Here I am!

Well, it's certainly been a while since I've posted on here. Needless to say, a lot has happened. So let's start with the kids catching up with Santa at the Yacht Club back at the beginning of December...


Megan's advice to Matthew for the holidays..."Matt, just be a good boy until Christmas and then you can be bad again!" (Yeah - we're raising some smart kids up here!)

Megan's school has also had their Christmas pageant recently. Megan was involved in the majority of the songs and here are some pictures from that day:

Megan is the 2nd one in on the left. All that I could see were her eyes moving around behind the holes in the paper. Can you guess what song was being sung?

3rd on in on the left - We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Angel - 3rd from the left again - during the nativity scene

So, there you go. The remaining updates on the family are that potty training has gone so much better than I could have hoped. And Matt must have grown a little because he can now stand on tip-toe to use the toilet. Megan is looking forward to having a new baby in the family. Poor kid has to wait almost 6 more months but she asks about it every day.

As for me? I'm feeling much better now that I'm out of the 1st trimester. Feeling a little movement here and there but nothing significant. Between the holidays, running around with the kids and other family things, it really has been an exhausting time of year. I'm looking forward to the 4 day weekend followed up by another 4 day weekend when I get to head back home to PA to catch up with the family.

Really, really exhausting!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Friday, November 10th was Bill's 42nd birthday. And as always, I waited until the last minute to purchase a gift for him. Well, let me rephrase that. I had a gift in mind, which I told him about and he promptly shot down. (I guess a leaf sweeper wasn't high on his list of great ideas.) So instead he got a new pair of jeans and a shirt from Gap. Original huh?!

Along with that fantastic present, the kids and I decided to take him out to dinner. Of course it had to be child friendly so we naively headed out to The Rainforest Cafe at 6pm on Friday. To which we were told upon our arrival that the wait was an hour and a half. AN HOUR AND A HALF! Who the hell waits that long to eat at The Rainforest Cafe? Sure the ambiance is fun. Where else can you eat with gorillas all around and a thunder storm every 30 minutes? But to wait that long? Never - not me - sorry kids, you'll get over it. Life is all about disappointments and you might as well get used to it now. (Anybody putting me up for the best mom ever award?)

What was I talking about? Oh right, Daddy's fantastic birthday evening out. So from there we decided to hit the candy store and of course, who can leave the mall without spending far too much money on another unnecessary Build-A-Bear? Evidently, not us as we came home with 2 more animals bringing our total count to 7. (We did manage to forgo outfits for them though, seeing that we are so close to Christmas and "you never know what Santa might bring".)

And for dinner? Drum roll please............................CHILI'S!

(Oh how life changes after kids come along. And let me add - by the time we finished at the mall, got back into the car, checked the wait time at another restaurant and then ended up at Chili's further down the road, we could have already been seated and eating at The Rainforest Cafe! Damn I make good decisions!)

But thanks to Aunt Alicia and Jackie, Bill ended up with one kick-ass tacky cake. LOVED IT!!

Potty antics

So the latest and greatest news from the Baker household is that we are starting round #2 with potty training. And oh what a difference this time around!

First let me start off by telling you that with Megan, we got the brilliant idea to potty train her only one month after we brought her baby brother home from the hospital. (Maybe not a good idea in hind sight due to that whole regression thing we were warned about.) She had just turned 2 and we could tell she was ready. Lucky for me, she was still going to day-care while I was home with Matthew. And we had the absolute BEST day care provider EVER!! Whatever new things I started at home, the sitter would continue throughout the day so we didn't miss a beat. Within one week she was good to go (minus night time and the occassional "oops" of course). Well, good to go meaning she had no qualms with peeing in the toilet. Pooping? Well that was an entirely different issue all together. After 3 weeks of her holding it in during the week and then becoming sick on the weekends from the "back up", we finally wised up and put her back into her pull-up when she told us she had to take a dump. She would go hide in a corner, do her business and then we'd clean her up and put her back into her big girl panties. Five months later, she finally figured it all out and life became a little easier. (And cheaper - damn you expensive Pull-Ups!) Yes, I thought potty training with Megan was an ordeal back then. Boy was I wrong!

