shop and swim

The girls got to go to Nana and Papa's house today so that this mama could do a little shopping at her favorite The Rare Pair

Swimming was the activity of choice for the afternoon.








Of course they loved it when they figure out how to dump the water. That's really when the fun began!

















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here we go to the monkey show

Since Gramma was in town yesterday, the girls and I took her to Como Zoo. We actually hadn't been to the zoo yet this year (gasp!), mostly because I didn't want to go without another adult and since the weekends are so crowded in the summer, we haven't gone with Daddy yet. 

The girls were mostly excited to see the polar bears. They are still really into polar bears (we watched some YouTube videos of polar bears like 5 months ago, but they still get so excited about them). 

Top 5 reasons it's even more fun to take the girls to the zoo.

1. They can walk better. Even though we brought the two single umbrella strollers, the girls walked and hopped in and out of the strollers on their own. They don't run off in crazy directions, but instead stay near us and follow us to see the next exhibits.

2.  They can verbalize what they see. Little Bird was so hilarious because she would run or skip from place to place yelling, "hey! look what I see! it's a ____." She was definitely the one that enjoyed herself the most.

3.  I only had to worry about carrying water and a couple of snacks in my bag. We didn't have to adhere to a super strict schedule. While they got very tired, they managed to still have fun without falling over in exhaustion.

4.  They can actually see the animals when you point them out. Sometimes it's hard to see those monkeys in the exhibit, but they are much better at following the direction of our fingers and description of the animals location so they are no longer looking off in the direction of nothing.

5.  They can sit patiently (with a snack) for 20 minutes while we wait for the Sparky the sea lion show to begin. And they can actually enjoy the show, watching Sparky doing his tricks and laughing along with him.

Top reason it's not so much fun to take the girls to the zoo.

1. Constant potty breaks. While the girls drank a ton of water because of the heat, many of the potty breaks resulted in no output. This just made us have to stop for more, just in case. But the good news was we had NO ACCIDENTS.

Here are some shots from the day.

Look what I see!

Checking out the beloved polar bears

he's super duper big

Being a healthy monster (eating his carrots)

Waiting for Sparky

Look! I made a picture. I'm usually in a picture with the girls every 6 months or so.

Funny Sparky

Taking his bow.

Little Bird's second favorite attraction was the giraffe. This picture is just too funny!

super duper really fast

Sometimes the differences in the girls' personalities are magnified when we experience something new or something we don't do very often. This time the magnifier was the Rice County Fair. 

The girls and I took a day trip to see Nana and Papa and go to the fair. They didn't really get what a fair was even though I talked about seeing animals and eating food. They were sort of indifferent about going. Thankfully the weather cooperated and the heat index was only 80 instead of the recent 105.

At first both girls were sort of hesitant about getting out of their strollers and looking at the animals. Finally after some coaxing, they both got out and explored with Nana and Papa. Little Bird quickly became interested in petting whatever and running up and down the barns. Little Pie stayed close to Nana, petting only a few animals and getting nervous when big tractors made loud noises. Little Bird is completely oblivious to the loud noises or the huge machines heading her way, while Little Pie cowers a bit by whomever is closest to her and talks herself into feeling better ("it's ok. It not hurt me. It's a loud noise.)

The little petting zoo area was the biggest hit because there were so many little animals. A few little goats got out of their pens and were running around. The girls thought it was hilarious and they went around trying to figure out which one was it's mommy.

Then the mommy goat belched out a loud noise, scaring Little Pie so much she hid behind Nana's legs while Little Bird went right up to it and laughed in it's face. 

Only after I started making the same hilarious belching noises as the goat, did Little Pie come out of her little protected area. Finally she thought it was funny.

So the girls are definitely like me in that they can devour a bag of mini donuts almost instantly.

I think many people will be surprised to hear that it was Little Bird that couldn't stop stuffing her face with the delicious treat. I was surprised that she wasn't savoring them like she does with most other foods. And there's nothing like some nice cold milk to wash those donuts down!

