Dottie, Circus Girl

One recent morning Paige was telling Neely what to do and Neely said "I don' haff to wisten...to you." 

Look at this guy:

This morning Neely woke up and immediately said "Mama, wook at me!" and did a headstand.  Then she said "tada!" and took a bow, much like this:

She must have been dreaming she's in the circus.  She and Paige have been playing circus games lately.  Gia is their circus dog, and they walk around with her on a leash, teaching her tricks.  I think they might be orphans, because they're sisters, and they have a baby doll who is their baby sister that they take care of.  The last time they played, Neely's name was "Dottie".  :)

A Reindeer Ninja Named "Shadows"

Neely's been extra hilarious lately.  She used to randomly shake our hands and say "Nice 'a meet you!"  She's back to that the last few weeks.  She also likes to say "I don't fiiiiiink so."  The night we went to the Parade of Lights, on our way to the car she kept telling me "A corporation."  I was cracking up because she said it perfectly.  I kept asking "a corporation?" because I couldn't figure out how that could really be what she was saying.  But finally she goes "PBS kids dot ord!"  So that's where she heard it.  Haha.

The other morning I was making us banana oatmeal.  She climbed into my lap, put an arm around my shoulders and neck and asked me "Mama?  I have a bana?"  We only had one left so I said "Not yet.  You can have some in a minute in your oatmeal."  She said "AAAAW dang it."She used "aww dangit" again when Gia licked some of her spilled food off the floor.  She goes "AAAW dangit.  Why she do dat?"

She also makes me laugh by turning long sleeves into short sleeves and pants into shorts.

 A couple of weeks ago, Jess had a last minute trip to Oklahoma City.  We drove him up Wednesday morning and he came home Friday night.  Paige was at school when we took him, so my younger two and I dropped him off, ran into Joann's, got a Starbucks, and headed home.

Cason chugged his hot cocoa before we even got to the car, and told me he wasn't going to "glitter".  I hadn't heard him say it in a while so it took me a minute to realize he meant "litter."

Right before Jess left on this trip, we found out we had a broken pipe somewhere in our backyard.  So while he was gone the guys were working on it.  Since the water was off we stayed the night at Misty and Jordan's.

We would run home to get things and let Gia in and out to go potty, and talk with the guys.  Turned out instead of a broken pipe we had nothing BUT holes everywhere with roots growing through all the pipes.  The guy was shocked we'd been able to get by this long.  He said it was by far the worst he's seen.  Haha.  Awesome.  But at least now our pipes are all new and we won't have to worry about it.  They had to go under our back porch, so the kids were excited to do their hand prints in the new cement.  It was way too hard though, so instead we traced their hands.  :)

We missed Jess, like always, but we entertained ourselves with dorky faces:

Fights about who gets to play with the Kindle while we wait for Paige outside her school...

Staring contests...

Watching the guys work on our plumbing...

Looking at cute Neely...

Ninja games, in which the youngest ninja is named "Shadows" and sometimes wears antlers...

We were happy to get him home in time for the weekend.

Good Luck Neely

Paige recently saw an episode of Good Luck Charlie.  She loves that show now.  If you have never seen it, there's a teenage daughter who records video diaries of her talking to her baby sister, kind of giving her advice or teaching lessons.

Well, Paige decided she's doing a daily one called "Good Luck Neely".  She recorded her first one today.  It's all about how Neely should never climb a tv.  I like when she's talking about Caso's injury, and describing where everyone was, and she says Jess and I were "nowhere".  Ha.  That makes us sound like Grade A parents for sure.  Haha.

She's sort of walking around muttering for the first 27 seconds, but then sits down and talks a little more loudly, in case you want to skip to there. The way she's talking cracks me up.  You can tell she's making it up as she goes, and trying to sound like a reporter or something.

I realized it may be hard to understand a lot of this, since she's talking fast and quietly.  So here's a narrative, starting at 26 seconds(keep in mind she's talking to Neely):

"Okay, so umm.....you're 2.  I'm 6.  Your brother's 4. He broke his leg, climbing the tv to turn up the volume....2 days ago....on...during the night.  When my aunt was over.  Um...she was....kissed you, hugged you...your brother Cason....and...then he ran when she opened the door, everybody else was nowhere and I was playing my Kindle, in their room...my parent's....the parent's room....our parent's room...and rushed out cuz there was a crash!  The tv fell on his leg, now there's a scab on it.  AAAAND...you have...and...it is....(head shake here)..a big hole, he broke his leg, so...I wanted to tell you...never climb a tv to turn up the volume, in front...like (in a whisper) SPIDERMAN.  (back to normal volume)NEVER!  Good luck Neely."

