Rooms are Finally Done... So Can It Be Time to Move Already?

Our timing leaves something to be desired since our home has been on the market for two months, but Sam and Anna's rooms are finally completely finished.  Or as finished as they are every going to be in this house.  About 6 months since they were separated into their own rooms and out of cribs, and I am satisfied- especially since it could all be dismantled within a month if we (please God) get an offer some day soon.  I knew it would be a gradual change over, but I didn't quite envision it taking half a year. 

First I decided on themes (the important part, right?).  Then we took down cribs and moved Anna into a new room (after emptying out our guest room). After that Anna's room was painted and we assembled metal frames.  Sam's room stayed the same color their originally nursery was.  Months later, the wooden frames were completed (made by grandpa).  We finally chose dressers for Sam from Ikea and painted them at the same time Daddy painted the wooden frames (this was a huge weekend project completed the day before we officially listed our home for sale, naturally.)  We quickly took the beds off the metal frames and onto the nice wood frames so the realtor could take the listing photos.  I changed my original thought to use vinyl wall decals I had found on etsy to the prints pictured below after much looking so they'd be more relocate-able to a new home in the new future.  They are a great deal less than wall decals and match so well too!

The prints ended up being made by an etsy seller in Israel so they took longer than I expected to get once ordered.  (But now I think it is totally awesome and unique that they have original prints from an artist in Israel.)  After that, I had to find frames that worked with the prints and the furniture.  Finally, I needed a spare set of adult hands to hang them which meant waiting until the next weekend when Daddy was home again.  So finally, finally, a week ago the rooms were as done as they are ever going to be.  Once we move, I'm thinking Anna's wall color will still be pink, but I'm leaning towards a green for Sam.

(Pardon the crappy photos- my good camera's lenses were too wide for the smaller spaces.)

 (Original letters that hung above Sam's crib were painted to match his furniture)

Finally done... so can we move already???

Then and Now

For their first Valentine's Day, I ordered these onesies custom made.  After seeing the idea, I HAD to do it.  Even without smiles, it was pretty darn cute.

2010

For their second Valentine's Day, I bought the heart pants for Anna and the heart shirt for Sam.  This was the best picture I could get and that was with a candy bribe (tootsie rolls in each mouth in this shot, hence the awkward smiles).

 2011

 

For this third Valentine's Day, I was thrilled that Sam's shirt from the year before still fit him (2T at almost 3 years old).  Anna's tweet heart shirt was a garage sale find this summer, but the red shirt she wore in last year's photo does still fit, although the pants do not.  They are each wearing the same socks in both photos as well.



2013

 

I'm finding that party planning for their third birthday is following much the same path... lots of thought into the first for minimal return with photo invites mailed, lots of planning (albeit less) for the second birthday party with designed invites emailed minus photos, and here it is 2 weeks from their third birthday party and I am just starting to think about it.  People have not been formally invited, although they all know the date and location.  Theme is decided but that's about it.  I ordered all presents except for one last week though, so at least that's mostly taken care of, right? 

A Boy And His Dog

 

He may sometimes terrorize her by chasing her with plastic shopping carts or toy lawnmowers and she may sometimes try to escape his over zealous play, but I know without a doubt these two will be near best friends always.

 

 

This Sibling Stuff

Sam and Anna have almost always gotten along well in the past.  Once we got down the "count to 3" and then later "count to 20" routine when they wanted the whatever the other had to play with, it has been close to smooth sailing since then as far as sibling interacting goes.

Sometimes having twins is awesome.  The special bond they have with only the other is apparent so frequently.  There was a stage when they did not like being apart, like when we had Mommy-Daughter trips to Target or Daddy-Son grocery store runs.  Ask either one who their best friend is, and each will reply with their twin's name.  While a small piece of me wishes that I could sometimes be the "best friend," I know how lucky they are to have the special bond they have as twins and that their bond with me is special and different too.

Sam and Anna are also very compassionate towards each other.  They kiss each other's injuries without prompting and ask if the injured is okay.  They help each other out all day long and more often than not use please and thank you towards each other without reminders.

But lately, the sibling stuff has been cranked up a notch.  They still have that special bond of course and pepper their conversations with compassion and manners (and a few words of twin-speak: words they both seem to understand but sound like made-up words to me) but these days the antagonizing is driving me nuts.  I see shades of my own relationship with my brother growing up mirrored in how Sam and Anna are acting towards each other lately.  That brothers-are-put-on-this-earth-to-annoy-and-tease sisters while sisters-are-put-on-this-earth-to-drive-brothers-crazy age old practice.  Ugh.

Sam kicks Anna just to annoy her when they are sitting at the breakfast bar (not playfully or trying to hurt her).

