Halloween Monkeys

Michael and Sophie have a couple of new best friends.  Thank you, Uncle Nick and Aunt Molly!

Halloween Party

For the second year in a row, Mike and I took the kids to a Halloween party at a small farm.  Here's last year for comparison.

This year the animals were a much bigger hit.  However, learning "moo," baa," boo," and "bye-bye" all around the same time can be tricky.  Cows sometimes say "boo" and sheep occasionally say "bye-bye."

Gotta love the tippy-toes.

Watching the kids dance around one day, this costume idea came to me.  Ten minutes later, I'd found Sophie's Gymboree poodle-skirt costume complete with tags and Michael's leather jacket on eBay.  Right sizes, right prices...ours.

Sophie looooved this rocking horse and we think she'll be asking Santa for something similar this year.  Perhaps his elves should make two?

Mike's parents and my mom came along today.  It was Mike's dad's first real outing since his illness, and it was great to see him getting around so well.  I suspect the photo above will become Grammie's desktop wallpaper very soon.  :)

More peas, please!

Instead of saying my twins are a boy and a girl, I might start saying one's an herbivore and the other's a carnivore. 

Check out the trays, a pretty typical dinner time scenario.


Both kids were given cut up pork chop and fork-mashed peas, and both were asking for "moah" (more) when their trays looked like this.  If you can't tell, Sophie still has plenty of pork and Michael has a toddler-sized handful of peas at his reach. 

They're both good eaters, but they clearly have their preferences!

Bye-bye Summer

Sunday was an unseasonably warm October day, and we found ourselves grateful for the late taste of summer.   



Mom-to-Mom Loot

Sophie "bowling"

I sold in a fall mom-to-mom sale and made about $200 off of Sophie and Michael's 6-12 month gear. But if you subract what I paid for the tricycles, wooden puzzles, and outfit for Sophie that I bought at that sale...and the stuff I bought this morning at another sale...I'm only up about $100 in the mom-to-mom game. Seems fair enough to me, though.

These are the tricycles.  While setting up my own stuff at the sale, I spoke to the seller as she priced them at $35 each.  She said she paid about double that, and online searches confirmed that's the average price ($50 + shipping was the best I could find for them new).  Michael and Sophie aren't tricycle-ready yet, so these will probably make an appearance under the Christmas tree or after birthday cake in April.

Above is what picked up this morning at our neighborhood elementary school's mom-to-mom sale.  Aside from more shoes and boots, we're all set on clothes right now, so I came home again feeling like Santa.  I'm sure I could have done better if I'd haggled a little bit, but for $25 I picked up a wooden block train set, a wooden puzzle (see my obsession below), a soft bowling set, a Five Little Monkeys board book with finger puppets, five other books (three of my favorites and two holiday ones), two CDs, and two drum/maraca/tamborine sets.  Like the tricycles, I couldn't resist the instrument sets because there were two of them, one pink and one blue.  I'm hopeless in that scenario.  Let's hope I never encounter a pair of ponies for sale.

My latest obsession at these sales and at resale shops is wooden toys.  The ones above were all purchased used in the last few months.  While Sophie and Michael certainly have their share of plastic toys that we love, health and environmental concerns drive me to keep them to a minimum.  Toys made of other materials tend to be pricey, so buying used seems to be the way to go. Since plastic toys are easy to clean and giving them a second go around keeps them out of landfills, I suppose it's better just to buy everything used!

We've spent a lot of time having fun with the new toys today, especially the instruments and the train.  I didn't get a chance to really show Sophie and Michael how the bowling set worked.  I had about five of the animal pins set up when they started knocking them down with their hands and feet.  That produced enough giggles for us to consider that "bowling" for now.

Visiting Grandpa

I had to take a few pictures of the kids in the sweaters Grammie brought back from France before heading out to visit Grandpa on Saturday.

In September the four of us started  a routine of visiting Mike's dad in the hospital on Saturday afternoons.  Michael and Sophie are still a little nervous around hospital equipment, but they've come to enjoy toddling down the long hallways and dancing on the table in the visitor's room--it's a thing now.

This week Michael and Sophie brought gifts.  I printed a message for Mike's dad and one for Mike's mom on card stock and taped the paper to highchair trays for the kids to color.  Trading crayons back and forth held most of their attention at first, but they eventually created masterpieces.

This ordeal certainly isn't over, but Mike's dad is recovering well. Whether he'll go home in a wheelchair or with a walker is uncertain at this point, but Mike Sr. has obviously put his mind to getting back on his feet as soon as possible.

While I don't love the idea of my kids facing difficult challenges in their lives, I know tough times are likely to come along.  I hope Michael and Sophie will be inspired in those situations by the story of Grandpa's recovery, a tale of facing a very frightening challenge with a positive attitude and hard work.  We'll see how this tale ends, but I trust it's of the happily ever after variety.

