Passed the 18 month mark

I really shouldn't be surprised, but it's amazing how much the boys have grown. So cliche, but so true. They definitely aren't babies anymore. I absolutely love this stage. The 18 month mark. They are toddling around. They can totally feed themselves. They understand enough that you can talk to them and they respond by either listening to you or laughing and running in the opposite direction. Their little personalities have blossomed. Truly a blessing to see these boys grow. It absolutely makes my heart melt to see them interact with each other.

Heart exploded

Thomas 

You are such a little jokester! What a great sense of humor you have. I never really thought of kids developing humor until they got older but you are such a pro at psyching people out and doing things you think are hilarious. Your favorite activity is to make things disappear by throwing them into the diaper pail. Especially if they aren't dirty diapers. You find this so funny. Just the other day I was changing Jacob's diaper and I could see you out of the corner of my eye standing at the diaper pail with a sock in your hand staring at me. When I turned to look at you, you quickly threw the sock in the pail and ran out of the room laughing. As I was finishing up with Jacob, you came back into the doorway and stood there staring at me again. I turned to look and you ran down the hall laughing. Melt my heart. 

You have the most perfect sleep habits ever. Every night we put you to sleep and you go down without a fight. Every. Night. If you aren't quite ready yet, you just entertain yourself or bug your brother until you eventually doze off. In the morning you wake up the same way. Without a peep. You patiently wait for the rest of the house to wake up and someone to come get you. Occasionally you will call out for someone when you've gotten tired of waiting, but even then it's not a scream. It a nice request.

Speaking of calling out, you can say momma clear as day. There are times when you are calling out "Momma!" And I can't tell if it's you or Sofia! You also say  uh-oh pretty well, but not much else. Lots and lots of babbling though. I'm sure you will talk soon and I almost get the feeling that when you start you won't stop... 

It amazes me how you can play all by yourself already. While your brother is running around the play area dumping out every single container of toys onto the floor, you are quietly playing at the play kitchen, opening doors and taking out plates and fake food. Just precious.

Things you love:

• a sippy cup of milk - you will suck that thing down in ten seconds flat
• kicking your legs so putting pants on has become the most difficult thing in the world
• ripping off your socks the minute your shoes come off
• grabbing my glasses off my face the second I get close enough - ninja style. You are so quick!

Things you strongly dislike:

• getting strapped into your carseat - even though as soon as the buckles are snapped, you stop complaining
• being put down at night without your brother - no complaints if Jacob is with you, but if we try to let him stay up later than you, you call no fair on that real quick
• having your sippy cup anywhere but in that little cup holder on your tray while you are eating. If someone moves it, you put it back. That is where it is supposed to go. 

Jacob 

Biggest love bug ever. You give out hugs and high fives to everyone like they are going out of style. You have got to be one of the happiest toddlers I've met. Smiles radiating from that sweet face of yours all day long. Best part of the day is when you give out random leg hugs - just because. Totally doing something else and you run up and give a huge squeeze. I think it's because you just love love. You give your sister love. You give your brother love. You give the dog love. It warms my heart to see you be so happy with life, especially when I think of how tiny and fragile you were when you were first born. You were constantly being held for the first few months of your life. Proof that you can't spoil a baby.

Unlike Thomas, you have to be the worst kid at going to sleep. You never want to go to bed. Ever. You will be rubbing your eyes and falling asleep at the table and as soon as we turn the corner into the bedroom, you start complaining. Even though you may clearly be tired, you will cry bloody murder for at least five full minutes before giving up and falling asleep. You have to be just exhausted in order to go down without a fight. With Sofia, we started the bedtime story routine at a young age. We've only recently started the bedtime story routine with you boys. Previous attempts were unsuccessful (read crying, screaming, slapping the book out of our hands...) But now that we are doing a story every night, you seem much more comfortable going to bed. Last night you even pointed at the bookshelf to make sure I was going to read a story. And even though you didn't seem super tired, you went down without a fight. You are the reason why I have sat in the car in the driveway after running errands on multiple occasions just wasting time while you finish napping because there was no way I was going to cut that nap short by taking you out of your seat. You wake up, you aren't going back down again any time soon.

