Jadyn's turning 4 - Party 1

Jadyn gets several birthday parties this year. My Mom says shes following in my footsteps. I may or may not have had birthday month week most of my life. Her birthday isn't until the 8th, but we had a party last night. She got her very first bicycle!! She is so excited.

Jadyn's helmet. It's princess (duh) and a size 5. My child has big brains, what can I say?

Daddy helping Jadyn on her bike. See our new ride behind them? I'm in the "soccer mom" club now! :)

Those turns are kind of tricky! A little help from Daddy, and she's off!

Check out my baby (and her baby, riding in the basket...)

A BIG weekend at the Franz house!

We had a big weekend at our house! I was going to say big news, but then I thought someone might think I was preggo and I am not ready for that thought to be thought by anyone.

Instead we have..... TEETH!
Jaycie had her second tooth pop through. You can see them when she smiles. So stinkin' cute! And my sweet little baby Jemma has her first! It's just barely though but it's there and we can feel it. I texted my family to tell them our big news and my sister-in-law responded with, "you know you are deep in Mommy-hood when you get excited about teeth! Way to go!" I thought that was so sweet! Thanks Megan!.

Jaycie's teeth

The roughest part of our day is always evening from 6-7:45. The babies start to get extra fussy and needy just about the time the fatigue of the day begins to set in. We have finally figured out that if we spread out a blanket and just lay them together we will get 20-30 minutes of "play time" where they usually just torture each other, but it looks like playing. Today, though they held hands! They've done it before but today was different. It looked deliberate and it lasted much longer. It was kind of like "It's okay, sissy, I'm right here." I LOVED it!

After I snapped a few shots our other big news happened: Jemma FINALLY rolled over! Jaycie's been doing it forever but Jemma has just not been interested. Jemma is very interested in sitting up, but rolling over... not so much. We were very excited that she finally gave in and rolled over. I've seen her do it before, but it was so isolated I thought it was just a fluke, now I think she was like "seriously, that's all this is - no big deal."

Jaycie

Jemma

I have some Jadyn updates as well, but I will save them for another night!

Life at the Franzes

Life if busy here at the Franz house. We got though Jaycie's first tooth to have Jemma catch a pretty nasty cold. She, of course, wanted to share so Jaycie did the cold thing too...although she's over it now and Jemma's still struggling. Poor baby! We are still trying to find a good routine here at home. Some days things work and some days they just don't. I suppose that's life though. :) Here are few pictures from my phone and instagram that we've taken the last few weeks. Enjoy! 

This is Jaycie and me. As soon as I posted this picture my mom sent me as text and said Jaycie looks just like me when I was a baby. I'm going to try to scan in a picture soon. :) 

Jadyn in a fashion queen. She dressed herself this day. She is so funny and so stinkin cute! 

Jemma was super cranky one evening last week - I put her down for a few minutes to help Jaycie out. When I came back this is what I found. Poor thing fell asleep in her jumper! 

Jadyn is really starting to develop into an awesome big sister. She is doing more and more that is helpful. I don't normally let the babies watch TV, but Jadyn had just started a show after school and she came to me and said "mom, can my baby sister please sit and watch with me." Who can say no to that? I just love this! :) 

Welp, there's a little update :)

Happy 6 mths!

The babies are 6 months old today and healthy! We are so blessed that even though they were 6 weeks early, they are doing remarkably well. Jaycie even finally hit the growth chart on her height. They are both chunky monkeys on their weight - something our doctors office celebrates!

Anyway, when I think about where we were and where we are today I just feel so incredibly blessed!

Happy 6 months, sweet babies!

Jaycie on top
Jemma on bottom.

First tooth

Jaycie has her first tooth. It popped through overnight last night. It explains so much about our week. :)

Here is a somewhat creepy picture of her first tooth: Greg added the arrow just in case you couldn't see it. :)

The Littles

One of the hard things about having twins is remembering that they are 2 people and that they will do things at different times! Maybe I should rephrase that. One of the hard things about having twins is REMINDING others that they are 2 different people and will do things at different times!

Jaycie has been rolling over for quite some time. She rolls over and is almost army crawling. Yesterday she got her knee up under herself for a split second. Our freedom (what little of it we have left) is coming. I can't even imagine what having mobile twins will be like. Jaycie is a smiler. She is so happy all the time!

Jemma, on the other hand, isn't rolling over. She gets all the way up her side but always manages to brace herself and can't get quite over. She gets so mad. She is, however, trying to sit up. She looks like she's doing sit-ups all the time! She can get (what looks to me like) about 45 degrees up. It's pretty awesome! Jemma reminds me so much of a tank. I hope that doesn't become her nickname because it's not lady like. Her personality so makes me laugh. I think she could either be "I'm Jemma Franz don't mess with me." or so laid back that she doesn't even care! (The second would be SO much like her daddy!)

(In this picture she went to sleep instead of burping after her bedtime bottle. We were laughing so hard that Daddy ended up "shaking" the burp out of her from his laughter! - She never did wake up)

After school "baking"

When Jadyn gets stuck in her head that we need to do something.... there is no moving on until we do it. Last week it was pancakes. She wanted pancakes for breakfast every single day and I told her no until we got to the weekend. Then I got up and made her pancakes. She wouldn't eat them.

This week it's been making cookies after school. Now, I know this probably shouldn't be that big of a deal, but after teaching all day I'm not really in the mood to run home and do some baking; but, I also want to be super mom so I figured out a compromise.

Enter fabulous idea.

 I bought the fabulous cookies that you just open the package and put them on the pan! Woo-hoo! Jadyn did it by herself and was so proud that she made cookies.

Because I feel the need for full disclosure.... you should never eat cookies of this style at our house. You are about to see why.

We work on the floor. :) All the germs bake off in the oven, right?!?

She had a fabulous way of putting them on the pan:

I may or may not have suggested she line them up a bit more. I stuck them in the oven and then 8 minutes later pulled them out for her. 

I asked her to model her finished product. She only gave me silly grins...

so I caught one of her enjoying the finished product.

And that is how this busy working mother of 3 keeps her sanity and her status of "super-mom" :)

Labor Day Fun

We all together for Labor Day fun last night. The kiddos got to swim and just play together. The adults got to talk and laugh and just relax. I love love love my family and I love love love the easiness of just hanging out together. I decided on the way out to my folks house that I wanted to make sure to get a picture of all 5 grandkids - which would mean little ones holding little ones, but we did pretty well! I'm so happy that I tried!

Here is Carter and Jadyn enjoying the pool together.

Alex chill-axin after swimming

The 3 older grand kids = Alex, 6 (almost 7 - Friday!!) Carter, 4 (5 in Nov) and Jadyn, 3 (4 in October).

And here is all 5.

And then Alex wanted to hold one of the babies

Cutie-Pa-tuties!!

babies and bottles

A couple of Sunday mornings ago, Greg fed the girls at the same time for the first time!! I've been doing it for awhile bur he had never done it! I was trying to get ready and he thought he could handle it - and did - just like a champ. Jadyn didn't want to miss out on the action so we have a very sweet "everyone just got up" picture of Greg with his girlies! 

Way to go Daddy!!