A few pics from the zoo

After VBX (Vacation Bible X-perience) with our Preteens this week, we took a day-cation to Columbia to visit Riverbanks Zoo. It was Mary Beth and Jackson's first trip. We had a great time - the zoo is totally different when you see it through a child's eyes.

Mary Beth called every animal "Star" (except it really sounds like "dar") after our dog.




Mary Beth did a lot of this...


Jackson spent most of the day doing this...

(playing with his feet)





Oh, did you expect to see some pictures of animals?
Okay, here's a few of those too.








We didn't see the Gorillas...
Then when we got home we heard on the news that a gorrilla had escaped and was loose in the park. I'm kinda glad we didn't run into him.

sneaky, sneaky

When made a quick trip to Commerce, GA today and we came home to find this...



freshly mowed grass!

Whoever loves us enough to be so sneaky, sneaky...
THANK YOU!

Toddler Tuesday

not fully understanding the concept of a sucker...

'What is this candy on a stick?'


"Mary Beth, you have to close your mouth,
to keep the candy from drooling out..."

Of course I immediately took this shirt off and sprayed it so it wouldn't stain.... oh wait, I didn't.

PT Update

So far...
We have gotten Once Upon a Potty (girl version) from the library. Mary Beth really seems to like it. At first, I took it into the bathroom to watch on the portable DVD to give her something to do when she sat on the potty. (cause it takes ~10 minutes each trip)
Then she went through a couple days that ALL she wanted to do was go potty. I figured out that it was more that she wanted to play in the bathroom naked than an actual interest in learning to use the potty. Climbing up and down, getting on and off, etc...
So now we have a timer that stays in the bathroom and when she wants to "pa-yee" she has to sit still on the potty for 2 mins and "wait for beep, beep, beep" before she can get down. Needless to say, some of the excitement has now worn off - I mean who wants to sit still, instead of climbing up and down?
The other thing we've done is getting dollar store toys to make a big deal for successes. She hopefully can move to a sticker chart at some point but she definitely needs the immediate reward for now as she is still figuring out what the heck we are trying to get her to do.

What's next...
We are getting our carpets cleaned at the end of next week... so I'm kinda on a deadline if I want to use the bare bottom method. (leave them naked all day so they know exactly what they are doing when they do it - makes a mess - take potty trips every 20 minutes - takes all your time and energy for a few days...) I've gone back and forth, but its basically now or at the end of the summer (cause I'm not starting this alone while Stephen is out of town this summer)

So we picked a few days that we will be mostly home... and we are gonna go for it!
Thursday, Friday and Saturday are going to be crazy!
I'm excited because I really think she can do it... but I'm totally not looking forward to cleaning up puddles.

Here's my shopping list as we prepare:
juice
yogurt covered raisins (she thinks they're candy, for trying)
training pants (for when boys are over - i can't let her go completely naked, that wouldn't be very modest...)
a couple bigger prizes, if she stays dry all day

Anything else I need to add?

Sittin Up!

Jackson has always been such a happy baby... whenever we tried to work on sitting up, he would giggle and squirm and roll.. never very interested in learning a new skill.

But he's been working on it a lot this week and is really starting to get the hang of it

He loves to laugh

Toddler Tuesday: He's NOT a horsey!

You know that look, that toddlers get?
The one that says they have a great idea!

and you start thinking... oh no, what are you about to do???

That's what was happening as I watched this unfold...

Mary Beth, he is your brother, not a horsey!




Jackson seemed to really enjoy playing horsey with Mary Beth,
but my question is...
How will he ever learn to crawl with 25 extra pounds on his back?!?

Adventures in Potty Training... coming soon!

We are almost ready to start thinking about
considering potty training.
[Don't I sound confident?]

Mary Beth is showing some interest and actually
(by accident - while sitting on the potty while I started her bath water) used the potty tonight!
She occasionally (typically after spending the day with older kids) goes through spells when she says she wants to "go pa-yee"
We thought we'd wait until later this summer, but if she's interested now, why not just play along?

Alright Moms! This is the audience participation portion....
I need to know...
What books you read? Info you saw on TV? Things you learned from friends? or tricks that just happened to work?
when you started potty training.

New Adventure: the Sippy Cup

Our little boy has decided that he loves to eat... he's always been a good eater but lately he has been even more excited about meal times. We stopped to figure out just how much he eats and realized that our 18 pounds of joy is eating $100 a month of groceries!



So I will attempt to start making more of his food for the next few months until we can start working on table foods. I made a lot of Mary Beth's food but with two kiddos, the convenience of buying it has been so nice.



Another transition he has made is perfering baby food and not really giving a toot about his bottles. [Even though it was only a year ago when we went through this with Mary Beth, I can't remember how/when we started cutting out bottles. I think it was around 11 months that we went to morning and evening bottles only and used a sippy cup with formula and solids for her other meals.] Anyone gone through this with their kid so early? Any ideas to make sure he's getting enough formula? or is it not worth stressing over?



Anyway, I started with a sippy cup this week... which he enjoys playing with but even something new to drink out of doesn't convince him to actually drink.

The other new development this week is TWO TEETH! He has been drooling for a couple months, but not many other symptoms. I always tried to look but couldn't ever see anything, so I just stopped looking. The other day he laughed and I caught a glimpse of something - opened him up and not one but TWO have popped through without me knowing.
[When Mary Beth was teething their was no mistaking with her many physical and emotional symptoms] But apparently Jackson handles it pretty well!

Toddler Tuesday

New Dishwasher for the Kitchen- $248

New playhouse for Mary Beth - FREE

Who needs Little Tikes or Playskool...when you have a big box?