Nana and I were thinking that since the fair wasn't that busy and since there were two of us (Papa had to leave to go play golf, surprise!), maybe the girls would like to try a ride or two? We checked out a few of the kiddie rides asking them if they were interested. Both replied no. 

But...BOTH of them were very eager to go down the giant slide. So we paid our $8 for two trips down the best ride at the fair. 

Nana and Little Bird went first. They, of course, had to go down the yellow slide. Apparently Little Bird took her time climbing the stairs, needing to look at everything around her. They came down really fast and once they were down to the bottom, Little Bird was ready to go again.

After watching how fast Little Bird came down, I was sort of surprised Little Pie still wanted to go. She was quite excited and didn't even get that nervous when we were at the top looking down. It was faster than I though (still fun!), and Little Pie made some nervous sounds on the way down, but in the end she had fun. When we got to the bottom, I asked if she had fun and she stammered, "it was super duper really fast!". 

But, she didn't want to go again.

Two

Little Bird asked for two pony tails today so I worked some magic and she looks adorable. Little Pie wanted two pony tails too so I worked some even more impressive magic and she got hers as well.

LP: "oh! Two cute pony tails!"
LB: "You have two pony tails just like me. We are the same."

Then Little Bird finished off with a little song "two cute girls have two cute pony tails. Ta da!"

Seriously, she made that up. I was dying it was so cute!


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what if they were triplets?

People often say to me, I don't know how you do it with twins. I usually reply that, like any other parent out there, I just figure it out. I mean, what am I going to do, give up?

But, sometimes when things are tough around here, I sometimes think, well it could be harder if they were triplets! 

Last night I got a little dose of what it might be like to have triplets, plus a baby! I watched BFF and Little Buddy while their mama went to a class for school. While it was certainly fine to watch four kids for a couple of hours, I started thinking, what if I had to try to get them all in bed, get them all dressed in the morning, take them in the car and go somewhere? 

Now I would be the one to say, I don't know how you do it with triplets or I don't know how you do it with four kids. And I'm sure those mamas would say, you just figure it out.

Anyway, we had a blast with BFF and Little Buddy. Everyone had so much fun. The girls thought it was a hoot that BFF was eating supper with us. The dinner conversation was hilarious!

While I put the pizza together, the girls played Elefun together, constantly yelling "this is so fun!" 

Little Buddy helped me in the kitchen.

We had pizza and fruit and carrots and the girls all told each other what was their favorite. At one point Little Bird looked at BFF and said, "I like it when you come to our house", and she replied, "yeah, I know!" There was uncontrollable giggles and lots of fun (and surprisingly, not that bad of a mess).

We all split an ice cream sandwich for dessert and then the girls resumed their play. Poor Little Buddy had to stay in his chair while I quickly cleaned up (I wasn't sure what he would get into while I was busy) but he was very good and cooperative. 

So, I thought taking two girls to the potty was a lot of work, but then add a third and the bathroom can get really crowded! Did you know the whole idea that women have to go to the bathroom together starts at age 2? At least there was only one #2 accident (Little Pie, sigh).

The girls were all so polite, all of them thanking me for making them pizza (at different and random points in the evening). It's so sweet to hear kids show their appreciation, without any prompting from parents.

After everyone's tummy was full and bladder was empty it was time to read some books. The girls got their new Disney Princess books out and handed one to each of the kids.

After everyone had a chance to skim their books, it was time for me to read. Everyone was captivated by the stories; even Little Buddy sat through a couple of them!

Soon the main level got too boring so we had to go to the downstairs playroom. But first we had to clean up. The girls did really well and were really helpful. BFF would even ask the girls "where does this go?"

Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere. Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.

Downstairs was a lot of fun except Little Buddy kept wanting to climb the stairs. Guess he's not that into making spaghetti and macaroni and cheese.

I was actually surprised when nobody had a meltdown about going back upstairs. It was time to get everyone's jammies on and to bring the energy level down a bit with some more book reading.

I think the girls were honestly surprised that BFF wasn't sleeping over. Soon enough girls! I can totally imagine those sleep overs; constant giggles, no sleep, so much fun and most likely asking immediately when they can do it again.

family reunion!