I like how she kept forgetting she was supposed to be talking to Neely, so she'd keep rewording things.  Haha.

Mom Of The Year!!!

I'll preface this post with this:  I am the worst.

We have an older tv.  It's not huge, but it's fairly big and definitely very heavy.  It's really wide and deep, more so than it is tall.  So even though I've heard horror stories about tvs falling on kids it never crossed my mind that ours could.  It just seemed impossible for that thing to tip over.  Here's where my stupidity gets more extreme:  Cason sometimes gets on the side of our tv stand to turn the volume up, because the buttons are on top.  Our tv stand is low and very stable, and because our tv is so low and wide and deep, and he barely touched the tv except to push the volume button, I didn't think about it.

Well, last night Tyra was over, and Neely was in the playroom, wanting us to play with her princess castle.  So we were hanging out with her, playing, and Caso was watching a show, Paige was playing a math game on her Kindle, and Jess was in the shower.  Tyra decided she needed to go home, so she said goodbye.  Cason was sitting on the couch with Gia, and Tyra kissed him goodbye and went out the front door.  Right as she was closing the door we all heard a crash and a HORRIBLE scream.  I was in the playroom still and Tyra had her back to him, so none of actually saw it.  We all ran, Tyra lifted the tv with her superhuman strength and I pulled him out.  I had a feeling he broke something in one or both of his legs because the tv was laying on his lower legs and he was screaming and writhing around while I held him.  Jess ran out in a bath towel and Paige ran in and started freaking out, thinking he was going to die I think.  Poor babies.  I looked down at Caso's leg and saw this big, DEEP hole in his shin, like a gouge.  He started to look so I tried to block him so he wouldn't freak out.  I felt like I was going to though.  I think I stayed somewhat calm, although I was freaked out and shaking like crazy. 

Thankfully Tyra was there, she stayed with our girls while we ran to the E.R.  The other day I was sewing an ornament and he asked me some question about what would happen if he cut his hand or something.  I teased him and said it was no big deal, I could just sew him up like Frankenweenie.  He laughed.  But then last night on the drive to the E.R. he told me he was glad I didn't say I would sew him up.  Poor guy.  I didn't tell him that someone might have to sew him up, it just wouldn't be me.

He was SO good and so tough the whole time.  We already knew he is so special, but seeing how sweet he was in there, smiling at us and hugging us every time we comforted him made it even more clear to us what a special little person he is.  I see some Jesus in that boy.
 
He dozed off some and calmed down enough that I started to think I was wrong and he would only need stitches.

But no, he has a broken fibula.  :(  So he got 5 stitches and a temporary splint.

Hopefully we'll hear from the doctor soon about getting his cast on.  Everyone who helped us was so good and nice to him and commented on how sweet and adorable he was.  The one nurse was saying how usually it's the newer flat screens, which surprised me in a way since they can't be as heavy, but then again isn't a surprise since they'd tip much easier. 

 It was awful.   On top of the usual sadness when your baby is hurt, there's the guilt.  That's one of those stereotypical injuries that happen to kids with crappy parents who don't babyproof or pay attention to their kids.  But we totally do.  All we do is spend time with our kids.  But we do make dumb mistakes sometimes, obviously.  Cason's also such a mellow guy that we've reached a stage that I don't feel like I have to follow him around, watching his every move.  This was a crazy fluke.  I'm going to feel like crap every time I have to tell someone what happened.  I want to take that tv in to the desert and go all Office Space on it.  But Jess already got rid of it so I can't.  It's the worst because we were going to get rid of our tvs when we move in a couple of weeks anyway.  :(

He's doing great today.  Loves that he gets to watch tv and play video games, and has been spoiled with cookies, a new RescueBot, and candy, more cookies, and a Captain America from Sarah.  :)

We're keeping the little tv from our bedroom just to entertain him until he can walk around again.  Then, no more tvs for us.  Or any objects weighing in excess of 10 pounds.  At least until Jess can get himself a flatscreen to mount on a wall.

