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As of 9:30 am this morning I was already out of ideas as to how to entertain Wyatt! We have had to leave the house every day this week as much for my sanity as the kids. On Monday we went to playgroup. Yesterday we met John for lunch and then went to the library to burn some energy. Today Wyatt woke up on the WRONG side of the crib and nothing went his way all morning. After playing with him, giving him a shower (pure entertainment for him), and trying to get him to take an early morning nap, I realized that nothing was going to work. So, despite the 20 degree air and 40 mile per hour winds, I decided to pack the kids up and head to Toys R Us (all the while repeating "You love your children" over and over again in my head)! We probably spent 2 hours in Toys R Us playing with the train tables, eating lunch, collecting toys, and playing on the battery operated power wheels cars and trucks on display. Apparently Wyatt wants to sell Mary Kay when he grows up because his favorite vehicle was the pink Cadillac!!! John is, of course, thrilled! Toys R Us was the perfect solution for my crabby boy! The rest of the day went much better...especially since I didn't have to clean up the mess from my kids in Toys R US! 
(Picture was from my cell phone-sorry!)
I am convinced that every mom suffers from Mommy Guilt. Do I pay enough attention to the older kid? Do I pay enough attention to the younger kid? Do they have enough one-on-one time? Do I spend enough quality time with the kids? etc. etc. etc. I have come to terms with most of the typical Mommy Guilt issues, but I have been having a hard time figuring out how to give each boy enough book-reading time every day. I know that parents are supposed to read to our kids at least 15 minutes each day and I have always met or exceeded that mark with Wyatt. The problem is that I don't feel like the twins meet the expectation that I have set for them in terms of getting enough reading time with Mom each day. I think that it hasn't really worked very well because it is hard to read to 3 people at the same time and have everyone pay attention and not dash off to do something else. Today I read to the twins alone when Wyatt was taking a nap and then read to Wyatt later by himself and it seemed to work really well. I still have to kind of trap Jonah on my lap so that he doesn't crawl off, but is very doable with just two kids at a time. Problem solved!
On the weekends it's all about Daddy around here. The boys seem to know that John is home during the day and suck up every opportunity to hang out with him. It's cute how they all run/crawl toward the door as soon as they hear the garage door open after John gets home from work during the week. It's like his own personal welcoming committee every day!
Wyatt wanted me to take a picture of him today so he climbed up on the window seat in the den and laid down. I just love how this picture turned out...one of all time favorites!!!!!! 
John and I went to a wine tasting party tonight. I got a babysitter a couple of months ago and purchased a wine to bring for the wine judging contest when we were in Michigan for Christmas. All the bases were covered. I even called our babysitter on Thursday to confirm the date and time with her and make sure that she was ready. I was really looking forward to a night alone without the kids. Little did I know that all of my careful planning would go up in smoke in the blink of an eye...or at the ring of the doorbell as the case would be. John scheduled Direct tv installation a few weeks ago and they were SUPPOSED to arrive between 12-4 today. Can you guess when the guy showed up? Yup, 4 pm on the nose! I am not going to go into details about how the Direct tv installer (who I am going to refer to as "Chew"...because of the large wad of chew that he so lovingly placed in his lip before running up to our door---sorry Mark) kept forgetting to shut the door to the basement behind himself and the kids tried to plummet to their deaths multiple times, or how he left all of his power tools on the floor with open cable switchplates to be collected by my minature handymen, or how horrible my kids behave normally at 4pm let alone with a visitor. The thing that ultimately frustrated me was that when he arrived at 4 o clock he said that the installation would take 1 1/2 hours and John seriously had to kick him out of the house at 6:30 pm with the project only half completed because our babysitter had arrived!!! So, Chew will be back on Monday night for another fun night of screaming and mayhem. The good thing was that we won the wine tasting contest with our "Simply Red" wine by St Julian! The wine was a huge hit and everyone was mad that it came from Michigan and they can't buy it in Pittsburgh. The bad thing is that there isn't any Simply Red wine left to drink for Monday night so that I can get prepared before Chew arrives!!!
Sometimes the boys have so much fun doing the simplest little things!
It's a good thing that John likes to duck hunt because we have some duck-lovers in our house! Jonah says it tastes like chicken!
