Radio Show

Mark your calendars! I'll be on the Virginia Insight radio program on Valentine's Day from 3-4pm talking about love and relationships!

http://www.wmra.org/post/love-connections-thu-3pm

Auntie Bird is on TV!

As you may or may not know, my sister is on TV twice a week in Roanoke, VA. She is on one news program at 8am every Wednesday morning where she brings a dish from her restaurant for the news anchors and then she's on another program every Thursday at noon-ish where she cooks a meal from start to finish. Well, she recently got on a local show called, "The Hour of Joy."

Check it out at 34 minutes...

Just a tease...

... from our weekend so far.

Random Paxton

It's 4:30am

And I'm downstairs with an ornery baby while everyone else is sleeping snug in heir beds. Why am I already awake? Because Paxton hates me. Naturally.

I'm not sure why he does this, but every once in a while, he'll wake up long before the crack of dawn. And nothing can get him to go back to sleep. (Okay, that's not completely true. I'll write a post soon about Paxton's morning shenanigans.)

It wouldn't be so bad if the rest of his day wasn't totally fucked up because of this early morning bad life decision. On days like these he'll usually take a very early first nap of the day (like around 530 or 6) and then he'll wake up an hour or two later only to struggle to stay awake for his 1pm nap. This means tat he'll probably go down for another nap around 11 and fuck the whole schedule up. He won't sleep when the twins sleep (which is vital to our sanity) and then he afternoon will be hellish.

So get ready, Paxton. Today is going to suck.

*And sorry about any typos; it's 4:30 in the freaking morning.

Teasing

Just like fighting, the amount of teasing that's going on in our house these days is equally insane. It started off with Gavin doing the majority of the teasing, but Vivi has quickly caught up and now rivals her brother in the which-Rosier-twin-can-tease-more competition. "Nanny nanny boo boo" is an extremely common phrase around here. It's become so popular (and annoying), that we've subsequently banned it.

I know what you're thinking: what do two almost-four-year-olds (Yikes! Did I really just write that?) tease one another about? You guessed it: EV-ERY-THING.

The most common topic, however, is when one of them follows directions and the other does not. This causes one to subsequently be rewarded, while the other one is, well, not. The rewarded twin will usually continue to talk about said reward to the unrewarded twin until the cows come home, or until the rewarded twin gets yelled at by one of us about teasing his/her sibling.

For instance, the other day Vivian and Gavin were giving Wes a hard time at nap (surprise, surprise). Wes told them that if they didn't yell and scream (stay tuned for the post about their new out-of-control sleeping habits), then they would get a lollipop. Gavin went to sleep without screaming. Vivian cried and screamed and thrashed and wailed and flopped about for close to 45 mins and then passed out from exhaustion. When they woke up, Gav got a lollipop and Vivi didn't. Well, as you can imagine, Vivi was not very happy about this turn of events. But what made it worse was that Gavin kept waving his lollipop in her face and telling Wes and I (so that Vivian could clearly hear him, of course) about how he didn't cry and Vivi did cry, "Mommy, Vivi cried and I didn't. That's why I have a lollipop and she doesn't. Nanny nanny boo-boo!"

We tell them that it's not nice to tease and that they are not allowed to do it, but they just can't seem to help themselves. They're in a constant competition about who is more well-behaved, better at completing tasks, funnier, taller, and older. And when one of them thinks that he or she has a leg-up on the other one, the teasing is used to let the lesser of the two twins know about it. And it will continue until a parent intervenes. Again, I hope this phase doesn't last too much longer.

Fighting

Arguing, quarreling, bickering, disagreeing, and fighting just to fight. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on around here lately. And it's all between Gavin and Vivian. These siblings have been getting a kick out of arguing with one another about EV-ERY-THING. From who's turn it is to sit in the "foldy chair" at dinner to how to pronounce "tomato." One of them thinks it's "tomato" and the other thinks it's "potato." Yes, I recognize that those are two completely different words, but they don't and the argument about how to pronounce that round red vegetable is unbelievably insane. And that's not all. They fight about what Mommy said and about what Daddy said, about what the rules are, about who their best friend at school is, about who gets to play with Paxton, about the owners of each and every one of their toys, about who should get to do a job, about who got it first, about who's turn it is, about what they like, about what they don't like, about who broke the {insert anything}, about who's fault something is, about who spilled the drink, about who wants to go upstairs, about who wants to go downstairs, about who slept at nap time, about who didn't sleep, and the list goes on and on and on. It's exhausting trying to referee these spats. And most of the time, the argument is completely unnecessary to have in the first place. It's like they just want to hear themselves talk. 

Geesh.

While I'm totally aware that this is how a lot of children communicate with one another at this age and that it's probably not going to stop any time soon, I just hope that this constant bickering can calm down a bit before Mr. Paxton starts chiming in. I don't know what we're going to do when all three of them are in a perpetual state of conflict. Sigh.

I Might Have a Problem

Here are the pics from my most recent photo shoot with Mr. Nugget. Yes, I realize that we just had an impromptu photo shoot last weekend (Oh, you didn't see our lumberjack baby? You really should check it out.). 

So anywho, I can't seem to stop staging photo shoots of Paxton Marshall. Here in lies the potential problem.

 But he's so damn cute!

Photo Booth Fun ~ Feb 2013

Dat Gurl in Da Movie

After watching some home videos of me when I was 6 or 7, Vivian wanted her hair to "look like dat gurl in da movie."