Anna pretends to eat Sam (as a wild thing or animal) joyfully even though he tells her to stop repeatedly as he gets upset.

Sam tries to chase Anna with the lawnmower while she shrieks and seeks refuge in my arms.

Anna takes a toy from Sam just because he has it and she doesn't want him to have it.

And the list goes on and on.

All totally normal behavior, I think, but it gets tiring and old fast.

I feel like we do everything to encourage the opposite and foster a positive sibling relationship:

We talk though their feelings and give them the words to successfully extinguish the unwanted behavior in the hopes that they learn how to do it on their own most of the time in the someday future.

We acknowledge, encourage and celebrate the great moments of twindom and siblinghood- working together, solving their problems with each other well and using kindness.

We give them opportunities to try to work things out on their own before rushing in and fixing it.

We provide and encourage time to be separate and do things on their own- that they both don't have to play the same thing at the same time, be in the same room at the same time, or interact with us as their parents at the same time.

I think we handling it just fine... I'm just wishing I didn't have 15 more year of this on the way!

A Post For Anna

My little sweetie pie has such a multifaceted personality.  She is so animated and amusing; filled with spunk and entertaining always.  My wee actress loves acting out different emotions in the bathroom mirror.  She will watch her face and say, "I'm happy!" smiling big, and then instantly slap on a frown while saying, "Now I'm sad."  The next second it will be "I'm mad!" with a scowl or "I'm excited!" with her eyes and mouth big and wide.  She'll sometimes add in a "Now I'm proud," while sticking her chin in the air.  We call the faces she sometimes makes her Jim Carey faces- lately she's on a eye crossing kick too. She quickly remembers what gets a laugh and will repeat the scenario to get the same results.  She pretended to fall out of a child-sized rocking chair after "rocking so fast" 20+ times in a row after we all laughed about her over-the-top fall the first time.  Girl definitely has a flair for the dramatic, that's for sure.

Anna's never been much of a girly girl, but that may be more a result of us than her.  Our toys selection tends to be more gender neutral, and although we have dolls to play with and she sometimes does, she most often gravitates towards the trains and train track.  I would say she's more all about the trains than even Sam is.  For a long time, Percy was her favorite, but now it's becoming more and more often Thomas.  Lately though, the Cinderella dress in our dress-up box has been the thing to play with du jour.  She puts on that garage sale find daily and tromps around in her "glass slippers"- red sparkly Fancy Nancy shoes that were also a garage sale find from this summer.  I figured if she's pretending to be Cinderella every day, I better at least let her watch the movie so she knows who Cinderella is... and thus, that became her first Princess movie ever.  Now she usually calls me her Fairy Godmother (when I help her get dressed) or her Step-Sister, when she demands that I pretend to rip her dress.  Daddy is typically Grand Duke.  But she's still pretending to be Baby Jesus just as often.  She loves when I hold her and pretend to rock her as Baby Jesus.  She'll instruct me to refer to her as Cinderella or Baby Jesus, as in  "Say thank you to Baby Jesus." or "Ask Cinderella if she has to go to the bathroom."

While Sam sometimes tries to be obstinate by purposely doing things we tell him not to do, Anna misbehaves more by omission.  Her challenge is more often to not do the things we ask, like to not clean up, get ready for a meal, eat instead of just playing or even answer our questions.  If she has a problem with Sam, she's more likely to shriek or cry about it than act out physically.  She can be so cooperative with him and his demands though- I can count on her to often give him things he wants even if she wants it too.  Most of the time, Anna's definitely the one that is more go-with-the-flow.

Anna is so easily adaptable and flexible in all kinds of environments.  I attribute that to her more independent nature.  She's never really been shy and hardly ever shows uncomfortableness in new situations with new people or places.  Anna's handled the major changes with Daddy gone Monday-Friday with no visible affects.  Of course, she loves him and is super happy when he's home on the weekends, but it doesn't bother her to have him not here during the week like it does Sam.  She's also more able to handle changes in her daily routine on a day to day basis, like the absence of a nap.  That being said, I'm pretty sure she's going to be dropping the nap well before her brother.  Good thing 6 months later she's still never tried to get out of her big bed, so a rest time should be doable.

