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!

And playing the role of Madame Buzzkill

Last night a colleague of mine and yours truly were invited to give a talk to 170 sorority girls at Wake Forest University. Apparently the Greek system at Wake is in some hot water for getting a little out of hand at this year's initiation party. So our job was to go talk some sense into these girls- by which I mean tell them the facts about alcohol use and how it affects your brain (and self-esteem the following morning!). Being that I still sometimes see myself as a PYT, I wanted to come off as smart and authoritative, with a dash of coolness. Yet, I think I just came off as a buzzkill.

As we were waiting outside the doors of the secret sorority meeting taking place on the other side, we started to chat up the two young lads in Wake Forest polos also waiting outside of the doors. We proceeded to find out that they were there to speak to the girls also, and that they were going to step inside and give a little spiel right before us. They said that they just needed a few minutes to tell the girls that if they came to the baseball games then free beer would be provided to all the senior girls. Huh, interesting tactic. Bad timing for us though, this offer of free beer coming before our talk on the badness of alcohol.

*Sidenote: the boys then asked us what we were there to talk about. Feeling a bit silly saying that we were there to try and persuade these girls to drink less, we told them we were there to talk about "science". I love to tell people that my job is science. I think it conjures up all sorts of weird images in their head involving bubbling beakers and people with white lab coats and a crazy look in their eyes. Just  to clarify, this is NOT the type of scientist I am. Instead if you imagined me sitting in a windowless office all day staring at a computer screen then you have the exact image of what type of scientist I am.*

So we did our job, gave the girls the low down on how many drinks lead to an intoxicated state, how many beers they're chugging when they play games like century club, and how their brains deteriorate as they chug-a-lug. Pretty much acting the part of Madame Buzzkill, squashing their enthusiasm for daytime drunkness at all the baseball games. While we were diligent in consulting the scientific literature to find the most compelling results as to why they shouldn't be drinking so much, I think all we really needed to do was inform them of the calories they were consuming during a game of century club (over 800 calories!). Then we probably would have captured their attention (and in advertently promoted skipping meals to save calories for alcohol binges!). Oh well ladies, go ahead and drink your gin and tonica- who needs a frontal cortex anyways?

Easter Fun 2010

Three Easter egg hunts equating to less than a dozen eggs brought home. But at least Conner and Lizzie seemed to enjoy Easter festivities this year more than previous years. Of course we did stay far away from the Easter bunny!