We went to a birthday party today at the
local gymnastics place. It was fun. Lex was excited about it
all day, but when the time came I had to tempt him with the
idea of birthday cake to actually get him out the door. They
both had fun, in their own ways. Here is a funny picture of Eve
and our friend Ezra sharing a chair. They sat next to each
other eating pizza, but when the cake came Eve took front and
center! (really Ezra
didn’t want any cake, but you’d never know it from this
picture)

Potty training is such a funny process.
Eve does really well, most of the time. She has accidents on
occasion and I can usually understand why (we’re in the grocery
store with tons of stuff going on, for example). Yesterday she
even choose to nap in her bed with underwear on (her option
each day is that or the pack-n-play with a diaper). She had a
good nap and woke up dry! I was amazed. She’s in the bed again
with underwear napping now, so we’ll see how she does this
time.

Then other times she seems to
forget that she’s potty training. I was trying to cook dinner
the other night and she peed her pants three times! Each time I
put her on the toilet and she peed more. The second time I was
surprised and by the third time I couldn’t even fathom where
all this pee was coming from! Sometimes she gets really upset
when she has an accident and other times she doesn’t seem to
care. This morning she walked into the bathroom where I was
doing laundry and said “I pooped in underwear.” All casual
like, no big deal. Sure enough she did and it was messy (good
thing I was doing laundry!)

You gotta be
cool about it, but sometimes I find myself wondering what’s
going on in her head. Maybe she did just forget about the potty
thing, or was distracted and it snuck up on her, or whatever. I
usually end up just saying “Oh, Eve.” and she shakes her head
and says “No pee underwear” (a little self reminder) and we
clean things up. It’s a funny process.

I think of lots of fun and exciting things
to blog about during the day, but then I always forget them by
the time I get to my computer. As part of my efforts to stay
sane I’ve started turning off the computer during the day and
only turning it on when they are napping or at night. It keeps
us all a bit happier, and that’s important in these long winter
days! So I have nothing exciting to tell you tonight, but here
area few photos.

This is what we do for fun in our house. Climb up,
wiggle around, climb down. Good times! Sometimes Lex brings his
blanket up with him and waves it around. Then he tells me how
his blanket is just like the wind :) But today it was just
climbing.

Time for teeth! (his haircut looks particularly
silly in this picture)

After good naps from both kids we are
having a late, and silly, evening. Lex wanted to turn off all
the lights in the house and play with the wind-up flashlight
that Alan got him a few weeks ago, so after bath we cleaned the
living room and read stories by flashlight light. It was silly.
And Lex keeps repeating a line from Toy Story 2 (he watched a
bit this morning) and cracking himself up, which in turn cracks
the rest of us up. Alan snuck up on us in the dark while we
were reading stories and scared everyone. Eve grabbed the
flashlight and became a warrior, pointing the light and giving
a very impressive battle cry! Plain silliness all around!

I seem to have lost my quotes bar down the
side (I’ll see about finding it again someday), but here’s a
good one from this morning. “Mom, I love you when you are
making me food,” said Lex as I made him oatmeal for breakfast.
I guess I know my place in his heart. I kissed him on the head
and told him that I love him always.

We went swimming at the Splash Park today.
It was fun, eventually. I’ve been trying for almost a week to
get Lex to go, but he kept saying “no thank you. I’ll tell you
when I want to go.” So yesterday morning he announced that he
was ready go to! Unfortunately, for him, I had playdate plans
for the day and swimming was not an option. So this morning he
said it would be ok to go, so we did.

The experience started out a bit rocky. The check-in desk
was crowded and we had to wait awhile. At one point Eve started
to walk away and I asked Lex to take her hand and bring her
back over to me. Two seconds later I’m filling out a form,
she’s screaming, and Lex is dragging her, by the mitten
attached to her jacket, across the floor, flat on her back.
Meanwhile a bus with 30+ kids unloads and everyone clamors for
the pool. Then we finally get to the locker room and I get Eve
and I changed and Lex decides he does not want to swim. No way,
no how. So we went out to the pool with me and Eve in bathing
suits and Lex in his PJs (footy ones even!). He got comfortable
on a bench where he could see me and I could see him and I took
Eve over to the Splash Park pool. This place is really cool!
The Splash Park pool is 1ft deep all the way around and has a
huge playground-like structure in the middle with a twisty
slide, fountains, and lots of things to do. I dipped Eve’s feet
in to the nice warm water and she wailed!! “Go home now, just
want to play at home now!” Sigh. So we went back to the bench
with Lex and I started wondering if they offered refunds for
the day pass (I had just paid $17 for this experience!)

So we sat and watched for awhile, which is
really what I think he needed. Between the sounds of the water
fountains, the kids screaming, the bright colors and warm air,
I think he had a pretty strong case of sensory overload. Eve
too, I’m sure, but I think her main problem was that it was nap
time and I was asking her to play hard instead. So we sat and
watched. Lex kept telling me that he wanted to watch me and Eve
play in the water, and I kept saying Eve did not want to play.
After awhile he decided to put on his bathing suit and show Eve
how to play in the water :) He came up with this idea on his
own. We got him dressed and made our way back into the pool. He
LOVED it! She cried a bit, but I slowly eased her in by sitting
on the edge, then in just a bit, etc. I told her could splash
and kick and make a big mess… just what I always tell her not
to do in the bathtub :)

After awhile
they were both in and having a blast. I was happy that I didn’t
waste $17! I could go on and on with details of their silly
antics, but I think I’ll stop now. They are supposed to post
the swim lesson schedule the first week of March and are
planning to start lessons on the 16th. I hope, hope, hope I can
get something that works for us, timing wise.

Rose came to visit with Bone this weekend.
Always a good time. The kids are so funny because they get so
excited and want to play with him, but he’s still pretty nippy
so the kids mostly just run around him and throw toys and dog
biscuits at him. I think they probably exhaust the poor dog!
After a day or two he’s ready to get back to Rosy’s quiet house
:) Can’t say I blame him!!

Lex and Bone playing on the
stairs.

This picture cracks me up! They torture Bone by
getting as close to him as the can, but not close enough that
he can get them. I think they were all having fun
here.

As you’ve probably noticed, we moved the
blog to our datdec servers. The old URL
(littlelex.blogspot.com) should continue to redirect to the new
site, but do what you can to update your bookmarks and whatever
for our new URL (familyblog.datdec.com).
I had to change the template to use “Classic” style, which
means “old!” and therefore I can’t use some of the fancy
widgets that I had before. Sooo…. it will do for now but I
may keep looking into a better solution. The URL won’t change
again anyway :)

Here’s a funny image to test
the new setup.

He’s taken to eating his snacks out of big
plastic party bowls. Obviously we don’t fill them all the way
up! This is a unique picture because he so rarely smiles for
the camera these days. He was very happy and his smile makes me
smile :)

We went to a little Valentine’s Day party
playdate today. Here are two pictures that crack me up! They
are both so pretty in the first one (sorry for the quality, it
came out really dark and I adjusted it brigher) and so silly in
the second. Like it was planned or something. Silly
girls!!