Cinnamustache

Paige drew this cute picture today. She said it's a "family on a hot sunny day at the park". There's the sun and a tree, as you can see. And a mom with a baby and two daughters walking with her. The baby is in a baby carrier if you click to enlarge the picture and look closely at the mom's belly area. So cute. Then the mom and the two older girls each have a glass of juice with a straw. The mom's even has ice cubes. Haha. I love it.
Neely is a cuddler, but she's starting to like being carried like this:
so she can see everything that's going on.

We downloaded Bomberman to play on the Wii, which we played tonight with the kids. That game is AWESOME. Neely watched for a short while.
Other than Bomberman, Paige and Burt Reynolds here are also pretty obsessed with waffles with butter and cinnamon lately.

Feats of Strength

The kids and I didn't leave the house today. (Jess ran to the store for me in the evening so we could at least eat tomorrow.)

Paige randomly decided to bench press Cason's basketball hoop, and yelled at me "LOOK HOW STRONG I ALSMOST AM!" Have I mentioned she says "alsmost"?
Paige thought Neely should get a new shirt too, so she got one. She wasn't all that happy.
She was still a big fan of daddy today.
I decided to go for a run today, and Paige wanted to come. So we did a lap around the block together first. She was so cute with her leftover whiskers and her headband. Ha.
Tonight they watched The Incredibles, and they got all excited, pretending we were the Incredibles. Neely had to be the baby, Jack Jack. Ha. Cason picked up the basketball hoop to prove to Jess how strong he is, and Paige stood behind him, being Violet, and protecting her brother with her force field. :)

Daddy's Girl

So far this weekend has been made up of tshirt requests(very specific requests, and both creatures of the sea, I noticed)...
pizza and movies...
smooches for Neely....
And lots and LOTS of love for a certain baby's daddy.
While we watched a movie she just stared at Jess, chewing on her hands and smiling and waiting for him to talk to her some more.
She couldn't get enough of him today. Even though he said I dressed her like it was the '80s.

Casonova

Paige decided to stay the night at Grama's house tonight. She said she'd be staying THREE nights, and she packed enough clothing to stay about a week. Ha. Here it is all dumped out on Grama's trunk at the foot of the bed. :)
Then she hurried us off, so we said our goodbyes.
We decided to take Cason to pick out a treat at the store since we didn't let him stay too. He was flirting with the high school girls who checked us out. He smiled and said "I Cason." and hid behind my legs. He kept talking about it on the way to the car. We were strapping him into his carseat and I said "You like the girls?" He giggled and said "Yeah. And I wike wadies." Haha. Jess told him to be nice to the girls and get himself a good one. :)
A while after we came home I called Grama's to check in one last time before going to bed. Apparently they'd already GONE to bed, and I woke them up and made Paige decide she wanted to come home. I blew it. So Jess picked her up and when they came in she told me she missed Neely.

Can't blame her.

She Laughs!!

Tonight Jess had a basketball game. We almost went along, but I wussed out at the last minute, because I wasn't sure if Jenni and Rylee would be there. I figured if he could run around with Rylee I'd be able to keep Caso off the court. :) So we stayed home and the older two took a bubble bath. Now I'm glad we stayed home because I got to hear Neely laugh.

A couple weeks ago we thought she MIGHT have laughed, when Jess held her up above his head, making her fly, but we weren't sure. It seemed like kind of a happy squeal, not necessarily a real laugh.

Well tonight I sat in the bathroom with her in my lap helping me supervise the bath. After a while I started draining the water, and told them when all the water was gone they'd have to get out. When it got really low Paige started getting chilly, but still didn't want to get out. So she started being silly, slapping her thighs and belly. Since she was all wet it made an especially loud noise when she slapped her legs and Neely started giggling. We were all excited, so Paige kept doing it and Cason joined in. Pretty soon Neely was CRACKING UP! It was the cutest thing ever. She was laughing so hard her head and belly were bouncing up and down. :) I ran for the video camera and had them do it again, but the battery immediately died. :( Hopefully we can reenact it soon.

Jess and I kept trying to make her laugh all this time, figuring it had to happen soon, since she started smiling so early. We should have known we couldn't compete with the hilarity of her big brother and sister.

