Cute Baby Saturday - Still BFFs

Jack and Sophie

They may not hang out as much as they used to, but when they get together, it is like they've never been apart! :-)

Look Out World...

...here he comes!

Jason was TOTALLY rocking his ride at therapy this week! :-)

We Don't Need No Naps*

This weekend, we discovered that no paci for Shawn equals no nap. Jason figured if Shawn wasn't going to nap, then he wasn't either. The sound of laughter drew us in to their room to find this:

Jason is visiting Shawn's place

Cue the hysterics

Look! His belly is my pillow.

Take my picture, dad. Let me get rid of the competition. :)

No, take my picture.

It's my turn to get rid of the competition!

*Oh yes you do!

Mostly Wordless Wednesday - Vogue

Don't just stand there, let's get to it

Strike a pose, there's nothing to it

Vogue, vogue.

What Are You Looking At?

Vogue

Strike a pose!

"Vogue" by Madonna (1990) Hm. I just dated myself right there, didn't I? Sigh.

Everyone Needs More Spit

With the amount of drool this boy generates just from making teeth, adding this new trick into his repertoire basically floods the house. He is quite proud of himself, though, so I have to share.

I here by introduce Jack's new feature film "A Boy and His Raspberries."

You're welcome. :)



Look out ladies. Once he figures out how to use these juicy lips of his, he's going to be dangerous!

Wait a Minute!

I think someone stole my winter break. Seriously. It's gone. I want it back, thank you very much! I wasn't done with it yet! (sniff, sniff)

Sadly, my time home with the boys is over. It's back to work tomorrow for me. Boo. We did a lot this winter break; at the same time, we did a whole lot of nothing. Ahhh...just what we needed, too.

• We visited with family and friends.
• We "crafted" ourselves crazy. (We didn't even finish everything I had for us to do. I already have a list of activities for next year. lol)
• We went to doctor and therapy appointments. (6 of them in total)
• Everyone got shots. :-(
• We saw Santa.
• We opened presents and played with new toys.
• We stayed in our pjs until late in the day several times!
• We played outside and ran in fear from the ferocious squirrels in the backyard.

We had a lot of fun!

I did, however, have two main goals that I wanted to accomplish before vacation ended. True to form, I waited until the very last possible moment before we started on them.

First, I wanted to finally bite the bullet and potty train Jason. (My plan has always been to divide and conquer--get Jason to potty train and know figure hope pray that Shawn will likely follow suit shortly.) If you know me on Facebook, you saw updates like this:

Day 2 of "Justpeeonthepottyandnotinyourpantsforheaven'ssake" has been a success. 2 accidents yesterday. 1 accident this morning (didn't get to the potty in time after waking up). I anticipate an even better day tomorrow! December 30 @ 10:23 pm

Little did I know that Day 3 would be even worse. Yikes. Let me just say that I think I may be forever scarred by what I found in his pants that day. (shudder)

But, I am finally happy to say that Jason has been in undies with zero accidents for two days in a row now. We're talking 24 hours a day, all day, all night dry. Whoot! Sure, I still occasionally hear the dreaded, "It's not fair!" when I remind him to go, but he does most of it on his own. Dare I say he's finally been "trained"? We shall see. Of course tonight should be interesting as he "couldn't" go potty before bed. Sigh. I'm a bit afraid to say he is potty trained because my kids like to go out of their way to keep me on my toes. (Where did they get that from?)

My second goal for the vacation was a lot harder to get through than I imagined as evidenced by the following Facebook updates:

And for giggles, today is Day 1 of "Idon'tknowwhereyourpaciis,youmusthavelostitsogotosleepwithoutit." This should make for a fun experience. (Don't judge. Everyone has a vice or two. Ahem.) December 30 @ 10:23 pm

---

Only took him two hours to go to sleep tonight without the paci, but he did it! Here's hoping tomorrow goes just as well. December 30 @ 11:50 pm

---

S: "I want my paci, mommy."

M: "You lost it, buddy."

S: "Oh, I'm sorry, mommy...I don't know what to doooooooo, I don't know what to doooooooo!"

