Happy Birthday Husband

Jess is 29 today. There are only so many ways I can say he's wonderful before it gets repetitive. But he's wonderful.

Jess, we tried to do a little something for you today.
Neely's feet had an "A" and a "D", but she wasn't into holding still OR keeping her feet positioned so we could see the letters.
Paige and Cason tried to help keep her in position, but she started screaming at us...

..and then I realized I was getting grumpy with them....

...so we settled for this:
Haha. We tried anyway.

Happy birthday Jess. We love you.

Stander

Someone at our house suddenly started trying to stand in the middle of a room without pulling up on something. She crawled early, but then seemed satisfied with that, since it got her where she wanted to go. But all of a sudden she stands up and smiles proudly at us.
Then when she falls, she stands up again as quickly as possible. The last few days she's clearly THINKING about walking, although no real attempts yet. It'll probably take her a bit, since this is the first time she's really started practicing balancing without holding onto anything.

And yes, I DO need more practice putting cloth diapers on. Haha.

Caso the Tree Hugger

This will be a long post, with a variety of topics. Ha. That's what happens when I fail to blog daily.


This is a bee right?
Well the jerk was in our PLAYROOM somehow and stung Neely on the foot the other night. :( So sad. Cason was all mad, and he and Paige trapped him in a cup (which is why there's the weird wet circle around him in the picture), and Cason yelled "THAT BEE'S A PUNK!" Yes indeed, he is.

Sarah and Wam are visiting. We got to see them for a while yesterday. Liam was semi-interested in Neely, but she was in a weird mood all day so she kind of ignored him for the most part.
A few smiles were exchanged though.
They played a little.
Liam pushed her in the swing.
And stared at her, which made her a little nervous. Ha.
After that visit we went to Connie's, where she made us yummy homemade pizza and even provided pumpkins and paint.
Cason liked her cat "Hookah", who he called "Kookoo".
This morning Neely was in a little more normal mood. So when we saw Liam at church and they both had to be taken out because they wanted to talk during the service, they played together a little more than they did yesterday.

After lunch today we went up to the Hualapais. Since it's officially fall now I thought it'd be fun to go up and hike, and let the kids bring baskets so we could collect pinecones and acorns to decorate with. And so we went.

Early on we saw this stump, and Cason was a tree hugger(literally and figuratively), saying things like "Poor tree" and "I don't want it to be cut, it's my favorite tree in the world."
We found lots of cute little acorns, and acorn "hats".
Neely enjoyed riding around in the snuggly.
She did it wearing skinny jeans. Haha. Look at these thighs in 'em.
She and Jess saw a squirrel and she started excitedly talking about it while she watched it run up a tree.
I forget how nice it is up there. We'll have to go more often.

Package Hats and Diaper Covers

Some recent pics of Meewee that I like:
In one of her cute new diaper covers:

Songs By Paige

Last night Paige did a concert for us, and wrote a special song for each of us, including our pets, and then Lily too.

She started with Cason:

"I love my brother, he's so cute. and I bet he's the funniest brother in the world. And he's so funny, he does a robot dance, I bet he's the funniest brother in the world." (Then she repeated that last line several times)

Neely was next:

"I bet there's noone cuter than a Neely girl!" (Repeated many times and sung really quickly)

Me and Jess:

"Oh my mama and daddy love their chudders(each other). My daddy goes to work every day I wish he could stay every day, but just Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays. Oh my mama and dad, mostly every day they kiss their chudders. My mom kisses me every night and she says 'I love you!'"

Gia:

"Weeeeelll, Gia kisses me every day. I love her and she's so black and brown, that's my favorite color, I love her I love her I love her. There's no one that's cuter and prettier than Gia. Oh yeah!"

Sammy(the tortoise):

"Oh Sammy comes out, he doesn't come out that long. He comes out a little bit but he doesn't come out a long time. SOOO..I love him I love him, he eats lettuce. I love him I love him SO MUCH."

Kalia:

"Oh I love Kalia, she's my 2nd fish. Swimmy died and my mom flushed him in the toilet." (This song would have been longer but I couldn't help laughing and she got a little shy and wouldn't sing any more about Kalia)
Finally she threw one in about Lily:

"Well....I love Lily...Oh I love playing with Lily and she's so...I love her, she is the cutest I think. I think she looks so cute when she's singing. I think she looks so cute when she's dancing like a ballerina princess. She's my best friend, I love her. I'm sad when she has to leave but I let her go."

Baby Jump House

I know I'm not very good at blogging these days. We've finally figured out how to get the pictures ON our computer, but the process isn't as efficient, so I'm not as likely to get on and do it every night like I used to. :(

But here's a post for ya.

Paige is getting even more in to soccer. She always hustles, although I notice she's more of a defensive player. She's her mother's daughter. She's not too worried about chasing the ball when her team has it, but she's all over it when the other team does. She randomly decides to play goalie sometimes. Haha. They're not supposed to have goalies, so her coach has to tell her not to.
I'm also happy to report, we are not living vicariously through Paige! Ha. I used to think, based on what you see with a lot of people at their kids' games and other events, and from movies and everything, that lots of parents live vicariously through their kids, at least to some extent. I hadn't specifically thought, or worried, about it with our own kids, but at the first game it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't care if Paige was good or not. I mean I'd like her to be good, because obviously she'd probably have more fun. Let's be honest, it's just more fun to do things you're good at than if you're awful. But I PERSONALLY couldn't care less if she's the best player on the team or the worst, as long as she's having fun.