Love Hurts

Paige and Cason are pretty darn good about being gentle with Neely, except that sometimes I have to watch them when they're feeling especially lovey. It's like they feel too much love and have to prove it by rubbing her belly a little too vigorously, or by kissing her cheeks right off. They really loved her lots today.
Lately when I ask Cason to pose for a picture, he says cheese, but poses like this:
Just what I'm always hoping for in a picture. :)

Paige had her first eye exam today. Tyra came to babysit the other two for me, so I tried to nurse Neely right before we left, to make sure she'd be happy and well fed, for Tyra. But she wasn't in the mood to eat, and was amazed by the light coming through the fabric of my nursing cover. And yes, I AM about to show you pictures I took under it, but NO, you don't have to worry about the content of these photos. Haha. I made Tyra wonder when I stuck the camera through the top of the nursing cover.
She kept going cross-eyed, trying to focus on the print of the fabric like two inches from her face.

Then Paige went to see Dr. Berguson. She was SO excited to go, but once we got there she was SO shy and quiet. She was really good and did everything they asked, but would answer their questions really quietly and kind of cover her mouth with her hand when she was talking.
She was so cute.
They laughed at me. Apparently all parents don't take pictures of their kids' first eye exams. Ha.
Then he thought she might be a little far sighted, so she had to have her eyes dilated. I guess the drops sting a little, but she was really tough and was such a good girl. They even thought she may need glasses, so we got to try a bunch on while we waited for the drops to kick in. She was still shy and was all stoic while we tried them on, but she would whisper to me which ones she liked.
She didn't end up needing them, although she IS far-sighted, and he wants her to come back in a year, instead of the usual 2 years for kids her age. So chances are she'll need them before long. I don't think she realized before we came, that the eye doctor might say she needed glasses. But once they had her try them on, she was sad when we left and she found out she didn't get any after all.

She did, however, have to wear these awesome things for her light-sensitive eyes on the drive home.
She was cute playing in the front yard with them later.
Cason liked them too. :)
Here's Neely watching them play.
And in the bearzee coat when it got chilly.

Wichita

Today Neely is 12 weeks old. I mentioned she recently became more interested in the toys hanging on her playmat. Today she grabbed one by choice for the first time.
She's randomly accidentally gotten a hand or finger hooked on one before and then couldn't let go. Ha. But today she purposely grabbed it and was trying to eat it.
Soon after that she fell asleep while I was feeding her, so I carefully put her on the ground to sleep in her boppy...
...while I colored with Paige and Cason.
Paige colored a couple pages in a coloring book and then drew and colored her own picture of a "berry tree forest" which she gave to Grama later.
Cason scribbled for a while and then got bored, and returned to Buzz. :)
Cason also had his first appointment with the eye doctor today. Jess went in with him, and he said he was SO good. They had a giant Buzz Lightyear toy in the waiting room, so his first impression of the place was good. That helped I guess. :)

Cason also took my camera and took literally about a hundred pictures today. Here's a sample, Swimmy's aquarium:
Tonight Paige wanted to watch Veggie Tales, and we didn't really watch any movies or shows on Netflix today, so I said she could. While she watched it, the rest of us were hanging out in our bed. Cason had Buzz, Woody, and Jessie. He made me be Woody and Jess was Jessie. We were playing and Jess(Jessie) came up to Buzz and goes "Hi, I'm Jessie! I'm from Oklahoma. The Wichita area." I started cracking up and said "Wichita, Oklahoma?!" Almost as soon as I said it I realized there might be a Wichita in Oklahoma too, and I was just going to make a fool of myself by teasing him. But then he looked embarrassed, so I figured I had beat him at something geographical for once.

But of course upon checking it out, I've found that there IS a Wichita, Oklahoma. He's outside working out while I blog, so I still don't know if he let me think I was right or if he wasn't sure enough about it to argue with me.

Anyhoo, yesterday Paige started pouring salt from the shaker all over the dining table. I told her not to do that because it was making a mess. She goes "You should put it where we can't reach it." Ha. She said it all politely too, without a trace of attitude. She really wasn't being rude, just giving me some helpful child-proofing advice. Haha.

She also wrote a song the other day when we went to pick Jess up from work:

"OH I love my daddy! He's so special. I'm gonna give him a Valentimes(her pronunciation, gotta make sure I don't get called out for any typos) card on Valentimes DAAAY!"