She dresses herself....

Need I say more? 

Her Aunt RaRa bought her those halloween baby leg warmers for her first halloween and she stills wears them around the house several times per week!

Grayson's Special Day

At Preschool, the children get to celebrate their birthdays by having their parent bring in a snack and read a book. Since Grayson has a summer birthday, they get to celebrate a "special day" instead. Grayson had his special day last week.  

He got to wear a crown, sit in the special Big Bird Chair and be the line leader.  

 Mommy (and Avery) brought in a (healthy of course) snack of frozen banana pops dipped in yogurt and rolled in cheerios and a few M&M's. They were a hit! Mommy read one of our favorites here, "Go Dog, Go!" (It's actually the same book that Avery choose for me to read when we celebrated her special day in the two year old class two years ago).

P.S. I love that his little buddy is totally photo bombing this pic!

After snack, Grayson proceeded to stand on the table and chairs and jump off of them.  His teachers were shocked - "just so you know, he never does that here.  He is a perfect angel and always listens" they said. I just had to laugh!

Dance Class

Every Tuesday night, I sit for an hour at Miss Jeanne's School of Dance Arts, while Avery dances the night away.  I have no idea what goes on inside the studio, but it is worth my time because she leaves tired and happy!

But once a year, they invite the mommies to come inside to visit a class, so I snapped a few pics of her in action that night. I'm hoping her extra silliness was due to the fact that I was there and I'm really hoping that she is not like that in every class.  

 She is the second one from the front...very focused at this point.

 I have no idea if this is "proper form," but she seemed to really get her leg up there - I was impressed! I have never seen her do this around the house before!

 You can't deny it - these girls are pretty adorable!

I even got a sneak peek at their routine for May's recital! I was so impressed with how much they improved as a whole from last year and can't wait to see them up on stage! 

Bye Bye Pacis!

We swore we were going to get rid of Grayson's pacifiers when he turned two, but then we always seemed to come up with any excuse why it wasn't a good time (moved to a new house, holidays, Daddy was traveling too much, we are enjoying the sleep we are getting right now, etc.) He only used it for sleeping and it never left his bedroom.  But we decided it was just time to buckle down and do it two weekends ago.

We let Grayson pick what he wanted to do with them.  Out of all of the awesome options, he chose to "mail" them to his newest cousin, Hadley, who lives in North Carolina.  So after his nap on a Saturday afternoon, we wrote a letter to Hadley, packaged them up and put them in the mailbox. 

 Then we hopped in the car to go the mall so that he could make a "Build a Bear" that would replace his pacifiers and keep him safe and comforted at night.  

Clearly, we did not think this through....we haven't gone to the mall on a Saturday afternoon in years! (Normally, IF we go to the mall, it is at 10 am right when they open). The Build A Bear Workshop was bumping....we waited in line for almost an hour to make this ridiculous bear!

 He picked out a Spiderman bear and named him "Spiderman." Please do not call him "Spidey" - he really does not like being called that because "that is NOT his name!" says Grayson. 

 This was my first time at Build A Bear. Avery went with Poppy, Rose and Daddy shortly after Grayson was born when she made her most favorite bear "Stuffy." It is a very cute process to make the bear - although would have been better enjoyed after not waiting in line for so long.  

But here is Gray helping to "stuff" the bear...

 Then picking out his heart...

 After he is all sewed up, he gave him a bath.

 And out he went in his box!

 They snuggled all the way home.

 Once we got home, Avery insisted that Stuffy needed to be introduced to Spiderman...

 and then next thing you know, we found them like this!

That first night without the pacifier was rough. It took Gray about 2 hours to fall asleep. But to be honest, that isn't all that unusual for him.  He woke up twice through the night. The next night he woke up four times. But since then, we still have trouble with the initial falling asleep, but he has slept every night through until morning!!!  Mommy and Daddy are finally getting about 6-7 consecutive hours of sleep a night!  Previous to this, he was waking up once per night even WITH the pacifier.  Makes me wonder if maybe the pacifier was the problem all along!

Either way, we are so glad those gross little rubber things are out of our house and our life! We have a big boy now!!! (If only he would poop on the potty!)

Superhero princess?

We found Gray like this one morning...

he had gotten into Avery's princess game, even though Avery was nowhere around.

even superheroes have a sensitive side!

Bath time with Aunt RaRa

One random weeknight, Aunt RaRa stopped by because she had some time to kill before her volleyball game.  She got to participate in the dinner and bedtime routine.  

