It's that time of year...

Well it's that time of year again... time for colds, runny noses, dr visits
WAIT
That's NOT WHAT I MEANT TO WRITE ABOUT!
I really meant to write about the HOLIDAYS! Oddly, I got sidetracked with my own issues, but let's not get stuck, shall we?

The Holidays mean Holiday shopping. I'm determined to get through things early this year and this is where I'm going to start:

Cool Mom Picks has an amazing team of Moms who find the greatest "stuff". Most of it is for kids, but they also find some great things for Moms. It's great.
One of the most important parts of their site is that they spend most of their time combing sites for things that other moms make. So not only are you buying one or few of a kind items, but you're supporting other moms (and sons/daughters) in their creative endeavors.
until next time...
happy shopping!

those nasty nightmares

As noted yesterday, baby bear is starting to fall asleep again pretty nicely. We're still in the 9:30pm range for falling asleep, but that's a nice start.
Now we're having some more serious problems.
Yesterday, baby bear came running down the hall to our bedroom because he's had a nightmare. He told us, at dinner, what the nightmare was...
"A man was chasing him, shooting at him... but he missed. Even though I (baby bear) was running slow, he still missed."
then it got sad
"Daddy was there, I wanted him to carry me, but he just ran the other way."
Talk about a heartbreaker. What on earth do you say to that?? Well, we did the standard - "Daddy would never run away if you were in trouble" but still - it's hard to make even an adult feel better when they've been "wronged" somehow in a dream, let alone kiddos.
Last night was another nightmare. In the middle of the night baby bear woke up crying and when SM (it was his night :o) went to check on him, it turned out he'd had a nightmare about a dog with really big sharp teeth chasing him. Baby bear kept calling back for SM to check this door and that door and the other door... making sure everything was closed up.
How do you make nightmares go away?
I still haven't figured it out, so I can't even begin to try to explain them away for a 4-year old.
*sigh*
until next time...
sweet dreams
PLEASE

a little good old-fashined bribery

You may recall my somewhat-stressed post about how the kids just aren't sleeping in a pattern that we can live with...

Well, we tried all sorts of tricks to try to get baby bear to fall asleep before 10:30 and none of them were working.

SM and I were literally losing our minds until he came up with a good idea, that led him to a GREAT idea. BRIBES!

He and baby bear sat down and made another "sticker chart". It's a pyramid type chart that started with only having to put up 1 single little sticker to get his first "prize". That night, he fell asleep by 9:30pm. Not early, by any means, but BOY what a start.

After that, 2 stickers to the next prize. By that 3rd night (en route to prize #2) baby bear was asleep by 8:30pm again. WOOOO HOOOO!!!
Granted, he has also been a little sick, so he's been tired enough to be able to fall asleep earlier, but who cares! We'll take what we can get. We've now had SEVERAL nights in a row with no baby bear contact after 9:30 (and usually earlier) and that feels amazingly good.

I'm not sure how long we'll be able to keep up the bribery. It's not a very good way to function, but at the moment it's the ONLY way to function. We have lots of cars to buy. This weekend we supplemented the prize supply with comic books, so at least we're also supporting his reading habit. Maybe a trip to an actual bookstore is a good idea to...

until next time...
enjoy some evening peace and quiet (or at least something tivo'd)
:o)

We heart our photographer

Through my amazing "Mamma" network I found the most wonderful photographer.
Her name is Barbie Hull and she's super sweet, fun and, most importantly, SUPER TALENTED!
She's done some photographs for the Pilates Studio I go to, and I just loved the shoot she did with the Moms and babies, so back in July (?) we had her come take some family photos with SM's family and mine all together. They were terrific, so we thought she'd be the perfect choice for the Christmas Card this year.
Now, I can't give away the card because THAT would be no fun. In the meantime, Barbie is featuring our family outing to the Pumpkin Patch on her blog.
I don't know how she did it, but boy did she make us look good.

my favs:



until next time...
we heart our photographer, and you can too!

Cool new gift...

A new toy store opened in our neighborhood and we visited last night to buy some prezzies for the birthday parties we have this weekend. While there, we found the neatest toy.
http://www.makemyownmonster.com/
Turns out, you go to fao schwartz and you can pay a ridiculous amount of money for a kit so that your own child can design one of these monsters. Funny enough, I found a blog entry that so far 4 of the 8 available have been designed by one kid. That's alotta money to have your kid design stuffed animals...
Anyway - it's such a cute idea and I didn't find it on cool mom picks, which is where I normally find the coolest gift ideas, so I thought I'd share.
If you were wondering, we got
"Supper Hero"

“Supper Hero is not afraid to try anything new to eat, and always tries 8 bites. He licks his plate clean! His cape is a napkin. Even monsters have manners.”
And considering baby bear's issues falling asleep lately, I think "Claws" is next!
"Claws comes out when I go to bed at night. His long fingers can reach up to turn on the lightswitch and his special eye can see in the dark so I can find the way to Mommy and Daddy’s room."
until next time... (which is hopefully sooner than the last time I posted)
have fun shopping!

They're after us!

The kiddos are after us. Somehow Baby Bear and the Empress have decided to completely refuse to sleep in a way that's human.
About two weeks ago, Baby Bear decided he was going to be afraid of just about everything. He's been staying awake and calling out to one or the other of us until about 10pm.
The Empress, on the other hand, has decided to start waking us up at 5am, 5:30am, 6am etc. until we're just so bleary eyed we might as well be up.
This is a problem.
This means I don't get to chat with SM at all. Ever.
It also means we don't get any "brain-dead" time in the evenings either.
*sigh*
please phase, be over, at least ONE of you
until next time...
sleep tight

The classic debate.. the country or the ocean?

The family went to the Pumpkin Patch this weekend, to beautiful and wonderful Jubilee Farms in Carnation, WA. What a gorgeous day for a trip to the country. All the leaves are changing - for a second I even felt like I was back in the Midwest! - there were tractors, horses, turkeys, piglets and of course, pumpkins and squash as far as the eye could see.

The Little Mans' best part of the day? See the animals and picking out pumpkins. The worst part of his day? When he WASN'T doing those things.
classic...
The Empress was animal crazy. The fake piggie snorts are enough to keep you smiling all day. I didn't think we were going to get her away from the horses, luckily the "Say Bye Bye Horsey" trick still works on a toddler.

I was asking the Little Man, while we were driving home, which he would rather do: live in the country and grow pumpkins? or live by the ocean and surf?
answer: BOTH!
Weird.
Guess that explains why we live in the city. His Mom & Dad can't decide where to live either - so we just live in the middle of all of it and enjoy it as much as we can. The sad reality of that is, we hardly ever make the time to "get away" to the country, or the ocean, or - for that matter - the mountains. We live in an area that is absolutely filled with things to go see, but we always seem to be looking at them from the distance, on our way to whatever event happens to be going on right then. I thought about it again last night while we were watching the (sad sad) Seahawks game on our big ol' HDTV. How Seattle did shine last night! (the city, not the team)...
They had shots sweeping down from the islands, coming in from Bainbridge, flying over the Space Needle, watching the ferries, and of course, the beautiful Football and Baseball Stadiums all lit up in Sodo.
I sure love this town, and lucky for us, we'll always have a great view of what it, and the surrounding areas have to offer.
We'll just have to try to make more time to appreciate it when we can.
until next time...
lovin' it here.... even in the rain