he is very set in his ways, he is not much for flying or traveling the 5 hour road trip down here. We decided to load up the kids and take them to Arkansas for Easter.

I should also tell you that my Papaw is 1 of 10 children and a large majority of his siblings live very close to him (not to mention all of their children, and their children - you get the point), so we knew we were in for some card playin', coversation havin', showin' those babies off kinda time! Of course, like any parent we always relish in the moments that we get to show off the twins! We love taking them around family and being at my papaw's house just feels like a second home to me.

The babies traveled extremely well both to Arkansas and back home. They were little troopers the entire trip, despite hearing the word "No" at least a hundred times because my Papaw has tons of breakables in his house.

We bought them Plastic Easter eggs and they quickly proved the quote "One in the hand is worth two in the bush grass". Once they got ahold of 1 egg, they were content at leaving the rest lying on the ground.

IT was great seeing my papaw entertain them with little things like his coin holder than he keeps in his pant's pocket or to give them a piece of candy he had hidden in his front shirt pocket. All of these little things remind me of when I was younger and how he would entertain me with the same old tricks. I sure do love him so and L & M were pretty fond of him as well!

They loved the John Deere Car my Papaw brought out!

Trying to get my Papaw and daughter to smile at the same time was harder than one may think.

Here are some pictures of us on Easter Sunday (a special thanks to Granny (Patti) for the Awesome Easter Outfits) and let's not forget HE IS RISEN:

My Family..

My life and heart are so very full...I feel truly blessed!

My Loves

Handsome boys...

Simply Darling..

Stud Muffin

If you were wondering where Maddox's orneriness comes from...see picture below...

My Daily Dialogue

I had an excellent English teacher when I was growing up. While I'm not a lyrical genius, I think I have a rather extensive vocabulary. However, since my children were born my vocabulary has become limited (don't get any wise ideas that this is because I used to speak like a sailor...that's not the case). It seems as if my vocabulary skills have been replaced by the repetition of a few specific phrases. Here are a few phrases that you will hear me say at least once on a daily basis.

"What is that?"

"Put that down"

"Spit it out!"

"Give it here"

"That's Ucky" (I'm not quite sure why Yucky has become Ucky - I blame my friend Jessica D.)

"You're shoo wee"

"Ewwww...gross"

"Don't put that in your mouth"

"Coooooody!"

"No"

"Where did this come from"

"When did you eat (insert food seen in their diaper)"

16 Months

My babies are getting so big. Literally, they are growing taller everyday. Maddox is a little string bean. She is long and thin. Lukas is very tall, but he is built. Seriously, he looks like a mini-body builder and he is solid. He has been wearing a 2T for a couple of months now.

They both love being outside and we spend a majority of our day playing outside with bubbles, water, going on strolls etc. We recently purchased a new jogging stroller and our babies love it. They recline whilst getting jogged around the neighborhood. I also purchased our family a season pass to the Museum of Science & History that has a Children's Museum inside and they love it!

We also are in the middle of swimming lessons and they really enjoy it too. They can both hold their breath under water for 4 to 5 seconds and they will jump off the side of the pool into us, blow bubbles, and hold their selves above water on the side of the pool.

We took them to the dentist for the first time and the dentist said their teeth and gums looked great. We will take them back at their two year appointment. They still LOVE having their teeth brushed. They open their mouths really wide and go "UHHHHHHHH" while we are brushing their teeth.

Right now, they love to test their limits. If we tell Lukas not to do something, Maddox runs over and does the same thing. I think she just wants to see if the answer is No for her as well. Little stinker. We have been doing "time-out" as a form of punishment and it works really well. They actually sit in time-out for one minute and give hugs and love when it is over.

They jibber jabber all the time! We definitely think that they have been doing a little bit of "twin talk". Sometimes when Lukas is crying, Maddox will walk over and jabber to him. He has also jabbered to her and she will bring him something (a sippy or a toy).





Lukas has started a yelling phase. I never lived when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but I'm pretty sure his yell sounds exactly like a pterodactyl. He loves to yell/screech in stores to get people's attention, whilst they look at me like my child is having a minor conniption. He's happy..no really..HE'S HAPPY!!!



That is all that is happening in our world. WE are traveling to Arkansas to visit my Papaw for Easter so say a quick prayer for safe travels!

