They have enjoyed attending classes at The Little Gym, and had their end of semester awards ceremony in January. They got to show off their skills, and received medals - the boys were pretty proud of them! We are attending a "sports skills" class there now.
Practicing their newly acquired gymnastics skills at home has also been a favorite activity... the little indoor tramp they got for Christmas has been handy! I sold our train table (sniff, sniff) to make room for it... but it was the right decision! They bounce on it repeatedly during the day, and sometimes they gather all of our household pillows and make a "crash pad" to land on.
We've also had some fun with "indoor snow" this winter, seeing as the real stuff has been pretty minimal. We have some "instant snow" that you mix with water and it makes realistic looking snow to play with, but their favorite is plain old shaving cream. Dish drainer tubs are the BEST little size and cheap sensory bins... we have a few now!
Eli and Owen just LOVE their "babies" lately. We do have actual dolls around here, but they prefer to play family with "Racooney" and "Foxey" etc. At various times they are either pregnant, or nursing, or rocking, or playing with, or even disciplining their little animal family. It cracks me up to listen to all the scenarios they come up with. Here they are having some family snuggle time in our "big chair."
And the little engineers love to build (and destroy) things... here is their skyscraper city! A few minutes later a tornado leveled it to the ground...
My kitchen table is the new train/car table. It functions as a race track, airport runway, parking lot, and party destination. Good thing the finish is already scratched up, so I don't have to stress too much about them playing on it. Really, the tabletop has seen better days! But it doesn't get any more fun than this!
The boys have really been playing so well together these days, aside from the minor spats and disagreements about WHAT they are going to play. After one busy day, Owen curled up in my "nursing rocker" that we just got out of storage, and rocked himself to sleep.
Eli is a little obsessed with standing on his head. He does it ALL the time now. He's got quite the strong neck, and I have seen him just about make a complete headstand without the wall support lately... it's only a matter of time until he discovers break dancing =).
We had some lovely weather the other day, so I sent the kids OUTSIDE with their shaving cream and water bins, and they had a glorious time making a huge mess of the porch. I was really glad it was outside this time =). It took quite a few buckets of water to wash off the porch (since our hoses are disconnected for the winter!).
And since we were outside I couldn't resist testing my new camera out on our backyard friends... I keep the feeder filled all Winter and we have at least EIGHT mated pairs of cardinals (plus a bunch of other birds) that live in the back trees and feed there. It is awesome when you see 4-6 bright red males all together in the same area, fighting over seed. I love them. They brighten the winter days for me.
My three handsome men... when Brad is working the night shift at the ER, I manage to get the kids to bed without too much fuss. Owen likes to come out of the room a few times before finally giving in to sleep, but I've been letting them listen to stories on CD as they fall asleep,which seems to help. They know there is just NO WAY their big preggo mama is going to sit/lay down by them anymore. When Dad is home though, they have him wrapped around their little fingers... which I don't think he minds. They get a few minutes of snuggle time with Dad before they fall asleep.... awwww!
