Goodbye, 2011...Hello, 2012!

Motherhood and homeownership have turned me into quite the little list-maker (or perhaps I should blame it on time spent with Bear's sister, who literally keeps a master list of all her lists--she's Monica from "Friends," except not annoying). Rather than making one general resolution, I've started making a combination list of Resolutions and To-Do's for each new year, which has worked out pretty well for me: it gives me a deadline to get stuff done AND helps me remember all the things I want to accomplish during the year. Plus, looking back at the list in December and seeing what I've done makes me feel all productive and victorious and junk like that.

Let's see how I did on this year's list:

1) Work smart, not hard- in progress!

In other words, quit being so lazy that I make more work for myself in the long run! I did pretty well on this one, making some simple changes that helped a ton: meal planning for two weeks at a time (half as many trips to the Dreaded Grocery Store? Yes, please!), installing a curtain rod in our laundry room doorway to hang up clothes straight out of the dryer, stocking up on stuff we're always running out of, etc. I also made a handy-dandy meal planner that has all of our most commonly used dinners and their ingredients on it, so we don't have to flip through a bunch of different cookbooks and the recipe binder to make the grocery list:


Now that the girls are getting to a squabble-y age, I started a system that I read in a magazine a while back, where each of them takes turns having "their day." (Luckily for us, Keira was born on an even date and Ellie on an odd one, so it's easy to remember whose day it is.) On "their day," each of them gets to do things their way: pick the first bedtime story, choose whose hair gets combed first after bathtime (they always choose each other), choose which color cup/plate they want at dinner, and so on. It's not so much a "Queen for the Day" thing--we don't let whoever's day it is become a tiny dictator for 24 hours--but it cuts down on bickering over whose turn it is and who gets to go first. "Whose day is it?" Bam. Problem solved!

2) Keira's preschool scrapbook-mostly done

3) Mommy & Me class with Elliana-done, with cute gymnastics pics to show for it!

4) Donate blood at least 5 times-done, with only 2 days to spare!

5) Finalize our wills-done!
If anything happens to us, we're donating our fortune to R. Kelly to make sure he can finance more chapters of Trapped in the Closet. Don't worry--he definitely won't get custody of the girls.

6) Finish re-painting the hallway for the last time ever-DONE! Hallelujah!
I'm also pretty proud of the photo wall I recently added:



7) Watch at least two seasons of "Buffy"-done, and then some!
Um, yeah. We watched the entire series in about 2 1/2 months! We experienced the absolute creeptastic genius of "Hush" (with all of the lights blazing inside and outside our house, just in case!), I joined Team Spike, and when it was all over, we went through withdrawals that even attempting to watch "Angel" couldn't cure. Instead, we took all that cred Bear's sister and Bittle had finally earned for their "Buffy" recommendation and cashed it in on another of their longtime favorites: "Supernatural." We're not big horror fans, but it didn't take long before we were snorting our faces at the unreasonably attractive brothers' rock star pseudonyms ("Good afternoon. I'm Father Simmons, this is Father Frehley.") and letting ourselves get sucked into the Winchesters' world. We burned through five seasons in another couple of months and just bought season 6. If you don't watch this show, you're missing out! If you do, mark me down for Team Sam...

8) Err on the side of empathy- in progress!
I'm generally a pretty empathetic person, but sometimes I get impatient or irritated with people when a little more understanding would probably serve us both better. I've really made an effort this year to empathize with other people's choices and behavior rather than judging them. It definitely helps to think, "He must have some really unhappy stuff going on at home" or "She must be having an awful day" rather than just writing someone off as a jerk when they're rude or seemingly irrational. Of course, some people ARE just jerks, and I'm going to have to decide where I give myself permission to stop being understanding before I wander into Doormat Territory; but in most cases, the nicey-nice is a good thing!

9) Take an overnight trip with Bear-Boooooo.
We didn't get to this one in 2011, but I got Jerry Seinfeld tickets for Bear this Christmas and am hoping that show in March will be our big chance for 2012!

