"Better Go and Get Your Mama"

We had a weird day today. I want to say lazy, since you couldn't see a square inch of the carpet in the living room, through all the toys and carseats whose covers were being washed. Also both babies were in their diapers/undies until 4:30 pm.
But it wasn't exactly lazy, because I did what felt like 48 loads of laundry, dishes, actually made the beds for once, made myself an apron, and made a doll for Paige. My first attempt at a doll, so there are lots of things I'll do differently next time, but she doesn't care. She's VERY pleased. She was sprinting around with her yelling things like "Thank you MAMA!" and "I so excited have my doll!", and "My doll SOOOO cute!" , and hugging her.
While I made her, Paige painted. She also did a bit of mixed media art work, watercolor and glitter, as shown below. This she tells me, is Santa:
We also had a dance party, to Paige's current favorite song: "Battlefield" by Jordin Sparks. Haha. Cason on dance solo, Paige on piano and vocals.
Obviously her favorite part is getting to sing LOUDLY "BATTLEFIELD! BATTLEFIELD! A BATTLEFEE-ELD!" But she also loves the part that goes "Better go and get your armor." Only she thinks it says "Better go and get your mama!" I encourage it, and sing it along with her.

They were just watching Rescue Rangers, and I peeked at them, and Cason was making this awesome face, with a deeply furrowed brow, like the show disgusts him.
Closeup, you ask? My pleasure.

Happy Birthday Jess!

Happy 27th birthday to my husband. You're the best. I don't know what I'd do without you. Not be in love, or have babies to love too, I guess. Also be sort of bored, and not nearly as happy and fulfilled. Thanks Barby, for giving birth 27 years ago. Thanks Karl AND Barby for raising him. Thanks God, for making him. Thanks Jess for making my life SO wonderful.

We love you. Happy birthday. Buy a flat screen.

Too Fast

Shortest weekend ever. But we made it good.

Cason requested lots of high speed dips.
"Moe?"
Paige cuddled.
And had whiskers.
The babies played.
Danced.
And fought.
And had a go at Mario Kart.
We had early birthday visits for Jess, involving gifts and cake.
Veronica bought him Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. It's being enjoyed.
Now I'm off to do a late night puzzle with Jess, like a couple of nerds.

YES

It's Friday. Woohoo. Last night Paige helped me make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.
Then she fell asleep in her clothes, and we just let her sleep in them. She still has them on this morning, along with crazy matted bed hair.
We painted,
and they've both been happily eating Halloween Ghostie cereal. Paige eats it perched on top of our couch by the window, where she can be sure Gia won't steal any.

Manners and Bloodshed

Caso likes to give kisses to his babies lately, along with all the real people he loves. Especially Barbies and his stuffed gorilla Aunt Mollie bought for him. He calls it "baby" and hugs and kisses it, and makes me hug and kiss it too.
This is his "give me some suga" face.
He gets what he wants.

He helped me cook again tonight.
I was making my mom's delicious stew. Lots of cans to open.
Paige and Cason have been so cute to listen to lately. They have little mini conversations. Twice now I've seen Paige give Cason a bite of food from her plate, and he says thank you-"Thankie" and then she says "YOU'RE welcome Cason." I keep loving them.

I Like Your Pants

Apparently we were a day off on the first day of fall, and none of you even made fun of me. Weird.

Last night in her prayers Paige said thank you for "Alex and Faif. All my friends. Tooooys." I feel like there was something else really cute in there, but I can't remember.

This morning we're playing with ponies and Tinkerbell and a Barbie. She made her ponies fly away, and they were yelling "Goodbye Tinkerbell! Goodbye Barbie!" Then at the last second she yelled "BARBIE I LIKE YOUR PANTS!"

Cooks and Baths

Tonight Paige helped me cook. She really helped me. I chopped an onion and she took the pieces I chopped and made SURE they were plenty small, and if not she broke them apart for me and put them all in a bowl. Then I put on an oven mitt at one point, and she ran for her kitchen yelling about her pink one with flowers on it. She was gone longer than I expected, and came back with the full getup, matching apron, potholder, and oven mitt.
The boy tried mine on tonight too.
He also marched around the backyard wielding our hose spray attachment, pointing it at things and even making appropriate sounds. "PSSSH! PSSH!" He's wonderful.
He also decided that he'd go ahead and put 3 words together, forming a nearly complete sentence tonight. I got their bath all ready, and came to get them from the playroom. I asked "Want to take a bath?" Paige said "No tank you, I watchin' Caillou." So I asked Cason, who looked excited. I started to take off his diaper and he goes "takeaba". I freaked out and asked Jess if he heard him, but he didn't, because he was really into the book he was reading. I was so disappointed I was the only one who heard it. It sounded JUST like he said "take a bath" really fast, without the "th". But luckily for me, as soon as I got his diaper off, Cason said it 2 more times and went marching for the bathroom. We BOTH heard it that time. So I took him to the bath, and after a few minutes Paige came running in. She hopped in too, and Cason goes "takeaba?" So cute.

