Snow Day!

Today, I got one of those glorious phone calls at 4:57 am. that ALL teachers (and students) anxiously await...you know, the call that school is cancelled! :) While I wasn't so keen on having a snow day this week, I do have to say it was mostly a nice day (except for the short naps). Now, the only rule for the rest of the school year is that out of our 6 days that we have, we can only use 2 more snow days, that way we get out the Thursday before Memorial Day! :) Ha...a girl can dream, can't she!?

Anyways, back to our day! Now that the girls are in toddler beds, it's become their habit to come and wake up Matt and I if we are still in bed, so at 6:30 (I know, super early), a little body snuggled up to me in bed...Miss Sydney and then about 20 minutes later her sister came to join us as well. Typically, one of us will get up and get the girls some milk and cereal to eat in our bed, while we slowly wake up! :) For breakfast, I fixed their typical cheesy eggs  and then made a special treat of cinnamon rolls and gave them a choice of their fruit. shockinly enough, the girls weren't so happy with their cinnamon rolls (probably because they are not as fabulous as those from the Bread Co...oh well, one of these days I'll make them some homemade cinnamon rolls, until then, its the ones out of a tube! :)

We played downstairs until the neighbor kids came over to see if the girls wanted to go sledding...so 45 minutes later, the girls and I (quite grudgingly I might add....because I HATE HATE HATE cold weather and snow), we were all ready, while the one who LOVES the snow (Matt), headed off to work.  Here are some of the best pictures that I took from yesterday afternoon.....



The girls playing around...all our super cool neighbors came out to see them in the snow, it was so cute! WE all had a great time!

 Miss Sydney..not so fond of having to wear her hat AND her hood, but later on she was happy that she had both her hats on b/c "it's cold out here Mama!"

Hope all is well,
J

Toddler Beds!

This post, is a little late in coming, but I thought I'd update you about the new adventure in our house...Toddler Beds. After the girls' climbed out of their beds on Christmas Morning and came out to the living room to check out their new toys, we decided that it would be in all of our best interests to move the girls to their toddler beds. This, was/is a bit depressing as we were hoping to keep them in their cribs for MUCH longer. So, we spent  Boxing Day, converting cribs to toddler beds and rearranging their room.

When the girls were first home, we placed their beds in a L shape, so that if one of us were alone and both girls needed to be soothed, we would have less space to travel. Made sense and was a great arrangement, however, it wasn't going to be the best for when they are in toddler beds. So, we moved their beds to the back wall of their room and put them end to end. The only problem with this is that NOW, we need to move their name letters that used to hang over their beds. (and of course by WE, I mean Matt, b/c well, we want them to look nice, right)? Oh well, we're not in too much of a hurry for that.


 Miss Sydney modeling her bed....the girls are still sleeping in sleep sacks, until they are nighttime potty trained. THEN, we'll look at maybe picking new sheets and redecorating their room.

 Miss Olivia....

Toddler Beds have been interesting. Not exactly fun for all of us. After a couple days, the girls (especially Olivia) discovered that they could climb out and we have spent a lot of time combatting this behavior. Sadly, it's made for one really, really tired Olivia. Sydney climbs out too, don't get me wrong, but nothing like Olivia. I miss the old days, I feel like all poor Matt and I do is yell at our daughters to "GET IN YOUR BED!" Poor girls and poor mommy and daddy. Then, we tried taking away the millions of toys (as you can see in their pictures) that they feel the need to sleep with. Kind of effective, but it makes them cry and breaks my heart. So, we've resorted to bribery. Yes, you read right, Bribery. If you stay in your bed, you get 3 M & M's (which we also use for potty training and they LOVE). Somes times it works and sometimes it doesn't. Last night, Sydney had to be rocked to sleep b/c she was just out of control..same thing with Olivia.....poor girls. Poor me. I miss my long 3+ hour naps and babies that slept until 8:30 when we didn't wake them up. Now, we're lucky if they sleep until 7-7:30, and Olivia's naps are now about 1.5 hours long, whereas Sydney will still sleep 3 hours (unless her sister wakes her up). Oh well, just another sign that my babies are growing up, which I am NOT ready for. Now, on to potty training, one is ready and the other could give a hoot. oy. Shoot me now!

