No posts since June 27th?

Really? Have I been THAT bad about posting on here. Yikes. With facebook and picasa albums, I have totally forgotten to post anything here. Sorry to those who have read information here, but here goes a summary of the last 6 months (oh my!):

1) Jake was potty-trained using the same 3-day method I used for Drew on August 15th. So we have been diaper free since then AND rarely any accidents EVEN at night! Actually Jake has never had a night-time or naptime accident!

2) We went to the Outerbanks again this year and had a fabulous time with the Starners and the Kiesgen's (Nana & Poppy). We still weren't too successful at "on the beach" photo time, but maybe next year we will have 2 happy boys!

3) The boys started a 2-year old preschool 2 half days a week and after a few rough days in the beginning, we think they are starting to enjoy themselves and even look forward to it. They may not take part in all the crafty activities, but they are all over any sort of running or moving game/activity.

4) We celebrated their 3rd birthday by going to see Disney On Ice Toy Story 3. They absolutely LOVED every minute of it. Many days after they were still asking to go see Disney On Ice whenever we got into the car... especially when Grandpa started coming over every Monday for a visit.

5) We went to Florida to visit our twin friends Alison & Chris, Grandpa & Iris, Uncle Edd, DISNEY WORLD and Granny & Pops. Unfortunately Pops was too sick for the boys to see him -- he was in a rehab facility and even hoped to see the boys himself. Unfortunately, as I am writing this now in March, Pops passed away on February 15th. He will be GREATLY missed but the boys will always remember when they saw him in 2009 and when we stayed at his house during this visit in December. They still talk about the loft stairs that are at the house and refer to them as "Pop's house stairs". Brings tears to my eyes since I can't explain to them that Pops is no longer with us. :(

Drew is PT-ed

So after about 2 months of almost ZERO poop in diapers (yes, he pooped only on the potty) and telling grandpa that he needed to go potty at his house, we decided Drew was ready for full potty training mode.
I started this Monday (a week ago) by putting him in underwear and telling him that we want to keep our underwear dry. He had a few accidents on Monday but all of them he caught before he was finished and told me "POTTY, MOMMY!". If we had a toilet in the basement, I am almost positive he would have been accident-free, but we can only run so fast up the stairs to the toilet. ha ha. He did REALLY well throughout the week with just a small handful of accidents. Probably the funniest occurrence was that he was having trouble distinguishing between needing to poop and needing to fart. There were a few times we went to the potty and all he did was fart. I had to hold back the laughter, especially after he says "Toot, Mommy. Excuse me".

So it is now a week later and I am hoping I am not jinxing myself, but I think I can officially say that Drew Steven Edwards IS potty trained and it was actually pretty easy because I think he really was ready... maybe he can convince his brother to follow his lead within the next month or so (?). :)

Batteries & Screwdrivers

The newest thing that is a constant around the house is that the boys think that batteries will fix absolutely ANYTHING. For example, at our gym there is a huge tube slide at the pool and the boys are too young/small to go on it. So when they ask about it, we tell them that it is broken or not working right now. Drew looked at me as serious as could be and said "Maybe it needs batteries. Mommy go get your screwdriver". It was hilarious and he has now repeated that statement many times for other "broken" items such as the TV & oven when we had a power failure, a climbing structure at a playground meant for older kids, and a nozzle for the hose that was removed to prevent them from squirting us. :)

Potty Training?

Jake pooped on a potty today (5/13) for the first time.... Drew has been using the potty for quite a while but only does #2 there. Up until a few days ago, I would have said he ONLY did #2 in the potty.... so more than likely we should have been potty training but now it has been put on the back burner. We are simply sitting on the potty at certain times of the day every day and hoping they might actually go. If they do, great! If not, oh well -- we tried. We plan to use up the rest of our diapers (but not all of them - just in case) and then move on the pull-ups, and then go to underwear by the middle of the summer. That gives us some time to "play" on the potty for a few more weeks before we are in Potty Boot Camp (or Potty Poop Camp). We will cross our fingers that this will go smoothly!

Movies!

We took the boys to see "How to Train Your Dragon" and it went.... good enough. They really enjoyed all the parts where the dragons were in the scenes. Drew was even screaming because he was so happy to see them flying all over. However, screaming is not usually something that other movie viewers enjoy. So we lasted through about 3/4 of the movie -- which we thought was pretty good considering this was their FIRST experience in a theater.
Now we are all very excited & relatively confident for their next movie experience which will be Toy Story 3 in June!

What happened to March & April?

We have been doing a lot of stuff and will share some of our MANY moments during the rest of March & all of April of 2010.
First, we FINALLY ate some REAL veggies - broccoli. Well, actually Drew ate them and Jake just moved them around his plate and on the table.
We often could be found sleeping in the same bed. And even got rid of these bed rails because there seemed to be no point to them other than an invitation of something to climb.

If there is any way to climb into something, we will figure it out and get in. Here we figured out how to get into the dog toy basket -- with the dog toys still in the basket!


We have started to really like trains and found a cool way to spend a lot of time with a train for FREE.


We started to take swim lessons at our new gym, Lifetime Fitness. It has been a lot of work so far, but we are getting to the point where we are not super afraid of the water... until we go under... but we are still working on that. Here is a photo of us waiting for our instructor, Erin, on our first day of lessons.
Our new favorite song is "Dang Girl" (edited toddler-friendly version) and we love to watch the video and dance/sing while it is playing. We also had a new patio installed and absolutely LOVED when the "mini bulldozer" and "cent smeexer" (cement mixer) came into our driveway to do the work.

Sleep Eating & Denny's Grand Slams

Drew & Jake have really mastered "sleep-eating" at lunch time. We are constantly searching for places to go and play that are germ-free during the cold winter months. I think when we do actually find a good place for them to run wild, their lunch nutrition takes a toll. Here is one of many lunches where Drew has dozed off.


We had a family outing on the first day we were FINALLY dug out of our street after the crazy snow storm. We decided to take advantage of the FREE GRAND SLAMs at Denny's! We ordered 4 Grand Slams and each of us enjoyed our breakfast! The boys didn't eat much of it but it was still a fun time!