Before I had children I had a lot of great ideas about how I would raise children. Now that I have children I have lost my mind! Basically 4-5 pm is the lowest point of every day...for me and for the boys! We are all hungry, tired, waiting for Daddy, and bored at the sight of each other. This week I have broken my cardinal rule of parenting....NO TELEVISION!!!!!! In my defense it is still not really tv.....but it kinda is too. Wyatt has never been interested in watching tv even if we are at someone's house and they have a kid video playing, so it has been easy to exclude tv watching for the last 2 years. But I got a new computer program for Christmas that allows me to compile all of my digital pictures into a slide show, add my own music, and burn it to a dvd that I can watch on my tv. The program is AWESOME. Just for fun the other day I made a slide show of all of the people that Wyatt knows (friends and family) and set it to some kid music (This is the Day and I'm Gonna Get You) and he is mesmerized by it! I mean we have watched the video 20 times a day for the past 3 days! Wyatt says all of the names of the people on the video too as he is watching which is really cute...Jackie, Abonai, nother Abonai, diff Abonai, Triston, Mary, Madison, Sammy, Jonah, etc. I only let him watch his movie at 4pm too which has dramatically improved the pre-dinner mood this week! I am thinking about making a new slide show each week just for the boys to keep things fresh. I guess that I still have a few great ideas about how to raise children up my sleeve after all....if only I could remember which shirt I was wearing!!!!
We fired up the gas log fireplace for the first time EVER today! It is about 2 degrees here in Pittsburgh and, though we are keeping the house temperature at 70 degrees, it feels like 65. I was a little nervous about the kids with fire, but everyone survived without getting burned and it was pleasantly warm inside the house all day today!
Abonai lets Wyatt use the vacuum too!
Abonai even lets Wyatt help prepare a fancy salad for dinner!
Grandma and Grandpa are here for a visit and Wyatt is still calling my Dad "Abonai" (pronounced a-bone-a)?!?!?!?! Not a clue what he is saying on that one!!!!
John served on jury duty today. I was hoping that he would get dismissed at 1pm and we could spend the second half of the day together, but no such luck! He got home around 4pm just in time to witness the 4 o clock meltdowns. Too bad!
Here are 10 facts about the boys that are worth mentioning:
1. Sammy has 4 words now "Uh Oh" "Mama" "Bye Bye" and "All Gone"
2. Jonah says "Mama" and can roar like a lion
3. The twins both drink whole milk now
4. Wyatt likes to call Jonah "Jo-nah-nah-nah-nah" and lately "Jonie"
5. Sammy and Wyatt know how to dance sitting down
6. I cut all of the boys hair and recently taught a friend how to cut her boy's hair
7. Wyatt LOVES to vacuum our hardwood floors by himself
8. The twins have started opening and emptying all of my cupboards
9. Wyatt sleeps in a sleep sack every night per his request
10. John and I can bathe, dry, diaper, and dress 3 boys in under 5 minutes flat
Sometimes it feels like I am running a prison for miniature criminals. Last week Wyatt spent the better part of every day escaping through the front door of the house. The exciting proof that I have that he is growing is that he is now able to reach (and turn) the deadbolt and walk out the front door. Eventually I got sick of ushering him back into the house sometime mid-week and decided to “teach him a lesson”. So I waited until he opened the door and was just about to step out and I said “Wyatt, if you want to leave so bad…here you go!” and I pushed him out the door, shut it, and locked it behind him. Then I went and hid in the dining room to watch him through another window without being seen. He nonchalantly sat on the steps and looked around while checking for me only occasionally. I fully expected him to panic and freak out when he couldn’t see me and realized that he was outside by himself! After about 10 minutes of casually relaxing on the front steps, Wyatt looked like he was having the time of his life. It was about then that one of my neighbors drove up to inform me that my son had been outside for about 10 minutes and nobody was watching him!!! Nice huh? I had to explain to her that I was watching from another window and was trying some tough love on him to curb the escape habit. Very embarrassing to say the least! So we concluded the training session by going in the house and calling John to ask him to buy a deadbolt for the top of the front door on his way home from work. John ended up buying another lock for the back door too, since it is just a matter of time…… Our other new prison motif, that I am completely infatuated with, is our new baby video monitoring system that we got from Grandma and Grandpa Rodgers for Christmas! It has quickly become an essential part of our nap and bedtime routines. We have 1 camera in Wyatt’s room and 1 camera in the twin’s bedroom. I can not imagine not having one of these monitoring systems now that we have used it in our house! In the last week alone I have used the camera monitors to: 1. watch Wyatt unzip his jammies and start to take off his diaper (good catch) 2. watch Sammy’s foot get caught in the crib rails 3. watch Sammy sit up in his crib and cry because he doesn’t know how to lay back down yet, 4. watch Wyatt throw his blankets out of his crib and then cry his eyeballs out, and 5. today watch all three of my boys NOT nap all day long. Not a single nap from a single kid!!!! (Everyone was in bed by 6:15pm tonight and asleep by 6:16pm) So, I am loving the new prison monitor and locks and have recently started looking on e-bay for some miniature handcuffs!