This past weekend was a family reunion for Grandpa Bob's side of the family. Many things didn't work out according to our plans, but we all had a good time nonetheless.

Our plan was to leave for Fargo on Friday morning. Rob would have returned home from working all week in IL late Thursday, so getting out of town before lake traffic hit, was our goal. Unfortunately, Rob did not return home from IL. His team couldn't get the work done that they needed to so the earliest he could have gotten out would have been Friday afternoon. It's a 6 hour drive to our house, and another 3 hours to Fargo, so it just didn't seem worth it for him to come, especially since he needed to be back in IL on Sunday night. So, he stayed in IL and the girls, Uncle Rye and I went to Fargo. But, plans changed again when the weather was so bizarre on Friday, raining and thundering and storming literally all day, so we left Saturday morning instead. It was great to have Uncle Rye  in the car with us so that he could be in charge of the DVD player, the snacks, the books, the toys, etc.

When we got to Fargo, we were starving so we went to lunch at the Country Club. Grandpa wanted to show the girls off to all of his friends. I think they made a good impression. 

Little Pie shook hands with Grandpa's friends (mimicking him) and said cute things like "she's really cute" when our waitress came by (somehow both girls ended up with a cupcake after that). Little Bird tried to be equally cute, but sometimes she tries a bit too hard and ends up being really goofy.

After lunch, the girls had to get a few holes in.

 Because it was so sweltering, they had to cool off in the pool.

It was so HOT she was so flushed!

Little Pie liked to wade.

chillin

Little Bird loved "swimming" across the pool. She would close her eyes though because she thought she was really swimming.

Then she found some goggles and I told her she could put her face in the water and open her eyes. She just did her usual crawl across the pool with her eyes shut and goggles on!

The best game of all was discovered right before we were to leave.

Little Bird had too much fun with this game, because she had the biggest tantrum when we said it was time to leave. So bad in fact, I couldn't get her dressed and ended up carrying her to the car in her underwear. Tantrums are her new favorite thing.

After we changed we went to the nursing home for a party. The girls were so excited to party. GG and some of her friends met the family in a nice little meeting room where we had food and drinks. The girls loved running around and talking to everyone there. Everyone got a kick out of how the girls call their Grandpa, Bob. I think it was Little Bird that said, "we call him Bob, but sometimes we call him Bobby."

Rob's young cousin's young girlfriend made friends with the three little ones at the party and entertained them much to their delight. I wasn't really in the mood for ring a round the rosy so I'm glad she was! The girls had a really great time and Little Pie summed it up best when she told Gramma, "I really love parties".

GG is turning 93 this year.

It was getting late, so we headed home knowing that it would be a difficult night ahead. We rushed to get the girls in bed, but it was probably 830 before we shut the lights out. They fell asleep quickly but Little Bird had a horrible night terror. It took almost 45 minutes to get her calmed down and back to sleep. Then she woke up around 2 in the morning and said she was going upstairs to play. I said no only to have her start a full blown tantrum. Poor Little Pie just laid there waiting for it all to be over. Thirty minutes later I was back in my bed only to be woken by another tantrum. We all finally fell asleep around 5 in the morning. The next day was brutal. We were so tired, yet nobody took a nap.

Gramma and Grandpa had the family over for a BBQ (which we had to have indoors because the heat index was 110!) so the girls ran around eating and entertaining the crowd.

Despite getting very little sleep the night before and practically falling over with exhaustion, the girls didn't nap. Little Pie was so tired, but if Little Bird wasn't going to sleep, then she wasn't going to either.

THANKFULLY, the girls slept the entire night. It was what everyone needed. We headed home in the morning. The girls think they are heading by to Gramma's "next day". Sometimes Little Bird says we are going to go to Gramma's "on Friday" or "next weekend". 

We were really sad that Rob couldn't be with us especially since we won't see him until Friday. It's going to be a long week without him, but we will try and stay busy. Tonight while we were reading books before bed, Little Bird asked where he was and I told her he was still in IL. She said, "he's got to be here right now."

I couldn't agree more.