Things you love:

• eating - you must eat three times the amount of your older sister. And you don't savor the food, you just shovel it in
• making the loudest noises possible with your toys - legos dropped from high elevations onto the tile, banging metal play pans from the kitchen on the floor, finding the most annoying musical toy and pushing keys over and over in quick succession, etc.
• getting told not to touch something and then just keep touching it while staring me right in the face (I blame your Zio Tony and genetics on this one. You are a recreation of him for sure)
• bathtime - splashing for days!

Things you strongly dislike:

• holding a hand while walking - Mr. Independent, I can do it on my own!
• having the smallest amount of food left on your plate when you've decided you're done eating - I'm full so let me throw all this stuff on the floor and then pull my high chair tray off the table, put it over my head and rub the rest into my hair

Having two kids at once is definitely more work than a singleton. At least from birth through this stage it has been. Everything has been just slightly more difficult. I'm sure it won't always be that way. It is true that it just keeps getting easier. The boys do such a wonderful job playing together. Do they interact with each other every single second of the day? No. Of course not. They aren't inseparable. But they do enjoy each other's company, that's for sure. Maybe I'm just projecting something I want to believe onto the boys, but I can see how they have a strong bond to each other. I can see how they feel totally comfortable together. I can picture them five, ten, twenty years down the road being close siblings. And I love that their big sister adores them with all her heart because I'm sure that means she won't be left out.

Thomas and Jacob, thanks for making your first 18 months a breeze. I am so lucky to have had three super easy babies. You boys are the icing on the cake for sure.

Sofia's outfit of the day

This kid cracks me up. 

I love how she can coordinate colors across her entire outfit. Which is why is kills me when she comes out of her room wearing some outfit that doesn't match at all. She stuck with a pink theme with this get up today. 

Shirt - Old Navy 

Skirt - a gift but I think from Kohl's 

Jeggings - Old Navy 

Shoes - sketchers 

Accessories - custom made stamped heart necklace (it has her name on it) from Tu Tu Cute Stamped on etsy.com  and Hello Kitty Nerd glasses found on Amazon 

If you haven't noticed from these fashion posts yet, most of Sofia's clothes are not high end. She does have a few pieces we've either splurged on or were gifted that are nicer, but most of her stuff comes from Old Navy and Target. I'd like to think Sofia is a testament to the fact you don't have to spend a lot of money to look good. I hardly ever buy a complete outfit at one sitting, but I do keep in mind what she has in her closet already. It's super easy when half your closet is pink. 

A trip to the park was on the agenda today so I'm glad that Sofia wore appropriate shoes and pants under her skirt. That doesn't slways happen. Ironically Sofia preferred riding her scooter around than playing on the playground. 

Sofia refused to pose for any photos today. So I caught her right before she sneezed. Oops. 

Sofia's outfit of the day

Here's another post highlighting Sofia's great fashion sense. This outfit is a collaboration between the two of us. 

Top: Old Navy

Skirt: Cherokee from Target

Capri leggings: Carter's 

Moccasins: Freshly Picked

Headband: Gymboree 

I'm loving this color combination. 

 We are headed to Happy Hollow today so I'm sure this will be great for running around the park and playground. Her brothers are quite stylish today as well! 

Easy Toddler Infinity Scarf - a tutorial

I love scarves. I have a bunch of them - all different styles and types. Some infinity, some traditional. Some crocheted, some fabric. Some heavy weight for cold winter days, some light and airy for an added touch in the summer. Although I love hats too, I dislike hat hair so I often find myself grabbing a scarf to help stay warm when it's cold out. To me, scarves are the best. 

I recently whipped up a cute little infinity scarf for Sofia (read about that here). Very stylish. I didn't want the boys to be left out. I think it's adorable when toddlers wear clothes that are typically thought of as adult pieces. Like toddlers in suspenders. I mean. Adorable, right? Plus the boys do NOT like wearing hats, so it's harder to keep them warm when we are out in the cold. A scarf would work nicely if they will keep them on. 

I found a great deal on this super cute mustache printed flannel at the store and thought it would be great for this project. Very manly. 

Cute, right? 

Here's how I did it: 

You need a large rectangle of fabric. I cut a 12" piece the width of the fabric which was 42". You could adjust the length for younger or older kids/adults but the width is fine at 12" across the board. So I ended up with a 12" by 42" piece of fabric. 

Fold in half long ways with right sides together and sew to form one long tube. Skip the first and last 2" of fabric to allow for turning later. 

