In Sickness...

My list of thanks is a day late. This time the "sickness" was me, not the girls. Sunday evening I ended up with the stomach flu. You'd think after all the coughing and snot in our home, that I'd sing the same song, but alas, I got the curve ball. But, I'm so thankful:

1029. Brad was able to stay home Monday, so I could rest.

1030. The girls seem to have escaped the stomach flu (you can pray about that one, I am).

And in other news:

1031. We were most thankful to receive a beautifully crafted Halloween card (and a sweet note from their mama) from our friends in Kentucky :)

1032. The girls learning that pirates say, Aaaarrrrrh!

1033. Vases of delicious smelling roses all over our house! Who would have thought our roses would go crazy with blooms in November?!

1034 and 1035. While the girls were sitting on my lap, Hadley reached over to give Brynne her bink. Brynne then signed thank you, completely unprompted!

1036. Brynne telling me every time she needed her diaper changed.

1037. Ready for winter!



Mama Loves: Bird Watching

Welcome to another fantastic week of Mama Loves! This is a linky party where mamas can share anything that has made your life easier as a mama.

Maybe you've found:

• a toy or book that captivates your child(ren)
• gear you just can't live without  
• a recipe your choosy toddler gobbles down  
• a parenting book that you've found perspective changing
• an activity that wears your kid out (these lead to good naps, which we all love)
• an outfit that flatters your post-baby body and makes you feel fabulous

Share it with us! Blogging has made me a better mama, because I've learned about all kinds of great things, like those listed above, from mamas just like you. Here's your chance to share it with all of us!

To link your post up, click on the linky tool at the bottom, and follow the directions, it's really easy. You can also add this beautiful button to your post. Just grab the code in the box, copy and paste it into your post. Easy.

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If you'd told me a year ago that we would be a bird-watching family. I might have thought you were insane.

This is what I think of when I think of bird watchers:



So.

We aren't "carry-a-canteen-of-water-and-big-binoculars" bird watching family but we do love watching birds.

Right outside our livingroom window we have a two-sided hook, where we hang a plant and a hummingbird feeder. It's kind of hard to explain, so here you go:

This summer the girls have loved spotting the hummingbirds at our feeder! They will stop what they're doing and run to the window, signing "bird" the entire way there, just to get a closer look.

Of course, this typically scares away the hummingbirds, so they wave goodbye, and wait for the next one to come along. This is never discouraging for them--I love their tenacity for bird-watching!

I noticed our daughters' love for hummingbirds, and recently decided to add a finch feeder to our little display outside the same window. (Notice it in the above picture to the left of the hanging plant).

For several days we didn't get any birds at our feeder, and I'd begun to think my purchase was a huge mistake.

Then, we saw them! 

They've continued to visit our feeders, so much so that we're refilling them at least once a week.

Our girls love spotting the birds at the feeder--it's so much fun to see their delight. They run at the window and pound their greeting to the birds on the glass. It sends the birds flying away, flashing their vibrantly colored wings about, of course, but the girls never lose their enthusiasm for spotting the birds.

I'm so excited to teach them about the different kinds of birds that visit our feeders, as they get older too--I consider our canteen-less and big binocular-less bird watching to be a great teaching tool.

If you have a window at your children's eye level, I'd urge you to consider feeding whatever local birds you have living there.

We've had so much fun doing it this year!

Can't wait to see what you're loving this week!

Mama Loves: Sign, Signs, Everywhere the Signs

Welcome to another week of Mama Loves!

You can read all about what Mama Loves is, right here. I hope you'll join our community!

A big huge thank you to all of you who linked up your Mama Loves this past week! It was so much fun to read all your mama must-haves!

I'm excited to see what you'll have to share with us this week!

So, I was going to do this really cute thing with the girls and the drawing for the nail polish, but the girls' 18 month check-up happened, and, just for fun, this happened while we were there:

Not pretty. Neither was our evening.

So...there is no cute drawing. Just good ole random.org.

And the winner is (enter a Griswold drum roll here):

#4 = Mandy from My Life as Described by Twin Trials and Triumphs.

Yay! Congrats! A bottle of Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous will be on its way to you shortly!

P.S. Brynne is a-okay! She just has a shiner. The benefit of face-planting into a metal chair at the pediatrician's office, is that you get a thorough check-up, and your daughter gets an icepack that is shaped like a penguin.

A win/win situation, I say.

On with my Mama Loves for this week!

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At six months, I began diligently using sign language with the girls. Simple things like "more" and "milk".

By eight months, I was pretty sure our girls were sign language failures. At nine months, I was sure of it.

Around 10 months, I regained hope! They clapped for "more". Hallelujah!

Maybe I was too hasty to call them failures.

At 13 months the girls began picking up tons of sign language. It was awesome! I could do a sign once or twice, and they would have it!

This website, Signing Savvy is awesome! You type in a word or phrase you want to know how to sign, and there's a video of a guy showing you the sign! Sometimes diagrams are unclear to me--video is, for sure, the way to go!

I consult Signing Savvy just about every day. I'm constantly coming across words or phrases that I think would be helpful for the girls to learn.

Since our girls aren't very verbal, I love that they have a way to communicate things to us through sign language--cuts down on frustration for the girls, and for Mama too! More than that, it's just fun!

Check it out! I hope you find it helpful too!
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My sweet friend, Melissa created a button for Mama Loves--I love, love, love it!

<center><a href="http://pontificationsofatwinmom.blogspot.com/search/label/Mama%20Loves" target="_blank"><img alt="Manic Mother" src="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv66/MaAldrich/MamaLovesButtoncopy.jpg"/></a></center>

So, you can pretty-up your Mama Loves post, if you want!!