I think the rat really completes the look, don't you?

Yesterday the girls got to pick a favorite bear to bring to preschool for Teddy Bear Week, which thrilled them to pieces. Ree picked Winnie the Pooh (I have no earthly idea why, since she has never paid him an ounce of attention—I swear sometimes she does stuff just to mess with me), and Ro picked Drea, her adored bear-lovey from when she was a baby: But even with all the bear excitement, the rubber rat did not get overlooked. Notice how Ratty has scored a prime seat in the baby stroller? The girls actually fight over this creature: Well shoot, it was after lunch, and that's quite close to dinner, which is nearly bedtime, so they might as well just change into pajammies (at least that was the logic they used on me): Hard to tell who got the better end of this taxi ride. Oh, and that's Batty, another "adorable" Halloween decoration hanging from the handle. Ratty is still the main dude though, see his charming little tail sticking out from under Ree's arm?: This pic came out terrible, all orangey and just "off," ya know? But I tried a Lightroom preset on it called Low Tide (from photo wizard Rebecca) and kind of like the results: Have a wonderful bat- and rat-free day!

Ree was on a roll yesterday

First, TubaDad made them some Spam for lunch, and Ro was extremely dubious about tasting it. Ree had no such compunctions, jamming some in her mouth then waving another forkful of meat product in the air and saying enticingly to her sister: "Try it Ro! It's gooder than you think it is!" Then I headed out to spend time with some girlfriends and told Ro and Ree I'd bring them back a surprise. During dinner, my phone rang and it was Ree. She didn't beat around the bush, jumping right in with: "Mama, what you gots for us?" Um, well, I told her I had picked up a book for her and one for her sister. Apparently this answer was supremely unthrilling, because she responded: "Mama!!! We don't want books. We want candy. Worm candy." Then she hung up. Cracked me up. They were good books too, one of them, called Dewey: There's a Cat in the Library! I really like. The girls liked it too, luckily. But even if they hadn't, you know that I stopped after that phone call and bought two of those gross gummy worms too, just to hedge my bets.

Gratuitous cute kid pics (like that's something new around here, haha!)

It was oddly foggy this morning. We couldn't even see the neighbor's house across the street. So we took advantage of the coolness to don some jeans (oh man I love jeans) and romp in the yard before preschool. It was finally cool enough to wear the new vests with HOODS (oh man Ro and Ree love hoods). Ro is in the black tee and Ree is in the army green one. It felt like we could gather the fog up in our arms it was so thick: Ok, this was cool. I had actually put the camera away at this point and the girls insisted I get it back out to "take a peeshur of dat spidough, mama!" Later in the day, it was time for some creative trains and interesting cycling: And then some chalk painting with "rat-colored chalk" — seriously, it was the exact color of a rat. Our Halloween decoration just happened to be nearby and could demonstrate the similarity. Where did they even get this color? I sure as heck didn't buy it.

Friday Fun and hello again puII-ups (sigh)

