The Terrible Twos Are Almost Upon Us!

In just 3 & 1/2 short months the boys will be 2, I can hardly believe it!  And I can already start to see "The Terrible Twos" approaching.  The boys are slowly becoming more independent and trying to deal with all those crazy emotions they have.  One of Owynn's favorite words is "Mine!"   This morning he took a book right out of Oliver's hands, declared it "Mine!", and then lays down to read it.  (Well look at it, they aren't quite reading yet.)  Though Oliver is by far the bigger drama queen of the two; he's always been that way.

They are good at letting us know what they want, and then letting us know how they feel if they don't get their way.  Owynn insists on having naked time while I am getting them ready for bed, and is very upset if he doesn't get to run around that way for at least a few minutes before I put his jammies on.  They like to do things for themselves now too.  They help me get them undressed, and also put their shoes on and take them off.  The boys insisted on coming into the bathroom with me the other night, and while I was in there Owynn threw a bunch of their bath toys into the tub and then tried to take off his clothes.  He wasn't too happy when I said it was already past their bedtime and would take a bath this weekend.  

The boys are pretty good at sharing for the most part.  They do tend to fight over a single toy if they both want to play with it.  Although if one of them takes a toy from the other, we tell them to give it back to their brother, they usually do what we ask but you can tell they aren't too happy about it.  The one thing they refuse to share now is food.  Although, if I hand one of the boys two of something, they will bring the second one right over to their brother.  They each have to have their own now.  Like bananas, I used to be able to feed them one banana together, now they absolutely insist on having their own.  When we give them donuts (they think it's the best food ever!) they really want one to eat by themselves.  Unless they are in their highchairs and I am in the mood to deal with that giant mess, they usually just end up sharing one.

Stick with me here as I go off on a brief tangent to share some of their cute donut eating stories.
Sometime around the beginning of the year we had an almost empty box of a dozen donuts sitting in the laundry basket, on top of some clothes, with the whole thing sitting on top of the couch.  I went to the bathroom for like 2 minutes and I came back to find this:

          

(I love Oliver's face in this photo, he's the one in the background behind Owynn.)

A couple months ago John brought home donuts for everyone, and then was feeding them to the boys.  They boys got so happy and excited about having donuts that they came running over to me and gave me giant hugs.  John was like hey where are my hugs? 

Just last week John brought home some donuts.  I got them out and showed the package to Owynn and his eyes got HUGE and he just started SHAKING all over! OMG donuts, I am soooo excited! (Is what I imagine he was thinking).    

The boys are starting to throw tantrums already.  Oliver freaked out today when I tried to put him in his car seat (both going to and from the store).  Then when we got home he didn't want to go into the house.  He laid down outside the door and threw a fit.  Owynn seeing what Oliver was doing, then laid down and started copying his brother. Ugh!  On our way up the sidewalk I asked the boys to hold hands to keep them from running all over the place (this by the way is the cutest thing EVER) and when Owynn let go to climb up the step to the front door Oliver also started crying.  It really didn't help today though that they were both past due for nap time.  I have to say though, they were very well behaved while we were shopping in the store.  *knock on wood* and I am about to jinx myself here, there haven't been any breakdowns while grocery shopping.  I did take the boys to Barnes and Noble by myself last weekend, that did not go well.  That was my fault though, by the time we made it there after our other errands, they were very tired and ready to go home, and I didn't have the stroller with me.  

Overall though, the boys really are very well behaved.  But I can see the "terrible twos" creeping up on us, and will be here before we know it.  They are growing up so fast!

Holy Baby Talk Batman!

