Happy 2010!

It’s January 2010 and we are getting back in the swing of things after Winter Break.  Christmas was fabulous and we’ve have a toy explosion.  The boys received the copious Rescue Heroes toys that we’ve been storing for two years.  I had to remove three bags of toys from their room just to fit it all.  Raegan got an Easy Bake oven and a Cupcake maker.  She loves her sweets!

2010 is bringing some big changes to our household and the kids seem to be adjusting fine.  I’m just really surprised at how easily they adapt to new circumstances.  I have the best children.  They continuously amaze me.  We received Raegan’s report card, and she is as smart as we always thought, but she seems to have developed an aptitude for math.  MATH!  And she likes it too!  Her mommy and daddy are good at math, and I’m just happy to see that get passed on.  The boys are speaking better each day.  We are getting full and complex sentences from them.  They have developed the habit of dropping the leading “s” from words ( “s”mell, “s”top, etc).  Other than that, they are fabulous.  They are also “all boy”.  I love that about them, but it sure it tiring.

Santa 2009!

Last Saturday was our twins club annual Cookies and Milk with Santa event.  We have a Santa come and bring our children presents.  It allows us to have photos with Santa without waiting at the mall.  Below are pics from the event (Gavin in red sweater):

Below is a picture that my mom took with her phone after she picked the boys up from preschool last Thursday (Gavin looking into the camera):

That’s my girl!

Raegan has been sleeping with me lately.  Around 3am this morning, she rolls over to where her mouth is near my ear.  When she finally completes the roll and gets comfy, I hear her say, “Gravy.”

My girl is dreaming about gravy.

Update, Anyone?

So yes, life is crazy-hectic.  Big changes in the Kirby household of which I will not go into detail here.  However, I will talk about the kids.

Raegan – her behavior issues at the beginning of the school year have subsided and is rarely, if ever, “pulling a card” at school.  At home, she’s the same 13 year old girl trapped in a 5 year old’s body.  I am just amazed at how quickly she has picked up reading and is progressing quite well.  She now has a best friend at school of which she goes to AWANAS and Sunday School.  They are quite goofy together.

Liam and Gavin – WOW these boys!  They are eating me out of house and home.  At 3.5 years old, they weigh 42(ish) pounds, wear a size 12 shoe and are about to gain Raegan’s height.  It’s just scary how much they grow.  And their speech is right on track now.  Sentences, phrases, new words – the works!  They do so well in preschool and they love it so much.  Yesterday they had a field trip to a children’s play.  My mom went with them.  She said it was more fun watching them laugh then the play.  Liam was laughing so hard he was snorting!  I wish I could have seen that.  When I asked them about the field trip, their faces lit up.  They are such happy boys.

My children bring me such joy.

Catching Up

Let’s see…

All three kids and I were diagnosed with impetigo last week.  We are being treated with antibiotics and an ointment for the sores.  Liam’s sores were on his back and bottom, Gavin’s were on his face (around his nose, mouth and left eye), Raegan had one spot (thankfully) on her back and I had two spots on her back.  We all obtained this little bacterial infection while all of us were fighting a nasty head cold.  Gotta love it!

Yesterday was our first ever (of many) Parent – Teacher Conferences.  It went pretty much as I expected:  teacher tells us that Raegan meets or exceeds goals and that Raegan has a talking problem.  Surprise! Surprise!  LOL!

This last weekend was quite full for the kiddos! Daddy took them to the pumpkin patch Saturday morning:

Gavin and Raegan on the haystack:

Saturday evening, my mom and I took the kids to my Twin’s Club Halloween Party.

And then on Sunday, Daddy took them with Papa and Nanny to their church’s Trunk or Treat.  The kids won Best Group Costume!  They won best costume last year at Trunk or Treat.  Way to go!  Raegan came up with the theme this year and my mom is responsible for finding (and purchasing) the awesome Captain Hook costume (Gavin) and Peter Pan costume (Liam).  Good job Mom!

Upheaval

There have been some major life changes going on in our household.  I continue to seek joy in my children, but find it hard to write here.  I’m not giving up my blog, just explaining the lack of posting.  Raegan, Liam and Gavin are doing well and thriving.  I’m sure I’ll be posting again soon as we have Halloween and the rest of the fall and winter holidays coming up.

Raegan got her hair cut!

Last Saturday, Raegan agreed to her first professional haircut.  A year ago, she allowed my mom to cut a couple of inches off, but this was closer to 6 inches.

Here she is before the cut:

If her hair was straight, she would be sitting on it.

So the first thing my hairdresser did was straighten her hair:

I wish I had taken a picture of her hair straight.  I’ve never seen her that way.  But I was getting a bit emotional.  My heart was racing.  Crazy?  Yes.

Here is what her hair looked like later, after the cut but still straightened:

A lot shorter. (sorry for the quality, I took this with my cell)

This is a picture the next day at the zoo, so this is her hair when the wave/curl was back (we’d been at the zoo for hours, so I probably could’ve ran a brush through her hair before I took the picture):

Big Boys

My mom weighed the boys yesterday. Twice.  Liam in at 39.5 pounds and Gavin at 42 pounds.  I’m hoping their growth slows a little.

Boys and Bugs

Now, I’m not going to say this is only a boy thing, but my boys are obsessed with bugs.  Raegan thinks bugs are cool, in theory only.  It started with the occasional slug slowly crawling its way into our home.  We’d let the boys play with them until the slugs died.  They moved up to daddy-long-legs.  Gavin will not hesitate to capture a bug.  As soon as he sees one and we let him know that it’s not a “mean” bug, he’ll stick his hand out and grab it.  We’ve had many daddy long legs captured and either killed in action or gone AWOL.  Recently, a friend of mine brought them caterpillars.  A total of 5.  Three are currently in cocoon state in the jar they came in.  I brought them home and let each child play with one.  Gavin let his crawl over him, Liam would touch his and Raegan would just watch it in the bowl.  They even brought the poor caterpillars to Raegan’s doll house and put them in the baby cribs.  This is how Gavin lost his first caterpillar.  It crawled away and by the time he alerted me to the disappearance, the catepillar was nowhere to be seen.  So I let him have another, which he promptly lost in his room.  So I said they were done with them and put the remaining three back in their jar.  The next morning, all three of them had cocoons.  Later that day, my mom called and said she found the one lost in the boys’ room.  It was crawling up the curtain.  Gavin played with that thing all day.  We left that one in a bowl over night and it made a cocoon.  However, Gavin started poking at it and it came out of the cocoon and kept trying to get back, but Gavin wouldn’t let it.  He just had so much fun with this thing.  It eventually died.  Or at least it seemed like it and I finally threw it away.

So now we are back to slugs, snails and daddy-long-legs.

The Boys’ Preschool

Gavin and Liam’s  first day of preschool was yesterday.  They will be attending two days a week for 2.5 hours.  We have all eagerly been waiting to see how they would like preschool.  My mom said that when she dropped them off, they went straight to their hooks and put their back packs up.  The teacher had tables of Play-doh for the kids and a one of the kids they “knew” (younger brother of a boy that was in Raegan’s class) was already playing.  No crying.  When my mom picked them up, they told her they had, “Lot’s fun!”  As when Raegan started preschool, the instructor sent  home a bag with tissues, a few Hershey Kisses and a poem about kids starting school and mommies being sad.  I was the exact opposite of sad.  I’m so happy about them attending preschool.  Excited to see them come out of their shells more (they jumped leaps and bounds over the summer).  Not so excited about paying tuition for two though!

Tomorrow is their second day.  I hope it goes as well as yesterday.