First off, isn’t this the sweetest, most adorable picture ever?  :)  George put both kids in Emma’s bed the other day for a nap and I had to take a picture.

Its been just over 2 weeks now since we put Hudson in a toddler bed and Emma staying in her bed all night.  Both transitions have been going better than expected, especially with Emma.  A couple of nights she never even came into our room!  Then sometimes she’ll come in once and want to give George a hug and then she goes back to bed all by herself.

George told her to stay in her room until it was light outside.  So a couple of mornings I’ve gone in to find her blinds half open b/c she was checking to see if it was light out.  How cute is that?  It has been so nice to not sleep on the edge of my bed and not have elbows and feet in my back.  :)

Hudson has been doing okay with his new bed too.  The first couple of nights he constantly came out of his room but now that has stopped.  The biggest obstacle is he likes to come in our room 4-4:30ish and I have to get up and put him back in his bed.  Then it’s almost impossible for me to go back to sleep so I’m a tired cranky mommy.  Last night was really bad.  BOTH kids were up 3-5 times starting at 4am.  Hopefully this phase will pass soon.

Tonight when Hudson was getting in bed he told me he wanted to sleep with his beep beeps.  That’s fairly normal until he started lining every beep beep up in his bed that he could find.  He was so happy so I let him keep them there.  It was so cute.

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Now for the super exciting news!

Barbra babysat for us Saturday night and she texted me that Hudson had went potty on the big boy potty.  I was a little sad that I wasn’t there for it but that’s ok.  So I decided to kind of go with it and not get my hopes up that he’ll be out of diapers next week.  :)   Isn’t he growing way too fast?

Anyways, he has gone pee pee several times for me this week.  Emma is his biggest cheerleader and she cracks me up.  She acts like his mother all the time and it’s so funny.  I’ve started doing the M&M reward thing with him b/c that is what worked with Emma.  So I said 3 M&Ms for pee and 5 for poop.  Well Emma keeps insisting that he should go poop so he can get FIVE M&Ms.  It’s killing her that he won’t go poop in the potty.  ha!  Somehow she thinks she gets a reward when he goes.  Too funny.

I’m definitely not pushing him at this point to go.  Since he’s in the nursery at school they don’t work on the whole potty thing.  So it seems almost point less to really work on it right now.  Fingers crossed though that it won’t be much longer.  It’ll be so strange to stop buying diapers!

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It is bedtime for me!  I’m going on a girls beach trip to Gulf Shores tomorrow and I still haven’t packed!  I’m excited b/c this is my first trip to Gulf Shores.  Hopefully George will survive with the kiddos and animals.  :)  Happy Mother’s Day to me.

Hudson is almost 2.5 now and we finally made the switch to a toddler bed.  I really didn’t want to switch him since he is our amazing sleeper but he finally learned how to get in/out of it so I wanted to get it over with.  I feel like he’s not my baby anymore!  He’s such a big boy and I keep thinking about potty training him and it just doesn’t seem right.

Unfortunately, the whole big boy bed thing has not been easy.  I think we’ve had 2 full nights of sleep since making the switch last Monday.  I thought it would be easier but he knows he has this new freedom and he’s taking full advantage of it!  Little stinker.

He also knows that Emma ends up in our room every night and he constantly says “i want sleep mommy’s bed.”  When I say no, he then says “I want sleep Emma room” and while it is cute, we are NOT going there!  Emma has been coming into our room since she was probably 2 and while I do love sleeping with my babies, it has to stop.  There is no way 4 of us can fit in our bed along with Braxton!

Hopefully in a few more days Hudson will realize that we are not giving in to him sleeping with us and he’ll resume his normal sleeping habits.  :)

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We’ve also started a new chart for miss Emma.  Today was Day 2 of sleeping in her own bed all night and making her bed in the morning.  We have been holding her Ipad hostage and so we told her when she gets 24 stickers she can have it back.   Basically she gets 2 stickers a day for each item and we are doing the chart for 2 weeks.  She’s been very excited about it so far and hopefully it will work!

