week ending jan 28, 2007

Week ending January 28, 2007: This week I started Alex back on the potty training. After he had an accident on Christmas Eve (when we were so tired from the continuing illnesses) I temporarily gave up on training in the hopes that later life would be easier and we’d have more energy to dedicate to potty training. So last week I started warning Alex that we were going to stop using diapers. On Monday I put him in underpants instead of diapers. He wanted diapers (he doesn’t like change). The previous attempt to potty train him failed miserably (he pooped in his underpants 3 times in one week) because he violently resists being pushed into anything, so I tried letting him decide when he needed to sit on the potty. By 9am Monday morning, he’d had an accident. So I tried asking him to sit on the potty every 3-4 hours, but not making him sit. I just ask, and ask, and ask, and eventually he decides that he will do it. At first it took 15-20 min of cajoling each time I needed him to sit on the potty. Now we’ve got it down to about 5 min of cajoling. It is not an ideal situation, but it feels like progress. Chloe’s been a bit of a bear this week. Her good temper seems directly linked to how much sleep she gets, and this week she’s been getting up early almost every day. One day this week she had a ½ hour crying jag because she wanted new princess costumes (she already has 4), and another day she had a 20 min crying jag because she didn’t want to wipe herself. She spent weeks demanding that as long as she’d only peed, she could wipe herself and I wasn’t to do it for her. Then this week she decided that if she didn’t wipe herself, she wouldn’t have to wash her hands, so she didn’t want to wipe herself anymore. While she was having the crying jag I started out thinking “she’ll change her mind, I just need to leave her alone until she decides that it is easier to just wipe herself”. Then a few minutes went by and I changed my mind and decided that I should help her see the logic that crying alone in the bathroom was making her unhappy and wiping herself and washing her hands would make her happy and would be easy to do. She wasn’t having any of it and told me to “go away”, and then the crying escalated into screaming and choking sobs. Every few minutes I’d feel bad for her and try to re-explain, calmly, adding that Mommy had lots of jobs like cooking and laundry, and that wiping was Chloe’s job. I tried telling her to take a deep breath and blow like she was blowing bubbles (I read that calms kids down), and then she’d calm down long enough to tell me that she didn’t want to wipe, and I’d explain my side of the situation again, and she’d start screaming again. Eventually one of my explanations seemed to work, she wiped herself, and she hasn’t had any “fits” since. Well, I typed so much about the crummy stuff this week, there isn’t much room left for the good stuff. Chloe’s cute phrase of the week was when she wanted to go to the mall and Daddy said we had to go home. She patted Daddy’s arm and said “It’s ok, Dad, we’ll drop you at home and you can work on the house and I’ll go the mall.”

week ending jan 21, 2007

Week ending January 21, 2007: The kids should sleep well tonight; we’ve had quite a busy day. We took the kids to their 1st boat show (Casey goes 2-3 times a year), and then it snowed just over an inch, so after climbing on boats all day the kids couldn’t resist running around in the snow. They dug with their snow shovels, rode on the sleds, and jumped and made snow angles on the trampoline. The kids really liked the boat show as long as we didn’t stay in one place for too long. They climbed on each helm and into each berth. They particularly liked the mid-cabin berths which are like tunnels behind the stairways and under the helms. It was miserable cold out, but I’m glad that the kids are too young to be outside by themselves so I forced myself to go out in the snow with them. I thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the snow, the ingenuity the kids showed in how they amused themselves in the snow, and the pure joy that the kids live because they are so in the moment that nothing is more important to them than enjoying the rare treat of a yard covered in fluffy whiteness. This week we tried putting Chloe on a dairy-free diet at the doctor’s suggestion to see partial-lactose-intolerance explains her frequent complaints of belly pain. We didn’t manage to be totally dairy-free, but we saw no improvement with a significant dairy reduction, and gave up. I may have to take her to a gastroenterologist because she is complaining probably once or twice per day about heart-burn. In the “amusing things Chloe says” category this week, there is what she said when I was pretending to be a monster and eating Alex up, she said “Excuse me, that’s my prince. Please don’t eat him, we need to go to the ball”. Alex had a cute saying too. He was being adorable and I said “I’m going to have to kiss you” and Alex said “I yike kisses!”. No wonder I was eating him up!