Cue the mommy guilt. I'm pretty hard core when it comes to doing what needs to be done, but taking away this stupid paci stuff is hurting my heart! January 1 @ 5:43 pm

---and a bit later---

This is day three...I told him he must have lost the paci and he apologizes to me about losing it. Sigh. I keep hoping the end of him asking for it is near... He's fine at night once he finally gets to sleep. Naps haven't been going well though (and man does this boy need a daily nap). @ 6:21 pm

Ugh. Getting Shawn off the paci is torture for us both! He hasn't been napping well at all, which has translated to some not so great evenings, too.

Finally now on day 4, I saw a glimmer of hope when he went to bed tonight and didn't ask for the paci even though he had asked for it a few hours before.

Dare I say it? He didn't ask for the paci tonight. (He did this afternoon but not tonight.) The farthest he would go is, "I think I forgot something..." I'd just sort of cut him off before he could get to the end of that thought.


Hallelujah! January 2 @ 9:50 pm

Fingers crossed that tomorrow he won't ask for his paci at all.

Whew.

Now that I am writing it all out, we really did do a lot. Hm. I think that means I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation!

2011 Revisited

There were so many exciting things that happened in 2011! It was truly a pretty good year for Team Lopez. :-)

I thought I'd try this meme I saw on another blog. The rules are to post the first sentence of the first blog post for every month of 2011. Here we go...

January - The Wonder of Genetics (1/1/11) "I have always had a hard time telling people who the boys look like." Everyone has said that the boys look like there father. In this post I finally saw the connection between the big boys and my side of the family after I was given a picture of my dad as a toddler. The resemblance between him and Shawn is uncanny.

February - Jason's Day (2/3/11) "On this day, three years ago, my little Jason came home from the hospital after 99 days in the NICU." In this post, the only one for February it seems, I focus on Jason's Homecoming Day. I love celebrating the days we got to bring the big boys home from the hospital. I especially love the fact that the each get to have their own special day to celebrate, as they are sort of forced to do everything else together.

March - 38 Weeks - The Home Stretch (3/26/11) "How many weeks? Guess who’s 38 weeks along? Me! Can you believe it?!?" I guess I wasn't really all that big considering I was carrying a 10 pound baby in that belly! lol. In this post, I was just a few short days away from delivering Mr. Tank. There was no way we could have known how amazing he is.

April - Cruising Along (4/1/11) "Isn't he handsome?" Why yes, yes he is! In this post, I get to share the one of the newborn pictures the photographer took at the hospital. We were getting close to being discharged (and were the next day).

May -  Easter 2011 (5/2/11) "Easter 2011 The Easter bunny dropped a few goodies off for the boys." In this post we highlight some of the fun from Easter and even get to show off our first family photo as a group of five!

June - Mostly Wordless Wednesday - Who Needs a Gardener (6/1/11) "Who needs a gardener to mow your lawn when you can have these?" All a family needs is a dump truck and a kid for their lawn mowing needs. This post was at the beginning of the 30 day challenge I started. Who'd have believed back then that I'd still be posting daily?

July - Love Fest (7/1/11) "'Nuff said. :-)" This is a picture post...and really, the title does say it all.

August - Had To... (8/1/11) "Buy it." A picture of a toy I found that I just had to buy for Jackson. It's the Lil' Jack Teether. See? I really did have to buy it!

September - Oh My Heart (9/1/11) "Oh how my boys make my heart happy!" One of my favorite pictures of our three boys together. I can't help but to smile when I see it. 

October - Cute Baby Saturday (10/1/11) There is no text for this one, just a picture of Jack showing off a few of his favorite things: his feet and his tongue!

November - Marshmallow (11/1/11) "There is nothing like the mind of a toddler." Boy isn't that line the truth. It is funny that this one makes the chart because after a particularly tough day at casa Lopez, I cheated and posted a YouTube video of the Marshmallow Experiment. I think this is one of the only posts not centering on our three guys!

December - Our Life By the Numbers - the Getting Ready for Christmas Edition (12/1/11) "24 - days until Christmas" This is one of my crazy number lists from the year. Maybe I missed my calling as a math teacher? Lol.



It has been fun looking back on our year. Perhaps I should make this "Year Revisited" post a Team Lopez tradition!

We hope you and yours have a wonderful 2012!