10) Make our house prettier (inside and out)-Inside? Mayyyyybe. Outside? Big fat no. Oh, well.

And now that 2012 is only two days away, I'm busting out my new list!

2012 Resolutions/To-Do List

1) Overnight Bear date

2) Donate blood 5 times again

3) Floss nightly so as not to waste another bajillion dollars on fillings between my teeth

4) Read at least one Hunger Games book (the movie trailer hooked me big-time)

5) Finish organizing the garage and work on the rest of the house

6) Put money IN savings (weekly) instead of taking it out

7) Do the Color Run in April

8) Take more family pics and more pics of just us Bears (in addition to the billion photos I'll keep taking of the girls)

9) Be a nice wife and learn how to make coffee for Bear (I realize making coffee should be relatively easy for someone with a master's degree, but as someone who doesn't drink it, I've never taken the time to learn)

10) See at least 4 of the Best Picture nominees before the Academy Awards (though I will rue this resolution if it means I have to sit through The Help)

11) Go to a movie alone (never done it!) and possibly coordinate with Bittle to see it "with her" simultaneously from opposite sides of the country. Yes, this is lame. No, I don't care.

12) Stop texting in the car. *cringe* This is going to be a big one for me--I can type without looking and often can't resist replying at stop lights, but even that's illegal now and isn't worth a ticket (or worse). I've already started turning off my cell volume and keeping my phone in the center console so I'm not tempted when I hear that little jingle, and it's definitely do-able. I just need to add a Post-It pad and pen for the car so I can jot down reminders when I think of them ("Text Bear that he is a man-whore for leaving his wedding ring on the counter," or...you know...other important stuff) instead of sending a text right away so I don't forget.

13) Paint the bathrooms, and maybe the laundry room. (2012 Me will, without a doubt, hate 2011 Me for putting this on the list. The question is, will that hatred come before or after she gets any painting done?)

14) Find new kid-friendly recipes for the girls. They're getting sick of eating the same things all the time, but don't really like trying anything new, either.

15) Get Keira to wear jeans before she starts kindergarten (this revolution has already begun--more on that soon!)

16) Do some 7-day challenges to build my willpower stamina. (Resolutions to eat healthy, drink more water, or exercise regularly would be doomed to failure, but I figure I can do 7 days of anything...maybe?)

Wow--that's a long list! Better get working on it!

Potty Like a Rock Star

I've been mentally planning my 2012 Resolutions/To-Do List over the past couple of weeks, but before I could really focus on what I want to do next year, I knew for sure what I didn't want to do anymore: change diapers!

Ellie is 5 months older now than Keira was when she was fully potty-trained, but we'd been holding off because I just dreaded the idea of it all: the spending hours upon hours in the bathroom, the cleaning accidents off the carpet, the frantic search for public restrooms, the toting along of the potty seat everywhere, the sound of my own voice asking, "Do you need to go potty?" every four minutes...ugh. Not my idea of a good time, especially when the holidays are already so busy! But, I had three weeks off and figured the sooner we started, the more likely it was that our little Bug would be a potty pro by the New Year, which was a VERY appealing prospect.

There are many potty training "methods" out there, but strangely enough, I--the researcher of all things, who must read every last amazon review before I'll order a product, and who has read practically every pregnancy and teaching book every written--haven't really tried to follow any of them. My "method" consists of reading lots of books about using the potty, dropping not-so-subtle hints about how much better a diaper-free existence is, and then one day declaring it to be Potty Day and putting Dora underwear on the kid with cheerful reminders "not to go wets or pooeys on Dora." (Sorry, Dora. They never follow those instructions.) The rest, we play by ear; my only rule is that there are no diapers during waking hours after that point, no matter what happens. Eeek.