week ending jan 14, 2007

Week ending January 14, 2007: Next week I will go to Heritage Baptist Academy to turn in the kids’ applications for preschool requesting a Tues/Thurs afternoon class to start in the fall. When we visited the school last time, the twins seemed to be able to follow directions about as well as the kids in the 3 year old class, so I think they will be ok. Alex and I are still coughing a bit, and Alex threw up Monday night about an hour after he’d gone to bed. He and Chloe are sharing a room right now (their choice), and Chloe didn’t wake up at all even when Alex cried after he threw up and I came back into the room to change the bedclothes. This week Chloe has been entertaining us with the things she says. I usually try to give the twins positive feedback when they are playing nicely and I often say “that is good cooperation” when I see them working together to agree on how to play. The other day Alex and Chloe were working together to carry a huge sofa cushion out of the room and Chloe said to her father, “say ‘that’s good cooperation’, Dad!”. At the dinner table tonight I got the chills after drinking a lot of ice cold soda and after I explained what had happened, Chloe said “is that a pain your butt, Mom?”. I guess we’ll have to be more careful about what we say around her. We were visiting our friends Rob and Tina, and Tina said “Rob is being lazy” while he was out of the room. When Rob came back in the room Chloe said “Is Mr Rob being lazy?”. This week their Aunt Danielle brought over a motorized fishing game and Alex caught a fish right away. At first I wondered if it was beginners luck, but although Chloe and Natalie didn’t have much luck, Alex continued to catch fish over and over demonstrating both his visual/spatial abilities, and his love of imitating his father’s love of fishing. Just before Christmas we noticed that if Alex stands on his toes, he is tall enough that he can push up light switches to turn the lights on, although he can’t reach high enough to pull the switch down to turn the lights off.

week ending jan 7, 2007:

Week ending January 7, 2007: The kids seem to be much better, however, every time they get sick, it is as they are nearest recovery when they get the surliest. I guess they get tired of feeling bad all the time, just like the rest of us. We made them miss their Aunt Danielle’s graduation party this week because the party didn’t start until 7pm and every day this week the kids were complaining about being tired as early at 4pm. They just didn’t seem to have any stamina. They did get to go to my best friend’s baby shower and they had a good time watching cable TV (we don’t have cable) and playing with my friend’s 13 year old son, Jacob, who was very kind to them. They are still asking every morning “what are we going to do today”, and when I told Alex that we were going to a party for Miss Jamie’s baby, Alex said “Really? Thank you Mama, that makes me so happy!”. They’ve been playing with their Christmas gifts. I’m very happy to see how well they do playing with the Candyland and Memory board games that Santa brought for them. These are their 1st board games, and they volunteer to play them and can sit through a whole round of Candyland until someone gets to the Fiesta to win the game. Chloe just saw an ad for Barbie’s 12 Dancing Princesses and she petted my hair and said very seriously, “Mama, that is a great movie”. I got an e-mail from one of my girlfriends today. She has 4 kids and the oldest is 6. 3 of them are throwing up and have fever in the 104F range, and her husband just left for 3 weeks in Thailand on business. Suddenly I feel like a real wimp for being so down these last two weeks when everyone in my house was sick!

week ending jan 2, 2007:

