Family Blog

Swim Time

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:54:52 -0400

Well it’s that time of the year again when all the kiddies hit the pool, and like all other kids ours wanted to hit the pool too. Granted the pool is at grandma’s house, so a little travel is involved.

Well going into this year, Harlan was the pool junkie and Lanier could take it or leave it. So like everything else they have done so far in their lives, the roles have switched. Although this time we know why.

About 2 weeks into the summer, Harlan took a plunge and her head went under. Mom was right there so no harm and it didn’t impact her. Well about a week later, she did it again and this time it took an extra second to get to her and now she won’t go near the water. At this point, we are still trying to convince her the water is not going to hurt her and it’s ok to splash around. We are hoping that she’ll start to forget her traumas from earlier this summer.

Lanier on the other hand, would only stand on the sundeck and splash around, now she is all about the pool. When we are not at the pool, she’s in the bathtub, splashing around. We are hoping that Harlan takes a cue from her younger sister and gets back into the groove.

No more Diapers???

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:38:36 -0400

Well we have reached a milestone in the development of our girls, potty training. Yes, I know that all parents reach this point, but as a parents of twins, this is an especially happy time for us. See when you have to buy diapers for twins, the expense adds up quickly.

Our potty training success came in two phases, Lanier then Harlan. We tried several methods to encourage the use of the potty, but for each child, we had to use a different tactic.

For Lanier, we tried, bribes of candy, praise, you name it we tried it. Finally the method that worked for her was the threat of a bath every time she did not use the potty and made a mess in her panties. Yes this seems mean, but it only took 3 or 4 times before she understood the situation. During this time, we did give lots and lots of praise for when she did use the potty. Now, we did not use this method for nighttime accidents, as that, in and of itself can take much longer to master. More on that further down in this post. So for now, we are 2-3 weeks into panties every day, with only the occasional accident, which was more a result of a stomach bug than not using the potty.

For Harlan, we tried the same methods and none worked. What seemed to do the trick was the praise we were giving to Lanier, because after about a week, she started waiting to use the potty and wanted to wear panties. She too has now gone about 1-2 weeks with only a couple of accidents, mainly at the beginning.

For both girls, we have moved to no diapers at night as well. Bother have taken to this very well with only a handful of accidents. When they do have a nighttime accident, we let them know its OK and that it happens to everyone when they are learning.

For both girls they are getting the hang of peeing and pooping in the potty, so if they continue down this road we may not have to buy any more diapers.

Twitter for the girls

Mon, 9 Feb 2009 12:30:08 -0500

Well they can’t type yet, but I wanted to secure their twitter names. That’s not to say in 5 years that twitter will be gone and replaced by something else. But since the girls are advanced enough to work an iPod touch, that they will be tweeting before too long.

But in the mean time I may try to post every once and a while to their accounts on twitter. I’ll also have any tweets up on the Girls Tweets Page.

Lanier - lanierashley
Harlan - harlanashley

Video uploads - Finally

Wed, 4 Feb 2009 23:10:02 -0500

Well I have put it off long enough. If it waited much longer we would have missed an entire years worth of videos. So now that I have a good reason to edit some video (new iMovie) I have finally started cutting it up.

Since the hard part is done (uploading to the computer), I can finally start the fun stuff. I always enjoy going over the old video of the girls. Its amazing how much they change in a short period of time. This time I’m going back to May 2008, not too bad, but still behind.

The method to my madness on editing is two fold, 1) edit for the year end DVD, this is for family and 2) YouTube clips of the highlights for family and friends. This time around I’m going to “jazz up” the youtube edits using some of the new features in iMovie ’09. Now I’m not the greatest editor in the world, but I do what I can and people seem to enjoy them. Well enjoy them as much as they can in watching other peoples kids running around.

So you can find the new ones on my youtube channel, our me channel or under the movie link above, which will direct you to youtube.

So over the next couple of days, new videos will be showing up. Enjoy.

New iLife for Apple

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:30:54 -0500

This is the first blog from the new iWeb ’09. I’ll write more once I take it around the block a few times. But this addition will test if it publishes to facebook.