The night before we officially started, I caught Ells going to hide n' poop and decided to put her on the potty seat and see what happened. Ms. Attitude was opposed to the idea, to say the least, and sat there with her arms crossed, glaring at me and yelling, "Nnnnno!! No potty! *pointing at the door* Go away, Mommy!"


Ooooooohkay. At that point, I pretty much braced myself for a nightmarish experience, and promised myself I wasn't going to stress about it even if the first full day was a total disaster...which it was. She sat there willingly most of the time, but had four or five accidents and no success. That's exactly how we started off with Keira, and she was done with diapers in three days flat, so I wasn't discouraged at all. Neither was Ellie:


(I tried really, really hard to resist taking or posting photos of this particular milestone, but the best I could do was to edit out any nudity. She's just too flippin' cute. Sorry, Future Ellie, but I wouldn't be your mom if I didn't embarrass you every once in a while.)

The next two days were much better, but we LIVED in bathrooms. You know how Harry Potter's "address" was The Cupboard Under the Stairs? Mine and Ellie's was The Bathroom Down the Hall. We'd sit there for an hour or more at a time sometimes, and I pulled out all the stops. I brought a bunch of Dum-Dum lollipops in and let her have as many as she wanted. We gave her the iPad and let her play on it to her heart's content as long as she stayed sitting...


...and when I got particuarly tired of camping out in there, I even tried out a little slumber party trick and let her put her hands and feet in a bowl of warm water to see if it would make her go. (It worked a couple of times!) Once, I even abandoned my whole "I don't need to use Santa to motivate my kids to behave" policy and told her that Santa brings an extra present if you go pooeys on the potty (which she did, so Santa brought her a jar of Tootsie Roll Pops). Hey, whatever works, right?

The good news is that she was able to hold it for long periods of time--sometimes 5 or 6 hours--so there were no accidents out in public, and the puppy training pad I put in her car seat was never needed (she threw it out with an indignant "I DON'T NEED THIS!!" on about the third day). During those hours, though, she increasingly became what I referred to as "a ticking time bomb made of urine," which, sadly, was detonated onto Grandma's floor during a brief visit on the second day. Sorry, Grandma!

By the fourth day, Ells had the whole thing figured out, and life was beautiful. She knew to tell us when she had to go, and she went as soon as she sat down--no need to forward my mail to the bathroom. Woohoo! It's been three days now since she's had an accident, and although she's still wearing a diaper at night for now, I bet it won't be long before she's done with that, too. She is, as we keep telling her, a total rock star.

Every rock star needs a fan club, and Keira has definitely been the president of Ellie's: she volunteered to fetch books and entertainment for her toilet-bound sister, told her, "That's okay, Ells--you're still a big girl like me!" when she had accidents on the floor, and still jumps up and down and claps every time Ellie uses the toilet. It. Is. Adorable.

So, whatever we Bears end up doing in 2012, we know that we will definitely NOT be buying, changing, washing (cloth), or throwing away (disposable) diapers. We're like Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything: "I don't want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything." Forget New Year's Eve--I'm ready to throw a "We've Bought Our Last Box of Diapers" party right now!

Christmas Day 2011

When last we left the girls, they were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa...




...and yesterday morning, Keira woke us up to announce that he had brought presents!

Including ROLLER SKATES!!!!!!!!!

We ended up having to wake Ells up from what appeared to be the coziest sleep of all time, but when Keira said, "Ells, Santa came and left us presents!" she sat upright and started climbing out of bed before her eyes were fully open.

Ironically, I have no good photos of Keira wearing her roller skates, even though she hardly took them off all day. But, here are some other pics from our Christmas morning at home...