Week ending January 2, 2007: Well, we lived to see the New Year. After 4 nights of being up in the middle of the night with coughing kids, I could hear that Alex’s cough was causing his throat to constrict, so I took him to the doctor and got an oral steroid for him. Then the next day he complained of ear pain and I spent until midnight at NightTime Pediatrics with Alex only to learn that he has a double ear infection. Alex’s cough continued to get worse and agitated his asthma. The nebulizer helped, but I got really nervous a couple times when he was coughing so hard and frequently and long that he couldn’t talk and his face started to get purple. At one point it took him a full minute of coughing and sputtering to say (cough, cough) “I’m…” (cough, cough) “I…” (cough, cough) “I’m…” (cough, cough) “I’m sick!”. On Monday we went to visit some friends and he so wanted to play with the other kids, but he couldn’t walk up a flight of steps without having a 5 minute coughing fit that had other parents asking Alex if he was ok. It was comforting to know that other parents found his type of coughing as worrisome as I did and that I wasn’t just being paranoid. Chloe’s cough seemed to be getting worse also and on Monday we noticed Chloe’s eye’s were producing a lot of discharge. A trip to the doctor’s today revealed that she has pink eye, and an ear infection. So in the past 7 days, we’ve been to the doctor 3 times, and we are currently giving the kids a total of 7 medications for 14 total doses in a day. We did have a few bright spots. One day Chloe greeted her dad when he came home from work and asked matter-of-factly “how was your day, Dad?”. Every time the kids and I would come home Alex would walk in the door, look around and says “presents still here!”. He was genuinely pleased. He still has trouble when things are new figuring out if they are just barrowed (like when we visit his friends and he gets to play with the toys but not keep them), or when new things are actually his to keep. I think it takes a week or more before he really believes that something new is actually his to keep. Another bright spot came on New Year’s Eve when Alex and Chloe were excited to be going to a party and Chloe was asking Alex if he liked her party dress, if he liked her ribbon, if he liked her rhinestones, and he answered all “yes”, and then Chloe said “aw, Brother, you’re the best!”.

week and a day ending dec 25, 2006

Week and a day ending December 25, 2006: No real pictures this week, just a link to another web site with a bunch of pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/BigPicsFromXmasMorn2006 We thought we were in good shape for Christmas with our shopping, wrapping, and gift-assembling largely done days before Christmas, but the best laid plans of mice and men, blah, blah, blah. Friday night Chloe couldn’t sleep because of a bad cough so I spent some of the night in her bed, and then Saturday night Alex was awake for hours with the coughing, which meant so was I. By Sunday (Christmas Eve) we were all exhausted. We’d invited my family over for lunch and to help us assemble the trampoline that they’d bought for the kids. Just as the kids were getting fussy and were demanding finger paint, the guys discovered that a part of the trampoline was missing. I felt pretty frazzled since I was exhausted, worrying about the trampoline, trying to find a receipt, and trying to find smocks, paint, and paper for the kids. As soon as the guys left for the store to see if they could get another trampoline, Cousin Natalie started balling and holding her ear saying it hurt. Her Mom gave her Motrin and Natalie settled down after a while, but was burning up with fever. Natalie has had seizures with a high fever before, so we were all on pins and needles hoping she would be ok, and hoping that NightTime Pediatrics could get her some medicine in time for her to feel well enough enjoy Christmas. I really wondered if, with everyone sick and "everything" going wrong, we were going to be able to enjoy this Christmas we'd worked so hard to prepare for. By some miracle there was another trampoline at the store, the clerk was helpful in the exchange, and the guys got back in time to finish putting the trampoline together before Natalie’s doctor’s appointment. Immediately after that, we had a party to go to with Casey’s family. Chloe spent the first hour hanging around my neck, saying “can we go home now?”, and Alex peed in his pants. After some dinner we all felt better and actually managed to enjoy the last part of the party. Our second Christmas miracle came when both kids managed to sleep through the night and didn’t get up until 8am. As Casey carried them down the stairs they asked if Santa came, and if he’d brought a ballet outfit for Chloe and some trains for Alex. Lucky for us, he had. Santa color-coded the gift wrap so that Chloe’s were wrapped in pink princess paper and Alex’s were wrapped in blue train paper. The kids didn’t even have to ask which gifts were theirs; they just started tearing open gifts. Almost as soon as they’d finished, Grammy Carole and Granddad showed up with more gifts. Then Uncle Dan and Aunt Danielle with more gifts (and a much happier Natalie). Then Grammy Barb and BobBob with more gifts. Then we went to dinner at Uncle Brian’s and opened more gifts. I think there were about 12 hours of gift opening and the kids loved all of it, and did not getting overtired or overwhelmed as they did last year. All’s well that ends well. One of the brightest points in the day for me was Cousin Blade playing with the twins for a long time. It was a game in which they buried him with pillows and sat on him. The twins thought this was hilarious. I thought it showed a good deal of patience and maturity and caring on Blade’s part. One other funny story from this week (as if I haven’t gone on long enough!) was that we all went to get flu shots. Cousin Natalie had one earlier in the week, and had shown off her Bugs Bunny band-aid, so the kids decided that after they got the band-aid, it wouldn’t hurt any more. I went first and got my band-aid, and the nurse said “who’s next?” and Alex said “me!”. When he got the shot he said “ouch”, then she put the band-aid on him and he said “it doesn’t hurt any more!”. After that Chloe wasn’t much nervous about getting her shot either.