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Over the weekend we finally decided to empty Emma’s piggy banks.  Over the past 5 years I’ve been putting all spare change in her banks and family members have been adding too.  She has quite a stockpile!

Not counting the cash and silver dollars, she had $159 in coins!  We had fun separating it and rolling it as a family.

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On Sunday we worked all day cleaning out our garage.  I think we did the biggest purge ever in our 10 years together and it feels so great!  The kids and I loaded it all up on Monday and took it to Goodwill.  Our garage looks so much better now.  I’ve still got more cleaning out to do inside the house & in the attic but I feel less stress every time I pull into the garage.  :)

I wanted to remember something that Hudson did during our big Sunday purge.  At one point in the late afternoon we had left both kids in the house for a few minutes thinking that they were watching tv.  It was hot out and Hudson had a major red hot face so I thought it would be good for them to rest.  Well, about 15 minutes later I went into Emma’s room and noticed green and pink marker all over her carpet.  The green was everywhere.  I.about.died.  George brought Hudson inside and he said he did it.  George started scrubbing and at first, it looked worse but then it started coming off.   It’s still there but not as noticeable.

Anyways, the markers he had used were for this Melissa & Doug birthday cupcake set of Emma’s.  You can use the markers to paint stuff on the cupcakes and it is super messy.  Emma always likes to pretend it is someone’s birthday and we’ll sing “Happy Birthday” and then pretend to blow out the candles.  So as we were scrubbing, Hudson stands at the play kitchen with those cupcakes and starts singing Happy Birthday.  I had no clue he could sing it!  He would sing “happy birthday to you.  happy birthday to you” and then blow out the candles.  It was just so sweet and reminded me just how much he’s growing.  He just talks and talks and his so loving and sweet.  :)

Emma is playing soccer for the 2nd year now and still loves it.  She plays in our local AYSO league and couldn’t be happier.  Her first game ended with some tears b/c although she came super close to scoring a goal, she didn’t.  As soon as the game was over she threw herself down and sobbed.  She is so competitive and we are working on it.  She scored 2 goals (I think) at the second game and it was much better.  She did an awesome job and had so much fun!

Oh and after looking through 100+ soccer pictures, I think she has her tongue hanging out in 95% of them!

I love this one!  She had just scored a goal and high-fived her team mate.  Her smile just makes my day!

About a month ago Barbra celebrated her 17th birthday at the skating rink.  Emma had never been skating but I used to spend every weekend at the skating rink when I was in junior high so I was pumped!  We ended up having a blast & I even got to take a loop or two by myself while Emma took a break & snacked.  :)

I was so proud of Emma because sometimes she can get discouraged if she can’t do something really well but she never gave up trying!  By the end of the party she was doing great at holding her balance and we had so much fun!  My arm/shoulder was so so sore the next day though from holding her hand so tight and trying to keep her from falling.  I think it was a great workout!

Don’t those skates look huge on her?  Such a big girl these days!  I signed her up for Kindergarten last Thursday.  I still can’t believe it!

Last week BOTH kids went to the dentist.  It was Emma’s 2nd time and Hudson’s first.  I was so anxious about it and extremely glad when it was over.  Luckily George was able to join us so that really helped out!

Emma was a bit of a drama queen and really made the hygenist work for her paycheck.  :)  She has got to be the most stubborn little princess I’ve ever seen.  After she was held down we were able to get her teeth clean but it took about 30 minutes.  Whew!

Then it was time for H-man.  After seeing Emma kicking and screaming on the table, I’m surprised he didn’t hide!  He definitely did NOT want the dentist looking in his mouth but the dentist was really good with him.  Since it was his first time, he just looked in his mouth and thought his teeth looked great.  Hopefully next time he’ll get a good cleaning.  :)

After the dentist the kids and I headed to the mall to get Hudson some new shoes.  We headed over to Stride Rite in the mall and he picked out some awesome Spider Man shoes!

