On day three of the snow siege last week, I got an email from one of my friends stating, "What do you do with them all day!?  This is ridiculous!"  I laughed after reading that.  I definitely have those days.  What mom doesn't?  I think there's a huge difference from just having a normal day at home compared to being on lockdown in your house for five days.  That's right, we were in the house for five days.  I actually surprised myself and didn't loose my mind.   I think it helped a lot that Chris wasn't able to fly out that week and was stuck at home as well.  So, all four of us plus Cooper trapped in the house for five days.  We got out about once a day to walk the glacier that had taken over our neighborhood.   

So, here is how we occupied our time during those five days.

If your children love to read and look at books, I highly recommend the TAG reading system by Leapfrog.  Ella got one for her birthday and then one for Christmas and it has been such a great toy.  I am amazed how that little pen can do so much.  Ella has received the Leapster Explorer for Christmas.  Again, another great toy made by Leapfrog.  Can't say enough good things about that brand.  Great, education and fun toys.  

This is a game that Ella invented called Bumping Down the Stairs.  Bet you can't guess what this game entails.  It's fairly simple, the girls lay on their tummies at the top of the steps and bump down the steps.  Have no fear, it's not face first.  The fleece jammies are their uniforms.  As Ella explained, it allows them to bump down the stairs faster.  Of course it does.  We had about five or six outfit changes a day so they could get in their gear to play their new game.   

This was Maddie's pool where she took her bath.  This was day three so the crazy was starting to set in.  

One of my best friends gave this puppet theatre to the girls for Christmas.  I think it's awesome.  I can't get over how cute all the puppets are.  We broke it out for the first time during our week trapped inside.  The girls loved it and I did too!  We knocked the stage over a couple of times trying to fit our bodies through the stage hole but what play doesn't have some bumps along the way.  With a little more practice they'll be able to take their show on the road.





Playdoh!  Ugh!  I think just about every kid loves playdoh.  And I would bet that just about every parent hates cleaning it up.  My girls love it.  I tried to remember that when I was picking up hard little playdoh balls all over the kitchen floor days after we had played with it.



Getting ready to go outside yet again.  We did a lot of this.  Not sure if I could make it in a place that has snow on the ground all the time.  The prep time just to get the girls ready to go outside is crazy!



We applied a lot of lipstick (really it's just chapstick) since it was cold out there.  Not really, the girls just love it and probably apply it about ten times a day.

And so ends our five day vacation  where we never even left our house.  I'll leave you with the best quote of our time together inside.  Maddie and Ella were playing down in the basement and we overheard this;  Ella: "I'm sick" Maddie: "I don't have any medicine.  Do you want a doughnut?"  If you only knew of Maddie's love of doughnuts, it would make the comment even that much funnier.  

Snowmageddon

It is now day 2 of the snow siege in Atlanta.  Surprisingly, cabin fever has not set in yet.  Although that may change in a couple of days if this stuff doesn't melt soon.  We got out in the snow on Monday but i just couldn't do it again today.  It took us thirty minutes just to get all suited up and ready to go outside.  I think five minutes of that was trying to cram Maddie's foot in her rainboot.  Doesn't go in quite as easy when you have on a sock, leggings, and a pair of fleece jammies.   There's no way those girls were cold!

It's not the fun fluffy snow.  We weren't able to make a snowman or a snow angel.  The girls were still able to enjoy it and have fun though.  

The big bonus of all this snow is that Chris wasn't able to fly out to Ohio this week so he's working from home.  Yay!  Happy that he gets to stay at home and enjoy all of this snow with us.  

Happy 2011!

I rang in the new year up in Kentucky at my in-laws house eating bourbon balls and watching TV.  I didn't even make it till midnight.  The days of staying up to ring in the new year are definitely over.  Who am I kidding, they've been over for a long time!  Yep, that's what happens when you have kids.

So, I may not be able to make it to midnight but I am going to attempt some resolutions this year.  I've never really made any resolutions before but we all have things we can improve on, right?  Here are some of mine:

1)  Take more pictures - My big goal of the year.  I really want to learn more about photography and get better at taking pictures.  I haven't really picked up my camera the past couple of months except for "big" events and I feel like I have missed out on some of those little precious moments.  No more of that.  At the end of the year I want to look back and see some growth in my pictures.   

2)  Cook more - I have a wonderful husband who loves to cook and makes the most delicious and yummy stuff.  I am forever grateful and a very lucky lady.  To be honest, I'm just not really a fan of cooking.  But I want to like it so, I am going to attempt cooking one new meal a month.  I know those of you that cook every night are laughing at my lame attempt but I have to start some where.   I think I can, I think I can.

