First trip to the circus!

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey was in town this weekend so we took the boys for their first trip to the circus. Our boys may not yet have quite the attention span required to enjoy a long sit-down show as this year's performance was almost two hours long. Owen slept for more than half that time and as Joey walked out of the Erwin Center (with souvenir toy in hand, might I add), he declared, "I don't like the circus." Okay then. Glad we spent about $800 on food, drinks and souvenirs.

Owen eating his lunch before the show begins.

Joey riding a motorcycle on the circus floor during the pre-show.

Joey's potty training: Round 1

I've been trying to play it cool with the potty training and decided that I was just going to let things run its course and that we would start only when Joey let us know that he was ready. Over the last couple of weeks, Joey started asking us to take him to the potty and actually successfully went pee-pee and poo-poo several times. So I took that to mean that he was giving us the green light (and I was also admittedly excited about cutting down on diaper purchases).

So we got the boys' bathroom ready to go with all the requisite potty training items:

Toilet seat

Kid-sized urinal (aka the Peter Potty)

Reward chart

Bribes (er, rewards)

Our plan was to give Joey 1 sticker each time he went pee-pee and 2 stickers each time he went poo-poo. Everytime he earned 2 stickers, he would get a car. Joey wore big boy underwear during the day and wore Pull-Ups only at night or when we were leaving the house. The training went surprisingly well for about 5 days as far as the pee-pee was concerned (as evidenced by the chart pictured above). He earned a lot of cars and we even had a song and dance routine that we would perform each time he went ("Joey went pee-pee in the potty, repeat, repeat, repeat). The pooping started out okay and just slowly deteriorated throughout the week until finally he was pooping in his underwear and freaking out when we would try to change him. Then he started peeing in his pants too and it was around that time that mommy's patience started to wear thin. And that was that for round 1 of potty training...

Port Aransas

Mima organized a family trip to Port Aransas to close out the summer. Almost everyone was there (we missed you Kevin and Laura!) and it was great to see Joey and Owen play with their cousins Beth and Maggie. We can't wait to do it again next year! Click here to see the pictures.

Happy birthday mommy & daddy!

Another year, another birthday for mommy and daddy. Our birthdays are not nearly as fun and exciting as the kids' birthdays - we don't get balloons, smash cakes or parties. But we do get to celebrate with two of the sweetest, most adorable boys ever so who are we to complain?

Joey has started singing songs a lot recently. Here he is performing "Happy Birthday" with a bit of prompting from mommy and daddy.

Going to the Big D

We made a trip to Dallas over the weekend to catch up with family and friends. We got to see the Kelleys and their brand new baby boy and visited the beautiful new home of our friends the Poglitsches. The drive there and back was actually pretty pleasant. Both boys slept a lot and when they weren't sleeping, they were about as happy as can be expected.

Joey flipping through the pages of a costume catalog in preparation for Halloween.

Owen and his precious bunny.

I love this picture of cousin Scott staring at Owen like he's some sort of alien.

Cousin Susan practicing her baby skills by feeding Owen his dinner.

Our boys with all our friends' cute kiddos.