Dead "Ba-ba" Walking

Here are the pictures of the kids walking Jackson's bottles outside to hand over to the Mommy & baby squirrels. :)


When I got home later that night I put a new tractor and a Mrs. Potato Head on the front porch and waited for the kids to get out of the bath. I called for them to come and look outside! "Hurry!!! The Mommy squirrels have left toys to thank you for giving them the Ba-ba's!" They ran to see and were so happy with the gifts the Mommy squirrels had chosen for them. ;)

Jackson is doing remarkably well, I'm thrilled to say. He'll still ask for a bottle but we just remind him that he gave them to the squirrels and that is usually the end of it.

Holy crap! Did we do it? Could it be this easy? Am I jinxing it? I'll let you know tomorrow.
Fingers crossed, please.

He is waving bye-bye to his ba-ba's

She looks guilty

A little lollipop for dessert

These are from Saturday morning. We played kitchen for a while. Isabel cooked.

Jackson & I built towers out of blocks

Yes, I have officially given over my living room to the kids and their toys

Update on the squirrels and the ba-ba's

I'm exhausted but I wanted to give an update on Jackson, the "Ba-ba", and the squirrels.
He willingly took the bottles outside (I gave Iz a bag of them too as well as a couple of pistacio's - it sounded logical at the time) and they set them down by the driveway (I did take pic's but don't have them uploaded yet). I decided to do this plan of mine on a Sunday because Kevin is off work on Sun & Mon's and I didn't want to endure the process by myself. The downside for Kevin is I had to leave right after we "gave the ba-ba's" to the baby squirrels to see my brother in the hospital (he will be ok but that's a totally different subject I definitely can't get into now) so he got to deal with it alone. Jackson didn't go to sleep in his normal, laid back fashion. He cried "mommy" over and over and over. He was extremely whiney and needy to me but he didn't really cry for the "ba-ba" , I think he just needed to be comforted by his Mommy. I finally ended up sitting on his bed until he fell asleep. Basically, I was pretty relieved.
Day 2: Again, Kevin got the short end of the stick, so to say. I was up and at work by 7:30am and didn't get home until around 6pm. They did go to school and had a great day but Kevin said things went downhill around naptime. They wouldn't go to sleep, Isabel was uncooperative, Jackson was crying for me then his ba-ba, then for me etc. Then after they went to sleep Jackson woke up crying for, guess what, the ba-ba and Mommy. Poor Kevin finally called me at work (which he never does) so I knew things were bad. I got home and walked into a little crying but within minutes that "sweet child" of mine was happy as a little clam. We had a really good night and after putting them in their beds he only cried for me once. I went in and tried to talk to him, he finally said "juice" so I got him juice in a Thomas the Train sippy cup and my baby was asleep in minutes. Whew!!!!!
So for me things have been pretty good, but my poor husband will tell a different story. :)

(Cute Isabel story:
After their bath I was drying and diapering and lotioning and p.j.'ing the kids and Isabel put her hands above her head like a ballerina and started to twirl. I said, "Isabel, are you a ballerina?" She got a funny look on her face and said, "No, Mommy, I not a ballerea (when she says ballerina it sound A LOT like "diarrhea"), I a little girl".

I have to do it and I need to do it now

I have to do it. And I know I need to do it quickly. Just like a band-aid. Just get rid of it and now. I am referring to Jackson's bottle. Yes, he is 2 1/2 years old and is addicted (I am not exagerating here) to the damn bottle. It hangs out of his mouth like a pacifier. I have grown to loathe the bottle. All I had to do is tell Isabel that she had to drink out of a cup instead of a bottle and it was so. He is insanely attached to this thing. Months ago I stopped allowing it out of the house. He tries to talk with the thing hanging out of his mouth. I am almost at the end of my rope. I know I should just throw them away and deal with the consequences but somthing is holding me back. Am I waiting on a miracle? I guess so.
Here's my new plan:
I have been telling him for weeks that we need to give the bottles to the babies. I'm trying to prepare him, I suppose. Well, now I'm telling him that we need to give the bottles to the baby squirrels (it's out there, I know). So the plan is to have HIM carry the bottles outside and put them by a tree and say bye bye to his ba-ba's. Then I will have Kevin sneak out, remove them from our house and replace the bag of bottles with a new truck. I'm going to tell him that the Mommy squirrels are thanking him for the bottles. I'm hoping this will help him to remember that they are gone and that HE gave them away, not me. Well, that's it, what do you think? I think today is going to be the day (if I don't chicken out, of course). I'll keep you updated and would love any advice. I can't have the only kid in the world addicted to a bottle, right??
Wish me luck!!!!

A little this & that

I don't have any huge updates in the lives of Isabel & Jackson but I'll share a few tidbits of information-
Jackson's vocabulary is growing....slowly. His favorite word (next to "choo train") is tractor. But thanks to all of our many books and dvd's about tractors and such he is now saying things like "digger", "dumptruck", and my favorite because he tends to feel the need to scream this one is "flat-bed truck". When he is trying to tell me something he is still not expressing himself that well so we've still got a lot of mumbo jumbo but we are making progress. :)
Isabel speech is fantastic. It's pretty rare when I don't know what she's saying. There are a couple of things she says that crack me up. When she says "pillow" it comes out as "piblio" and when she says "dvd" she adds a little flair and it comes out "dvdb".
Time-out are pretty regular these days and for Isabel, she visits time-out even at school. The other day on her daily report her teachers had circled the word "happy" but had also written in "defiant". I thought that was a pretty big word for a 2 1/2 year old so I asked the next day. Her teacher Jona said that Iz will flat out tell her "No" when she asks her to do something but she always has a smile on her face. :)
They are both doing awesome with their colors and shapes and counting in english and spanish (I don't know whether to thank the teachers for the spanish or Dora)
My goal for Januay is to get serious with the potty training. I haven't done anything about this yet but it's still early. I'll get there!

These are just a few pic's of the kids playing last night

This is our after school snack time today...

And snack time continued but wearing the hats they made at school-

The Christmas Card "photo shoot"

It's been a little while since my last post but the holidays wore me out! Between my kids, working in a CRAZY busy restaraunt, buying gifts (O.K., so I didn't really mind that part), family gatherings, decorating and then un-decorating, cleaning out all the old toys and a total lack of sleep - well, I've just been too damn tired. We had a blast, don't get me wrong but I'm so glad the holidays are over.

I haven't even taken too many pictures lately. We went to the science museum last week-end which they loved! I'll try to get a video uploaded of that day soon.

But what I realized was I had not shared some of my favorite pictures from the Christmas card photo shoot. I took the kids to the Botanical Gardens the day before Thanksgiving and literally took pictures for hours (171 total pic's to be exact).

Believe me when I say that I really narrowed the pictures down to the ones I love the most. I've been trying to get the actual card in this post but my computer ignorance is standing in the way. I'll figure it out, just not tonight.

I have not edited any of these BUT this first shot is probably my favorite of the day and it was edited by the wonderfully talented Anna of hankandwillie.wordpress.com.
I love it so much I've got an 8 x 10 ready to go up in the bedroom. I am also showing you the unedited version so you can see what a huge difference she made in the shot.

The beautifully edited version: