Beachin It

The girls and I met some friends at the beach today. It was such a BEAUTIFUL day! Unfortunately... I ended up being THAT mom with THOSE monsters toddlers. You know that mom whose kids look like they may be possessed or possibly in dire pain, like losing a limb or something? The screeching/growling crying children. Yeah, you know them. If you have kids you probably look at them with a little empathy (and joy that your kids [hopefully] aren't currently behaving that way) and if you don't have kids you look at them a like lepers.

We went so quickly from this:

To full on cling on mommy meltdown. Sigh. The girls insisted no one else could help them to the car, they were also unsure that they even wanted to go to the car so there I was hauling 40 something lbs. of wiggling, tantrum throwing heathens kids across the hot sand of the beach to the car. If the sand hadn't been so hot I was seriously contemplating leaving their cute little butts in the sand.

Next time you see THAT mom at the store or beach or walking down the street try not to judge her (or her crazy kids) too harshly. It could be you tomorrow, next week or in a few years :) 

Big Girl Beds!

This is an extremely belated post but.... the girls are in big girl beds! Yay! A couple of months ago we removed the fronts of the girls' cribs and replaced them with smaller/shorter bed rails. These keep them from rolling onto the floor during the night but give them the freedom to get up and out on their own.

I know you're thinking? "WHY?" Well the girls, (ok mainly Madelyn) was waking up every morning and from every nap just completely angry at the world which did not work for me. So I tried to guess why she was doing this and really the only thing I came up with was that she was trapped when she woke up. So, hence the transition. Luckily, I was right and she is now a much happier camper upon waking. I don't know that I would chalk her up to being a morning person but at least she isn't screeching mad.

 Now I would REALLY love to tell you that this transition was peaceful and serene. I mean just look at these photos. Serene right? Ah... the joys of having perfectly well behaved monsters toddlers.

But seriously let's get real. We had quite a few episodes of this:

I love how Georgia instantly distances herself from the mess... as if to say "I had NOTHING to do with this." Riiiiiight.

aaaand this:

oh yeah, and some of this:

To be honest there were a few times when I thought "what?!?!" and "oh no... we will never sleep again." I even went in there once with the sides to their cribs and very sternly asked them "do you want to sleep in cribs like babies again?" to which Madelyn happily replied "Yeah!" and we all laughed. So after we added some handy little child locks on the drawers and removed the book basket we returned to a more serene way of life with sleeping children. They sleep with the door closed but when I get up in the morning I crack the door open. I am convinced that there is nothing cuter than those sleepy little faces in the morning. There is something so comfortable about them when they wake up in the morning and wander out of their room to find me.