We had a couple of teaser days with beautiful weather, and now its freezing and raining again! We want spring to come! The kids are getting kind of sick of being indoors all the time so we headed down to G&G's for the week. Jake's been busy so he'll have a few days to work and sleep (and play video games). :)

Videos from the summer

I am SO behind on downloading videos. Here's a few cute ones I just found yesterday. These are all from this past summer when we were staying with Grandpa and Grandma

Sweet sisters:


Chloe's Veggie dance:


Taylor did this to Chloe. TOO Funny!:

Pretty Boy

Why is it that BOYS always get the killer eyelashes?

Chloe

I just wanted to write a little post about Chloe. Thank God we have at least one Chloe in the family. She is such a blessing and she is so incredibly easy to parent. She's so obedient and so incredibly sweet and full of smiles. She lives to please. She cleans up at the end of the day. She never ever gives us any trouble sleeping and lately has been putting herself to bed early. (Yes, I just said putting herself to bed). :) It's like every parents dream. She climbs into her crib, turns the light off, puts her blankets on, yells for Taylor to come give her a kiss and a hug and then when Taylor climbs out of her crib she say's "Tay tay shut the door." She does this some nights as early as 6:30. LOVE HER!!!

Language Explosion

This last week Taylor has starting talking like crazy. She's using all kinds of sentences and she has a TON of new words. One of my favorites is "because." She uses it all the time. Today she said, "I don't want to go to the park, because I want to go to gymnastics. She also said "Mom I need some juice because I'm thirsty!" It's just really funny to hear her say because. She's really good at expressing her self and she's so bossy. She's always been bossy, well since she was 9 mos old. And now that she's talking she wants to call all the shots. We're in trouble. ;) She also looks out for Coby like a good big sister. Today the kids were watching Mickey Mouse and Coby got scared of one of the characters on there and started crying (he does this alot). Taylor came running up to me with the tv remote, handed it to me and said "Mom, hurry make Coby feel better, he's scared!"

Gamma's Visit

Jake's mom is awesome. She has been faithfully coming to visit the kids every 2-3 months since we moved. She'll be out here for the third time in just a few weeks. We're so lucky to have her. She loves our kids so much and it shows. And when she is not visiting she's sending cards, and packages for the kids. Now when a box arrives the girls say "from gamma?" It's so cute! Anyway these photos say it all.

Three Little Cuties

Sleep update

We've had 2 good nights in a row. One night she didn't cry going to bed and the other night she cried for only 20 minutes. Tonight back up to 40 minutes. But both nights she slept through till after 7. And she's sort of napping again. She goes in her room each day from 1-3 while the other kids naps. She either looks at books or sleeps. She's been napping every other day. I'll take it!

Beautiful tired baby

Here's T playing at the park a few days ago. If you click on it you can see how tired she is. Poor little thing.

The Toddler Bed

Taylor slept on the floor the last 2 nights. We took off the crib tent and she pops right out of that crib and prefers to sleep on the floor instead. So today Jake put together the new bed that Grandma brought over. It's super cute and just her size. She had fun playing in it today but she was NOT happy when bedtime came. She got out of her crib 31 times in a span of about 3 minutes, and she was screaming the entire time. After trip 31 back to bed she decided to stay in there, but continued the protest scream/cry for almost an hour then fell asleep face down in the middle of the bed. The poor little girl is so tired, she's got permanent bags under her eyes. She hasn't napped in 2 weeks and she's not sleeping through the night either. I think it's going to be another one of those nights. Jake and I are now trading off every other night so at least one of us can get some zzzzzzzzz's. Here's 2 photos, one shows some of the room that Taylor trashed the first night she escaped the crib tent, the other one is of Anna and Chloe. Chloe and I went up to WA for Anna's shower Friday night and of course Anna bought herself and Chloe matching shirts. Too darn cute!

Update

She took no nap yesterday. I put her down at 6:30pm. She cried for about 45 minutes and was out by 7:15. She slept through the night. It was 7:45am and I heard something over the baby monitor, but was a little puzzled because I didn't see her moving around in her crib. I went it and woah! She had removed the crib tent, TRASHED her room, like you couldn't even see the floor it was covered with books and toys (yes I have photos). And our sweet little girl had made her self a little bed on the hardwood floor, where she must have slept last night. And she told me she "no like her crib anymore."

Need Advice---major 2 yearold sleep isssues!

The girls are now ages 2 years 4 mos. Since Jan 1st we've all been sleeping great. Jake and I were finally getting 8 hours of sleep a night for the first time in almost 2 years. Sleep is very important at our house! For the past year the girls have sleeping from 7-7:30ish and 2-3 hour naps. Which I think is a pretty normal schedule for a 1-2 year old. They go down very easily, sometimes mild fussing from Taylor but never more than 5 minutes.

And here's the problem: For the past 9 days Taylor has stopped taking naps and been screaming/crying instead for 2 hours. Then at night she cries for about 1/2 hour to an hour then falls asleep. A few nights this week she's been back awake crying about midnight and then here's the killer-she wakes up at 5am screaming her head off and wakes the other babies and mom and dad up too. And she doesn't fall back asleep. We leave her in there until 7, but she still wakes everyone up. We have tried going in there at 5 and settling her back down but the minute we leave the room she starts in again, so it doesn't do any good. I understand kids do phase out naps sometimes at 2ish, but she has gone from needing a total of 15hours of sleep(with nightime and nap) to only sleeping 9-10 hours total. She's not sick, she's her normal self during the day, well except I can tell she's exhausted. I feel like she's way over tired which is causing her to not sleep, but how do I get her to sleep so she can catch up? We're going on day 10 of this and its affecting the entire house, everyone's losing sleep. Today she screamed at naptime for 2 hours, which means neither Coby nor Chloe got any sleep.

oh and p.s. she knows she's being naughty. she acts all super sweet and polite as soon as we get her out of bed. Like in her sweetest voice. "oh thank you mommy" and shes super agreeable and overly nice to her brother and sister. Which is not normal for her because she's usually kind of a stinker. And then of course it goes from that to major meltdown because she's exhausted.

And to complicate matters even more she has now officially learned how to escape the crib tent and she takes her diapers off, and yes I've even tried the duct tape.

Anyone been through this or can offer any advice?

Thanks for reading! Oh and yes this is why I'm way behind on my picture posts, I'm back to sleeping 4-5 hours a night with no break during the day. Yuck!

Coming soon....

more photos and updates. Sorry we've been busy lately! One little girl thinks she doesn't need naps anymore, which is making mom extra busy/tired. :)