Should look like this at this point. 

Flip the scarf right side out. Just stick your hand in, grab one end and pull it through the tube. At this point you should iron the seams flat. But I'm not that fancy.

Now you need to sew the ends together. Starting with the two pieces in the middle with the right sides together, pin along the edge. Be careful to match up your seam.

Start of edge seam. 

sewing the edge seam

This is what it should look like when finished. 

Two more steps to go! After sewing the edges together, push the seam in. If you want to be fancy, you'd have the additional step of pressing this seam flat too, but like I said, I'm not that fancy. You should have a small gap that needs to be closed. Fold the raw edge in being careful to flatten out the seams if you didn't iron them already, and line up the two folded edges. You can either sew this gap closed by hand, which would also be fancy, or you can cheat like me and just use your machine.

Gap pinned. Seams lined up. 

If you are using a machine, sew as close to the edge as possible. This tiny seam should be on the inside of your scarf anyway so I didn't think it was a big deal. 5 seconds of sewing versus 10 minutes if I did it  by hand.

Last step done!

Turn the long seam to the inside, fluff it up and you are ready to go! 

Ta-Da!!

This size scarf fits both my 18 month old twins and my 4 1/2 year old daughter nicely.

Sofia thought this scarf was hilarious. 

Best part? The boys loved them. I had Thomas act as my model and Jacob pointed at his scarf repeatedly and kept looking at me like, where's mine?!? Good thing I made one for Jacob too! Big ol' smile and they kept the scarves on. Win!!

Sofia's style

Putting Sofia's clothes away after doing laundry today I realized, dang this girl has got a lot of clothes. I don't feel like I've purchased that much stuff for her to wear, but I must be wrong because she sure has a lot to choose from. Actually I've probably curbed my clothing purchases for her quite a bit because I've learned the hard way if she don't like it, she's not wearing it. But I can't pass up a great deal so if a see a bargain, I'll get it. 

Most days, Sofia picks out her own outfit. Even if she asks me to pick out her outfit, inevitably she's going to change at least one article from my selection. Those days are usually fine. But the days Sofia has 100% control are very hit or miss. Sometimes she picks a real winner. Sometimes, not so much. Although Dad and I have ultimate veto power (no you can not wear a tank top and shorts when it's 40 degrees outside, even if you are wearing snow boots) we don't want to stifle her creativity and put a bunch of pressure on "looking good" so we usually let her go with what she wants. Maybe me more than Dad.... 

So I thought it would be fun to occasionally highlight some of Sofia's outfits. I'd say her style is part bohemian, part fairy, part color-blind. This season's staples have been leggings and long sleeved tees with the occasional skirt thrown on top. We started out with a lot of blue, white, and red, but now it's morphed into teals and purples lately. 

Here's today's outfit, 100% picked out by Sofia. (And I'd log this one as a winner)

Dress: Hilo Hattie's (Hawaiian aloha-wear) 

Cardigan: Target

Shoes: Michael Kohrs (from Nordstrom Rack)

Tiara and Fairy Wand: model's own - but probably from the dollar section at Target

I hope you'll enjoy following along as I share some of Sofia's great fashion sense.

New Year, New Play Room

I don't really make new year resolutions. I can't even say that I really make new year goals, if there is a distinction between the two. Sure there are things that I'm working toward achieving, but they are more of a constant, not a new year thing. Plus I'm not that big of a life planner. I'm more of a day to day kind of person. One thing I am always working on improving is organization, especially around the house. We have been amassing stuff for the past 8 or so years, and not to mention the fact that there are three more people living in the house from when we started, so it's easy to say we have to get rid of some stuff. It has been a work in progress, but I think it's coming along nicely. I always get a burst of energy to downsize and organize around the first of the year. Start the new year clean and the rest of the year will follow, right??