Ellie sporting the hair bow and Disney lanyard and pins Santa left in her stocking:


Keira got a Fancy Nancy calendar:


Ells got a new Curious George collection and a Dora one, too:


Both girls got handmade initial shirts by a friend of mine, tutus, and luggage (I got us Bears a set for $34 on Black Friday, too, so now we can travel without grocery bags!):


The reluctant child and the ridiculously excited child:


We got this cardboard color-your-own-rocket ship from Michaels for $10, and the girls have already had a blast (har har!) with it:




This was a Halloween costume on clearance, and will make a lovely addition to the girls' dress-up box. I adore this photo of our little Southern belle:


Ellie got a cute piggy bank, so now she has somewhere to put all the coins she shoplifts from Pap-Pap:


And I got a new camera from Bear--you can definitely see the difference in the rest of the photos I took! All the ones to this point were taken with my old Canon PowerShot SD 1300 IS, which I bought without doing much research because my previous one broke and I needed a new one stat! It didn't take very good indoor photos, which didn't work out so well for me since I take most of my pics at home or in my classroom. The new one is a Canon PowerShot S95, and I'm stoked that I don't have to re-learn an entirely new camera (the menus and functions are almost identical) but am getting MUCH better photos!

In the afternoon, we went to Uncle Ryan's house, where the girls opened gifts from Grammy and Grampy.

Tinkerbell flashlight? Awesome!


Keira asked, "What does this dolly do?" and, tragically, we had to explain to her that when all of us were kids, dollies didn't walk, talk, or excrete disgusting fluids into outrageously expensive little diapers. After a little demonstration from Grammy, the girls were all about rocking, carrying, burping, and snuggling their babies for the rest of the night:



Alice in Wonderland--woohoo!


The girls both got unbelievably cute little aprons (Ellie's is yellow with a bee pattern), and Keira's came with an order pad for playing waitress. She had a great time writing down everyone's orders (Daddy wanted "frid ris" and "pnkin pi" with "whit crem."), and then threw on her skates again for good measure. If anyone opens a 50's diner around here, they've got an employee in training!




Bear got to drink good beer and watch football, and I...well, I had this little reindeer to snuggle! Baby Cassidy was full of coos and smiles:


It's a good thing Ellie fell asleep during the hour-long drive to Uncle Ryan's house, because we didn't leave there until about 9pm and figured both girls would knock out in the car. Kiwi slept, but Ells had apparently snuck a few too many chocolates and was totally wired--she talked and sang nonstop! She entertained us with such gems as, "Let's play Car to Car! No, how about Sign to Sign? No, Mountain to Mountain!" (I have no idea what any of that means) and, "There's no picking bogies on Christmas." Duly noted, Ells. She was still wide awake when we got home after 10 o'clock!

I've been lucky enough to have some really wonderful Christmases in my lifetime, but this may have been the best one yet. Hopefully there isn't a finite amount of joy in the world and we didn't hog it all!

Christmas Countdown Continued!

Last year, I vowed to take the holiday craziness down a notch and simplify things as much as I could, so as not to be all Grinchy from sheer exhaustion by the time Christmas rolled around. We've still packed in tons of activity this month, but I started our shopping right after Halloween and did most of it online, so that definitely helped! We had to skip my school's pancake breakfast with Santa (the girls had fevers and sore throats), never got around to riding the Christmas train or checking out the zoo's holiday festivities, and don't have any Christmas decorations outside this year (Bear doesn't often get home before dark and has been sick for the past week or two, too), but whatever--we've still managed to have plenty of fun!

Last Tuesday, Bear and I got all fancied up for his company's Christmas party:


On Saturday, we hosted the Christmas play date I've been wanting to have for the past three years. It's a crazy time of year for everyone, and I only gave two weeks' notice, so most of our friends were busy...but three families came, and that turned out to be a perfect number of kids!

I had all kinds of grand ideas for fancy treats to make, games to play, and activities for the kids to do, but after having a pancake breakfast and all-day holiday extravaganza for my 31 students the morning before, I opted to, again, keep it simple. They decorated milk carton gingerbread houses...




...and made some foam photo ornaments, and then got their wiggles out in the playroom. I'd asked everyone to bring food donations to make a basket for a needy family, so we piled it all on a table in our entryway, and then took a group photo of the kids to include on a card for the family. How cute are these children?!