Then we headed to the food court where Emma saw the trampoline thing.  She about died and wanted to “jump now, now, now!”  She’s my little daredevil!  Not realizing how high she would actually jump, I said yes.  At first, she just jumped a little and it was not bad at all.  Then she really started jumping.  My heart and stomach started flipping but she LOVED it.  She loved it so much she immediately wanted to do it again.

Time to go play outside!  It is gorgeous today!

It’s no surprise that poor little Hudson doesn’t get the same attention as Emma did.  With Emma we stayed home alot and just played and worked on stuff all day long.  These days life is just busy.  I still think of Hudson as my little baby and I’m so not ready for him to grow up.  :)  I have no desire to switch him from his crib to a big boy bed and would be fine keeping him there until he’s 18.  ha.

So I was super surprised a couple of weeks ago when Hudson starting counting.  Emma always did things very early and I if I remember correctly, she was counting at like 15 months old and counting to 20 by 18 months old.  She’s a girl and just does things quickly.  So while I work with Hudson some, I just haven’t done it much.

He was sitting on my lap 2 weeks ago and was banging his 2 cars together and saying something.  I wasn’t paying much attention b/c I was watching American Idol-which I’m loving this season!  After a minute or two I started paying attention to him and realized he was counting as he hit his cars together!  I about died!  He would hit the cars together and say “one” and so on.  I quickly paused the tv and had George and Emma listen.  Then Emma had him counting to twenty.  So how long has he been counting?  I have no clue!  This just came out of nowhere.  I was so proud.  :)

Then last night in the Shaggy’s parking lot he sang his ABCs with me for the first time ever!  I’ve been working on that for a long time with him and every night for the past so many months I sing them over and over at bedtime.  He can definitely point out letters if you ask him “where’s the A” but to hear that sweet little voice sing with me was so sweet.  He’s such a doll!

Now I just need to get it on video.  I’ll do my best to work on that.

I still have more pictures to share from Emma’s big birthday weekend but for now I’ll share some older pictures of H…

George and I still can’t believe that we have a 5 year old!  Time just seems to fly by now that we have 2 kids.  Only a couple more months and I’ll be registering her for Kindergarten!  Ahhh!

Friday was her official birthday but she kept saying her “real” birthday was Saturday because that’s when her party was.

On Thursday night George and I stayed up late cleaning and then decorating the house for the birthday girl.  We had to wake up early Friday morning b/c she had a checkup at Vanderbilt.

When she got up and saw the decorations she was so excited!  Then I was putting some clothes in the washer and she runs up to me and says “Mommy, do I look bigger?” and she was kind of shaking her arms around.  I said “I think so” and then she ran to the bathroom to see.  Then she starts squealing and says she is definitely bigger.  It was so incredibly cute!

Gabby and Ru-Rus met us in Nashville to help with the appointment and then we met cousin Amy and a family friend at the Spaghetti Factory for lunch.  It was very tasty!  Another funny story-after we finished our meal our server brought out Spumoni for the 2 birthday girls (Amy & Emma) and there was a candle in each one.  Apparently Emma had just told Gabby that she had to go potty.  Well three servers came out and announced to the whole restaurant that we were celebrating two birthdays and Emma runs from the table jumping and crying saying she couldn’t hold it and she had to go NOW!  It was hilarious!  Poor thing was about to die so since I was holding Hudson, Gabby saved the day and got her to the bathroom.  Once she did her business she was ready for her spumoni.  :)   Ru-Rus relit the candle so she could blow it out.  :)

From there we headed home and we even got to see some snow!

We were all so tired that night that we just sat around the house and had tacos.   Emma loved having her grandparents here and was ready for her party.

To be continued…

I’m tired so I’ll write about the party tomorrow hopefully!