What I love best right now about my almost 3 year old little girl?  Watching her "read" books and seeing how much she adores pouring over the pages.  It amazes me how quickly she picks up the words and can repeat parts of so many of the books we have read together.  I have a huge collection of picture books, so we don't reread very frequently.  I bring home books from my classroom shelves like a public library and the scholastic book clubs, oh boy- they feed my compulsion of getting my hands on new children's books to read.  I would estimate that Sam and Anna's personal library alone grows by 20 books or so a month. When I bring new books home, Anna will clamor into my lap and listen to them all one after another.  Then when I take a break to get something done, I'll walk away and she'll already be repeating phrases from the books she only heard once or twice while "rereading" them to herself.  As a result, she has a ridiculous vocabulary for a not-quite three year old.  Example:  she told Sam he was being ridiculous the other day.  (Story the word was from : A Silly Snowy Day starring a ridiculous turtle.)  I can't even pinpoint a few of her favorite books right now, because she loves them all.  Books that I can't get 5 and 6 year old to pay attention through one sitting she loves and her comprehension of them rivals the kindergartners in my class. Eric Carle's Animals, Animals book held her attention until my husband had read to page 70.  Unreal.  I can't wait to start reading simple chapter books to her and Sam, although I have been trying to hold off until they are 3. 

3 years old? Only one month to go.  Wow.

...And Then Things Got Worse

Where I left off in my last post about the crazy beginning of my week: 

Me alone sans husband for the week again.  Sam vomiting like crazy over everything the night before two house showings.  Me taking the day off work to clean like mad.  Getting locked out of our house after the showing.  More bad weather predicted for the following day.

If only I knew then the storm of misfortune that was a brewin' that I would have to weather in the days ahead...

Wednesday morning, I went to work.  The winter storm warning threw down 9 inches of snow atop the ice skating rink-like roads that day.  But still we had school although many around us did not or were delayed.  Sam and Anna went to daycare.  I got called midday about a house showing request for that evening, which isn't supposed to happen because we required overnight notice. I approved it anyway, because I hate to turn someone who might buy our house down, and I rationalized that I could pick up late from daycare and frantically clean for an hour after work.  Most of it was clean from the day before, I just had beds to make, curtains to open, vacuuming and stuff to pick up.   I forgot to add in the snow blowing of the 9 inches that had been dumped upon our driveway in my mental list.  And I forgot that the roads would be treacherous so my usual 30ish minute drive would take twice as long.  Thankfully, I was able to leave work right after the buses left, which bought me an extra half hour of time.  Without that, I would have had 15 minutes to get our house showing-ready only.

So I drove as fast as I could, which meant I had only 45 minutes to do it all.  I had my husband call a neighbor to quick snow blow our driveway and I was on track to get it all done in time.  And then our daycare called me, and informed me that Anna was now vomiting all over.  I quickly finished the last few things and headed over with a bucket, fully aware that I would have to be sitting in my car in below freezing weather, while my daughter sat in her car seat throwing up into a bucket for a hour while random strangers walked around our warm house.  Thankfully, our daycare offered to let us hang out there for the hour and I just sat on the couch holding a bowl for Anna.  Sam kept playing, and our dog had a blast playing with their dog in the backyard.  We headed home as soon as possible, and Anna laid on our couch while I quick threw dinner together for Sam.  Bedtime was only a little late. 

Anna stopped vomiting after I put her to bed, but she started the waking-up-every-half-hour-or-so routine that Sam did Monday night.  I started to feel a little queasy too, and ended up writing sub plans after midnight once I was sure that Thursday we wouldn't all be miraculously better.  Unfortunately, since I left right after the buses left Wednesday, I was less prepared for the following day at school than I usually am.  I also had a big meeting after school that had been rescheduled a bunch of times already that would need to get rescheduled again.  Thursday Anna was mostly better and acted like herself, just with some diarrhea.  But then our daycare provider called and told me that they all came down with the flu and would not be able to watch Sam and Anna on Friday.  I was still queasy and bracing myself for the vomiting on my end so I wasn't sure what to do.  I also could not be gone from school a third day if I could help it, so my husband agreed to take Friday off of work and travel home a day early.  Daddy stayed home with then healthy Sam and Anna on Friday while I took my queasy self to work and pushed through it.  I never threw up.  I'm thinking it was from sheer willpower because I simply could not afford the time to be sick.

Saturday morning we had a Open House scheduled so we cleaned once again, but this time I at least had some help.  15 parties reportedly came through.  (Here's the count so far with our house on the market in a month and a half:  13 showings.  2 Open Houses with 20 total groups through. And yet zero offers.  Nada.  Nothing.  Not even one second showing.)  Then Sunday, I'm sure you can guess what happened... Daddy caught the bug and started throwing up.  Lucky him, he got to lay in bed all afternoon while sick.

It has been an epic week.  An epic week that I really, really, really could have used a little break from this weekend to recharge and get down time before heading into another long week of solo parenting it Monday through Friday with double the standardized testing in Kindergarten and a long 12 hour work day on Thursday because of conferences.  I hope, hope, hope that will be it with the above-and-beyond challenges though, because I'm all tapped out.  And ready for a vacation someplace warm.  Like Hawaii.  Yes, Hawaii sounds very nice...