Robot Carpool

We officially have a moving date now.  We'll leave early on January 3rd.  It is starting to feel real.  There's a ton to do, on top of regular stuff like Christmas shopping, and only a few more weeks.  I'm pretty excited, but also nervous and sad.  Paige had the hardest time of any of us, saying she might not get another nice teacher or make friends, or her new piano teacher might not be as nice as Miss Carla, or she won't remember what our house looked like here.  :(  But she seems more excited lately and hasn't mentioned any of those things to me, except for telling me she cried one day when Mrs. Arnold said there were only 2 weeks of school until Christmas break.  :(  But Mrs. Arnold said they talked about how they could write and everything, which made Paige feel better.

She's still so excited every single morning, for school.  One day she asked me to set her alarm so she could get up early and make US breakfast.  So cute.  We had to wait until she said it was ready. Then we came out and she had toast and orange juice for us, along with a card for each of us.  :)


The one for Jess was the same, except said "Best GUY ever"

Ever since Paige got the kindle Cason's happy she's at school because then he can play games on it.  Neely misses her though.  She'll ask every so often "Mama, when Paige come back?"  She and Cason are such cute friends though.  Napping...

Hanging out with daddy during his lunch break...

...and just playing and watching Rescuebots together.

Neely's other buddy is Gia.
 



Neely is in many ways a mixture of her brother and sister.  It's the same with playing.  She likes to play with someone else a lot of the time, like Cason.  She'll ask us "Wanna pway wif me?"  then no matter what your answer is she shoves one of the toys into your hand and then makes her toy say to yours:  "HAAAAY woah!  (how she says 'hello') Wanna hug?"  Then you make your toys hug.  THEN she usually makes her toy fly around for a few seconds and then crash to the ground, which is when your toy should help hers back up and hug again.  Ha.

But she also plays really well alone, like Paige.  The other day she was playing with 2 batmen and she made one say "What's wong sweethott?  You cwying?  's okaaaaay!"  Haha.  She's so funny and cute.  Oh, and smart.  :)

Here's another cute thing she did while playing recently.  A bunch of robots carpooling in a Barbie car:

The Last Few Days

We're not doing all our usual decorations for Christmas, so that we won't have to pack it all up in a rush the last few days before we move.  Instead we got a small Christmas tree at Home Depot... 

 

 

...and some dollar store ornaments to decorate it with.  We did our usual day of decorating and watching Rudolph. 

 

 

 

 

 Then we finished up by going to the Parade of Lights with the Cassons and the Barsons.  It was fun, although Kingman could probably plan a more time efficient parade.  That thing took 4 times as long as it needed to, with like 150 yards between floats.  This was the first year we made it to the end of the parade.  One year it was way colder than we anticipated and Paige was a baby, so we got her out of there.  Another year a random stranger mistook me for someone else and tried to pick a fight with me out of nowhere.  The last time we went we left for the E.R. before the parade even started because Caso accidentally stepped on 3 or 4 week old Neely's face as she was lying on the quilt.  So this was our first positive experience at the parade too.  Ha.

 

Sunday turned in to "Leaf Day" after church.  I raked up a HUGE pile of leaves and then the kids played in it with Jess.  They threw them, buried each other in them, and Caso and Jess filled their jackets with leaves to make big bellies to smash into each other.   They always love Leaf Day.  But it's over now and I've bagged up SO MANY leaves. 

 

Caso was sick yesterday so I spent my day sewing mostly.  I decided to make Stacy(Skye's wonderful mama, for those who don't know her) an ornament inspired by her beautiful dog Steinway.

Skye helped me with a plan to surprise her.  She texted me when her mom arrived at her house, and I was going to drop it off at the door, and text HER when I left.  Then she'd tell her mom she thought she'd heard the UPS man and ask her to go check so she'd find her gift.  So I thought I'd be clever and leave Skye's doe ornament and surprise HER too. 

 

Meanwhile she texted me to tell me the painting she'd been working on that I loved was done and to see if I still wanted it so I'd have first dibs.  When I tiptoed up to her door the painting and a sweet card were waiting for me.  Skye was the biggest trickster.  I love my painting!

Leaf Hunters

While Jess was in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago I tried to keep the kids entertained so they didn't miss him TOO much.  One afternoon we went on a leaf hunt.  They brought baskets and looked for any leaves that caught their attention.  They loved it.  Such a simple thing that made them so happy. 

Neely rode in the stroller, and enjoyed herself too.

 Then we came home and they set up at the picnic table to sort through their leaves.  

 

 

We gave out "awards", like biggest leaf, smallest leaf, yellowest leaf, reddest leaf, spottiest leaf, etc.  They each won several.