What else besides sleepovers and cheesecake?

I want to apologize to all my loyal fans and followers for my wickedly inconsistent blogging.  All two of you.  Ha!  I think I sometimes have writers block and lose the desire to tell stories - but then a funny thing will happen and I get jump started again.  Anywho....

What have we been up to lately besides sleepovers and such?  Well, there's Target.  Aren't these the cutest Leprechauns ever?  I did not purchase this hat, but I'm reconsidering.....I mean, look at them!

There's the Commons playground.  This place is great, but I am so very ready for warmer weather and taking the kids to play outside.

There's Pizza King Strombolis in Columbus!  This is big news, people, but there's a couple downsides:  1)  unlike in Evansville, the stroms come with generic Walmart potato chips instead of Grippos and 2) this is so not Weight Watchers friendly....but delish!

There's these two cuties sitting next to each other on the couch, eating their snacks, drinking their milk and watching "Dooh-rah!" (Dora) together.  This moment barely lasts long enough for me to get the camera out and snap a quick photo.  But no one has to know that...just the two of you reading this blog....shhh......

There's this little guy talking up a storm.  He says lots and lots of words now.  Many are still hard to make out unless you have the right context but he's getting there.  He's starting to get good at the letter "L."  It's super cute to hear him say "lellow" (yellow) and he's getting pretty close to getting "Lily" out.  He received his first at-home haircut a week or so ago.  I can't say it was a total success, but it wasn't a total disaster either.  He didn't hold still for more than 2 consecutive seconds the whole time, so I'm basically just happy that there aren't giant chunks missing. Tyler's obsessions right now are his books, his bear and his dog.  He's all the time wanting his books.  He wants to read them.  He wants you to read them.  He wants to hold them and carry them around with him everywhere.  He wants them in his bed.  They are his most prized possessions.

There's this beauty.  We were on a roll there for a bit where her tantrums weren't so bad - and by on a roll, I mean like 3 days.  But recently she seems to have given up her nap at school on most days, which means that by 5:00 she's EXHAUSTED and CRABBY and SENSITIVE about EVERYTHING.  I talked to the director at the daycare and she said that Lily just doesn't want to sleep.  She says that Lily lays quietly and doesn't disturb anybody but she just won't sleep.  She flops around and intentionally keeps herself awake (STUBBORN).  This happens to us occasionally on the weekends too.  This child needs her nap.  Hopefully when the weather warms up and the kids get more outside time, this situation will correct itself.  When she's not being stubborn and sassy, she's unbelievably sweet.  She can melt you to puddle in mere seconds.

Lily's still in to the camera thing.  But not her little camera....our big one.

And finally, here's my whole world in a picture (or two).  Don't know what I would do without them.  

Blog Stalker?

Over the last several weeks, I've noticed that one of my blog posts is getting a lot of attention and I can not, for the life of me, figure out why.

Mission: BGB- Phase 2 has gotten a ridiculous amount of hits in the last 30 days.  And now it's probably going to get a whole lot more since I just linked it here!  Anyway, the post isn't even that exciting and only has one picture so I can't figure out why someone is so interested in it that he/she looks at it 5 times a day.  It's from a year and a half ago.  What gives?

I wish I could see who was looking at my blog.  But I can't.  I can only see how many times someone clicks on a link and how many times someone goes to the main blog page.  So the stalker's identity is a secret.

Who ever you are, I ain't mad atcha.  I just wanna know why.

If you want to see a flash from the past that's actually entertaining to look at, you should check out this post.  It has a video and I watched it yesterday and I laughed.  I laughed cause the only thing that's changed is Lily is taller and her hair is longer.  

Slumber Party at Josh'n'Ree's

Marie has been offering to keep the kiddos overnight, well pretty much since each of them went off the boob, respectively.  And, stupid us, we just now got around to taking her up on the offer.
 

We needed the night off.....desperately.  We love our babies, but everybody needs a little break now and then.  Plus, the kids love their Aunt Ree and they love their Uncle Josh too after they get reacquainted with his mountain man beard. 
 

We were pretty nervous about leaving them over night.  Actually, we weren't too concerned about Lily.  She adores, ADORES, cousin Whitney.  Whitney takes such good care of her too.  Entertains her and caters to her.  It's pretty cute.

But we were worried about Tyler - and mostly how he would do sleeping.  Or not sleeping and keeping everyone else up as he's done in past overnight trips.  But turns out, we had nothing to worry about because he did just fine. 

When we first dropped the babes off, Lily was good to go and ready to be entertained.  We had told her a couple days prior what was going on and she was excited about it.  But Tyler immediately knew something was up and was none too interested in leaving our sides.  But Marie eventually got him good and distracted and we took off.

The kiddos behaved really well - thank goodness!  Lily had a merry old time playing with Whitney and even slept with her upstairs.  Whitney said Lily did really good and didn't cry or anything.  Tyler also played well and hung out with Uncle Josh.  Whenever Josh would leave the room, Tyler would look around ask "Joooosh?"

Sunday morning, Marie did a little photo shoot with the kiddos.  She got some pretty good shots.  And check out Lily's princess hair!  I told Lily her Aunt Ree is really good at fixing hair and maybe she would do Lily's if Lily was good.  And she sure did!  The dress that Lily's wearing is Whitney's from when we went to Disney World the Fall I was pregnant with Lily.  It's hard for my brain to reconcile this.  Granted, Whitney was/is a skinny little thing and Lily is like an Amazon 3-year-old, but still....

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Lily has really gotten in to watching Disney princess movies and at the beginning of each one, they always show Cinderella's castle and the Disney logo.  And every time, EVERY TIME, without fail, Lily says:

"We went there, Mommy, when I was still in your belly!"

And it's really cute.  And I can TOTALLY see how people take 3 year olds, who will never remember the trip, to Disney World.  She gets so dang excited just seeing that cartoon castle on TV.  Just think how she's going to react when she sees it for real (in no less than 5 years....).

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A million thanks to Marie, Josh, KJ and Whit for watching the babies.....We'll try not to call too often.

Say, are you guys busy this weekend?

Two super worn out kiddos!