October has come and gone....

And we are still in Atlanta...much to the dismay of many. But we have done some wonderful things in the last 4 weeks:

1) Breyden only wears a diaper to bed and other than that, we are potty trained!

2) Cade has graduated to doing book reports at school every week and also is doing a lot more math and reading
3) We had a fantastic Halloween - Holly Hobby and Dash from the Incredibles had a successful trick-or-treat outing

4) I got to Johnson City unexpectedly to see my Grandmother and a few friends that I hadn't seen in years and also went to Clemson for the first time in 5 years

Party at 4 am!!!

There has been a recent upswing in the number of parties in my room at 4 am - and this is no throw back to my college vacations. These parties at 4 am leave me without sleep for an entirely different reason....

2 kids under the age of 5 (who weigh less than me combined) end up taking up 90% of my bed for at least 3 hours of the early morning. Here is what I woke up to this am. This might be my favorite time of the day now:

The next female super hero: Balance Beam Breyden

Breyden's most favorite thing to do is go to gymnastics. She says "I flipped" for 2 days after her class and I am CERTAIN that Wendesday is her least favorite day of the week because it is Cade's gymnastics day.

What a GREAT birthday present!!!

After watching the Olympics, I had had enough of the flipping on and off the couch. And so when a very good friend wanted to do something for them for their birthdays, I knew exactly what could be done:

GYMNASTICS LESSONS!

They both go one day a week for an hour to a great gym where the coaches are super helpful and VERY patient. Here are some shots from their first lessons....sorry they are blurry. Parents have to stay in a glass enclosure so we don't disturb the instruction. ;-)

not - hot - pot

Cade has had homework almost every night since school started. The good news for him is that it typically never takes us longer than 20 minutes to do it and generally it is stuff that we would have done at home anyway. But I am no early childhood educator and so, don't really know what is appropriate for him to be learning at 4.5. So tonight when I saw what we had to do I was REALLY excited to see the end result would be.

The following is a list of words that Cade READ tonight:

dot * hot * not * pot * got * cot * bat * cat * fat * hat * mat * pat * rat * bin * fin * tin *pin

WHOO HOO! Pretty soon, Cade will be reading the bedtime stories to me!

so at 5:45 on a Tuesday with 2 kids...do I look like I want to "dine"?

If I walk into your restaurant (I don't care if you are Wendy's or the Capital Grille) on a Tuesday afternoon at 5:45 with 2 kids, you should know I am not coming to your dining establishment for an "experience". If my 2 year old daughter has to ask every person in your assigned blue shirt that walks by "where's mine"...do you think you are getting a 20% tip?

If you actually have a printed kids menu and hand out crayons - you should know the drill.

UGH!

Ah....potty training.

WARNING - not for those with weak stomachs!

Potty training 2 kids has been easy for me until this past week. Easy because Lois trained Cade over the weekend I was in the hospital having Breyden....and easy with Breyden because she wants to do everything Cade does.

Easy until this week.

Breyden wants to "poop on pink potty" when she is home and by poop, she means peepee. She is pretty good about getting her diaper and pants off and then letting me know when she is done. Sunday afternoon she said she needed to go "poop on pink potty" and I said OK go ahead. Well about 2 minutes later she came into the living room saying "I poop on potty!!" holding what looked to be a mini-Reece's cup. I guess you can imagine my surprise and shock that "poop on pink potty" finally meant going #2...

She was so proud of herself I couldn't get mad. She just wanted to show me her "poop on pink potty".