On Tuesday night, our friends surprised the girls with a PJ Run, which is a tradition they introduced us to last year. The idea is that the parents secretly arrange for one family to charge into the other family's house near bedtime, banging pots and pants and chanting "PJ Run! PJ Run!" (and hopefully not scaring the daylights out of the young "victims"!). Then everyone goes out for ice cream in their pajamas (parents included), cruising around to look at Christmas lights along the way. Here are five of the six kids at McDonald's, showing off their sugar highs:


Instead of baking goodies for our coworkers (which inevitably results in a frantic, late-night cookie-thon that almost...almost...makes me like cookies a teeny bit less), I went back to my old tradition of baking for the fun of it while watching You've Got Mail one afternoon--no deadline or quotas to meet. (Hey, You've Got Mail is just as much a Christmas movie as Die Hard. Shush.) The girls pitched in with some of the baking again this year, which is a tradition I can remember doing with my grandma from when I was their age. Here they are sporting the adorable matching aprons my grandma's friend made for us (I have one, too!):


Another tradition we try to keep up is taking photos with Santa at the Festival of Lights--it's the same Santa every year, and he's a really good one! We didn't get one when Keira was a baby, but here's her first one at one year old. Clearly, she did not share my view of Santa.


The next two years, Kiwi declined to sit on Santa's lap, so we got no pic in 2008. In 2009, it was just 8-month-old Ellie. I think these two photos perfectly illustrate the difference in the girls' personalities! (That's not to say that Keira isn't all kinds of fun and adorable, but it's in her nature to be anxious about new things, and in Ellie's to be all, "Woohoo!" no matter what's going on.)


Last year, we got both girls in the picture--hooray! Check out Ellie's reverse mullet: business in the back, party in the front!


And here's this year's picture, with Keira displaying the Shoulder Raise she sports in most of her 2011 photos (love it):


I tried to get a good photo of the girls with Cousin Brandon afterward, but Ells was a blur in most of them and Keira was apparently too cold to smile:


Keira and I went to Moms' Morning at preschool last Wednesday, where they have different crafts in every classroom. She and I made some cute ornaments and took a mother-daughter photo together (can't wait to get that back!) before we scurried off to the movies to see Arthur Christmas with Bear and Ellie!


The girls made some more ornaments at home yesterday, which involved busting out the glue and glitter--yippee!



And last night, we finally made it to the temple's Bring Your Menorah service that I've been meaning to take the girls to for a few years now. Bear was still under the weather, and the girls and I were still in jammies at dinnertime after a long day of at-home potty training adventures with Ellie (more on that later), so I was tempted to just stay home...but I put on the BGP's (Big-Girl Panties)--both mine and Ellie's--and got the girls and myself out the door just in time to scurry in at the last minute. If Bear's sister hadn't saved us seats, we would've been on the floor--it was packed! Although the two-hour service was a bit long for the girls, they enjoyed the music (Ellie did some interesting dance moves in my lap) and we got to light our menorah along with dozens upon dozens of other ones. Is this beautiful, or what?


Looking through all of these photos, it sure doesn't seem like we've taken it easy this month, but it has definitely felt more fun and less frantic than last year did. I think lowering my expectations and being just a little less ambitious in our plans has made a big difference!

Now it's time to get ready for Santa's visit tonight. I took this photo just a few minutes ago...I like to call it "Anticipation."


Merry Christmas!

Pinterest, Where Have You Been All My Life?

It's a good thing I don't blog for a living, or I'd be broke right about now! What have I been up to for the past couple of weeks? Well, let's see...

1) Please forgive me for bragging about what millions of other moms/women/teachers do every single week of the year, but I taught for a full week for the first time in 6 years...and guess what? Not so bad! I caught a cold and had laryngitis for most of the week, including a couple of days with almost no voice at all, and my students were awesome. (Perhaps they pitied me. I'll take it.) Bear was a rock star, picking up my slack at home and taking an extra day off work to be home with the girls so we didn't wear out my poor grandma. I'm sure working full-time plus running a household is no piece of cake when it's your way of life, but my one-week stint was at least enough to convince me that I won't completely lose my mind in a couple of years when my jobsharing phase comes to an end!