week ending dec 17, 2006

Week ending December 17, 2006: This week the kids helped me make gingerbread cookies, I finished my Christmas shopping, and we went to another holiday party. Chloe said “Mom, something white” while pointing to a nativity silhouette in a neighbor’s yard, so I started to point out the baby Jesus, the star, and to explain that the roof was of a barn called a stable where baby Jesus was born. She said, “In Bethlehem?”. I said “oh, you’ve heard this story before”. She said “yes, in our angel book”. I think it is a Christmas story book that we probably haven’t read since shortly after Christmas last year. This week Alex and Chloe were each pushing baby dolls in toy strollers. Chloe’s baby doll was covered in a blanket and had a teddy bear and a bottle. Alex’s baby was naked and had a toy train and a conductor’s hat. I think each twin gave their respective babies what they thought would make the babies happy. I took the kids to Little Gym this week and they each learned how to do a forward roll. They also played a hilarious version of duck-duck-goose in which almost no one played by the rules, but everyone had fun. This month or so the twins have started learning games like hide-and-seek, tag, and duck-duck-goose. We always ask the kids to tell us about what happened in their days but lately Chloe has been responding “that’s special”. When a toy is a special toy, like their favorite toy for sleeping with, or a favorite present they just received, they don’t have to share it (everything else must be shared), so Chloe is telling us that the information about her day is “special” so she won’t have to share it with us. We’ve tried asking her why and she always says “don’t worry, its just until after Christmas”. I can understand her wanting to assert her independence by not sharing on command the details of her day, but I’m not sure what she thinks Christmas has to do with it, other than a stall tactic. This week I was walking past Alex and tousled his hair. He giggled and looked me straight in the eye and said “I love you Mom”, for no reason at all. It is truly the little moments like that which keep me going.

week ending dec 10, 2006

Week ending December 10, 2006: This week Alex has started to use our old digital camera to take pictures. By the end of the week he has learned how to turn the camera on, put it in picture mode, get the object he wants to photograph into the frame, take the picture, and put the camera into view mode to view the picture. Chloe is continuing her streak of saying things that sound like they should come from a much older child. This week she said “Mom, why do we have a moose on top of our Christmas tree? Why can’t we have an angel like everyone else?”. To this Casey replied “you’re 3!”. We just ended another session of story hour at the library. We go once a week and a group of about 20+ 2-5 year olds listen to the librarian who alternates stories with songs, dances, and games, and then everyone does a small arts and craft project. A few months ago Alex would not participate at all but would only watch. Now he is participating right along with the group. The story hour is a nice incentive to get the kids dressed and out of the house so that we get new books and videos each week. This week we got the “Night Before Christmas” book along with other Christmas stories. This week the kids invented a new game called “vacuum me!”. While I’m vacuuming with the hose extension they scream “vacuum me!” until I chase them and suck their clothes with the vacuum and they giggle and scream like it is the funniest thing in the world and then they scream “vacuum me again!”. Something else not new for this week, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that when Chloe is talking to Alex she calls him “Brother”, as in “Brother, can I have a turn?”, and “where are you going Brother?”. She doesn’t do this when she is talking to us about Alex. In that case she calls him “my brother” as in “where is my brother?” rather than “where is Brother?”. The pictures this week are of Chloe sitting on Alex’s lap on my mattress which is ½ off of the bed (they used it as a slide for about an hour and a half while I was getting ready to put the bed skirt back on), and of the kids “hiding” in the toy chest. After hiding, they decided that the toy chest was an egg and they were hatching from the egg.

