Man did we screw up.  Between one of the hottest summers on record and having a growing 6 month old, we’ve basically kept the kids inside for like…ummm….ever.  The past 3 weeks the weather has been fabulous.  We’ve introduced the world outside the front and back door to the kids.  Do they like it?  Holy crap they love it.  About a 1/2 hour after waking up in the morning they are banging on the front door, grabbing our hands to bring us to the front door, or trying to get us to put their shoes on (Tobie also says they say “outside” all the time, but I never am around to actually hear it).  I don’t know what it is about cement and shoes, but the moment their feet hits the pavement, they are off, running as fast as they can.  We’ve picked up a lot of nice new bruises along the way.

We’ve also started to go to the park more often.  We usually bring the choo choo wagon.  Everyone, and I mean everyone loves to make a comment on how cool it is.  It’s definitely a crowd pleaser.  It’s hard to get the other kids in the park to leave it alone. They absolutely love the swings.  It takes some coaxing, but they slowly start to explore the park the longer we are there.  There are a lot of kids there that are P & C’s size.  They seem so much more advanced than them.  I wonder if they are older or the same age.  Oh, we were on the swings today and the parents next to us were talking about premature births because her daughter was a preemie.  We asked how premature.  She said two months.  I was like, “got that beat, 4 months over here”.  Great, now I’m bragging about the babies being born extremely premature.

Paige broke her glasses for the second time in about as many weeks.  Her eyes have just been having a lot of difficulty lately.  Not having her glasses, they are that much worse.  Luckily this time we ordered the part via FedEx, so she should just be without her glasses for a few days versus a few weeks like last time.  (Tobie here:  the eyeglass place has never mentioned overnight delivery as an option before….why are we still going to this place?  I do believe Paige’s prescription has changed so if she needs new lenses, we will get new frames from a different eyeglass store.  Last time she broke her frames it took two weeks to get a replacement and her eyes were suffering as evidenced by crossing.) 

And Drew, he’s such a stud.  He’s sitting up on his own now.  He just loves it.  He loves to sit and pass the ball between us.  Cole and Paige don’t even know how to play ball.  I’m telling you this kid is something different.  He also took his first big boy bath today now that he can sit on his own.  No more mini-blue tub for him.

Other than the heat rash on his chest he’s looking good!

I have no idea why he looks so pissed in this picture. 
Makes me think twice next time I take a picture of him.

Why can’t toy manufacturers create a toy remote control that doesn’t look and
feel like a toy? Kids only love “official” remote controls.  They know if it’s a fake and doesn’t
actually turn anything on.

Paige got her first ribbon in swim class.  To be fair, I think everyone got one. 
When I told her that, she threw her ribbon.  I guess we are lucky they don’t give out trophies.

“Mom, detangler stat!”

Post detangler
Notice the scar below her bottom lip? Super.

Paige has learned a new skill.  She’ll now put things away.  If you know us, you know that we never get our mail.  Infact sometimes we’ll let our mail pile up in the mailbox that the mail delivery person will leave us a nasty note saying we have to go to the post office to start-up our mail service again.  Ooops!  Anyways, last weekend we finally picked up our mail.  There was lots of mail.  The kids love to help so we gave them all the junk mail to sort through.  Anyways, after they are done shredding everything, Paige started taking the trash and actually brought it to the trashcan to throw away.  How smart is she?  We have two trashcans downstairs.  She started throwing trash away in both cans (she knows what a trashcan is!).  Where did she learn this behavior?  She certainly didn’t learn picking up after herself from us. :)  Finally these kids are starting to pay off.  I wonder how good Cole would be with the lawnmower?

Yeah, it would be better if you just sent an email.

Cole:  Been eating really well this last week.  Started whistling. 

Paige:  Talking up a storm.  She loves to say “all done” to everything.  She has said “Da-dee” aka Daddy, “milk”, “shoes”, “pretzel (this one is really rough and sounds kind of like peh-sel) and “outside” in the last week.  She could already say dog and duck.  I know…those are really random words.  Please observe there is no Mommy in that list.  :(  She got soooo excited this morning when she saw the swim bag with towels in it, she started squealing and running through the house.  It was so cute.  What wasn’t cute was that it was Cole’s turn for swim lessons.  I talked to the swim school and we can get all three babies in the same class if we can find another adult to be with one of our babies.  If anyone is bored on a Saturday morning around 10am….call us.

Drew:  Implemented Operation Tough Love this week.  It is going surprisingly well.  I remember being AGONIZED doing Operation Tough Love with P & C…but maybe this is second baby syndrome…it does not phase me at all to let Drew cry it out.  He’s been falling asleep within 15 minutes of being put down…most of the time it’s under 5 minutes of that really tired cry.  Now if he’d just let me put him down during the day when he’s awake instead of crying the second he’s out of my arms….. Eric here: Tobie must live in some fantasy world.  I can’t believe she didn’t bring up the fact that Drew is teething. He has one super sharp dagger coming in. If he isn’t held just right and biting on something, he’s miserable.  Forget putting him down, he needs constant holding.  And let’s not bring up the drool.  Buckets full I tell you.

Other news:  both P & C are grabbing our hands and taking us for walks around the house.  Most of the time they want to be let out of the house and will guide us to the nearest exits and start pounding on the doors.  Other times it’s to the fridge or oven depending on hunger levels and time of day. 

I was very frustrated that P&C could not do simple baby skills such as blocks or ring stacking or shape sorting.  It turns out that the star lighted ring stacker was not very forgiving to a toddler learning to stack rings.  I ended up getting the basic Fisher Price ring stacker and both babies are stacking like champs now.  It’s all about the equipment.  I bought new blocks too after someone advised me our blocks that we were using were not age appropriate.  Who knew?  And shape sorting…we’re working on it.

Here is a little 07 Halloween preview. 
Paige might go as Snow White and Cole as an Islander.
Okay, Cole’s costume is still a work in progress.