Life with Two

For the past week, we have gotten to 'try on' life with two kids as full time working parents.  A little skewed because it was our nephew and he and Emerson are close in age and Luke is so easy...but then again so is Emerson, so here's hoping that we'll do it right and God doesn't have other plans for us with our own #2 also and we can keep saying that the next time around.  I didn't know what Emerson would think of having someone  else in her house and playing with her things from Monday - Sunday, but they really played so well together and especially for the last 3 days had a total blast together.  I think she was sad to see him leave tonight!  Here are some quick snippits of our week together.

After several fun picnic meals on our front porch because the weather was so amazing this weekend, we braved going out to dinner one night and the kids had a great time chowing down at the new Chipotle close to our house.  This could be dangerous because we love Chipotle and now it is even closer to home - yum. It cooled off for the rest of the weekend, and in celebration of Luke's parents being in Colorado skiing, we had s'mores in the backyard over the firepit.  This was a first for both kids and they both loved it.  And yes, I did put a pair of Emerson's pajamas on Luke since I knew their pjs would smell like campfire so I could throw them in the laundry and put on new ones before bed!  Emerson loved them, as you can tell by the pictures below.

 (Oh dear...we need to manage these curls a little better...this is why there's always a bow or pigtails keeping this curls out of her eyes - especially this big one right in the front!)

Emerson has been getting more sugar in the past few weeks than she has ever had before. We potty trained a few weeks ago, and she has done amazing with very few accidents only in the early days.  She gets 1 jelly bean or one Reeses pieces when she pees and well, we tried lots of different high value prizes for pooping (sorry, TMI?) but she just wasn't motivated. "No fanks!, Hold me mommy," was always the response. It has been no big deal because she regularly goes during nap or right before bed when she has her diaper on - but I don't want her to be a kid that always just goes in her diaper.  So we bought these individual ice cream containers at the grocery store and those have been the new prize.  And today, it worked.  And...well, let's just say she probably lost a few pounds when she went to the bathroom so I didn't mind that she ate the whole little container of icecream!  Actually it was frozen yogurt...maybe a little better?  Here she is enjoying herself in bed with her icecream (oh yeah, the prize was ice cream and a video - which is a big prize and not the norm at our house).  Here's to hoping that this was a breakthrough and we can just keep going from here!

In other January news, Declutter 2012 has been going well - probably because the first week's activities have been pretty simple and not ones that I dread or avoid - for example, dust the top of your cabinets, clear off a storage shelf, clean out old food from the freezer, throw out expired spices, organize canned food.  Well, I don't have many cabinets, definitely don't have many storage shelves, did throw out some things from the freezer, use my spices too frequently to have expired ones, and have 1/4 of one shelf in one cabinet dedicated to cans - sigh, no pantry.  So far so good.  And I think that if this is how my house looks before I go to bed Sunday night from just normal clean up after a week with two 2 year olds and 30 people at my house Friday night for John's 30th birthday, I think I'm off to a good start! (Sorry, these are cell phone pictures and pretty dark)

 And yeah, maybe the side of my refrigerator needs to be on the declutter list.  But here, you can see (from left to right, top to bottom): Terry's brothers and sister-in-laws after our rehearsal dinner, [on the magnet clip:] pictures from a photo booth at a recent wedding, things Em has made from church and who knows what else), side by side pictures of my mom and I at Easter as 3 year olds where we look incredibly alike, Terry and I in highschool before I knew how much I would love this man, me with Salem as puppy, one corner of Emerson's head in a picture from her dedication, the Walgreens clip holds the declutter calendar that I have been marking out, Beth's family, the group at Emerson's dedication including: Beth & Dean, Molly & Bella, us, Laura, Mom & Rebecca; a picture of me kissing Terry on the cheek after my grad school graduation covered by some recent cut and paste crafts Emerson has made, and Terry and I in January 2005 (or was it 2004?) before we were dating but probably the trip that I thought the most about maybe dating him :)  See - who would want to declutter any of that?!