week ending dec 3, 2006

Week ending December 3, 2006: Ok, tomorrow is going to be a long day with an afternoon/evening party over an hour away, so I’m going to write today. Today we took the kids to an Xmas party at Casey’s work. There were over a thousand people there and they had lunch, Santa, balloons animals, Sesame Street characters, face painting, and shows. The kids had a blast but are now really tired. Alex has had a rare evening of defiance. We had to put him in “time out” twice during dinner. “Time out” is reserved for when the kids are engaging in dangerous behavior or are openly defiant. Alex hardly ever needs time out because he hates conflict and really wants to make to keep the peace. Chloe, on the other hand, spends a few minutes in time out each day and doesn’t really seem to mind a bit. This week Chloe decided she wanted to sleep in her sleeping bag, and it didn’t seem worth a fight, so we let her. Then she wanted to sleep in her sleeping bag in Alex’s room, so we let her. So far it is going well. She slept in there two nights and then on the 3rd night Alex said he wanted her to sleep in her own room. She was crushed, but she slept in her own room. This week Chloe asked “why does Santa come at night?”. I think I said “because you aren’t supposed to see Santa’s magic” to which she replied “why?”. She’s made me aware that it is too often that I answer, “that’s the way it is” to her questions of “why?” because when she said “I am going to ride with a clown in a roller coaster on Xmas”, and I said “what makes you think that?”, she said “that’s just the way it is, Mommy”. So if anyone has a better answer to “why does Santa come at night?”, I’m open to suggestions. This week Alex’s cough (of 13 days and counting) got really bad so I took him to the doctor who said it was constricted bronchia and prescribed a nebulizer. Since this is our 2nd year of nebulizer-ing, we now own a nebulizer and Alex is officially “asthmatic”. The pictures this week are of Chloe getting her face airbrushed, and Alex with a dinosaur on his face, a balloon sword, and a petit four.

week ending nov 26, 2006

Week ending November 26, 2006: This week the kids had two Thanksgiving dinners. Well ok, they didn’t really eat much of anything at either dinner (they seem to be picky eaters when in a crowd or a strange place), but they seemed to enjoy the company. Right now I’m wishing that I’d been more proactive about getting flu shots for the kids. Alex has been coughing since Monday, and since has developed a fever and vomiting. Chloe started coughing on Wednesday and hasn’t had any other symptoms yet. She’s been doing really well with the potty training. She hasn’t had any accidents in a while and she’s getting better about deciding on her own to use the potty without so much hounding from us. We’ve totally backed off on Alex’s potty training. It was getting to be a war to get him to use the toilet at all, so now we’re waiting again for him to decide that he is ready. So far he does all of his BM’s in the potty, but otherwise takes advantage of wearing diapers. This week I dressed the kids up in their xmas finery and took them to a fancy xmas shop to take their pictures for our xmas cards. I brought a puppet with me and the puppet kept them cheerful and looking at the camera, so it only took one session to get a decent picture instead of the several sessions over several days that it took last year. We were up at 5am this morning with sick kids, so I can’t remember too much about what happened this week. I do remember that last week we heard Alex get out of bed at around 9pm and then we didn’t hear him talking so we figured he’d gone back to sleep. We didn’t realize until we went to bed that Alex had gone back to sleep in our empty bed instead of his own. In the month or so that they’ve been in beds instead of cribs, this is one of the only times either one of them has gotten out of bed before morning, so I guess we are pretty lucky. Also last week the kids rode their bicycles about 3 blocks, all the way to the community playground and back. That is by far the longest ride they have been on.

week ending nov 19, 2006

Week ending November 19, 2006: Alex had his appointment with a speech therapist who works for the county. After nearly an hour of testing him, she said that his speech skills are actually advanced for his age. She had a chart that described which sounds 90% of kids have by which age, and Alex can do some of sounds that many kids don’t acquire until they are 4 years old, such as letter combinations like “st” in “stop”, etc. Chloe seems to have remarkable memory skills and will remind of things that we said one time weeks ago. For instance the other day we were riding in the car and out of the blue Chloe said, “When I grow up you are going to be the grandmother, and my baby will be named Strawberry Shortcake”. I was really impressed that she remembered that I’ll be a grandmother when she has a baby. Another example was when I ran out the car for a second to grab something that we’d left in there. When I got back into the house Chloe said “Mom, are you going to jail?”. I said something to effect of, “jail is for people who do things that are against the law. Did I do something against the law?”. She replied, “you left us alone”. I then recalled a conversation we’d had weeks before when she wanted to go somewhere and Alex didn’t. She had suggested that I should take her where she wanted to go and Alex could stay home. When I asked who would stay with Alex she said he should stay home alone. I then told Chloe that children must always have an adult with them and if I left Alex home alone that would be against the law and I could go to jail. So, she must have remembered this conversation and worried that since I’d gone to the car and there was no adult with her in the house that I would have to go to jail. This week Alex pooped in his underpants 3 times with no attempts to try to find a potty, so I temporarily gave up on potty training him and put him back in diapers. He now hardly ever asks to use the potty, but we had a talk about it and then he did a poo in the potty, so maybe it was only a temporary set back. This week we took the kids to a children’s museum called Port Discovery. The kids really liked it but I saw kids coughing and sneezing all over the place. It is just a matter of time before the twins start developing cold symptoms. This week we got the kids’ picture taken with Santa. The strange faces they are making are what they look like when we ask them to smile. They just don’t know how to fake a smile.