Expectations

"I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, then it is beautiful" - Fritz Perls

Maybe it was the "all nighter" I pulled with Lukas last night or just a lot of pondering I do when given a spare moment, but something got me thinking about expectations last night.

Life is full of expectations.  The way we are raised, our life experiences, the relationships we have all shape our expectations.  I would like to say that my parents set reasonable but high expectations on me as a child and I, in turn, have always placed high expectations on myself.  This can be a blessing and a curse.

I think it is very important that I maintain a set of expectations in my life.  I even think it is important that we have expectations of our family and friends.  I mean, if we never expected much out of the people we associated with what stops us from hanging around with a "bad crowd" or lowering our own expectations in response to our environment.  But where is the line in the sand?  What happens when my expectations on someone, don't come close to the expectations they have on themselves?  What about when their life experiences have lead them to draw different conclusions and expectations on a situation that don't match mine?  When does placing my expectations on someone else, become selfish?

 As I have grown up, I have realized on several occasions that my expectations don't necessarily meet other's expectations and vice versa.  This has also become blatantly apparent while parenting.  How I expect someone to react in a certain situation doesn't always happen and it can generate conflict.  I even set expectations on the small inconsequential things that happen during a day.  How I want my work day to go, how I want a special night with the husband to go, how I want my children to behave.  Then, I get upset if everything doesn't go as I expected in my mental plan.  Am I setting up someone for failure when I set expectations on them?

Here are a couple of examples:

When I ask Cody to take out the trash and he says, "Yes", I expect him to take it out right then.  When I walk by 30 minutes later and the trash is still in the can, I get frustrated.  My expectations on the time frame that the trash should be taken out wasn't the same as his.  Will the trash get taken out? Yes.  Will it be on my time frame? Not always.

Since the kids have been sleeping through the night for several months, we have come to expect that they will sleep solidly through the night.  When we have a night that they wake several times & need assistance going back down or a morning that they wake up at 5:45 AM, we get frustrated, because our expectations on their sleep habits didn't get met.

I sometimes have to set back and re-evaluate a situation, really mull it over in my mind.  Would I have gotten upset if I hadn't placed this un-needed expectation on them/the situation.  If I look at it from another angle, can the "perfect" (insert plan foiled due to expectations) still be salvaged?  Most of the time the answer is yes and a lot of the time some of the best things that ever happen to us are unexpected.

They See Me Strollin'.....

....They Hatin'

Scared...

This weekend marked the scariest moment of my life as a parent to date. The weekend started out fairly low key, just a visit with some friends at the park, then a date night at the Ranger's game on Saturday evening. However, Sunday aged me about 3 years...I would say 4 but that would make me in my thirties.

It was around noon and I was getting things ready for lunch and preparing stuff for dinner. The kiddos had already eaten lunch and were playing outside on the back patio. Lukas, being a ornery boy, kept going to this part of the back fence that he is not allowed to go due to wasps trying to make their nests. I had given him a piece of a Summer Berry Muffin and he was eating and playing.

After telling him no for about the 5th time, Cody picked up Lukas and brought him in the house. This made Lukas super mad. I noticed as Cody was carrying him and set him down that he was crying, but wasn't really making a sound and had his mouth full of muffin. I walked around the counter to go pick him up and get him to calm down. As I picked him up, I realized he had not taken a breath and he turned blue and went limp in my arms. Blue limp baby = freaked out mother. I yelled "Babe" to Cody and he ran around the counter to me, but I was blocking Lukas so he barely caught a glimpse of what was going on. He also had to tend to a screaming Maddox, who knew something was wrong and was scared too.

I had heard of toddlers getting upset and holding their breath till they passed out but I wasn't sure if he was choking or that he had gotten so worked up that he had forgotten to take a breath. I immediately flipped him over and administered a couple of back blows, then held him up pulled muffin out of his mouth and blew in his face. When I blew in his face, he took a breath. I could see that he was scared and for a second he just took in short jerky breaths, I watched him closely and patted him gently while walking around the living room. This all lasted about 30 seconds, but it felt like years. Within a few minutes he was up and running around the house as if nothing had happened, while I was in tears.

I still get teared up thinking about it. Needless to say, neither Cody or I were able to finish our lunch. I also had a small discussion with Lukas and explained to him that if he wanted his mom to live to a ripe ole age, he need not do something like that EVER again. It's always nice to see that you can handle a situation, but I hope we never have to be tested AGAIN.