Random updates on the kids

-I can't remember if I mentioned it but Reese has 8 teeth now. Big stuff.

-Reese is going to be an owl for Halloween and Donovan is going to be spider man. They both have their outfits already and they are the cutest.

-At Donovan's school they asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and this  was his response:

He wants to be a "drive a van to a train show." So is that a taxi driver or a dad???? I have no idea.

-Somehow, sometime about a month ago, as we walk out the door after telling Donovan "good night" he started responding, "Have a good night! I hope you eat lucky charms!"  He doesn't say it every night, usually just when he is being playful. Sometimes he switches it up a bit and tells us, "I hope you eat lucky charms, with poo poo!" or "I hope you eat lucky charms...just the marshmallows!"

-Reese is very independent when it comes to bed time. She rarely drinks her sippy of milk in your arms or wants to snuggle with you at all. She wants to read 40 books, then go directly to her crib to drink her milk on her own. This isn't saying she goes willingly every time, but gone are the days when I got to snuggle with her and have her look longingly at me while she drinks her milk. Oh and also daddy is way better at putting her down than I am (he puts a kibosh on the 40 books while I can't) so it is usually his job now.

-Reese is also slowly transitioning to 1 nap a day. One tiny, barely longer than one of her regular 1 of 2 naps, but a solitary nap none-the-less. During the week she usually takes two but this weekend she took one wimpy one both days (which equals a real (read: not at all) fun Reese by the time dinner time comes around).

-I don't think I ever mentioned this but I want to because I am really proud of it: Donovan can spell his first name and has been able to for the past couple months at least. I credit his embroidered pillow for teaching him.

-Donovan is working on counting to 20, or really 13-16. All the others he has down. His toddler speech impediment is making it really hard because his 13s and 14s sound exactly the same so it is hard to correct him as we are never sure if he is saying 13 or 14. It confuses him to. One time when we were going over 13 and 14 he finally said, "Why there two fourteens?" So we are still dealing with that. It seems like he has figured it out a little, either that or he is just saying 14 twice, then going on to 15. Once he gets past 16 he is in the clear. Once you start him in the 20s and 30s, he can tell you the whole line of them too. Pretty fun stuff!

-When Reese wants something she says, "Uhhh (fill in the blank)". As in, "Uhhh, chooo chooo" when she wants to watch Thomas the Tank engine on TV. "Uhh yi yo" is what she says when she wants the I-pad. She calls it "yi yo" because she used to play "E-I-E-I-O" on it non-stop. Speaking of I-pad, we are starting to have to limit her time on there. She wants to play it all the time. Or at least more than we want her to. She is pretty good with it. She knows how to turn it on, swipe it to unlock it, and she knows exactly what folder the games she wants are in. Her latest love is "Toca Band". Look it up if you have a toddler, although Tom and I go around singing it all day so don't say I didn't warn you.

-My favorite thing that Reese says right now is "Thank you". It doesn't sound exactly like that but you know what she's saying when she says it. And she says it unprompted all the time too, at the appropriate time. She also nods her head and says "yeah" or a very firm "no" when she does or does not want something. It makes life easier the more and more she can communicate with us.

-Reese ate part of a foam toy today at Target that I had no intention of buying. She owes me 6$.

-Donovan was really jealous of all of Reese's footie pjs so I had to buy him a bunch of his own. But not before his daddy mentioned that he could sew some socks onto Donovan's cardinal onsie (footie less) jammies. So now Donovan has that in his head.

-Both kids got to be taken out of Kohl's today kicking and screaming, by Tom and I stayed behind to pay. I was about 30 feet behind them and I got to hear all the old ladies in line (that Tom had to pass) smiling, laughing and shaking their heads saying, "Been there!"

- Donovan helped me kill about 10 flies today (that the bachelor boys let in the house yesterday). He would help me spot them and then when I killed one he would yell and congratulate me and go and tell daddy excitedly.

