Daddy Transport

Brian has been very accommodating and have transported N2 up the stairs.  He doesn't do it every day but he does it once or twice a week.  I cannot even imagine doing this.  Take a look.

I don't think I'm trying that any time soon (or at all)!

New hairdos

Natalie has been allowing me to do her hair recently.  She lets me do it almost every day and she generally keeps it in for most of the day.  Yay!  Now I wish I had more hair to work with and that I had more hair styles that I could do quickly.  I get maybe 2-3 minutes and then she's done.  I put high pigtails in her hair one day and she looked so cute!  She loved them too!

Then she decided to do her own hair using my head band (the ones I wear when I work out).  She wore this for a long time!

Yu Kids Island

I got a deal on visits to Yu Kids Island in Hawthorn Malls.  It's a little late in the season to do indoor play places but I only bought a 5 visit deal (yes I know that means I am going to pay for 1 full price visit but I wasn't willing to do a 10 pack).  I may see if I can sell off the remaining visit to another friend who bought a 5 pack and has twins.  We visited the play place on Wednesday and met some friends there.  N2 really enjoyed themselves.  We stayed for about an hour and 15 minutes and I think that was enough.  The place may be a little better for smaller kids.  This place is unlike any play place we've been to.  Take a look.

 

This was like a carousel.  It rotated quite slowly but fast enough that it was hard to help them get up on the top balls.  This was the thing they went to first and immediately climbed up all the way to the top.  The couldn't sit on the balls very well-I think they were too heavy.  I watched younger kids sit on them without tipping backwards.  But that didn't deter N2 from having fun.

There was a caged in area that had lots of balloons and a fan blowing them around.  They had fun chasing after the balloons.

The had a hamster wheel which N2 didn't get.  The tried sitting in it which was kind of funny to watch.

They also had another carousel which you couldn't climb-you just had to ride it.  N2 were not very interested in this one because they couldn't stay on the balls that long.  You can see Noah peeking it out.

They had a coil that spun that kids could climb through.  Poor Natalie fell off this one and was a little traumatized.

We ate lunch in the mall food court with your friends afterwards.  What a treat for N2 to get to pick what they wanted to eat.  They both chose Happy Meals even though they went in wanting pizza.

Visit to the Park

Yesterday was a beautiful day so after going to the library I decided we would go to the park across the street.  I am amazed at how much more they can do this year than last!  The only thing they can't do there are the monkey bars.  They are too tall plus they don't have the strength.  But they can do everything else.

These platforms are on chains, they they move and sway.  Last time we were at the park I had to help them get from one to the other.  They were a little too far apart as well.  This spring-they need no help!

Then there are these mountains where you have to climb along the edges to get up to the highest part of the playground.  Last summer/fall they learned how to do them but one of us would stand there as they did it.  This time, I sat back and watched without being nervous.  They bouldered like pros!

This is one of the things I love about twins.  Who needs mom or dad when you have your sibling to push you on the swing?

(I did get one of Natalie pushing Noah because they did a nice job and took turns but it looks like Natalie is crying in it and she wasn't).

I also love that twins have a build in playmate.  They had a good time choo-chooing down the slide.  There was only one other kid there who was just a few months younger than N2 and he so desperately wanted N2 to play with him but they just wanted to play with each other.  The little boy got a little violent with them because he was trying to get them to engage in his pretend scenario.  N2 really didn't understand.  Guess we need to work on including others (although they do include the kids that they know).

And finally, here's a picture of Noah.

A Beautiful Day

Today was gorgeous!  Too bad I didn't realize it until lunch time :)  We had a lazy morning and then an afternoon outdoors with very little quiet time.  But that's OK, the weather was fantastic and it was sunny!  We went to the park (I'll post those pictures later) but then later, N2 were playing outside and Natalie was being quite cooperative for pictures.  I got these great pictures if I do say so myself.

Here's how cooperative Noah was.

Alphabet Project

Brian wasn't home Saturday afternoon or evening so I needed a project to do with N2 so that we wouldn't play with Legos the entire time (I'm so sick of legos).  I've been working on letter identification with N2 as I their teacher wants them to practice their letters.  N2 love to cut and glue so I decided we would do a letter hunt through the newspaper.  Luckily there were quite a few auto sections so that is where we got most of our letters from (plus the auto section has BIG type face and a lot in just uppercase-we were only working on uppercase).  They started out by just cutting lots of letters and I realized that they weren't getting a good variety of letters.  After that, I just cut out headlines and made a pile of them. They started gluing their letters in order and when they didn't have a letter cut out already, I went through the stack of headlines and handed them one that had the letter they were missing.  They still had to find the letter in the headline.  This kept them busy for an hour!  Noah didn't finish-he ended at U and then got bored.  Natalie finished hers.  One of them told me that daddy wouldn't be happy with me for cutting up his newspaper because then he couldn't read it anymore.  I told them it was OK because daddy wasn't going to read the auto sections and he had already read the paper.

