NO MORE CRIBS

Kai and Sierra moved to toddler beds September 1st. For 4 days, life was good. They both stayed in their beds, went to sleep right away and slept all night (except for a few tumbles out of the bed the first few nights). We thought we had lucked out.... until their "mental crib rails" came down. Once they realized they could roam, they took things to a new level.

You'd think it would be easy for two adults to stay ahead of two 2-yr olds (at least we did), but we were wrong. We did think ahead on some things (i.e., locked closet doors to avoid them being disassembled, changed the venetian blinds to a shade for safety reasons, put a baby gate at the door to keep them contained, locked up any lotions/cream etc). However, the rest we learned as we went - as they "taught us." Here are a few of activities during nighttime liberation:

• Lock the door before destroying anything
• Pull out all the diapers, clothes, sheets etc from the drawers
• Dump all the stuffed animals out of the bin
• Disassemble the diaper genie
• Stand in the window (where they ripped the security sticker off)
• Pull the shade so it would fly up
• Open and close the door - throwing things out in between slams.

Night after night, we'd take more things out of the room until they had nothing left but their beds. The last straw was when they figured out how to climb over the baby gate and now "re accessed" all their stuff in the hallway --- Yikes!! They are smart/resourceful little people. We finally had to turn the door knob around so we could lock it from the outside (didn't want them to hurt themselves coming over the baby gate). This is the first night with the new door knob and in the closed/dark room, they are finally asleep within 20 minutes (prior nights the playing has gone on for 2 - 3 hours). Let's hope we're on to something. Here's a picture of their room with toddler beds.

OUR SUMMER

Nags Head, NC Vacation - In July, we drove up for a family vacation in Nags Head, NC. We met Memaw, PawPaw, Uncle Jeffrey, Aunt Kit and Hunter. We don't get to spend much time with our family so it was great to spend a week just "hanging out." Our friend, Marsha, brought Bud down for a visit (Kai and Sierra's Great-Great Grandfather). Aunt Bunny, West and Clay also came to see us for a day. It was a long drive to get there and back but we had a lot of fun.

More Pool Time - We spend a lot of time in the pool (it's still warm here so we're still spending a lot of time in the pool). Kai and Sierra both gained so much confidence in the pool since their swim lessons. We can actually sit on the side now and let them jump and swim by themselves (granted we don't go very far but they're perfectly happy playing by themselves sometimes). They can swim the length of our pool (which isn't very large) pretty quickly now. Memaw and Pawpaw also taught them to swim on the noodles (which helped increase their speed). Mom and Dad actually went away for their 10th year anniversary and MeMaw/PawPaw stepped in for us. Kai and Sierra wanted to go in the pool all day - so being good grandparents, they gave them what they wanted.... the pool. They swam after breakfast, got out for lunch, took a nap, swam before dinner, ate dinner, swam after dinner, got a bath, went to bed. Not a bad day for a 2-yr old.

Here are some pictures from the last few months...