-Donovan has more mosquito bites than anyone I know. Today we were talking about them and he told me, "maybe they bit me because they thought I was a big piece of corn." Because Mosquitos like corn. According to Dono, they also like grapes. FYI.

Weekly update

Ok so turns out blogging when you have a new position at your job and said position is a lot more stressful that your old one was, your blog suffers. But I will do my darnedest to keep up with this thing as sometimes it is the only way I can remember what I did the week before.

This week Grammie and Pawpaw were out of town, so Grandma and Grandpa got to watch the bambinos.  Saint Linda usually tackles both kids by herself, but for the rest of us mere mortals, we need a 1:1 ratio for those crazies. So grandma switched her work days so on the days that they had both kids, she could be there to help out grandpa. Some of my favorite notes from the grandparents this week included: "Wed. 9/26. Breakfast at Denny's-Dono ate great! Reese-not so much.", "Reese has ketchup hair." and last but not least, when texting my mom about their (fun) day at the zoo her last text was, "Except I need to go back to work to rest."

Wed was raining so they took the kids to breakfast, then took Dono for a much needed haircut in the afternoon followed by lunch. Friday they took the kids to the zoo for along fun, filled morning. The rode the train, saw the sea lions, saw the hippos and elephants, penguins and even both came home with souvenirs! Those are some lucky grand kids! Here are some pictures from the two grandma/grandpa days.

 This slide was Dono's favorite part of the zoo from what he told me.

The hippo's were Reese's favorite part of the zoo. They were apparently swimming and playing together under water and Reese could have stayed there and watched them all day according to the grandparents.

This elephant was playing in and under the water. Dono told me all about it.

 

This is the sea lion area, which Donovan told me he did not go to. He lied.

 

Scamming the grandparents for toys.

Then Friday night my cousin Laura, who has been a best friend since as long as I can remember, came in for a short night stay on her way to watch her nephew for a wedding. We stayed up late talking and got to visit the next day until around 12:30 when he had to go to the wedding. It was lovely! 

Saturday Tom was busy with his brothers bachelor party so Jenna, Laura, the kids and I went over to my parents to hang out. After Laura left and the kids took naps, we went to this free day at the local indoor pool/play place. Dono and Reese loved it!!!!!! (picture of the excited kids in the locker room)

Dono was in the pool, up the playset and down the water slide in about 30 seconds flat. I estimate he went down the slide a minimum of 50 times. He was wonderful. We barely had to watch him, which was perfect because it took both myself and Jenna to watch Reese. That little daredevil wanted to go down the big slide too. But one of us had to help her up the play place to make sure she didn't slip or fall down the slide. The other had to be at the bottom to catch her. I estimate she went down that slide at least 30 times. She could not get enough. We eventually had to drag her out kicking and screaming, "MO Poooooo!!!! MO poooooo!!!! MO pooooooooo!!" (more pool) after her lips turned purple and she started to shake. My parents just came to watch for a little bit, however my sister and I decided that we need 3 adults to the 2 kids so we could switch out for breaks and in case of emergencies (like toddler's that have to poop, which happened).

Today was a play at home with nothing on the schedule day. We went shopping, got Donovan a bunch of new (and gently used) winter clothes and did some chores. Nothing crazy but a good wind down to the start of the week.

More weekend fun

This past week the weather has been awesome. The kids got to go to our local favorite play ground three times during the week (one with Grammie and two with us). We are trying to soak up all the nice weather while we can and it feels so good to finally not feel like we are jailed in our house due to heat. So to continue our fun weekend, we went to Purina Animal Farm today. It was Reese's first trip, as the last time we went (and Dono's one and only trip) I was 39.5 weeks pregnant with her.

We started off the day with Reese performing her favorite chore of feeding Petey. She LOVES filling his bowl with food, in fact sometimes, she overflows it. I like how she looks like she was caught in the act here.

