{ ten on tuesday }

I'm stealing this idea from a fellow mom blogger friend (thank you, Kate!) because it is a good way to just recap some random stuff that goes on in our life. But don't count on it every Tuesday because that probably won't happen.

1. The month of February has FLOWN by. Maybe it is the amazing weather we've had? We did wake up to a nice layer of snow this morning but my guess would be that it will be melted in a day or two as the temps are back up into the high 30s. Paul Douglas said that this is a 1 in 80 years kind of winter. I'll take it!

2. We had Maizy back for 5 days last week and O & S seemed to enjoy it. However, I'm fairly certain that Maizy did not. They treated her like a horse and rode her.

And although this picture does look like Oliver is being sweet to her, I can guarantee that there was hair pulling or hitting that came after.

3. We had a breakthrough at music class last week. For the first five (which seemed like ten) weeks O & S would run around the room during class. This left me sitting in the circle alone or chasing them around so they didn't try to open cabinets or touch the iPod that the teacher uses. Most of the time it just left me contemplating why I spent a lot of $$ when all I wanted to do was leave right after we got there. It was a "I'm that mom with those crazy kids" kind of experience.

But this past week they actually participated! That doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't the wild ones in class but they at least took part in certain songs and activities. I'll keep you posted on how next week goes. I am prepared for a digression but hoping they surprise me!

4. When do kids ever become less messy eaters? I know, I've got years before that comes. We are clearly still working on fine motor skills and getting food in the mouth.

Favorite foods (or lets just say foods they will actually eat) right now are waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, pears, blueberries, strawberries (when they aren't $8.99 a container!) applesauce pouches, mac and cheese, pasta/casserole, and anything with dippy. They had steamed carrots with ranch dippy last night and Oliver was licking the ranch off of his plate.
Note: this is yogurt, not ranch dip on his face in the picture below!

5. Dress-up is pretty much the best game in our house. It usually consists of pulling our stuff out of the wicker baskets that O & S have access to by our back bench.

6. And sunglasses - even better. Though you will notice that Oliver took his claim to the rainbow heart glasses that were meant for Stella.

7. Both O & S are starting to talk more and more. Stella's current favorite is telling everyone who we are. So we will show up at a class and she will hold out "Lulu" (her lovey) and very adamantly say "Wuwu". And then points and says "Oli", "Mommy", and last but not least "Stewa". Perfect strangers now know who everyone is.

Oliver's favorite words are George (see #10), car, uh-oh, all done, bubbles, bus, no, and cheese. 

But both of their favorites are their three cousins "Anna" (which they say with a British accent), "Yaya" (Lydia), and "Owie" (Owen). It's not exaggerating to say that I must hear this sequence of names at least 20 times a day. Part of this is due to the fact that they have named some of the characters in the "Little People" books after each of them. Anna is always the girl with glasses (even though she doesn't wear glasses) and Lydia and Owen are a variety of characters.......sometimes of the other gender or skin color.

8. O & S have finally decided that it is okay to be within 3 inches of each other, and possibly even touching (gasp!), if it means that they can both look at a book with us. 

9. Stella decided to end her 10 day nap strike (hooray!!) but it still seems sleep is all out of whack in our house. Oliver has always been our early riser......it has improved from 4:45am during his first 9 months of life to somewhere between 5:15-5:45am. Just when we got him to a more reasonable hour, Stella has decided that she wants to get up in the early 5:00 hour. We continue to con ourselves into believing it will get better but after 19 months and only having both sleep past 6:00am less than a dozen times, I think we should face reality! Or hire a babysitter to come at 5:00am.

10. We are "Curious George" obsessed. And by we I mean O & S. This comes with mixed feelings as he is kind of a mischievous little monkey. He gets in trouble and then wiggles his way out by being cute. Chop thinks this is a bad lesson. Right now the "stories" of George mean nothing......we just tend to flip through pages and point out every, and I mean every, George that is on the page.