I love bath night. I always did. We did it every other night with Paige, and she loved baths. We always warmed her towel up in the dryer before we got her out, took her to the hydration station right after, and lotioned her up. We did it the same way with Caso, except without warming his towel, since it wasn't getting cold out yet when he was born. I love how much fun they have in the bath, and how clean they look and smell after, in their pjs.

FALL FALL FALL...

...starts tomorrow! And it's the best. I broke out the decorations today. With a little Halloween mixed in. I can't wait.
Paige found her old snail costume in the box when we brought it out. She wanted to wear it, so we just put the sleeves and hood on and that was enough to please her. She wanted Caso to wear his hammerhead costume, but there was no way that was gonna fit any part of him.
She's pretty pumped for Halloween.
Speaking of Paige, she had a short tantrum phase when she first turned 2, but we got through that pretty easily. Now she's suddenly getting frustrated easily and sometimes won't tell us what she wants, just gets really mad at us and we have no idea why. It'll probably pass quickly like the other phase though.

She's still sweet sweet most of the time anyway. For example, today she started talking about ice cream, and it reminded her of her movie date with Jess. So she goes "I HAD FUN WITH DADDY!" and threw her arms around him. Then today at around 5 pm she was asking me to play ponies with her. So we walked into the living room to find her My Little Pony, and out of nowhere she goes "I had a fun day." It was so cute. Jess and I were cracking up. Later I said something about it to Jess and she heard me. She goes "YES, I had a fun day." and smiled. That's her other thing lately, saying "yes" to everything, not "yeah, or yep, or mmhmmm" like she used to.

Now then, as I type this there's a pretty intense dance party going on. I can't believe the moves Cason comes up with. Paige is mostly into being spun at high speed right now.

But the boy. Oh, the boy.
His favorite move is where he kinda flips his wrists really quick and jerky, one up and one down at the same time, with his elbows bent.

Hard to describe, but it looks incredible. I tried to get video, but of course the camera had no power. But I tried to capture it in some pictures anyway. He even added a spin move at the same time, now that his balance is improving.
The other one he likes best involves him bending forward at the waist with his arms straight out behind like he's about to fly away.
He usually does it too hard and fast, and falls down and laughs. Or he tries to add a twisty move at the waist, like below, and falls to his side.

At the end of each song, he looked at the computer and goes "Moe?" Haha.

Movie Date

Jess has had a very busy work week. It started to calm down today though, so he took off the last couple hours and took Paige on a date to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. She was so excited when I was getting her ready. She kept saying "I bring my doggy. You stay home, Cason stay home. I see meatball with Daddy." He ran in, changed his clothes, and they were off. And she DID take her doggy, in its carrier.
They were SO cute walking in the door after the movie. Her ponytail was long gone, and she looked so happy. She told me she had fun, and a hot dog, and how "ice cream fell on the house".

Plainted Mountains

Artist Paige told me again today that she wanted to "Plaint the mountains". Plaint is how she says paint. Ha. She's mentioned that several times now, so tonight we got out the brown and green paint, and she made it happen. She painted a few pictures, (with her left hand) and Jess and I went to the computer/play room with Cason while she worked. After a while she came in and said "Mama, I put on the fridge!" So she led us to the kitchen where she'd created a gallery of mountain art out of our fridge. I think it's so cute that she already knows where people display their kids' artwork. Although that flame painting is getting framed.
Oh, and she likes me again too. She's told me she likes and loves me several times in the last 2 days.

We also went to Storytime today, and Cason LOVED the dancing.

Winks

Cason learned a new word today: "Mow" (mouth) and he also learned to wink, with both eyes of course. Although he did actually come close to getting just one to shut. It kinda twitched halfway closed. I'm sure he could have sooner, but it's one of those things I didn't think to have him try until today.
Paige gave it a shot too.
Have I mentioned that Paige is completely potty trained, except at night of course? Well she is. I don't even feel like we did anything. We weren't in any hurry to do it by a certain age, so we just mentioned it and once in a while asked if she wanted to go on the potty. She kind of trained herself slowly, other than that. She's been wearing big girl undies for a few months now. Awesome.