My most recent project was to tackle the kid's play room, formerly known as the living room. We converted the living room into a play room for Sofia quite a while ago, but when the twins came along we quickly realized when they started crawling that sharing a play space may not be a great idea. So we moved the boys into our family room and did some creative baby proofing using baby gates, play pens, ropes and an ironing board. Sounds slightly dangerous but really it worked rather well. At least for the first year. But then they got strong enough to push our sorry excuse for baby proofing aside and get into the cabinets, and they could reach over the play pen and touch the electronics, plus we'd eventually have to put a Christmas tree in there and I'm pretty sure that's not an approved toddler toy. So we combined the two play rooms. I tried using the existing shelving and organization we had in place already but it just wasn't enough. Trying to cram all those toddler toys in with her crayons and barbie shoes was not working great. The boys' favorite playtime activity was to take every single coloring book off the shelf and dump the entire bucket of crayons on the floor. As soon as the hustle bustle of the holidays was over, I ran to IKEA to remedy that. 

I neglected to take any before photos so just use your imagination I guess. But this is what it looks like now.

the White family play room

I wish I had a play room as awesome as this growing up! All the shelving and cabinets were already in the play room except for one. We added in one Expedit unit from IKEA. I guess you could say I'm an IKEA fan. I definitely don't hate it. Is it the most amazing furniture ever? No. But it works and it's cheap and super functional. I think the Expedit is probably one of my favorite pieces. We use one as our changing table, just stuck a changing pad on top, that way when all is done, the boys have a bookshelf already. It doesn't have a back like some units do, so it can be used as a room divider because both front and back are finished. You can either lay it down like we have here, or you can stand it up and use it like a traditional bookshelf. So versatile. 

The new Expedit unit. Those baskets hold SO much stuff. 

I strategically placed this new shelving to help block off Adam's desk and delay the boys getting to it. The jury is still out if that was an effective move or not. The bins are huge and hold a ton of stuff so if I have to clean this space up quickly, I can throw everything into the bins. It all fits. It's also high enough to be out of reach for the boys so this was a good place to put Sofia's new princess castle (a present from Santa).

I wanted to make sure there was space in the play room to display art work. I'm not a fan of having it hang off the fridge since the doorway into the kitchen is right between the refrigerator and the kitchen table. I found these sweet jumbo sized clothespins with arrows on them in the dollar section at Target awhile back. They are adorable for displaying artwork. I used some command strips to hang them on the wall so I didn't have to punch any holes and I could move them around easily. There's a row of them all along the wall. We just clip artwork in the clips for all to see.

Adorable, right? 

But I wanted to be able to showcase some of Sofia's better artwork too. I originally bought a shadowbox picture frame for scrapbook pages with the intent to do a page every season and hang it in the entryway. The glass broke shortly after purchase so Adam removed the glass entirely and we put the frame in the play room. It works really well - no glass so we just pin artwork into the frame on the attached cork board - but it's small. There's a lot of space for more frames but I don't know if I want to buy another frame just like this. Seems like overkill to have to take the glass out, so I might just get a nice glassless frame and put cork board in it myself. This works for now though.

Sofia drew the picture and made the button frame. 

During one of my regular IKEA shopping trips I found these wall rack bar things on clearance so I snatched a few up. I'm pretty sure they sell the same thing or something similar in the kitchen department. There are hooks you can place on the bar or there is an assortment of hanging buckets you can get. This works out great for hanging aprons and larger toys to get them off the floor. Also for keeping smaller toys in buckets to keep them away from little mouths.

I tried to separate Sofia's toys from the boys' toys as much as I could, so I moved an existing piece to the far side of the room. It's one of those units they sell at Target that you can buy bins for. I need to get more bins for this unit. I dislike that the bins are much smaller than the IKEA ones but they do have a ton of colors and styles. I tried to showcase all the cuter retro toys by placing them on the top shelf. This also makes it easier for the boys to play with.

All in all I think the room turned out great. I'm really glad there is a place for everything and it's all organized. All the barbies fit in one bin, all the crayons were moved to a plastic bin with a locking top, the trains are in their own bin, legos in another. It's glorious! I dislike that I had to move the play kitchen in front of the fireplace as that pretty much means we won't ever use it, but not like we could anyway with all these "spare the air" days we've been having. So really, is it a loss???

I also re-organized Sofia's closet taking out her drawers and adding in some shelving units.... while she was sleeping! Kudos to my Mom and I for pulling that off two feet from her head. But I wasn't sure you just wanted to see pictures of a closet, so I left those out.

I'll leave you with a close up of the best hand-me-down we've received to date, the Radio Flyer Blaze Riding Horse which Sofia has lovingly named Neighnees and has ridden almost daily. Glad I was able to make room for this beast of a toy.