week ending nov 12, 3006

Week ending November 12, 2006: Another big week for the Phelps family. We decided that in order to encourage Alex to try to poop in the potty we’d offer him a bribe (especially since we’d offered Chloe the fairy wings for 24 hours with dry diapers). He has a favorite train that is getting old and doesn’t work very well, so I offered to get him a new one if he pooped in the potty. I think it only took him a day or 2 to figure it out, and he’s pooped on the potty every day since. I don’t think I have every seen Alex so excited and talkative as he was after we got that new train! After 2 days of pooping in the potty we let Alex wear underpants, and he’s been wearing underpants for 4 days now with only one accident. After he had the accident he cried and said “I had an accident! It makes me sad!”. This Alex also agreed to let us take his crib out his room. He’s been sleeping in his big boy bed for several weeks, and every few days I’d ask if he wants us to take his crib apart, or if he wants it to stay in his room and he’d say “stay in my room”. Then one day I asked if he wanted us to take his crib apart soon and he said “yes”, and the next time I asked him if he wanted us to take his crib apart he said “yes” and was very excited to do it right away. On Friday we took the kids to the Baltimore Zoo and they had a wonderful time. We stayed there almost 5 hours and walked the whole park. It was 75F and there were no bus loads of school kids and hardly any other crowds either. It was really and idyllic day. Alex liked the tram and the polar bear. Chloe liked all of the animals except for the bats. On Saturday we all 4 stayed the night at a friends’ house. It was the first time we’d stayed away from home since the kids moved out of their cribs, so it was their 1st time sleeping in sleeping bags. I’m so excited that we made it through a whole night with them in sleeping bags. I have visions of them sleeping over at their grandparents’ houses and Casey and I getting an evening to ourselves now and again! I just can’t believe that this month we’ve got them both out of diapers, out of their cribs, and sleeping in sleeping bags. They are growing up fast.

week ending nov 5, 2006

Week ending November 5, 2006: Welcome to all potty all the time news network. Potty training officially started Oct 16, and Chloe has had her 1st 2 accidents this week. It had been 2 weeks with no accidents so I was starting to relax and figure that she had a handle on things when she had her 1st accident. Then I started asking her to sit on the potty more often and she started rebelling. She refused to go at all. One day she held it from 8am to after 5pm before she decided that it was time for her to go in the potty. Then she went accident-free for 5 days and then had another accident. I didn’t chastise her after either accident, but she knew she’d not done what we wanted her to do. After the 2nd accident she said “Mom, are you still a little bit proud of me?”. Alex is still doing most of his pee in the potty, and all of his poo in his diaper. This week he told his Daddy that it is “ok” to poo in his pull-up diaper. We may have to try him in underpants again. Also this week, the kids had their 3 year well visit. In the past year Alex has gone from 29lb 34.5in tall to 33lb 38 in tall, and Chloe has gone from 25lb 33.5in tall to 29lb 37 in tall. Chloe is still having acid reflux problems, so we are trying her on a new medicine. Alex has been on Claritin for his seasonal allergies and we are adding Singulair to his regimen. The doctor also said that the speech of a 3 year should be understandable by a stranger 75% of the time. I don’t believe that Alex’s articulation is that clear, so we are going to talk to the county about having him tested through the Head Start program. We’ve been noticing lately that Alex sings all the time. Much of the time he makes up his own tunes and lyrics, and sometimes he gets Chloe to sing with him. Chloe has become interested in coloring lately (neither twin has been much interested in coloring in the past). Also this week Chloe overheard Grammy Barb talking about a doctor and Chloe said “Did you know that a few days ago I went to see Dr Escabosa? He is my pediatrician.”. If you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious!

