Things they learned/mastered this year

• Besides the physical skills that they have mastered this year (running, jumping, spinning on 1 foot, balancing, etc.) we are amazed at their mental and fine motor achievements, especially the past 3 or 4 months.
• Saying the alphabet, recognizing some letters and remembering words that start with that letter
• Counting to 10 consistently (sometimes we hear them saying thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, etc. but it is not consistent)
• Putting together puzzles. We started out with 9 piece puzzles about 1 month ago and they picked up on that very quickly. Kaleb can now put together a 24 piece puzzle with no problems (and does so a couple of times a day)! Kendall is more than capable of doing it, she just doesn’t always have the interest to finish the job!
• Singing nursery rhymes (or anything else they might hear on the radio). Kendall’s favorite right now is “I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus”. Kaleb’s is “Are you ready for some football! A Monday night party!”
• Dancing!
• Reading books – they will pretend to read back to us. Kendall can go back and read/say almost word for word back. Her memory is amazing!
• Kaleb can ride is bike very well/very fast. He is coordinated enough to go zooming around in circles around our house between the living room, dining room, around the island in the kitchen and back. Kendall likes to go on her bike, but she doesn’t like to use the pedals yet.
• They gave up their pacifiers in June (gave them to their friend Baby Evie when she came to visit from Minnesota this summer).
• Potty trained in June

They've grown so much since our first Christmas with them in 2007!

Fall Family Photos

We took some really cute family picture in our front yard down by the river during "color" season this fall.

Fall Family Photos

Here are some more cute ones of the kids. Kendall had to have her "bun-bun" in the pictures with her!

Potty trained!

Kendall & Kaleb simply amazed us at how easily they took to potty training. Back in February we purchased 2 potty chairs and set them out in the bathroom to introduce the kids to what they were. Kendall learned very quickly the muscles to use to make herself go...it took Kaleb a couple of months...he would sit for a few minutes, get up, look in the bowl and say "nope", sit back down, get up, look, say "nope", sit back down....and on and on. At this point, we were letting them wear underpants after dinner/before bathtime, but not attempting during the day. He eventually figured it out.

In the middle of June, there was a rainy/cold weekend where we had nothing planned, so we decided to put underpants on the kids after they woke up to see how they would do. Surprisingly, this was the last time that they wore a diaper during the day! We drove around all summer with a potty chair in the van just in case they had to go when we were not near a bathroom.

Kendall has had a few accidents, but Kaleb has done great right from the beginning! He started waking up from naps/nighttime with dry diapers, so in the middle of November he stopped wearing diapers all together. Kendall is still wearing them for naps/nighttime, but she is starting to wake up dry so pretty soon we will try her without a diaper during naps/night.

I think it was easy for them because they made it a competition. If one of them said they had to go the bathroom, you can bet the other one was right there trying to go to...we rewarded 1 M&M for #1, 2 M&Ms for #2 so they were both making sure that they got an M&M if the other one did.