Why do we buy toys?

I often wonder why we buy the kids toys...they seem to get the biggest kick out of things that are not toys. Earlier this week the fascination was with the drawer under the oven, and playing with the cake pans inside the drawer.


This morning the kids discovered the dishwasher as I was doing the dishes.

The Adventures of Dudley & Olivia

I believe Dudley and Olivia are starting to form a special bond...a bond that I think will last for a very long time and will involve lots of love and hate!

Olivia has spent the last week doing belly flops into Dudley's bed that lays by the sliding glass door, she has crawled into Dudley's crate, she tries to pet him, she grabs his leg, she teases him with toys, and she taunts him over playing in his bed.

Last night she was playing in his bed and he came over to find out what she was doing. She crawled away shortly after he came over. She stopped to watch what he would do next, and as he started walking away she immediately started crawling back to his bed and then it became a race as to who would get to the bed first. And I think Olivia actually won.



We're thinking of getting Olivia a dog bed for her first birthday!

Alex & Olivia can feed themselves!

At the end of January, day care had told us that they were working with Alex and Olivia to have them hold their own bottles. Their bottles are a little long which I think made it a little more challenging for them to hold them. So we started putting them in their high chairs for their morning and afternoon bottles so they could learn to hold their bottles.

Sure enough not long after the first couple of times, they both figured out how to hold their bottles and feed themselves! It is great!! Now, we can have breakfast while they eat on the weekends and seems like we get a lot more done since they can feed themselves. It also helps out a lot if one of us cannot be home for the feeding right before bed because we can always just put them in their high chairs!

Olivia Walks

As the prior post indicated...it was a crazy week full of vomit, Alex being sick, Alex crawling and Olivia walking!!! Over the last couple of weeks Olivia has been taking a few steps here and there, but still liked to hold onto stuff where she could, or crawl to things since she knew it was faster. We bought her her first pair of shoes and we think this helped her have a better grip on our hardwood floors. So after the new pair of shoes, last week she decided that walking is the new preferred method of transportation. It's great because she is so easy to entertain now as she just likes to walk around the house! Here is a clip of her walking this week.

Alex Crawls!!!

After a few days on steroids, Alex has figured out how to move when he gets up on all fours. Perhaps he has a future in major league baseball based on his performance on steroids and his love of balls!! Here's a quick video....it is definintely a labored crawl.

One Crazy Week

This past week was really crazy. It was the first time since the kids were born where we had one that was really sick. It started with last Sunday, Alex threw up while eating his last bottle. The next day we kept him home from day care, and he ran a pretty high fever. Turns out he had bronchiolitis, and an on coming possible ear infection (from the bronchiolitis). Alex ended up being out of day care all week, and he was put on a nebulizer with drugs he was to inhale. Little did we know the drugs were steroids and we had no idea the types of side effects they had....nervousness, and difficulty sleeping!!! Alex had both of these side effects, and it was a struggle to get him to sleep more than 3 hours at a time, and some times we found him wide awake at 4 in the morning with no desire to go back to sleep. This all meant that Ben and I got very little sleep. Needless to say we ended up taking him off the steroids - - the side effects were just too much to handle.

The week ended with Alex throwing up again on Friday night, once again while eating his last bottle, but this time it was me who was feeding him the bottle. Yep, you guessed it, the vomit was all over me! The funniest part was before we fed the kids, since I had been home with Alex all day I asked Ben "Do you want to feed Alex?", and his response was "No, I really like feeding Olivia."....It was like he knew what was about to happen!

Then on to last night, Ben took Olivia to go out and pick up dinner and on the way home she threw up in the car, in Alex's car seat! So there I found myself cleaning a 3rd set of clothes containing vomit! Apparently it must be written in the marriage by-laws that "wife must clean up all vomit", because I never heard Ben volunteer. Maybe he just spoke too quietly!

On a good note, Olivia seems to be fine (perhaps she just ate too many pancakes yesterday morning) and Alex is much improved and slept through the night last night for the first time in about a week. And I must add, his third tooth just cut through the gum so that had to of added to the irritability.

A couple pictures of the kids modeling their Valentines day outfits...Olivia is covering her's up but it says "Little Heartbreaker".