Halloween

Halloween 2006: Maybe I won’t have anything left to write about at the end of the week, but I wanted to send out a quick note about our first real trick-or-treating. The kids practiced in the house early in the day by walking up to each parent and saying “knock-knock”, then we’d say “Hello?”, and they’d say “trick-or-treat”, and we’d pretend to put a candy in their pumpkins. No one asked them to practice like this, they just invented the game themselves. When it came time to actually go out the kids were very excited and cooperative. Chloe was just bubbling over and couldn’t stop talking to the people who answered the door saying things like “I’m Ariel, the Little Mermaid. I have the movie too. And this is my crown”. Alex was pretty good about knocking on the door and saying “Trick-or-Treat” and “Thank you”, but other than that, he was his usual reserved self. Chloe practically ran from house to house and Alex was so busy taking in all the sites and playing with his costume and light stick that he walked very slowly. One of the neighbors said that her kids used to go down the whole main road and then by the end they were so tired that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) walk home. I really wanted to avoid that, so we walked a few houses down passed the end of cul-de-sac, then back passed our cul-de-sac, at which point I said “do you want to go home and eat candy now, or do you want to go to more houses?”. They both wanted to go to more houses, so we went 4 houses down the other direction and 4 houses back. We gave them a count down (3 houses left, 2 houses left), and they didn’t even complain when we said were all done and it was time to go home to eat candy. I let them pig out on candy for quite a while. They picked out all the candy was colorful and had no chocolate to eat first, but they were so excited that they didn’t finish one piece of candy before they moved on to the next. In the end I think they each licked or nibbled about a dozen pieces of candy, which I think is great because it makes us about a dozen pieces closer to being a candy-free house. Every night before bed Alex and Chloe watch about 20-30 minutes of a cartoon to relax and mellow out. Tonight Chloe said she didn’t want to watch the “movie”, she wanted to go to bed. That has NEVER happened before. I guess all that excitement really got her tuckered out. I’m proud that she took responsibility for her own rest. And I’m proud that Alex was so brave to go up to all those strange houses, and get that close to all those people whom we did not know.

week ending oct 29, 2006

Week ending October 29, 2006: This week Alex moved out of his crib and into his big boy bed, the kids enjoyed a Halloween parade, and the whole rest of the week was about the potty, so if you are squeamish about such things, consider this fair warning. This potty training thing has taken over our whole lives. It started before their 2nd birthday when I bought a potty chair for them, and then there were books for both the kids and for us parents about potty training. And then my sister-in-law gave us a potty video with potty songs (♫Tra la la boom di-ay, I push my pants away, and while I’m standing there, pull down my under ware♫) that her kids watched when they were potty training. And then the kids couldn’t share a potty chair, so there were 2 chairs, and then we needed chair upstairs for middle-of-the nights, and during baths, so there were 3 potty chairs. And then there were potty treats (M&M’s and Mike-n-Ikes) for successful elimination completion. And then the kids got stressed when I’d ask them to sit on the potty and they weren’t able to produce, so a potty chart for putting star stickers on it was implemented so that they would get rewarded just for sitting on the potty even if they didn’t have to go (this was an issue because I they weren’t telling when they had to go, and I was guessing based on how long it been since the last time they went, so sometimes I’d ask them to sit on the potty, and they didn’t actually have to go). And then there were the big rewards for consistent potty use to encourage the kids to use the potty every time rather than just once-in-a-while. Now we basically live in the bathroom. This week we’ve been in the bathroom in the library, JC Penny, the grocery store, Boscov’s, TGI Friday’s, Crofton Elementary School, K-Mart, Target, and probably a few others. Being 3, the kids have trouble focusing on completing the series of tasks required to actually get out of the bathroom (1 pull garments down, 2 climb into potty, 3 produce, 4 wipe, 5 flush, 6 replace garments, 7 wash hands, 8 dry hands), so I’m constantly re-directing them, and it still takes about 15 minutes for the 3 of us to use the restroom. Anyway, it all seems to be paying off. Chloe hasn’t had an accident since Oct 16, and Alex is really starting to get the hang of it too. I thought Alex would get scared using strange restrooms, but as long as Chloe goes 1st, he is happy to try it. In this sense (and many others) he is lucky to have a twin sister.

