January days

Here are some pictures of the sledding I promised. I didn't get any of Xander going downhill, because he only did it once or twice. He spent the rest of time at the bottom of the hill with me playing with the snow.

So, we're just going along during these cold, dreary January days. The kids have had small colds, just enough to start using up boxes of Kleenex and complain about runny noses. I had a bout with what I thought was the stomach flu, but more likely was probably food poisoning. I ate some prosciutto on Tuesday night that was iffy and no one else has gotten sick. Xander did throw up on Saturday night, but it was only once and in the car. He probably got car sick, that's not the first time he's done that. So, we stuck close to home at the end of last week, because of the colds and I just didn't feel very good. The weather was pretty nice on Thursday, so we did play outside for a while, but all the other days have been cold.

Saturday was a fun first for the kids. We took them to their first movie on Saturday morning at the downtown theaters. It was Madagascar 2, and we think they had fun. They each got a small bag of popcorn, and proceeded to eat almost all of it! It was kind of funny, they are so little that they didn't have enough weight to hold the folding seats down. We had to prop them up so they sat farther forward on the chairs to keep them down. We had to sit in the very front row, because it was so crowded. So, next time we'll get there earlier and use booster seats, then it'll be perfect! Saturday night they went to the Hoefs' house, and Brian and I went out to dinner and to the Lied center. Sunday was church and family movie night (Cars this week, and Charlotte's Web last week.)

We've been getting a kick out of their use of the English language lately. They've got a good enough grasp on the language that now they are trying to use new words, but get them in the wrong tense or context. We've been hearing a lot of words like "slided", "brokeded", "runned". The other day Will was trying to say "Grace told me to go upstairs" but he kept saying "Grace sayed me upstairs." It took me a while to figure that one out.

A quick update on Will with his pottying and pulmicort side effects. To sum up, not good. He's still having accidents and they are extremely on purpose. The tantrums and screaming are not any better and we consistently lose our cool with him. He is one hard kid to figure out!

Xander has re-started something he did as a baby/toddler, but had stopped for a long while. He has started taking his socks off all the time. He walks around in these sub-zero temperatures with no socks on. We find 2-3 pairs in his bed, because he takes them off at nap and nighttime everyday. There are socks all over the house, under the kitchen table, in the basement, everywhere. And if you tell him to put them back on he conveniently gets "distracted" and never quite gets around to it.

Little Miss Thing has started becoming very coy and sneaky. She has quite the explanations for things that she does wrong. It's actually pretty funny to see her try to explain her way out of doing something. For example, "Grace, why did you throw that toy at Xander?" "I was just throwing it at him, mommy." "But why, Grace?" "I just wanted to throw it at him, because I wanted to." Something like that. Boy are we in trouble when she gets more creative.

When they first started potty training, we put them in diapers at nap, just in case. Well, we never stopped putting them in diapers, then we noticed they were waking up wet. We figured out that they would wake up and pee in the diapers, because they could. We knew that because it we every woke them up from nap, they would be dry. So, now we are paying for that mistake and are having to "retrain" them to wake up and NOT pee in their underwear. They've been wearing covers at nap, and we are doing pretty well. For some reason, they won't get themselves out of bed to go to the bathroom when they wake up. So I have to remind them not to pee when they wake up and get them out of bed right away. Will has had the most dry wake-ups, but I think that just might be luck, because he wakes up last or gets woken up by everyone else. Grace has finally gotten the hang of it, she had a lot of days of wet pants and sheets. So, this is just a hurdle to waking up dry in the mornings, so far they are still really wet in the a.m. I don't know how we're going to accomplish dry mornings.

Sorry this got so long. I guess I had a lot to report! I'll post next week, if I have anything to talk about!