Three Years Old!

Well, I am now the mother of three-year-old twins. WOW. :)

The girls had a wonderful birthday. The party was great and fun was had by all.

In my typical fashion, it will likely take me a while to get a proper post up summarizing their big day, but here is a picture to hold everyone over...

Need Birthday Present Ideas...

My girls will be 3 (three! already?!?) next week.

I want to get each of them some kind of portable learning game as a bday present and want opinions on what is best for their age and/or, for those of you with older kids, what your kids liked at this age.

I am considering a couple of LeapFrog products:

My First LeapPad is for their age range, but seems kind of limited as far as what it does.

Leapster is for ages 4 and up. The learning activities seem more interesting but I'm wondering if it is too sophisticated for them...

Any other brands/ideas would be appreciated.

I will be taking a 10 hour car ride with them and my mom this summer so I definitely need something besides DVDs to keep them busy!

We are Paci-Free!

Well, I can now cross off #1 from my To-Do list as we are now paci-free. Woo hoo!

(Bear with me as I try to re-recount this. I went to save a copy of my original post before posting it and somehow deleted the whole darn thing. Doh!)

How did we accomplish this? By going to Build-A-Bear Workshop, of course. ;-) (A big shout out of thanks to Melissa for giving me this idea.)

On Wednesday, we were at the Mall and A asked to go look at the bears at the above store. While we were there, I suggested that maybe one day we could come back and make a bear and put our pacis inside, that "big girls" don't have pacis and you can't turn 3 and still have pacis (they are very into their upcoming birthday). And they would have a very special teddy bear to sleep with instead. It was not a hard sell and I figured they would forget all about it. We went home. Later that day, they asked if they could go back and make their bears with their pacis. I tried to explain to them what it really meant, that there would be no more pacis. They enthusiastically agreed to say goodbye to them. I decided to take the bull by the horn and go for it, even though I wasn't totally convinced they were ready.

We went to the store. They picked out their bears -- basically the first ones they picked up. LOL. They helped stuff them and put in hearts and then the pacis. No problem. Paid. Left the store. Had a great time walking around carrying their bears in their boxes. Went home. Couldn't help having the feeling that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop...

The shoe fell hard. While they ate dinner I was on the phone with my mom telling about what we had done and all of a sudden remorse set in. BIG TIME. L starts crying. In typical twin fashion, A starts in to. They ask for their pacis back. L keeps saying "open it up" (as in "open up the bear and give me my paci back!"). After a solid hour, the crying stopped. And, other than asking about their pacis a couple of times, the transition actually has gone rather smoothly. Whew!

I have pictures of the big event which are unfortunately stuck in my camera since the batteries ran out and I can't find the battery charger.

As for To-Do List Item #2, that is in a holding pattern as the basement renovation still is not done. ;-)