These are some examples of bad shots...which is why I always have to take 50 pictures to get 1 good one!
This is the dog toy box. Wyatt and Jonah played in the box for almost2 hours this morning....I guess that I have been wasting a lot of money on children's toys if they are entertained by this!!!!
Can you imagine what kind of trouble these three could cause if I let this happen on a regular basis?
I saw a tee shirt online today that I am going to order with the following saying "If you think that my hands are full, you should see my heart". Perfect huh? I must have 20 strangers per week say "You sure have your hands full" and I never have a good response. There was another shirt that said "If you think that I am cute, you should see my twin" which would be really cute for identical twins, but it wouldn't really work for my boys because people might think that I have a favorite. Yes, of course I have a favorite.....but it changes every day!
What I should have asked for Christmas from Santa was an external hard drive with lots of extra memory for my brain! This week has been extremely detrimental to my mental faculties on the memory front. On Sunday night the twins were up at 2 am to eat (yeah I know...what's up with that?) and I fed them, changed their diapers, and put them back to bed. to add that when I "woke" John up to help me hold the babies while I made the formula I wasn't quite sure that he was totally awake and understanding what was going on. So I asked him to hold Sammy and said "now what are you supposed to be doing?" and he replied "I know something with Jimmy Buffet". Needless to say I ran the show at 2am. Any-who, When I came downstairs in the morning John was making a pitcher of formula and I said "I made a pitcher of formula just before I went to bed last night why are you making more?" to which he replied "Because you left out on the counter at 2 am all night!" Nice! Fast forward to yesterday when I went on the morning excursion to the grocery store with all three kids for the explicit purpose of buying milk. I got the milk, got it home, and apparently promptly left it in the truck all night! I have destroyed one full pitcher of formula and a whole gallon of milk in 3 days! My mind is just a little fuzzy these days. I may have to start wearing a sign around my neck that says "breathe" before too long, cuz who knows?!?!?
It was over 60 degrees here today. We spent most of the day outside...is it possible for kids to get too much fresh air?!?! We went grocery shopping this morning and went to the park for an hour. Then I fed everybody lunch and put everyone down for a nap. Of course Sammy didn't sleep so he was awake for my appointment with the speech therapist coordinator, but he was all smiles! Then I fed everyone a snack and we went on a walk for about 2 hours and covered about 1/2 mile! Wyatt has to stop and talk about everything...the cracks in the sidewalk, grass, a bug, an airplane, etc. We also have to deliver everyone's newspaper to them if they are outside. Lucky for me I brought a water bottle and some snacks since it was a full blown production! Needless to say the boys were all in bed and asleep by 7 pm tonight! I am posting a picture of our new dinner seating arrangement. Doesn't it look like we are on tv and have to face the camera?
I used my new Christmas mini muffin pan today and made some pumpkin muffins. They were a big hit...especially with Wyatt. He calls them "muff-nins". It is really cute. He has become quite the talker lately. Today he told me "Ammy's crying, he's sad" and he was right. He also watched John making a bottle for Jonah (Sammy had eaten before Wyatt woke up from his nap) and said "Where's Ammy's milk?". He even knows what color bottle that we use for each baby (Sammy gets green and Jonah gets blue for both bottles and spoons). But, I think that Wyatt may have a little verbal competition from Sammy shortly! I got Sammy on video tape today saying "Uh Oh" and "Bye Bye". I will try and post it sometime later this week. Too funny! I am posting a picture of story time with Wyatt and John wanted me to post a picture of the fishing hole that he tried out today at Elk Creek where he came up empty but enjoyed some beautiful scenery.
Today was John's birthday. We opened gifts, ate cupcakes, and went out to dinner with the whole gang. It was probably not John's most relaxing birthday ever, but it was fun in a chaotic kind of way!
This is our trio after they are all cleaned up at bath time! 
(Picture was from my cell phone-sorry!)