(this is an old post from 2009, just fixing a few things and republishing it) A double feature today, first a Friday Flick and then some Fashion Friday. Friday Flick: This video was taken almost three years ago, in Guangzhou, China, when the girls were 12-months old and we had known them for about a week and a half. I dug it up because I was telling Ro and Ree that they have great senses of humor, and they've always cracked up about stuff, even when we first met them in China. They didn't believe me, so I said "No really, we have the cutest video of you grabbing your daddy's nose and laughing and laughing. Hang on, I'll find it for you." Turns out Ree was belly laughing and Ro was watching and smiling, but hey at least I remembered that we even had the video: Fashion Friday: Here are a couple of crazy outfits Ro and Ree put together this week. Ree is wearing her favorite sandals in both pics, and in the first pic Ro is wearing a purple outfit that her sister dressed her in and a yellow ensemble wholly of her own choosing in the second pic. Oy. The public retraction: Well, both girls wore a puII-up to bed last night. Sigh... But—thanks to your awesome nighttime potty training comments, which everyone with kiddos who wear puII-ups at night should read—I didn't worry about it for one second. I didn't think it was my fault for not sticking it out this time. Yay! The girls announced (minutes before bedtime) that they wanted to try to keep puII-ups dry rather than wear underwear (which sounded like a good idea to us), so we scrounged all over the house looking for supplies. We found one lone puII-up in their dresser, and one teeny-tiny old scraggly one downstairs in the playroom. So that's what they wore. And then I bought some more today. TubaDad and I really don't care one way or the other, it's not like we're worried they'll go to college in puII-ups, so we'll just keep leaving it up to Ro and Ree. And I love Jennifer's comment where she said "Just remember that there's no correlation between desire to be dry at night and ability to be dry at night," and Diane's comment "Nighttime dryness is related to a hormone produced in the body. It is a physiologic maturity. You can try all the tricks, limit drinks, waking them up etc, but until the brain matures there is really nothing you can do." The comments were so reassuring and made me think "Whew, so we're not doing anything wrong, it's just something that happens when it happens." We haven't been stressed about this, but it's still nice to hear. I have to admit, though, even though I would never say this to the girls, that I'm secretly disappointed—man it felt good to pump my fist in the air and kiss those puII-ups goodbye, even if it was only for one day.

Bye bye puII-ups: I can't say that we'll miss you

It's laundry time at our house, and I'm thinking it'll be the first thing I do every morning from here on out. We ran out of overnight puII-ups yesterday and decided that since the girls were turning four soon it was probably a good time to tackle the final and previously elusive frontier in potty training: nighttime! Ro and Ree have been potty trained during the daytime forever now, but they've always worn puII-ups at nighttime. It was just easier for all of us, and none of us were really ready to make a change, which was just fine. We've tried nightime training in the past (at the girls' request) , but I quickly got frustrated with two extra loads of laundry a day (2 mattress covers, 2 sheets, 2 sets of soaked PJs, and two blankets) and gave up after just a few days. But not this time! The girls are more than ready, they've been asking to do this for awhile and are so excited it's adorable, and I am going to suck it up and stick it out this time. So I'm making a bold public proclamation: we have bought our last puII-up. That's right, Huggies, you will get no more money from us. There. If I go back on this one I'm going to have to write a big 'ole humiliating public retraction, and no one wants that. Any tips or tricks that worked for you? PS: I was curious, so just did a really rough calculation, using timeanddate.com to figure out the number of days, and figured out the following approximate stuff for the girls (these numbers are for both girls combined, and I took the cost of diapers and puII-ups and averaged them):

• Daytime: We used 10 diapers/puII-ups a day from 10/24/06 to 5/23/08, which is 578 days, or 5780 diapers/puII-ups, at an avg cost of 35 cents each, or $2023.
• Nightime: We used 2.1 nighttime diapers/puII-ups per night from 10/24/06 to 9/22/09, which is 1065 nights, or 2237 diapers/puII-ups, at an avg cost of 55 cents each, or $1230.
• Total: So we spent roughly $3300 on diapers and puII-ups in the last three years.

The stupid house is clean, but who cares?

When I was putting the girls to bed tonight I realized that I didn't relax and enjoy them at all today. I know that every day can't be all fun and games, but today I had complete tunnel vision and only focused on doing errands, cleaning up the house, wrangling the dishes, organizing the insane pile of clothes that's been accumulating on the bottom of our closet, doing paperwork, and paying bills. I got a lot done, but you know what? I didn't play with the girls at all, I didn't laugh with them, I said "I'm busy," a lot, and I spent an awful lot of time ignoring them. I just generally sucked as a mama. Ugh. Why do I do that? It's not like the world would have come crashing down if I had just relaxed and focused on the girls in between chores. Whatever... tomorrow, right? Tomorrow I can do better. I'm writing this as a reminder (kind of a written slap in the head). I can smile, laugh, and hug at least as often as I load a dish in the damn dishwaser. I can balance things better. Because, come on, no one will ever look back and say "wowee, that house sure was clean," but we will remember the fun nature walks we took, the hilarious art projects we attempted, and the new recipes we tried together.