 

Then Donovan tested out his photography skills. This one is a still life. Pretty good for a 3 yr old I would say.

 

Then we had a lovely breakfast of chocolate chip muffins which Reese choose to smear on her face instead of eating. This is her "cheese" face.

 

Then we headed to the animal farms where Donovan picked up where he left off 16 plus months ago...hugging the bunnies.

 

Where as Reese, well...she preferred just to look. And clap appreciatively.  I blame myself. You see, last week when we went to the bird sanctuary I let her walk up to a chicken in a cage, and immediately poke her finger in there, only to have it savagely bitten by that ba&*#rd chicken. It all happened in the blink of an eye, and I felt horrible because I saw it developing but I thought that maybe the chicken would a) not try to bite her or b) would miss her finger and peck the cage. Well I'll be damned at that chicken's speed and accuracy.  She screamed like the dickens and part of me expected to see her finger laying on the bottom of the cage, but alas, she just had a tiny bite mark on her middle finger. She recovered quickly, but apparently the emotional scar is still there as now she is majorly gun shy with petting or getting close to the animals.  She did pet the bunny, but it was just a quick poke or two. She left the hugging to her big brother.

 

Daddy even got in on the petting this time.



 

Reese was a very big fan of the horses.

 

Ok I lied. She didn't like looking at the horses so much as she liked looking at the horse poop. She was a big fan. She would point at it and tell me "Dare's (There's) poo poo! Dare's poo poo!" My parents will tell you the apple does not fall far from the tree as that was apparently my favorite thing about seeing the animals at the state fair when I was a little girl.

 

I don't have as many pictures of Donovan as I do Reese as he was a wild man and was running through all the tunnels and exploring. Reese wanted nothing to do with the tunnels.

 

Daddy even tried to help her but she thought she would sit that one out.

 

The kids loved the dog show. At one point I looked over at Reese and she was clapping to the music (like everyone else was) while watching the dogs do their thing. Last time we were there, Donovan did not like the dogs jumping in the pool. This time, he thought it was pretty cool. 

 

This was inside the building. Not really that exciting but I thought it was a cute one of Reese.

 

We ended the day with a lovely wagon ride with only one other family. Reese decided she wanted to get off towards the end of the ride while the wagon was still going so she and I got to wrestle for a little bit. She lost but in her valiant effort, she threw her snack trap overboard in protest. Life with these two is never dull.

 

Weekends like these are what makes working so hard during the week worth it. We are blessed.

Things that go 3.0

We just got back from our 3rd consecutive year at our town's annual "Things that go" day at the elementary school. There are all kinds of vehicles for the kids to play with for a hour and a half. Donovan loved it this year! Reese thought it was fun but at exactly an hour and a half, she began her epic meltdown and we made a hasty retreat home. We could not have gotten a more beautiful day either. The weather is everything you want an early fall day to be like. Such a fun start to the weekend!

Dono wearing the police helmet they wear to serve warrants. It was heavy. And he a little bit looks like the bad guy from "Space Balls" with it on.

 

Kids driving the firetruck.

Our little people sitting on the firetruck like adorable children.

Our little people showing you how they do out takes.

 



Driving the tractor.

 

Jumping on the back of the tractor.

 

Driving a back hoe loader.

 

Donovan was loving just being on a school bus. I told him he was too little to be on a school bus and he had to get off. He said. "No, I can be on here. You are just teasing me!" And he was right...and so wrong all at the same time. I'm gonna have a hard time when he gets on that bus for school the first (through 100th) time.

 

Last year Donovan was nervous when he got in the circle that rolled over and put him upside down. This year, he loved it! Even told me it was his favorite part of the day on the ride home.

 

Driving the bus.



 

They had some games and a place for the kids to ride bikes on. Dono rode and rode and rode. There was a "bike wash" for them to drive their bikes through.

 

Reese even got to eat her first sucker ever there. She was loving it! Ate the whole thing.