Happy Father's Day 2010

Lo siento!

I must send out my most sincere apologies to this little blog project of mine. I've totally neglected you! Don't think that I haven't thought about you numerous times. Just every time I thought about sitting down and writing, my mind drew a blank and I made myself feel better by blaming my writer's block on the lack of excitement in the Hatzis household lately. But, we have had excitement over the past month- I've just been too lazy to actually edit pictures and upload them to share with y'all. I must cut myself some slack though, I have been crazy busy working on a half-million dollar grant that I just submitted last week. If the grant gets funded (fingers crossed!) I will have enough money to pay my salary for the next three years and do some pretty cool science!

And here on the homefront, school's out for summer! The kids finished up school on June 8th and we promptly headed out on vacation the next day (more on that to come). It was bittersweet seeing school come to an end. We have really enjoyed sending the kids to the Montessori school this year and it gave us such peace to know that they also loved going to school everyday. We were lucky to get a quick kiss at drop-off before both of them went barreling into the classroom to feed the fish and hamster. Their teacher put together a dvd of all the pictures she had taken throughout the school year and it was amazing to see how much the kids changed over that year. The most prominent changes to occur over the year were the loss of fat and gain of hair for both kids! Funny, I think if you look at my change over the last year you would probably see the exact opposite changes in me.

Over Memorial Day we were lucky to have Auntie Amy come visit for a few days. The kids enjoyed showing Amy all of their new tricks and taking Amy to the pool. Lizzie was also very happy to have a fellow dancer in the house and she made sure that she wore her tutu at all times!

Mother's Day 2010

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. Mother's Day 2010 is really shaping up to be the best Mother's Day I have experienced as a mom yet. Yeah, I know it's only my third one, but this one just seems different. My first Mother's Day is a huge blur, due to the preceding two months of little to no sleep. Last year was nice, we had a picnic in the park and Conner and Lizzie got me a massage. This year I have actually been dreading this weekend for the past week. You see Chris is on-call all weekend, which in my mind meant that I had two whole days with two toddlers who are prone to tantrums and very strong opinions. Just the thought of it made me think this wasn't going to be that great of a Mother's Day. But I have to say, I was totally wrong. First, Chris earlier this week told me he wanted me to go to Anthropologie on Sunday (score!). Then, over the past 24 hours, the kids seem to have been on their best behavior. Lizzie has even been going to the bathroom on the potty for me! Yesterday they both picked the flowers from the clover in the backyard and brought the flowers to me as a gift. On Friday when I stepped into the classroom at school, they both ran up to me and proudly presented the gifts they had made for me in school. And then, when walking to the car Lizzie kept saying, "Mama, I love you." Oh.my.gosh. All the sleepless nights and changing of dirty diapers were forgotten at that moment. And while Conner hasn't been verbally expressing his love for me, he has been very willing to give me kisses and hugs all weekend. So thank you Conner and Elizabeth- for the kisses, hugs, laughs, and love.

And of course, a big kiss and hug to my mom! I love you!

I can't wait to see what our Christmas card will look like this year

In case anyone was wondering why I never post any pictures of both kids together. Here's what I get when I try to get them to sit next to each other and smile at the same time for a picture:

Jumping is more fun when you're wearing a pink tutu

All of sudden I've realized that I have a little girl on my hands now. Seems like over the past couple of weeks Elizabeth has started to really like all those things considered girly. Yep, princesses, babies, and tutu's. As you can tell, I'm not doing much to change that. And just to be fair, I've taken every step to include Conner in these activities. In fact I offered him Elizabeth's spare tutu but he refused to wear it. Let's just not tell Chris that the offer was even made.

Signs of summer

Summer is right around the corner- I can feel it. Around here we've been taking advantage of the nice weather for some picnics at the park, beers on the patio, and planting our herb garden.

PB & J is so much tastier when eaten at the park

Conner provides the entertainment - here he is doing his rendition of Snowman, Snowman

Little hands help plant

Here Conner, put some dirt on your face too.

Mommy's juice (as stated by Conner)

Mi casa es su casa- Two little monkeys jumping on their new beds!

We spent this past weekend redecorating Conner and Lizzie's room. This makeover was long overdue, as both kids have been sleeping on their crib mattresses on the floor for the past couple of months. But really the need for this makeover was due to some wintertime snuggling.

You see in the cold months of winter, Conner and Lizzie decided that the best way to keep warm was to snuggle up with each other in one bed. As cute as it was (and believe me, it was), there really isn't room for two toddlers in one crib. Each night before we went to bed we would have to go up there and place limbs and heads hanging off the sides of the bed back in. We knew that we needed to come up with a better sleeping solution but weren't sure what option would be the best long term solution. We aren't planning on Conner and Lizzie forever sharing a room, but in our current house we don't have enough bedrooms to give each of them a separate room. And so, while we figured out how to solve the situation, we just threw their mattresses on the floor next to each other so that they could still snuggle but would have more room than both trying to squeeze onto one mattress.

Realizing that we would be putting our house on the market in less than a year, we thought that the twins' bedroom might "show" better if there weren't two mattresses lying on the floor. I can only imagine what kind of child torture people probably think we impose on our children by making them sleep on the floor. So it just seemed like a good time to go ahead and get the kids their own beds. I did some research and realized that holy crap!, beds aren't cheap. A twin bed with a headboard and footboard was going to run us between $500-700 at most furniture stores and then we still would have to buy a mattress + bedding = really, they can't just keep sleeping on the floor? And then of course I remembered how my whole house is built upon self-assembly furniture-why should I now be trying to get all fancy buying furniture that they deliver to your house assembled? And there we were this Saturday, at IKEA looking at bed options. I'll make this a short story (and really you would be impressed, we were in and out of IKEA in less than 2 hours!)- we looked at several bed options and ended up going with this one. I initially wasn't planning on getting a twin sized bed for the kids but my sensible husband talked me into getting twin-sized beds so that the kids could grow into them. There were smaller beds that would have been SO cute in the kids' room but those beds weren't much bigger than a crib and would have been too small very quickly.

The Trofast bed is pretty cool and really functional. It is expandable (with the largest size being a twin size bed) and it was so easy to put together. I have to give IKEA props, they really make their furniture easy to assemble. And IKEA is smart because they stock coordinating boy/girl bedding. You think more companies would be smart and make boy/girl coordinating bedding but there really aren't many choices for that. So we picked up this bedding for Conner, and the coordinating set for Lizzie.

We decided to paint the walls a green color, Grasscloth by Behr, and two coats later the room looked so different.

Man, I love how paint makes a old room feel completely new to you. The room isn't completely done yet. I need to paint two pictures to put above Lizzie's bed but it may be years before that gets done so I thought I would share some pictures with you now.

Before

After

Plus, I'm home with a sick kid (Conner has strep throat) so I actually have time to sit down and write a post. Hope y'all had a productive and fulfilling weekend!