Beach girls and enchiladas

Cruising to the beach is always fun, but even more so if you can play car bingo the whole way! (We have a bunch of printouts with common road signs, road trip sights, and types and colors of cars that the girls really dig crossing off.) Ro and Ree are wicked-serious when it comes to bingo, by the way, and they never tire of it. So now you've been warned—if you ride in our van, don't be thinking you get to ride along leisurely listening to some tunes. Come prepared to play a whole lot of bingo: Once at the beach, the girls met a new friend, Amara, who we've been wanting to meet for awhile now. They were instantly smitten. All three girls loved playing in the waves (and mama Jen and I were so grateful that TubaDad tromped back and forth and back and forth with the girls so we could laze around in the sand and talk): Little Ree seemed particularly taken with Amara, holding her hand, looking out for her, and even sharing a blanket/cape: I don't even need to mention that the enchiladas we had later for lunch were a huge hit with the ladies, do I? I'm thinking these pictures say it better than I ever could: Mmmmmm. Hey I wonder if they like beaches or mexican food better? Betcha they'd be hard pressed to pick a fave. (Ree is in the purple shirt, and Ro is in the blue one, and they were in charge of picking outfits and accessories today.)

I'm such a sucker for cute PJs

I got these PJs on winter clearance last year at The Children's Place outlet, and the girls have been dying to wear them. Well, our nighttime temperature dropped down below the 60s (brrrr!) at least once this week, and the girls instantly declared it winter pajama time! (It was adorable, but I had to turn up the air conditioner that night because they were sweating so badly. Heh.) (Ro is in the pink, Ree is in the purple, and Ro is trying to get her sister to yawn in that second photo)

Winner has been chosen: GoGo squeeZ applesauce giveaway

The winner has been chosen in the GoGo squeeZ applesauce giveaway, please see the details here.

Product review: Girly Girl Bowtique hair accessories

Can't wait to see what Ro and Ree do next with their accessorizing? Well you won't want to miss this one—we got to test out a big 'ole box of bows and clippies from Girly Girl Bowtique and the girls went a little crazy. Check out the funny pictures and full review here, and also get a discount code for 20% off.

Does anyone care what we did last weekend?

Probably not! But I've been meaning to post these pictures and am finally getting around to it. Had a lively dinner with these two lovely ladies (Michelle and Kayce). Love them. We met around 6:00 and talked non-stop until 10pm or so, and it STILL wasn't enough. Next time we're just going to have to bring PJs, order a pizza, and have a sleepover. Kayce is expecting a referral this month or next month, by the way, so keep your eyes on her blog for big news soon. Took the girls to a Barbie Dream Home workshop at Pottery Barn Kids. It turned out to be just putting stickers in a little paper Barbie-branded house, but the girls still thought it was fun. They had coloring, face painting, and (of course) Ro got to visit the "bump bed" (bunk bed) that she is lobbying HARD for. I think the purse camera is on its last gasp, the flash and colors in these pictures are so wonky. Must send it in for repair soon! After we bade a sad farewell to the bunk bed, we tried to go visit my folks at an antique auto party in the park, but the girls fell fast asleep in the car, so we turned around and headed for home. Need a closer look at that? Yep, Ro actually fell asleep in mid bite. And I took a picture instead of getting it out of her hand. Classy, no?: After naps, we piled back in the car and this time we made it to the car party. A couple of the girls' cousins met us there, which was so cool! Here are three of them hanging out in my dad's Ford Speedster called "Sublime." And y'all recognize my folks by now: This was the undisputed thrill of the day (even more exciting than visiting "their" bunk bed): Then we all went out for pizza (TubaDad and the girls look cute, but I blinked during the pic so I cropped my butt outta there): Fun stuff. Hey, maybe I'll even get around to posting what we did THIS weekend sometime next month. Heh heh.