Potty training

We've finally made serious progress on the potty training front. Ben has been wearing underwear during the day -- full time -- for almost two weeks now, without any accidents. And the first thing he does every morning is run to his closet to get clothes and underwear.

Maddie is a bit more reluctant. She was insisting on diapers all the time until last week when I gave her an extra incentive. I gave Ben a wrapped present -- a book about trucks that he had been wanting -- and told him it was because he had gone a whole week wearing underwear without accidents. He was thrilled, of course.

Maddie started crying and ran upstairs and came back down with a pair of underwear, insisting that I put it on her. She thought that by simply putting on underwear, she would get a present, too.

It took awhile, but eventually I got her to understand that she needed to go a week wearing underwear and then she'd get a present, too. So the next day, she was quick to get some underwear and she did a pretty good job all week. A couple accidents, but mostly dry.

So yesterday they both got a small present and they were super excited.

The hard part is nap time. We want them to be in a diaper or Pullup for nap and that kind of derails the whole underwear thing. Most days we have a bit of a battle to get them back into underwear after nap. Ugh.

Ice cream!

I stole an idea from our ECFE class to make a homemade and cheap ice cream play set for Ben & Maddie.

From 2012-03-25

The set consists of:
1) Pompoms as ice cream (from JoAnn)
2) A cleaned-up ice cream tub
3) Cheap plastic scoops (from Walmart)
4) Cheap plastic bowls (from Walmart)
5) "cones" made out of brown construction paper

From 2012-03-25

From 2012-03-25

Spring is here! (we sorta skipped winter, I guess)

It's been so awesome having the kids outside yesterday and today!

Yesterday was the moms of multiples garage sale, so I not only unloaded a ton of our old stuff, but also got a few new things.

The big purchase was two scooters. Ben & Maddie tried them out right away yesterday afternoon -- including their new bike helmets.

From 2012-03-03

From 2012-03-03

And here's Maddie wearing one of the two fire chief hats I got them (Ben is really into fire trucks)

From 2012-03-03

I also got Ben a play tractor with a trailer. The thing is pretty big and he fell in love with it instantly. This morning he nearly had a meltdown cause Maddie tried to play with it. For Maddie I got a play cash register (with money!). Yesterday she kept opening it up and then pulling out a piece of money and divvied them up between me, Ben and Jamey.

And I found this picture from awhile ago -- whenever we got that last snow. I took the kids out sledding and they wanted hot chocolate when they came in. However, they don't really want the hot chocolate they want the marshmallows. So I just gave them each a small bowl of marshmallows and then sat like this on a two-tiered step stool next to our fridge.

From 2012-03-03