2) We've been cramming in as much holiday fun as we can with our Activity Advent Christmas Countdown calendar. (Apparently it's not technically an advent calendar, because we're counting down the days in December, rather than the four weeks, leading up to Christmas. Tomato, to-mah-to? Whatever--I'll err on the side of correctness.) (Also, I should probably research whether "correctness" is technically a word.) So far the girls have...

-watched Christmas movies in bed

-made paper snowflakes

-looked at Christmas lights in the neighborhood

-seen Happy Feet 2 in the theater

-busted out the Christmas music in the car

-had a picnic lunch under the Christmas tree

-roasted marshmallows on the stove to make s'mores

-gone to Keira's preschool's Christmas play (poor Kiwi came down with a fever and sore throat that night and clearly wasn't feeling good--love this fake smile):


-gone to our friends' annual Christmas party, where I received this wonderfully-creepy statue in the white elephant gift exchange...sadly, I "forgot" it at our friends' house. In their bed, specifically. I have a feeling he'll be back.


(Our poor friends also received a Justin Bieber calendar from us in the same exchange. The best part? Bear had gone out and bought the calendar himself. Like, in public. When I asked if he was sure he was willing to do that, he said, "I'll get it at Wal-Mart. There's no shame there, anyway." I wonder how long we'll still be able to call them "our friends" at this rate!)

At the same party, there was a book exchange for the kids, where Ells got a cute reindeer book that plays "Up on the Housetop"...


...and Keira got a childrens' version of Little Women, which she is very excited about despite this "This book has hard words" look she's sporting:


And, finally...

3) I jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, and MAN, is that thing totally awesome and completely evil at the same time!

If you don't know what Pinterest is, it's a brilliant combination of bookmarking your favorite websites online plus the simplest aspects of Facebook (adding comments or "liking" other people's pins). It's way better than bookmarking, though, because you create your own categorized bulletin boards and "pin" ideas you find onto the boards, so you have a visual display of your favorite ideas in whatever categories you choose (crafts, teaching ideas, hairstyles, books to read, home decor ideas...the possibilities are endless)--just the photos. When you click on the photos, it takes you directly to the website where that idea was featured so you can read more details or instructions if you want.

For example, my "Fun Kid Ideas" board looks like this:


And, you can search the site for other people's pins and re-pin them to your own boards, and follow people whose taste is similar to yours...so, basically, it's The Best of the Internet. Since I love me a good tip AND am a fiend for stealing other people's great ideas, this site and I were destined to become acquainted!

The bad news, of course, is that it's possible to spend about a zillion hours browsing people's boards and searching for ideas. It's the biggest Internet time-waster since Facebook, but at least it has the potential to be productive, IF you actually put the ideas you find there to use! And, shockingly, I have.

Here are a few of the Pinterest projects I've done in the past couple of weeks:

Tea wreath (DIY gift):


DIY ornament wreath for over our mantle (I had the "JOY" letters in our holiday decorations box for ages and finally was about to put them under the wreath, but realized the wreath as the "O" looks cuter! I don't love the cubes around it, but those are there year-round and I can't figure out what else to put up there, anyway, so I at least stuck some festive stuff in them for the time being):


North Pole cookies for the Christmas party we went to:


Book hospital for my classroom, so kids aren't constantly interrupting me to show me torn pages or loose covers (this one isn't mine, by the way--it's the source photo):


Pinterest is also great for Random Great Ideas, like this one to keep your apple from getting all brown in your lunchbag before lunch (it does work--I tried it):


Like the apple thing, almost everything I find on there goes in the general category of Why Didn't I Think of That??

Anyway, that's what we've been up to lately. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go waste more time looking for time-saving ideas on Pinterest!