Apparently Owynn has decided he is ready to talk, because all of a sudden he is saying new words left and right.  Before he could say:

All done
More = Mo
Mama
Dada
Drink = Dink
Cracker = cracka
Mine

In the past WEEK or so Owynn is now saying:

Grandpa = Papa
Please = Peas
Door = Do
Hot = Haw
Cold = Co
Poop = Poop poop (he sounds adorably like Poof from the Fairly Odd Parents)
Hi
Bye Bye
Night night = Nigh nigh

When asked what a kitty says he says Maaaooow
When asked what a doggy says he says Woof woof
When asked what a monkey says he shakes his finger and says tsk tsk tsk (which is what the monkeys do in one of his favorite books, Caps for Sale). 
He also now holds his finger up to his lips and says Shhhhh (which he picked up from The Monster At The End of This Book).

Owynn is also working hard at saying his letters, he can say a few.  Dr. Seuss' ABC book is the favorite of both boys, we read it several times a day.  Our board book copy is pretty beat up already, it's been chewed, bent, and had food spilled on it.  I actually bought it while I was still pregnant with them.  When they get a bit older I plan on buying it in a normal paper page book.   

Oliver isn't saying nearly as much as Owynn at the moment, but he is further along in other aspects.  Oliver has gotten really good at climbing up and down the stairs upright holding the railing.  He loves numbers, we count things like crazy now.  He also is pretty good at figuring things out, and catches on really quickly.  The other day I asked him to bring me a diaper and he found one, but it was underneath his highchair (we use the small chair top ones).  He tried to pick it up but couldn't.  He stood there for a minute looking at it, then picked up his highchair and moved it, then brought me the diaper.  He knows how to work a smart phone, and knows what the mouse, mouse pad, and keyboard are for on the computer.  On my phone I have a radio app and a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic sound bite app.  He can turn on my phone, slide the screen saver up, and navigate around to find exactly what he wants.  He knows what button turns on my in-laws TV, he also knows how to do it at home too.  Home is a bit more complex.  In the morning he will turn on the tv, the receiver for the sound system, then go and get the clicker for the cable box so either John or I can turn it on.  When we are getting ready to go out, Oliver will go up to the entertainment center and turn off both the tv and the receiver.  He is one smart cookie.

I find myself comparing the two of them probably more often than I should.  I have to remind even myself occasionally that even though they are twins, they are two totally different people.  They are fraternal twins which means that they came from two different eggs.  So they are like any other siblings, they just happened to be born at the same time (well you know, 2 minutes apart).     

Budgeting for our Tax Refund

With me currently being our only source of income and John staying home taking care of the boys it's safe to assume that we will be getting another tax refund next year.  We have learned a somewhat painful and hard lesson about what NOT to do when you suddenly have extra money.  And yes I am trying to budget already, I don't intend to make the same mistakes that we did this year.  I have been keeping a running list of ideas that I think will save us money.

We spent most of this year's refund on a couple of big ticket items that I let John talk me into (which let me tell you, was really not hard at all) and two trips.  We did renew our Sam's club membership and made a few Sam's runs that did save us quite a bit, plus we've been saving on gas all year.  We bought me a new laptop (my old one was on it's last legs) and a new camera (which I had been asking for since we found out I was pregnant).    My old camera is a basic Kodak point and shoot, which took decent enough pictures, but I knew once we had the boys I wanted something that would take both awesome pictures and videos.  I need HD memories here!  As far as the trips went, we spent a night up in Omaha at a fancy hotel for our anniversary and we took an amazing 3 week road trip to visit my family in NY.  So I can't really regret spending money on what we did, I just wish we had budgeted better and not blown a lot of it on stuff we didn't need (like getting take out way too often).

I am determined now to make next year's refund work for us.  Here are some of my ideas:

1-Immediately take what it will cost to register both of our cars next year and stick it into savings for this purpose ONLY.  We are terrible at trying to save to do this.  You think by now we would have learned. 

2-Our car insurance renews again for another 6 months in February.  Our insurance company gives us a nice discount for paying it in full.  I plan on doing this, that way we save money and we won't have to worry about paying car insurance again until August!