Enter Matthew! Verbally, he's been much slower than Megan, so I haven't bothered to push him into this. He's had the potty sitting in the bathroom along with the convertible seats for all 3 of the toilets in our house should he decide to forgo the little potty. He picks and chooses when he wants to use the potty and will do either #1 or #2 without much of an issue. But recently he's decided to make things a little more interesting for us.

A few weeks ago I noticed that he was being very quiet. Which as many parents know, is not a good sign. So I went looking for him. I found him in his bathroom, naked from the waist down. There was poop on the floor around the toilet (imagine him sitting down after removing the soiled diaper and scooching on the floor similar to the way dogs scratch their butts) all over the toilet lid, the roll of toilet paper was pulled out and the loose end was hidden somewhere in the toilet.

I quickly made him lay down on the floor (to avoid getting poop anywhere else) and opened the toilet lid. Inside I saw that not only had he dumped the contents of his diaper in there (good job buddy!) but as he tried to wipe himself, he evidently would pull the toilet paper, wipe, pull some more, wipe, pull some more, wipe.......you get the idea. All the while, never tearing off the toilet paper. The toilet was so full I had to fish some of the paper out just so I could flush it for fear that it would over flow!

I then moved on to cleaning up the culprit. There's been enough mention of poop in this entry so I will spare you any further disgusting thoughts by simply ending with this new found knowledge of mine. It's not as easy as one might think to remove feces from underneath a toddlers fingernails.

After a few more incidences of the above, I think he's finally grown tired of this. Now he has decided to attempt peeing while standing up. Well, my little Matt is not the tallest of children, so from the beginning I've taught him to simply "sit and tuck it in" to avoid sprayage. But I guess he has decided he wants to be like Dad and has realized that it's a bit girlie to be doing that technique and has instead been asking to stand up. But he needs about 1/2" - 1" extra inch to have good clearance due to his height. So we improvise...he stands on top of my feet and does his business. (Quite well I might add - this kid has good aim! His future wife will be happy!) This has worked well except, did I mention how independent he is?

Two nights ago, as I'm getting the kids ready for the bath, I walk into my bathroom and Matt is perched on the edge of the toilet, facing backwards, hands on the rim (good reason to keep my toilets sanitized!), with both legs straddling the edge. If you need a better visual, picture a gymnast, suspended in the middle of a jump over the horse. He's creative, that one!

(He got a 10 for form but only a 9.5 for function due to his inability to suspend the pose without wobbling.)

(Oh, and although I'd love to post one, I thought a picture of the above might be better left to your imaginations.)

I'm trying...really I am!

UGH! Now I know why I've stayed away from blogging and have simply sat back enjoying everyone else's handi-work. I'm just so darned lost on here that it will definitely take some time to get up to speed on the fancier things I could be adding. People, I can't even figure out how to link on here!!

Maybe I shouldn't have just admitted that, but oh well. Too late! In the mean time, I do know how to add pictures, so enjoy those pics of the kids to hold you over until I can navigate my way through here with ease!

(Roger William's Zoo in Providence, RI)

(Mystic Aquarium, Mystic, CT)

(Easter 2006)

(First day of pre-k 2006)

Halloween 2006

I sent out a blast email on this one last week, so I thought that I'd start out with this in order to show off the kids' costumes.

The kids had a blast on Halloween and we couldn’t have asked for better weather. There were a ton of kids out in the neighborhood and everyone was having a great time. Megan, Matthew and I probably only hit about 15 houses but with the little guy walking and refusing to be carried or to allow anyone to help with his candy bag, the going was slow at best. By the time we were ½ down the block on the return trip Matt was already saying he was “tired and wanted some ice-tea”. We were back at the house by 7pm and the kids were more than content to hand out candy to the rest of the kids for the next hour. I, on the other hand, was happier that we didn’t end up with an uncontrollable amount of loot in those bags. I mean I just got rid of some Easter candy that was still floating around the house!!

So here are 3 pics from their big night out hitting the streets! And just to set the record straight, Megan was a ladybug and Matt was a monkey (notice the banana hanging out of his pocket). I can’t tell you how many times Matt was called a bear or how often Megan corrected someone about not being a butterfly. I thought they were pretty obvious costumes…maybe not?