Watch your language

I believe we're on the brink of having two little language sponges on our hands.

Following directions is like a game right now.  Overnight it seemed that saying, "Sophie, bring me your pants, please," or "Michael, let's read Going on a Bear Hunt," actually started making them stand up and go get stuff, and the specific stuff I mention.  Sometimes the kids will be playing in their bedroom, starting to get into drawers or climb on the ottoman, and I'll say, "Come on, let's go out the door," to stop the mischeif, and they do it happily.  I suspect this will change once they're two or three, but for now I'm marvelling at their intelligence and cooperation.

As far as actually speaking, they've been saying "kitty," mama," dada" and "hi" for a while. Now both are saying "more," ball," yeah," bye," and will repeat back sounds like "moo" and "vroom-vroom."  They also enjoy mimicing intonations and melody, something Sophie seemed to do even as a newborn.

So I guess we better take a tip from Up All Night and cool it on the cussing.

Hello Good-bye

When I returned to work last month after our second summer together, the kids went through an emotional phase.  Sophie would snuggle and follow me around in the morning, tears flowing as soon as my purse appeared.  For weeks they both kept a close eye on Mike and me when out of the house together, sounding the alarm if one of us strayed too far or out of view.  But now that the routine is re-established, the tears are rare and usually alleviated in the morning by asking the two of them to wave good-bye out the window. 

With so many greetings and departures over the last few weeks, Michael has also developed a sincere and heartwarming "bye-bye."  He likes to say it and wave at the ends of books and before naps and bedtime.  Sometimes he pokes his foot out of his sleep sack as I'm zipping it up and waves with his toes while he says it.

With construction on my work commutes, non-stop technology problems at work, and added pressure and responsibilities for teachers in general, returning to work has been less than smooth this year.  But I'm feeling more at ease now, and Sophie and Michael clearly are as well--it's surely a reciprocal kind of thing. 

Off we go to another school year!

I like to do things twice.

I very rarely get DIY projects right the first time.  Painting the mobiles, arranging the scrapbook page frames, and now making the babies' pillows--all done twice.  As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I felt I rushed the pillows I made last month and have just not been happy with them. 

Here's take two:

Better, I think.

Here's what they looked like before:

Blech, right?

 

But now I'm thinking I might take the new picture over again in the daylight.  It never ends!

DIY Nap Mats

When visiting the child care center a few weeks ago, I was reminded that in addition to diapers, sunscreen, extra clothes, and a set of sippy cups for water, Michael and Sophie would need nap items like small blankets and crib sheets to go over their cots.  The director mentioned that one of the kids had a little nap mat with a blanket and pillow attached that rolled up like a sleeping bag.  She said his mom got it at Buy Buy Baby and that we could get a couple of those if we wanted.

When at Buy Buy Baby a few days later I spotted the nap mats, but at about $30 each, a $60 investment for the two, I opted out.

Soon after that I saw a DIY nap mat tutorial on the Prudent Baby website, and I felt inspired. I felt a tad intimidated as well, but I tried to focus on the inspired part. 

Here's how they turned out.  I'm pretty impressed with myself, I have to say.

If I was going for cost savings, this project was a total failure.  After peeking around online and totalling up the cost of making them myself, I see now that those $30 mats are a bargain.  However, I really took this project on for the sewing practice, and that I got!

I bought anti-pill fleece that I thought would feel familiar to Michael and Sophie since it's much like the sleep sacks we use at home. Fabric appropriately masculine for even a male toddler is tough to find. I chose two-toned green for Michael and two-toned purple for Sophie, happily venturing away from the usual blues and pinks.

I made the pillows removable for the mats' weekly cleaning like a later tutorial suggested, shortened the dimensions a bit, and attached Michael and Sophie's names. I really wanted to practice using bias tape, but I only did so on the blanket part (the tutorial uses it on every edge). Fleece doesn't really need finishing, I was eager to trim the cost of this project down, and being my first attempt at bias tape I felt less would just be more. I did ok with it, but I still need a lot of practice!

The main thing I learned from my recent sewing endeavors is to slow the heck down.  I don't have entire afternoons to devote to projects anymore, and I have to embrace chunking them into pieces.  With that lesson in mind, I've recently disassembled the pillows I made last month.  I wasn't happy with how my hurried work turned out, and so far going back and taking my time is paying off.  I'll reveal those finished products soon.

I'm not sure if we'll really use these nap mats this year or if we'll wait until preschool days since Sophie and Michael don't really sleep with pillows at this point. They might be more comfortable with a blanket and a sheet or their usual sleep sacks, so I'm planning to send all three options to the center tomorrow for the teachers to choose from.  Potentially annoying, but I'm pretty sure I'm just that kind of mom.

Did I say tomorrow?  Wow, that was one fast summer.