Those are the two big ones that I want to focus on.  But there are a million other things that are constantly running through my head.  Be more patient with the girls and the hubby.  Save more, spend less.  Stop being such a planner and live more in the moment.  Stop procrastinating.  Eat more fruit and less chocolate, cookies, brownies, and candy.  The list really does seem endless.  I'm not going to try to limit myself and see what happens.  

I better step it up on my resolutions.  It's already the 9th and I've only picked up my camera once this year and so far the closest I've gotten to making a meal is pouring some milk into my honey bunches of oats.  Since I'm slacking on my picture taking, here are two of my favorites that I got of the girls while we were up in Kentucky after Christmas.  

And one with the big man himself.  Both of the girls asked for a train table and a stuffed bear named Bubba.  Ella also requested a baby jaguar and a simba.  Maddie asked for a banana car.  Santa had some difficulties locating the banana car and the baby jaguar but he came through with everything else.

And our Christmas card picture for 2010.

And you can add on blogging more on here for another one of my resolutions for 2011. 

Bye-bye paci

On July 24 we said goodbye to the paci.  It was a day that none of us were really looking forward to.  I wasn't sure who was going to have a harder time with it, me or Maddie.  Seeing that it's been 19 days since we took them away and I've finally had three good nights in a row of Maddie not screaming her head off when we put her down at night, I'd say she probably had a little harder time with it then I did.  

I didn't want to have to take the paci away.  I knew the time had come since she was now two.  I was able to push it off a little bit because I didn't want to do it before we went on vacation.  Then I was able to push it back one more week because I wanted Chris to be at home when we finally did it so he could partake in the festivities.  I just didn't want that day to come.  I wanted to hold onto that little bit of baby that I had left.  Because after the pacifier was gone, that was it.  No more Baby Maddie.  And that was a little hard to deal with since my youngest was really growing out of the baby stage.  

In case you don't already know, Maddie LOVES (or I guess I should say LOVED) her paci.  It was truly her security blanket.  We would only let her have it at nap time or when she went to bed at night.  Chris and I were seriously concerned what was going to happen when we did take them away.  

This was Maddie on the morning of her second birthday.  See what I mean about loving her paci!

We knew this wasn't going to be as easy when we took them away from Ella.  She had one or two rough nights and she was over it.  Maddie, aka - the fighter, was going to be a completely different story.  I believe it was my sister-in-law who told me that when she took the pacifier away from her daughter, she told her this story that the paci fairy was going to come one night and take away all of her pacis and give them to little babies.  So, we went with it.  Let me tell you, the girls ate it up.  Seriously, they were so excited and fascinated about this paci fairy coming into our house.  Ella kept asking how the fairy was going to get in the house and into Maddie's room.  She was obsessed.  You would have thought Santa was coming.  

The first night wasn't so bad since she went to bed with her paci.  The nights that followed were a nightmare.  As soon as we started our bedtime routine, she would start saying "Mommy, I miss you" over and over.  After putting her in her crib and shutting the door at night was when the screaming began.  The first three nights she screamed for at least an hour and a half.  To top it off, she would wake up multiple times during the night, screaming and yelling for her paci.  She was screaming so much that she nearly lost her voice.  Gradually, the screaming subsided.  Then we moved on to yelling for certain people.  She would take turns yelling for me, Chris and Ella.  "Mommy - come back"  "Mommy, I have potty"

So here we are, 2 1/2 weeks later and I can't even express how happy I am to be here.  That first week was hard.   Really hard.   It's beyond difficult to hear your baby screaming for you and you know you can't go in there because they need to work this out for themselves.  I think she's finally got it figured out now.  I hope I'm not jinxing anything by saying this!  Although she has traded in her yelling at night to yelling "Daddy - wake up!" in the morning.  That's okay.  I can definitely handle that.  

A paci lover from the beginning.  Maddie on the day after she was born.

As I was looking at pictures, I came across this one.  Definitely one of my favorites of the girls.  It was taken in March 2009.  Maddie is 9 months and Ella is almost 2 1/2 years.  

Catch-up

Well, I thought that this was going to be the month where I blogged all the time.  Ha!  That didn't happen!  So, here I am the last day of the month, sitting on the couch and watching The Bachlorette and trying to cram in 2 weeks worth of what's been going on in one post.  I thought a photo recap of the past two weeks was the only way I could go about getting everything that I had hoped to write about these past two weeks.

The girls helping Chris prepare mashed potatoes.  Every opportunity that we have to get the girls in the kitchen to help us out, we are all about it.  Chris and I both agree that it's important for them to be comfortable in the kitchen and to learn how food is prepared.  They really do love it.  Keep in mind that they are 3 and 23 months old so they won't be able to hang in the kitchen for the whole process of baking some cookies.  Yesterday they helped Chris make apple crumble.  We actually called it apple pie.  Maddie has been going crazy over apple pie.  She's never had it or seen one before but about two weeks ago whenever you asked her what she was making in her kitchen or what she was going to pick up at Costco, her reply would always be "apple pie."  So, Chris made her some pie.  