Maybe we'll do this with lowercase later.  They really seemed to enjoy it.

Student of the week

Noah was student of the week last week (Natalie was student of the week the week before).  On Thursday he had to bring his favorite toy.  Of course he was going to bring legos.  He built his creations the night before but couldn't sleep because he didn't finish them but it was time for bed.  So he finished Thursday morning and it was hard to get him to go to preschool!  I wanted to take a picture of him with his lego creations since he builds so nicely with them.  Because I took a picture of Noah with his legos, Natalie needed me to take a picture of her with legos.  I built all the pieces for her.  When Natalie was student of the week, she wanted to take her parking garage as her favorite toy.  I told her we would take a picture of it and take the picture and she could take a couple cars.

Lion's Birthday Party

Natalie had a birthday party for lion last month (it could have been cow's birthday, I can't quite remember).  She made a cake out of paper.  The she brought some friends to the party.  She held lion while she sang Happy Birthday.  Then she helped lion blow out her candles.  After that she got out scissors and cut the cake for all the animals.  I thought it was really cute and a great show of her imagination!

Mismatch Day

We were having a very quiet Friday and had no plans to go out so I declared Friday mismatch day.  My kids got to pick out whatever they wanted to wear and I told them to purposely not match.  That is harder said than done with Noah.  He has no crazy pants like Natalie.  We finally ended up with olive green pants and a bright green sweatshirt (it didn't look good together but the picture didn't show that).  I wore plaid flannel pants and a damask pattern shirt.  It was pretty hideous!  When Brian came home from work, they immediately told him that he had to change into mismatched clothes.

They wanted a mismatch lunch and I didn't really know how to mismatch their food but they were OK because their food weren't the same colors (although Noah had a white banana and white string cheese and he did not like that because they were both white).  They also wore mismatch PJs and they were so excited about it but I forgot to take a picture.

Swimming

N2 are progressing very well in their swim class.  Noah is still hesitant about swimming on his own where he can't touch the bottom.  When he knows he can touch the bottom, he swims back and forth.  Natalie can swim really well on her front and back.  She likes backstroke just like me!  She has been promoted to the next level class but I decided to keep her together with Noah and maybe next session when Brian is home we can split them up.  I kept them together mainly because I couldn't get classes that were at the same time and the next level class is only held in the afternoons right now and I prefer the teachers in the morning.  Sorry for the quality of these pictures-Brian took them from the bleachers so there's tons of stuff in the way.

Grandpa's birthday

After we went to the Museum of Science and Industry during spring break, I called up mom and dad to see if we could stop by to wish dad happy birthday.  They were meeting the Hayes' at Mandar Inn and invited us to join them.  After dinner we went back to their house to have birthday cake.  Mom still had to ice the cake and once she did, she gave N2 spoons of icing to lick.  Make sure to look around Noah's mouth in these pictures.  They were happy to sit on Grandpa's lap to help him blow out the candles.  I don't think Dad even tried to blow out the candles.

 

Dress Up

Here's another occasion to show off Noah's love of dressing up.  The dress up clothes box is in his room and sometimes he'll come out of his room after nap time wearing a random outfit or he might play with the clothes at bedtime.  Not sure what he was being here (I don't think he was being a ballerina).  He kept going back up and adding new pieces to his outfit.

Easter

We celebrated Easter at my parents' house but before we left to go to church, N2 opened their Easter baskets at home. They had camping items in the baskets-carabiners, flash lights and new hats.  They also had some M&Ms, a reese's egg and a pot to grow grass.  They also got a Light Bright because the Easter bunny found it at a garage sale last summer and figured it was time to get it out!

We went to church with everyone and then back to grandma and grandpa's house for an Easter egg hunt.  Each kid was assigned a color and those were the eggs that they could hunt.  I don't think a single kid tried to pick up a different colored egg.  Towards the end they tried to help each other find eggs.  Natalie had pink, Noah had blue, Amelia had purple and Megan had green.  It was warm enough for us to do the Easter egg hunt outside.

(I like how Natalie cannot figure out how to get the egg out without poking herself with branches).

We tried to take pictures of cousins but it seems like some kids weren't in photogenic moods that day.  Noah wanted his tongue stuck out in all the pictures, Amelia wanted her eyes closed, Natalie was inconsistently photogenic,  and Megan was looking elsewhere (but was smiling!).  Here are the best ones I got.  Maybe Marcie got better ones?  I guess I could photoshop the pictures but I think it would actually be kind of hard since the kids seemed to look in different directions quite a bit!

Then we tried to get cousins with Grandma and Grandpa.  We had better smiles from Amelia and Megan but Natalie wouldn't smile.

Then I got pictures of N2 and luckily I got a good one!

I also got this silly one which I love!

We got a good family picture too.

Grandpa read Uncle Remus stories to the kids before dinner.

I think everyone had a good time!