My business partner and I recently booked some entertainment for a client and we had a chance to go and enjoy the festivities of the grand opening.  It was a car showroom grand opening for pre-owned luxury vehicles.  Know what I found out?  Ross really likes cars.  I mean really really likes cars.

Okay, so he likes his sister too, but boy are we going to have trouble when he is older.  He looked at each and every one and was in awe.

Francesca liked this one, an old BMW Isetta.

He was beaming from ear to ear the entire night.  He loved the cars.  Oh, and they had cupcakes.  And cookies.  Good Italian cookies like Zia makes.  So there was that too.

We went to the Radio Disney Studio in downtown Chicago recently to fulfill a Cub Scout requirement; communication.  The kids got to see what Radio Disney was all about, how they make money and then the kids got to record their voices in the recording studio and then play them back.

Adam, DJ extraordinaire and all around great guy led the tour and the kids loved him.  After the tour, the kids got a great Radio Disney goody bag and got to have lunch and hang out downtown for awhile.

They enjoyed tossing coins into this fountain.  But want to know what they really thought was cool?

Riding the “el” to and from Chicago.  They were daring and tried to balance when the train started and stopped and loved being thrown off balance.  This was the best part of their great day!

The certificate makes it official!  Ross has officially graduated from kindergarten.  He is now a big 1st grader.  All that’s left is to pick up report cards on Friday.

My kindergarten graduate and me!

Ross and Miss Bultinck - what a lovely, wonderful teacher.  Thank you, Miss Bultinck, for taking such good care of Ross this year!  We love you!

I am constantly looking for ideas to incorporate in Ross and Francesca’s rooms and I love the look of Pottery Barn and Land of Nod. Mainstream, I know, but cute none-the-less.  I was looking at the Land of Nod website and just now realized they offer wallpaper. Could have been that way for a while - I just never realized it before.  I like the idea of Land of Nod offering wallpaper, as I like their asthetic. These two are kind of cute and can be found here http://www.landofnod.com/wallpaper/kids/1.

I’d like the alphabet better if it wasn’t the Greek alphabet and if it was offered in more color choices.  The frame one is cute but a little to busy for my purposes.  What I especially like is this one below.  At first glance it’s nothing special, but as you read what it is - PRESTO.  It’s textured to look as if it’s bead board, and it’s paintable.  Super cool.

I’d love to see Land of Nod offer more prints, maybe some cute florals.  I would also love to see what Pottery Barn would do with a wallpaper line - for kids and adults.  I think that would be awesome!  I know the design purists would probably cringe at the thought but for those of us who like the look of these stores, it would be an easy solution to a design dilemma.

Sometimes they fight so hard I think one of them is really going to get hurt.  And then, there are moments like this.  They love each other so very much and Francesca will give Ross a kiss and a hug “just because”.  Or Ross will join in a tea party simply because he was asked.  It’s times like these that make me forget about the times when they are swinging and kicking at each other.

Francesca went through a brief period of not wanting to go to dance class anymore.  She actually missed the last 2 classes, one because she was sick and the last one because she didn’t want to go.  I wasn’t going to sign her up again, she loves gymnastics and wants to learn to ice skate so she can play hockey(!?!) so I was good with her taking those classes.  Every day for the last 2 weeks she has been asking to go to dance class.  When I remind her that she didn’t want to go anymore, she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.  I guess we’ll be registering again for dance class.  I’m secretly happy.  I love to watch her in dance class and I hope she will get enjoyment from dancing.  I love music and I love to dance.

This was at the auto show.  Just think, 13 years from now she’ll be on the road with the rest of us!  AAAACCCKKK!

“Old Buckethead” in better days.  With unseasonably warm weather these last few days, the snowman that the kids built is no longer in good shape.  Let’s just say that he’s off to the North Pole to return again someday!  But how cute the children are!  There is nothing cuter than kids dressed head to toe in snow suits!

We waited a while for Francesca.  In a lot of different ways ways.  We waited to conceive.  We switched to science when our own attempts did not work.  We tried different scientific approaches, finally arriving at success with PGD and in-vitro fertilization.  When Francesca was around a year old, at the suggestion of her day care,  we had the folks from the Zero to Three program come out to evaluate her.  The teacher at the day care felt she wasn’t hitting the milestones she should be in basically all areas.  I had some concerns myself but had chalked them off to her being on the slower side of the “normal” range.  When I brought the concerns up to our pediatrician he said she was fine, we should wait, but he understood my concern and need to follow up further.

The program administrators sent out a slew of folks, from occupational and physical therapists to speech therapists, all of whom came to conduct an in-home evaluation.  I am pleased to say, as were they, that Francesca was doing just fine and would be hitting those milestones in her own time.  We just need to wait.  The speech therapist did suggest that if by 18 months she didn’t speak more we could have her re-evaluated.

She spoke a little more, but not much more at 18 months.  At this point, I was more comfortable in my own skin and felt that Francesca was just moving at her own pace and that it was just a tad behind the other kids.  We didn’t re-evaluate.   We waited some more.  Every so often I question where she is developmentally and before I have a chance to explore my concerns further, she goes and moves on up to another milestone.

At just over 3 now, she is talking up a storm.  Her sentences are not grammatically correct by any stretch of the imagination.  At times I catch myself wondering if she should have the syntax of grammar “down” a little more than she does, and then I remember that she will “get it” in her own time.  And we wait.   There will come a time, in the very near future that I will miss the little nuances and errors of her speech and grammar.  She will soon move away from those cute mixed-up phrases and be talking like a “3 going on 10″ year old. For now, she speaks like this:

“Who do that?”

“Mommy, this eye wake” (as she points to her eye), “this eye, tired” (as she points to the other).

“I hungry Mommy.”

“I no sorry!” (very popular after asking her to apologize to her brother for something she did to him)

I love the way she speaks. For now, I will cherish the words and phrases of a pre-schooler and

I will chuckle, to myself, when she talks as she does.  It will soon change.  I can wait.

We did it!  With just a small effort Francesca is potty trained.  She is a stubborn little one and has resisted for some time now, even though she knew the drill.  So I waited.  I finally revisited the whole potty training thing and within short order she was running to the potty on her own.

I still have her in pull-ups at night although she wakes up dry most mornings.  I should have let my 6 year old train her, because she looks up to him so much.  He suggested she use the ” big potty” (toilet) and lo and behold she has circumvented the potty chair and went straight to the big potty.  So much for transition.

It is so nice to not have to buy diapers anymore.  We now have quite the assortment of fancy big girl underwear.  Dora, Disney princesses and Fancy Nancy underwear are particular favorites.  Although with a big brother who is such a Star Wars fan, I think she might prefer Star Wars underwear.  She walks around humming the Star Wars theme and playing with his Lego Star Wars toys. Too bad they don’t make them for girls.