This was Ella on her last day of preschool.  Tomorrow it will be two weeks since she has been on summer break.  So far, we are all handling it fairly well.  There's been a couple more uses of the time-out spot but we're managing.  We're looking forward to swim classes in a couple of weeks and hopefully spending some days at the zoo.

When Chris saw this picture of Maddie, he said, " That's my gungy."  And he's right, this face is so her.  She's such a little ham.  T-R-O-U-B-L-E!

This is Ella and Maddie's cousin, Ruby.  They LOVE her!  Seriously, Ella talks about her all the time and tells us that one day she's going to be a big girl like Ruby.  Ruby is four.  My brother and his family are in the process of moving to Montgomery, AL and we couldn't be more excited.  This will probably be one of the only times that they will ever live this close, so we plan on taking full advantage of it and seeing them quite often.  I am sure they will be sick of us by next summer and ready to move on to their next location!  It's so cute seeing all of them play together.  It will be great for the girls to live close to one of their cousins and see her on a pretty regular basis.

 

Maddie, fast asleep on my parents bed.  Her first time taking a nap on a big bed.  I had put Ella and Maddie down for a nap at my parents house.  They just started to share the same room at their house.  Ella sleeps in a twin bed and Maddie in the pack-n-play.  I went upstairs to check on them to find Maddie out of the pack-n-play, running around the room naked.  So, no more pack-n-play.  Let's hope she doesn't figure out how to climb out of her crib any time soon.  I don't know what we are going to do if that happens!



Sweet girls.

This is what Ella was doing yesterday while Chris and I were busy packing up some things in the house.  She thought Cooper need to be tucked in as well.  

This is what Maddie was up to while Chris and I were cleaning up the kitchen.  This girl loves her winter hats.



23 months old today.



Ella doing one of her "cool tricks"

And that's the 2 week catch up!  Maybe June will be my month were I actually follow through with blogging on a regular basis.  

Gungy

What is a Gungy you ask?  Or maybe you're thinking how on earth do I pronounce Gungy.  I actually just spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how to spell it, so I'm winging it.  

Anyway, this is our little Gungy -

 

Ella came up with the word Gungy.  I don't know, just one day she starting calling Maddie "Gungy" and the nickname stuck.  I can't even remember when it started, maybe a year ago?  I do remember the first time Ella called her by that name.  Ella loves going to get Maddie when she wakes up from her nap.  She gets really excited and starts jumping up and down when I tell her that Maddie is awake.  One day after I told her Maddie was up, she said, "Hey, let's go get Gungy."  Not really sure if Maddie is going to appreciate that name when she gets older.  Well, she can thank her big sister for that one.  

We're big into nicknames around here right now.  Ella has recently started referring to Chris and myself as Daddy-Tron and Mommy-Tron and of course, Maddie is Gungy-Tron.  Nothing like adding a "tron" onto the back of your name to make you feel special or to make you feel like you should be in the next Transformers movie.  It's pretty catchy because we now sometimes refer to the girls as "The trons."  

Anyway, lots going on with us.  We're in the process of picking a realtor to help us sell this place so we can move.  Yay!!  We've spent the last week cleaning, and donating, and taking things to storage, throwing things away, and cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning.  We have a lot more to do but we've definitely taken some big steps this past week.  

Ella's last day of preschool is next Tuesday. She is ready for summer break.  Not so sure that I am!  

Yes, she can throw

It was suppose to rain here all weekend so on Friday night after a great dinner, we decided we should take the girls to the playground since they were going to be cooped up in the house all weekend.  It was a beautiful night so we had the windows down in the car.  The girls love the wind in their faces and laugh hysterically- almost to the point where we want to roll the windows back up.

We pull up at the playground and the girls have their shoes and socks off.  They always takes their shoes off once we buckle them into their carseats.  Chris is looking all around and can't find one of Maddie's socks.  He asked Maddie where her other sock was.  She didn't answer right away and sat there looking at him.  Then she said, "I throw.....................I throw sock.....................Window."  She threw her sock out the window.  I'm glad it was her sock and not her shoe!

I guess we learned our lesson about having the windows open in the backseat.  We're going to have to watch this one!!

But there is no doubt she's my daughter.  The girl loves cake, just like her momma!  I made strawberry shortcake last night for dinner and she ate all of hers.  She then looked over to see what Ella had left in her bowl, pointed at it and said,  "Eat Ella's."  I am beyond amazed at how skinny she is.