Valentine's Day!

Okay, so some of these pictures are from the week before Valentine's Day, but they are wearing thier Valentine's PJs. Does that count. We are finally starting to get the basement area a little more organized. At least now it is not just a sea of boxes. So we put books, puzzles and toys down there for the kids to play with if they are down there with one of us. We finally put together the presents that Brett, Anne and the kids gave Drew and Jillian for Christmas and they love them. As you can see, Jillian is getting some good practice standing up. You can let go of her for a couple seconds, but that is about it. She has the strength to keep herself up, just not the balance or self awareness yet.
A couple days later, when the kids and I were down there she pulled herself up to the table, but almost immediately took a dive. It is the first time I had seen her pull herself up to a standing position. Who knows she may be like her big brother and walking at 9 months. We should focus on crawling right now. She is sooo on the verge. She army crawls and get on all fours and will crawl just one step then back on to her tummy. She also is a yoga prodigy. She will get into downward facing dog, on her hands and feet with her butt in the air, her body in a V shape. Atleast I think it is called downward facing dog, but by the looks of me I am obviously not a yoga expert. Needless to say this is a very strong little girl.

Drew is obsessed with these animals. It is a very cute toy, an animal for each letter of the alphabet. They mat will tell you the letter, what sound it makes, the animal and what sound it makes. Everytime we leave the house he wants to veer off and go play with the animals. I usually tell him that they are sleeping and that works for now. For some reason, Drew is not interested in the alphabet. He knows colors, shapes and counting when wants to, but gets angry when I start in with the letters. He will say "no mama" when I start singing the alphabet song. Maybe it is my singing and not the letters.

Drew is a genius. I put out these stacking/nesting cups for little miss to play with and she did and had a great time spreading them all over the floor. So Drew comes over to play with them and he starts nesting them, then he would have one that didn't fit and he would undo the previous and find out where it fit and then proceed nesting the others. He encounter non fitters about three times and figured it out all by himself. I was so proud, I was nearly jumping up and down. Not long ago he would have been frusterated at the first obstacle and would have whined, thrown the cups or gave up. Now he had the patience to figure it out. I am one proud mama.

Okay the real Valentine's Day!!

Of course I wanted to get pictures of my angels together in their heart day pj's. The pictures make me smile and laugh just looking at them. I hope the do the same for you.

Drew is trying to watch TV and humor me at the same time.

I asked Drew to give Jillian a hug, which he does quite often, but usually they are facing each other. He tried putting his arms around her, but couldn't quite get it figured out so he decided to hug her feet. Funny boy. Everyone's feet need a little love. I know mine could use it, I need a daddy foot rub yesterday.

FUNNY FACES!!

One of the cutest pictures and there is a shadow, which I think is my finger. Oops!

Drew and I made cupcakes for Daddy for Valentines Day. He helped me pour in the water, oil and cake mix and counted the eggs with me as I adden them. He put the paper cups into the pan. He helped me mix all the ingredients and they baked during his nap. We talked about shapes, circles and hearts and colors, red, pink and white. Who knew learning could taste so good. He had a great time decorating them. Daddy was very impressed.

A couple Drew side notes. I tell everyone that he is a little repeater, which is true, but we are also starting to have more converstations. It is so funny to hear the things that come out of a two year old's mouth. I will tell that something is not a toy and he will ask "why not" I will explain that it could hurt him or Jillian and tell him what it's real purpose is and he is usually satisfied with my answers. If I just tell him no and don't explain it usually gets a worse reaction all the way up to Drew melt down or throwing himself on the floor. Who said you couldn't reason with a two year old. He also is gets the concept of again, which is pretty cute to me. He will ask me to read a book, usually Brown Bear Brown Bear and then when I am done he will say "read book again mama." I could probably recite the entire Brown Bear Brown Bear book by heart, we read it so much. Sometimes I just hide it, just so we can get a little literature variety.

Also an update on potty training. We are so not ready yet!!! We (and when I say we I mean me) decided to give potty training a full out honest effort. It lasted less than one day. We put on pull ups and were sitting on the potty. Sometimes he would pee, but he was always wet. Even less that an hour after a fresh pull up. He was getting a little upset by having to sit on the potty so much. So I called mom and we talked it over, I really needed her to tell me it was okay for him to wait a little while longer. Which she did :) I think he needs to be able to hold his bladder more and stay dry for atleast a hour before this is going to be worth the effort. Plus I don't want him to hate the potty, so we are going to wait a couple of months and then have more potty training trials. For now we will keep reading our potty books and watch our Elmo potty DVD. I know he will get it, just not right now, which is okay.

The End. Have a good weekend everyone.