I think bath time was her favorite. No, she was not actually in the tub with them, but she may as well have been! She had magic foam and water everywhere.

The kids just adore her and Adam now wants her to come over every night so that he doesn't have to deal with our usual nighttime battles with the kids....they just seem to listen to her!  We are looking forward to Aunt RaRa's sleepover at our house this weekend.

Happy Birthday Cousin Ben!

Just after Valentine's Day, our nephew Ben celebrated his third birthday at one of the coolest places ever! It was at a sports complex in NJ - the kids got to spend an hour in this play maze.  Most of my iPhone pics did not come out, but picture a crazy, windy, maze with things to climb, crawl, jump and slide down. It was so awesome, I'm pretty sure the adults had just as much fun as the kids!  

 Meanwhile, the birthday boy's little sis got some sleepy time cuddles from Aunt RaRa - equally fun!

 This was followed by pizza and cupcakes.  

Obviously Avery and Grayson had to sit next to their cousin.

 Then, the fun continued at the arcade where Avery hit the jackpot on one game.  She redeemed these tickets for a slap bracelet, a whoopee cushion, fart putty and glow-in-the dark slime.  All quality products that are still played with almost daily in our house (except the fart putty, which I threw away after Avery got it stuck all in her hair!) Not awesome.

 Oh, the party was not done after this.  We went back to the Deremer's for the family party, which always includes delicious food and drinks, but this time there was an extra amazing birthday cake! 

 My words can't describe the awesomeness of these cakes. I didn't want anyone to cut into them. 

 It was a fun, exhausting, wonderful day of celebrating!!!

What is better than a birthday!?!?! Happy Birthday Ben!!

Not quite ready for this yet....

As a follow up to the prom dress post, my mom was watching the kids at her house and she dressed Avery in my wedding dress that I still had stored there. 

Beach party for one

Despite the 20 degree weather outside, Avery has got summer on her mind!

She was supposed to be napping one afternoon, when I started to hear some noises coming from her room and I found her like this...

she found her bathing suit, flip flops and goggles (I could not have even told you where she found these buried for the winter). She also spread out her blanket as a towel and had her beach chair all set up.  How can you not laugh when you walk into this?!?!

It was cute...until she did it again the next day (in a different bathing suit)!

I don't blame her - I wish it was beach season too!

Do you want to build a snowman?

Despite all of the snow days, we didn't get out to play all that much. Mommy found it to be way too cold to be rolling around in it! But we had a milder day after the *big* snowfall (19") and finally got out there.. 

You can see how much snow there was by our almost buried mailbox (this was before we watched the snowplow take it right off the post one day!)

 I'm happy to say these snow piles aren't nearly as high today, but I still feel so bad for our poor mailman who has to maneuver around everything.  It's such a mess!

 We also went sledding down the street...

 and, inspired by Frozen and the Snowman Kit Aunt Jamie bought the kids, we built a snowman in the back yard.

I let the kids put all of his parts wherever they wanted.  I cannot explain the placement of the eyes, buttons, etc!  But here he is....and he was quickly named Freddie!

 Shortly, thereafter, Freddie fell down and that was the end of that!

 Spring is only 11 days away!!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Who doesn't love a holiday that is all about LOVE (and candy)? There was so much anticipation for Valentine's Day this year with both kids having a Valentine's celebration at school and at home.  

They always come home with so much candy and junk from their school's valentine exchange, so I wanted to be sure to do a non-food Valentine this year. The kids agreed on making these crazy straws and they were a hit!

I made them pose for a picture before they could open their gifts from Mommy and Daddy on Valentine's morning.  

Avery enjoyed her ring bling...a Hershey Kiss ring made from a pipe cleaner 

(Daddy did not like this one)

 They each got a new shirt (how could we pass up a shirt that has a Guster look alike on it?), a heart shaped bowl,

 and certificate for a movie theatre date with Daddy...

 which was quickly redeemed the following week to see the Lego Movie.

The rest of the day was filled with as many heart-themed things I could think of...

 Words can't explain how much we love these kids!!

Hope you had a fun celebration with your loved ones on Valentine's Day too!

Table Manners

We are constantly trying to work on table manners....then something like this happens and we just give in and let him to what he feels he needs to do.  On this particular day, he wanted to eat noodles with his hands while refusing to take Avery's helmet off.