3- Renew Sam's membership and do a lot of shopping there.  This year we bought a GIANT box of trash bags and we still are using them.  We also purchased a big box of dishwasher detergent, we are currently only on our second box of the year.  We purchase our most often used spices there too.  I also want to buy some baking supplies.  Lately I've been searching online for homemade versions of some of our favorite recipes and I find myself going through a lot more flour and sugar.  I found an awesome recipe for homemade pizza dough (Here) which has been saving us quite a bit (yay me!)

4-I AM buying a fast reading digital thermometer for the boys.  It is such a pain to try and take their temperature under their arms with our current one, it seems to take forever.  And they just get mad and squirmy, it's always a fight.

5-Put a chunk into savings after paying all our bills.  We want to have some extra emergency cash on hand so we don't end up in such a financial bind again next year.

I'm also thinking that John and I need to treat ourselves a little bit.  I don't think it will break our budget to have a nice date night out, and we seriously need it for sanity's sake. So here are a few wants.

6- Date Night! I think this is self-explanatory here.

7-A membership to our local zoo.  Well the one in Omaha.  It's consistently ranked as one of the top zoos in the country, they let you bring in your own food and even have a picnic area with a playground, and it's only about an hour away.  If we do it right we'd only be paying for gas each time we went; I like affordable fun family outings!

8-I want toddler sized chairs for the boys.  They love to sit with us in the living room, but they are always trying to climb all over the couch.  I'm hoping with special chairs of their own that maybe they will be less inclined to climb onto the couch.  The problem with the couch is we keep stuff that we use frequently but that they shouldn't play with on the window sill behind the couch and they are always trying to climb up to reach it (and they don't usually have the patience to sit quietly on our laps).  Owynn has also fallen off the couch more times than I can count.  The boy has no fear, and as much as we try, we can't catch him every time.  I've taken to calling Owynn my little monkey because he loves to climb over and onto everything. 

9-I want to at least be able to take one nice weekend trip to Kansas City.  My husband loves going there, and I know it would mean a lot to him.  We try and go every year over Labor Day, but the past few years between my pregnancy and then our financial problems, we just haven't been able to make it.  But this is a definite want and at the bottom of our monetary to do list.

10- For myself I want to go to a nice salon and get my hair done.  The last time I had it cut was over a year ago, not long after the boys were born. You know though that Mommy usually puts everyone else ahead of her, so we'll see.  But this is my one special want purely for me =) 

While I Wasn't Here

I'd like to say it's been a busy few weeks, but really it hasn't been.  About 2 weeks ago we all caught the stomach flu, it was horrible!  Between Wednesday night and Friday morning all 4 of us came down with it, ugh!  Thankfully John and I had it opposite of each other, so between us we managed to take care of each other and the boys pretty well.  The boys bounced back very quickly except for their poor little tummies.  They were on a bland food and pedialyte diet until about the end of last week. 

On Saturday John's mom took us shoe shopping for the boys.  The boys were in serious need of some new shoes, and it was super nice of her to treat them.  The boys are in love with their new shoes, they spent all day Sunday stomping around in them.  I finally put them away after they went to bed, I am worried they will wear out the little lights before they start wearing them.  John's mom got them a cute pair that fit them right now, and got cute little Cars shoes that they can grow into.  

 

We also went to McDonald's for lunch.  They were putting Paul Frank toys in the happy meals.  The boys both got a bendy Monkey, it's now Owynn's new favorite toy.  

I am thinking we may be having a monkey themed Christmas for him (sorry Mum!).  For Oliver I think it will be Muppets and Toy Story.  Oliver has some Toy Story jammies and he loves them, in fact he picked some out to wear to bed tonight.  I would also love to get some toddler friendly musical instruments for them.  Owynn loves to drum on everything he can.  Oliver has a tiny 5 key keyboard on one of his toys that he loves to play with.  I'd like to get him a more normal sized one.   

Thankfully everyone is feeling better at the moment.  I am really hoping we all stay healthy until at least the New Year, I am almost out of sick days.  Here's to hoping things keep getting better, slowly but surely.