Hope all is Well,
J

The WORST word...

in the English language is MOM! I hate it, what happened to Mama or Mommy? Yes, as you can guess, that is Olivia's new favorite word, well, that and both girls have discovered that Matt and I have names. Yes, several times, they have called us out by our names. FUnny yes, but not something either of us was ready for. However, for now we say, You call us Mommy/Mama or Daddy...NOT Mom or first name! Sometimes it works.

I remember when my friend Amanda at work was upset because her daughter started calling her Mommy and not Mama, guess I need to check in on her to see how she feels about Mom...because I'm pretty sure I feel the same way she did back then. Mom. WORST.NAME.EVER. Call me Mommy or Mama please. :)


Here are some fun pictures of the girls playing with our new Glee Wii game. We do love to sing in our house!

 Olivia being silly.....

 Sydney's going to be a famous singer...or more likely a dancer..some day! This kid can move those hips!

Hope all is well,
Mama :)

MORE Christmas....

So, in our grand tradition of Christmas, we had MORE Christmas's to attend after we had our private Christmas at home....we traditionally go to Matt's mom's house for Brunch (which was as always super yummy) and presents, and then head to my mom's for dinner. Sometimes in there the girls nap at Neena's house and sometimes we go home and they nap...this year, they just slept in the car to the house, Matt ran in and out and then we were off to Grandma Pat's house for dinner with Uncle Mike and Aunt Zomi...

Here we are at Neena's house....

 Arriving at Grandma Pat's house....SANTA came, and he didn't wrap presents..boo, because we LOVE to unwrap presents! Oh well, they are still super cool!

 My attempt at getting a cute pic of the two of them together...FAIL. oh well!

 Olivia is so so busy, this is literally one of the few pictures I have of her that is NOT blurred because she was so excited and running around like a maniac!

 Sydney hamming it up for the camera...my little diva!

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Hope you had a fabulous one!
J

A Christmas Morning to Remember....

WELL, it appears that BOTH Sydney and Olivia were on the NICE list from Santa. However, it's a good thing that Christmas was LAST night, or they may have both been added to the Naughty list. It seems that my girls have decided that they no longer need to stay in their cribs when they wake up in the mornings. For the past few days they've been climbing out, which isn't safe and brings up lots of scary images of toddler beds in my mind. However, they need to be safe. However, in those past couple mornings, neither one of them have left their room, ever. Today, however they did, and man was it cute. I wish we'd been able to get it on video, but sadly we were just realizing what was going on as they were talking. It went something like this:

O: "Sydney look, look, what's this."

S: "WOW. presents. Livia, presents".

Mommy: What are you two doing out of your cribs? Both girls looke sheepishly at Mommy and Daddy, and then we both say, "Look, Santa came last night!" "HErmie said you were good girls!"

Here's a sampling of what Christmas Morning was like with the girls!


Look...2 Jessie Dolls.....

 Sydney playing with her new play kitchen.....a super big hit!

 Playing inside our Hippo tent with our Rody's. So fun....

 Our new Tinkerbelle Nightlight is super awesome!

 Opening our Cabbage Patch Dolls from Uncle Todd....

 Opening presents...Olivia is one of THOSE people, you know the ones who have to have ALL the paper removed BEFORE you open the gift? And drive everyone nutso! And Sydney is one of those people who just opens as much as she can to get to what is inside!

 Checking to make sure that your Airel Barbie is as cool as mine....and that you got the SAME Airel pjs!

 Hugging eachother in our new Cindarella dresses from Mommy and Daddy!

 Olivia...just after we discovered that both Sydney and Olivia were out of their cribs and in the living room. Still not sure what all these toys are doing here!

 Playing with her new Kitchen...she LOVES it!

 I love my Fairy wings and Rody the Donkey!

 Playing with my Noah's ark...you know that they come by two's...right!???

 SLOWLY opening a gift.....

 'Smiling' for the camera in my Cindarella dress!

 Sydney....it is essential that one has on their Fairy Wings AND has a wubby AND a Jessie Doll on Christmas morning!

 Playing with her kitchen....

 Checking out her Tinkerbelle nightlight...

 Playing with Tinkerbelle AND her pony at the kitchen table...

 'Helping' Daddy open his presents

 Putting on my 'lipstick'....I love to dress up...

YAY for Christmas, and a special Thank you to our families for such fabulous gifts for all of us! Now, off to get ready for Neena's and PaPa's house and then later on for dinner at Grandma's house...we have a super busy Christmas planned!

Love you guys.....
J