I also don't care if she ends up loving sports, or wants to keep doing dance, or both, or neither. As long as she's trying and experiencing things and having fun. So anyway, I just found that that was a relief, to find that we won't feel the urge to push them to do things for US instead of for THEM. Not to get all deep on you. Ha.

Today at practice, her coach said she's really coming out of her shell. Paige is hard to explain to people, she can be shy, but it depends on the situation, and the type of people she's around. (Her mother's daughter there again) When she does open up, she has SO much personality, and won't stop talking to you. Ha.


Cason was eating his sandwich the other day and told me it looked like a bow tie.
He's our scaredy cat. He won't even walk down our own hallway to go to the bathroom unless one of us goes with him. He used to tell me Swiper might be there and get him. Swiper is the fox from Dora the Explorer. I guess he's technically a "bad guy", since he steals things, but Dora always catches him and he's pretty wimpy. So it was funny that Cason was scared of him. He doesn't mention Swiper anymore, but he's still nervous to go anywhere alone. Yesterday before church I was getting ready, and I walked into the dining room. Cason was in there alone, finishing his cereal, and he smiled at me and said "I'm not scared! Daddy telled me God always bees with me." :) So cute.

It was the church's anniversary, so they had a little barbecue after the service, and there were 4 or 5 jump houses for the kids. They loved it. Toward the end most people had gone home, and lots of the jump houses were empty. So Veronica and Jess asked the girl in charge of one of them if the babies could play. They LOVED it.

Aivree tried walking around and kept falling, and Neely did her bouncing on her knees thing.

Those scabs on her nose would be the rug burn from her face plant off the chair.

We noticed Caso pouting in another jump house, with the kid in charge of that one trying to comfort him.
I went to see what was wrong, (and take pictures of him pouting) and found out he was sad the girl wouldn't let him in with his baby sister. So we asked if it would be okay if he promised not to jump with the babies in there.

Neely was happy to have him there, and he and Paige were proud to show her off to their friends.

First Somersault

Neely did her first somersault today. Ha. It was awesome. She was doing the usual headstand, looking at me and Caso from underneath her legs, and she just leaned forward a little too much, and suddenly her momentum carried her over into a somersault. She landed on her back and just stayed there a second in shock, and then looked at me and started to laugh. I think I saw her try it a few more times during the day, when she did headstands, but she'd get nervous and stop before she started to roll.

She also did a faceplant off of Cason's little toddler sized arm chair. She was sitting in it, playing a sort of peekaboo game with Cason, and suddenly popped up to standing and did some crazy sideways move before I could even react. She fell over the arm of the chair right onto her face. I of course was sure her neck was going to be broken or something, and called Jess to come home. He got there in time to have her grinning at him as he walked in the door. He comforted us for a few minutes and went back to work. She had a rugburn on her little nose though, poor girl.
She's a crazy dancer the last few days, dancing on her knees as usual, but it's evolved into more of a bouncing move like Cason likes to do. She gets all excited about the music too and squeals and screams and laughs while we all dance.

She's been wearing cloth diapers for a few days now. I've always kind of wanted to try them, but was intimidated. But our kids all seem to have sensitive skin and get rashes from about 6 months to 2 years, no matter which disposables I try so I thought I'd finally try cloth. So far it seems pretty simple, especially since you have your choice of all different kinds now. I should have started much sooner, would have saved us a lot of money, not to mention how much less trash we'd be creating. She looks awfully cute in them too.
Paige was sick last night, so we spent the first half of our day being lazy.
But she felt better all day, so eventually we realized how beautiful the weather was, and spent our afternoon outside.
I even got to cuddle a napping baby on the porch swing. That swing has to be one of my most prized possessions.

The weather's been awesome for several days. A few days ago it was rainy outside and cozy inside.
And so cool out today. Some days I feel too lazy to make it outside, but every time we do I remember how much better it feels out there and tell myself to do it every day.

Potty Talk

Cason was WAY less interested in being potty trained than Paige was(and at much younger than he is). But all of a sudden he just started going in the toilet. He was pretty much potty trained for weeks.

And then his birthday came, and right after he had a stomach bug. He was throwing up and also had other symptoms, ones that interfered with potty training. So for a few days, even after he was better, we had to work at potty training again. One day he had an accident, and I cleaned him up. He was chatting with me as he put on a new pair of undies, and said "Sometimes it's okay to go poop in your diaper." Ha.

I told him, "Only if you're a baby though, and you're not a baby anymore, you're a big boy."

He goes "Some people just poop in their diaper, and they say 'it's ok, it was just an accident.'"

I said "No, Caso. You're not sick any more and you're big enough to know when you need to go."

So then he told me, all cheerful and casual: "Sometimes I poop in my diaper, sometimes I don't. Some people are mad at me, some people aren't."

Haha. Thankfully he started going in the toilet again a couple days later, so we're good. But I forgot I'd written down these quotes that day, and just found them again. :)

Beast

We went on a walk/bike ride the other morning. When we got home Paige and Cason still wanted to cruise around the driveway for a while. So Neely and I hung out watching them.
Cason almost ran over a big moth in the driveway. I think it freaked him out, so he asked if he should squish it.
Since it was the size of a small cat, the thought made me sick, so I said no. Ha. We discussed what to do,
and decided to take some pictures instead.
Then moved him into the bushes in our front yard so Jess wouldn't drive over it when he got home, and leave our driveway looking like a murder scene.