week ending oct 22, 2006

Week ending October 22, 2006: This was a very big week for us. Chloe seems to be completely potty trained, she’s moved out of her crib into her big girl bed, Alex is peeing in the potty 80-90% of the time, and we went to a pumpkin patch. It all started Tuesday morning Chloe peed in the potty and asked to wear underpants. She has not had a single accident since. Before then she never seemed to be able to predict when she needed to use the potty, but if I happened to guess when she might need to go, she’d sometimes agree to sit on the potty. Now she tells us when she needs to go every time! When we bought the mattress sets for the kids, the kids were excited to sleep in them but I thought “the cribs keep them contained, they fit in the cribs, why should I have them wandering the house in the middle of the night unless they are potty training and need to get up to pee?”. So we told the kids that they couldn’t sleep in their big beds until they learned to use the potty. Apparently when we were in a store a few weeks ago, Chloe saw a night gown and I told her that she’d be too cold in a nightgown unless she was in her big girl bed with covers. She remembered that and as soon as she’d done one successful day of potty training, she said she wanted to get a nightgown and sleep in her big girl bed. We were so happy that she was taking the initiative in the potty training that we decided to reward her. Her 1st two nights in the bed were fitful, but now she seems acclimated. When Alex saw her using the potty so much he started to get interested too. He really wants to sleep in his big bed also, but so far he has never done a poop in the potty, always in his diaper. The big change has been somewhat stressful on all of us. Everything takes longer since we seem to always be waiting for someone to finish on the potty (our 3 hour trip to the mall involved 3 potty visits, each lasting 10-15 minutes). Whenever one of us is in the bathroom, at least 3 people end up being in the bathroom. The kids are not very independent yet about getting dressed and undressed, or setting up the potty seats, or wiping, or washing their hands. It seems that we parents are constantly being pulled in two directions at once because the kids either both need help with the potty at the same time, or one needs help on the potty and the other needs help with something else. The kids 1st visit to a pumpkin patch went well save for showing up an hour late because we couldn’t get the kids off the potty and one potty accident by Alex.

Week ending October 15, 2006: This week Chloe had her 1st dental check-up. She’d already seen Alex do it, so she was really excited. She’d say “Mom, is it time to go to the dentist now?”. She did really well at the visit and had no problems with her teeth. Alex wanted his teeth checked again, so the hygienist let him get in the chair and opened another set of sterilized tools and checked his teeth for him. Last week I wrote a lot about things Chloe said, and not much about Alex. It is easier to write about Chloe because she is so verbal and I don’t have to find my own words to describe the things she does. Anyway, Alex’s skills seem to lie more in the visual/motor areas. For example, he got a remote controlled bulldozer for his birthday and the controls have 4 buttons and 2 joysticks. I was intimidated just looking at the controls because I thought they’d be hard to figure out. After two days of trial-and-error I asked Alex if he could back the bulldozer up and he did it without blinking! I didn’t have to figure out the controls because Alex had already done it. He also has a toy train and the drive linkage keeps falling apart. I fixed it for him the 1st two times for him, and now he puts it back together himself. Fixing the toy involves putting a little tiny pin through a little tiny hole, and then snapping another piece onto a little tiny knob on the other end of the pin, and he does it all by himself. Also this week we took the kids to Luray Caverns and Skyline Drive. Alex liked the cave, but Chloe kept saying “can we go upstairs now?”. We drove about 20 miles on Skyline Drive and then parked and hiked to a waterfall. We brought back-pack kid carriers. The kids were really excited about riding in the back packs, so we carried them all the way down hill to the falls. It was pretty steep, so we were really glad when the kids walked about ¾ of the way back up the hill before getting tired and asking to be carried again. The traffic getting around Washington, DC was so bad that we ended up spending over 8 hours in the car that day, but the kids were well behaved the whole time. On a final note, we went to their Great PopPop Hague’s 91st birthday and had a good time and cake.