Life, Lately (Alternate Title: Do ALL the Things!)

Some years are full of life.  An extra shot of life, if you will.  We've had some big years. 2010 was an extra dose or two of life.  I graduated college and we got married, which also meant moving to a new state.  2014, Lord knows that was a big year, what with having twins and all.

And then 2015 rolled around.

God has decided that the stretch from May-October would be a great time for us Williamses to:

1. Graduate with a PhD (Tyson).
2. Grow a third child (me.  Tyson sort of played a part).
3. Upgrade to a minivan.
4. Start a new job (Tyson).
5. Buy a house (also mostly me).
6. Move to a new state/city.

Major life events: might as well do 'em all at once.

(Just a sampling of our mail today.  Three letters: one with ultrasound instructions, one congratulating us on the purchase of our home, and one on the titling/licensing of our van. These letters contain instructions that range from "call to follow up on this paperwork" to the ever popular "DO NOT EMPTY YOUR BLADDER".)

That list should come with subsections, though, since starting a new job means Tyson will be working out-of-town each week in the meantime (training on-site before he can work from home remotely permanently) (thankfully he will be home on the weekends in the meantime) (what am I supposed to do with two 1 1/2 year olds all week?) (parentheses!), buying a house means omg the paperwork! And getting insurance! And all sorts of documents from the past few months/years/lifetimes! And the paperwork!  (Also, Tyson accepted his job offer last Friday afternoon, the offer on the house was put in at about 11:00 that night, and accepted by 11:00 the following morning.  Just a normal weekend around here.)  (And I LOOOOOVE the house.  Tyson has never seen it.  It's fine.)  And moving to a new state/city means spending the next month and a half purging, packing, and cleaning. While Tyson is mostly gone.  And Caden and Brooklyn are still around.  See: it's fine, we'll survive, etc.

(We still require things like food and attention!  And you should probably be teaching us things so we can grow up to be functional members of society!)

So, as you can tell, we have absolutely nothing going on around here.

Double Jump, Pillow Pile!

Jumping off of the couch onto pillows, or: one way to eat up 45 minutes before bedtime.

(And it wore them the heck out, too.)

You should have heard all the giggling.  Constant, from-the-gut, full-on, toddler giggling.

This may look as though Brooklyn has no fear, just like Caden, but let me reassure you that our delicate princess remains her cautious and careful self.  Caden just walked until there was no couch left, until gravity plummeted him downward onto the pillows, whereas Brooklyn walked to the edge, carefully sat down, and pushed herself off the remaining two inches to the ground.  You go, sister.

I'd apologize for the blurriness, but this is pretty much how it looked in real time.

"Outta my way!  I'll show you how carefully this is done."

And sometimes we lost our pants.

Life Lately

They help!

Sorta.

Kinda.

Caden may have just been taking my clean laundry from the basket and putting it in the dryer.  And then taking it out of the dryer and putting it back in the basket.  Repeat.  For about a half hour.  (#atleastitwascleanunderwear)

Caden is actually a really good helper, and will hand me laundry to fold and put away, dishes out of the dishwasher as I'm unloading, food out of the grocery bags to put in the cabinets, and he loves to throw things in the garbage.  He's also usually the first to do something when I tell them to...depending on where we are, "bye bye" either sends him to the entry looking for his shoes, or running for the stroller so we can leave the park.  "Come here" usually elicits a grin and a wobbly run-walk back to where I need him to be.  (Brooklyn's "helping" skillz, on the other hand, are more hit or miss.)

They play!

(No one is sick of toddler in the tub pictures yet, are they?)

(Good.)

And play!

And play some more!

(Yes, that is a lap diaper full of sand and pebbles right there.)

They grow!

They spent the last day in their infant car seats on Tuesday.  I'm not quite sure how that happened.

(Actually I sort of know how it happened.  It suddenly dawned on me about a week ago that hey-even though they are nowhere near the 30-pound weight limit of their infant car seats, they actually are somewhat on the tall side.  And come to think of it, we are kind of smooshing them in there more than we used to.  *Research session on height limit of current car seats*  They needed a new car seat oh, about an inch or two ago.)

They party!

Baby shower BBQ/life group celebration.  And in four-ish (???) years of meeting, I think this is the ONLY time that we've gotten a picture with the entire group.  Go figure, since some of our dear friends will be moving out-of-state in just a couple of weeks.

I would also like to point out that when we started, our "young married couples" life group had zero children.  Four-ish years later and there are five littles running around, with three on the way.  Guess that's what a "young married couples" label will do to ya, huh?

We've Come a Long Way, Babies

Tyson was gone Friday night, leaving me to these two little buggers.

And...it was easy.  Sure, I'd already been with them all day.  And that is exhausting.  But a year ago-heck, even a few months ago-I would have been cringing and dreading all day (all week) the fact that I was going to be flying solo for the evening.

Now?

(Wut?  You used to dread being with us?  Us?!?)

Plunk 'em in a tub after dinner (which, okay, was pizza) (DELICIOUS pizza) (they mostly ate fruit WHO ARE THESE KIDS), let 'em run around for a little bit wearing only their diapers, toss 'em in a crib with a pacifier and a story, annnnnddddd done.  Now that they go to sleep on their own (and more or less stay that way), it's almost too easy.  I mean, not too easy (hahaha, like I got anything done while they were awake!  The kitchen, high chairs, bathroom, and living room were all waiting for a good cleaning/pick-up/hose down after I put them in bed), but, y'know.  Relatively speaking, it was easy.

I can't emphasize enough how much I used to dread going it alone in the evening after already being with them all the livelong day.  And now I meet it with a shrug and a life-as-usual grin.  (Good thing, too, since Tyson will be working Wednesday and Thursday evenings all summer.)

(Caden I'm CRYING I'm laughing so hard!)

I would also like to point out the SPANKING CLEANESS of the bathtub.  I wore actual rubber gloves and cleaned it with actual bathroom scrubbing soap and I even actually scoured down the little ledges and shelves and everything on Friday.  I think the only other time this bathtub has been cleaned since we moved in (oh...almost four years ago) was February 2014, after these two were born and my parents and Tyson's parents cleaned everything before we came home from the hospital.  I'm not quite sure where this fit of housewifely cleanliness came from.  You can be assured that it won't happen again until at least 2018.