Little Artist

I just got Paige and Cason out of the bath. Cason likes to hang out in his towel a while, so I put Up on for him.
Paige got dressed immediately and started drawing. I glanced over after a minute to see the cutest drawing ever. She had drawn 3 snails, and said it was me, Paige, and Cason. Then she started Jess on the next page. I heard her saying in a boy voice "Come on kids and Brandi, follow me." as she drew the Jess snail.
I drew snails all the time at her age! Cason is of course the smallest snail, at the bottom. She looked disappointed right after she drew his head, and told me "his head is not perfect, like our heads. But his shell is perfect."

Clowny Cone Trip

A few months ago Chris and Sarah were at a Baskin Robbins and Chris tortured me by sending me a picture of a clown cone. I love them anyway, but being pregnant I REALLY wanted one. Pretty soon after that we went to Vegas and I was so excited to get one. When we finally found a Baskin Robbins we pulled into the parking lot at 10:01, only to find they'd closed at 10. I nearly cried. Yesterday we made a spontaneous trip back to Vegas for one, along with a few other things. First I made Jess take my 24 week picture. I think we must have our dates messed up and I'm actually like 36 weeks. OR we have a 13 pound baby on the way.
Then we got in the car and had a nice drive, with Paige entertaining us while Cason slept.
Paige covered herself in a giant quilt because she said it was SO cold in the car.
Then we had an AWESOME meal at Macaroni Grill, complete with some opera singer woman serenading Paige and Cason.

Then I got some fabric at Joanns. I'm almost done with my girl quilt, so I figured I'd better start getting fabric ready to start the boy one soon. I have about 122 of the 154 squares quilted now. Not quilted well, but quilted. Ha.
Every single time I go to a Joanns I have to wait like 30 minutes to have my fabric cut. It's like they're TRYING to move as slowly as possible. Yesterday we even missed when they called our number, so I got skipped, and the next lady had about 47 fabrics to be cut. The other lady in front of us was buying 98 yards of shiny gold fabric. Anyway, we eventually got ours cut, and I got some good fabric.

Then of course we stopped in at Anthropologie. I got a couple new bowls in colors I didn't already have, and 2 cute plates from the sale section. I liked them because they have fish in love on them, but Paige told me it's a mama and baby, actually.
They did NOT have the awesome Moby whale cookie jar that I'd seen go on sale and then it almost instantly disappeared from the website. :( Oh well. Jess says cookies don't last long enough in our house to even make it to a cookie jar anyway. It's disgusting, but true. They're all eaten before they can even cool. Ha.

The first Baskin Robbins we found didn't have clown cones. It was devastating, but we called Veronica and she told us where to find another one. And guess what Chris? I hope the guilt has eaten away at you these past few months that I've been craving a clowny cone, but you can rest easy now.
Maybe I have just as much frosting on my face as Cason does.
This completed our trip, so we headed home. Paige talked the ENTIRE drive home, it was funny. She kept telling Jess it was okay to keep our interior lights on, or drive fast, because there were no police around to see. We told her we have to follow the rules even when we won't get caught, because it's the right thing to do. She ignored us and started asking where the police were. Then she goes "Where ARE the police?!" and then lowered her voice to sound all spooky and said "They could be ANYwhere." Hahaha.

We didn't have the internet for almost a full day on Wednesday night and Thursday, so I couldn't blog. But here's what they've been up to.

Riding the rocking horse the old fashioned way is no longer thrilling enough for Cason, so he puts it on top of the toy bins to ride it.
Here's a picture of one example of Paige writing her name. I love her "E".
She's also been practicing other letters, like T,Q,Z,Y, and F:
M and N:
And the number 8.
I also realized she's suddenly improved a LOT at coloring inside the lines. Some of this stuff is like overnight, they just suddenly can do something they couldn't the day before. So crazy.
I was just telling Megan and Veronica something I realized I'd never written down. We've been getting books at the library most weeks. Paige picked a counting book a couple weeks ago, which we thought was good because so far she has loved letters, but didn't seem to care about numbers or counting. So we've been reading it at bedtime.

The first page has a little poem about the number 1, and there's a picture of one baby, one rubber ducky, one flower, and one marble. Then page 2 is of course about the number 2, so there are now 2 babies, 2 rubber duckies, and so on. It goes up to 10. All the babies are different, and in different positions, crawling, sitting, walking, whatever.

So after I read the poem, she'd count the babies, the ducks, flowers, and marbles. She was counting the babies, but she was saying 1, 4, 5, 2, 3...so we'd correct her and say "good try, but it goes "1,2,3,4,5". She was getting SO mad at us. She was slamming the book closed and shaking her head and kind of pounding her fists on the book. We couldn't figure out why she was so frustrated, or why she kept counting the babies like that. Because she counted the ducks, flowers, and marbles the right way.

Well finally one of these times we were making her mad, she said "NO! That baby is NUMBER 5!" We finally realized the babies were moving around into a different order on each page, but she wanted each baby to keep the original number they'd had. So if the baby from page 2 had been moved to be 5th in line, she still wanted to number him "2" NOT "5", and she was really upset when we tried to tell her differently. I started paying attention, and sure enough they all kept their original number. It's funny too because she's all fast, she just looks at them and goes "2,5,4,7,9,8,3,1" automatically. So apparently she's smarter than we are. Ha.

Ballerina Paige

When the lady at the Dance Factory emailed me back she said today was the last day of Princess Ballet, and that I should bring Paige by to let her try it. So we did. I couldn't go in with her, but there was a little window I was watching through. Along with Cason.
Paige looked SOOOO happy. The kind of cute happy that makes you want to cry. Also making me want to cry, the little girl who was mean to Paige. Paige handles it way better than I do, but it makes me so mad and sad when kids are mean to mine. Why aren't all kids sweet?

Oh well, there was another girl there who WAS sweet and Paige looked so happy, so it didn't matter. She's now signed up for Little Dancers for this month, and I guess we can start her in Princess Ballet in August, so that's not that long a wait for her. All my pictures are from really far away, and through a window. I was also disappointed none of them caught her when she was smiling her huge happy smile. But at least I got some I guess.

Scanned

For a while Paige has been talking about dancing, and then Lily got a leotard and tutu at her birthday party. That got her talking again. To be honest, I was kind of hoping she'd do karate. Not because I mind her dancing, although I'll be of no help if she ever needs it. I just think kids are so cute doing karate, and I wished I'd done it when I was little. But when I mentioned it to her she asked what it was. We explained it a little, and she laughed and said "No, I want to do ballet". So ballet it is. Grama got us tickets to go watch the dance factory girls perform on Saturday night. Paige was SO excited the whole time, she couldn't sit still in her seat. She'd get up randomly and do some of the dance moves. Between almost every single dance she'd ask me to "scan her". She'd been playing with her cash register all day, scanning groceries, so the word "scan" was on her mind. She wanted me to sign her up to dance. I think she thought she could go down the second she was signed up and join them to dance on stage. Ha. She kept saying "Okay, I want you to scan me now." When we got home she stood next to me making sure I sent them an email to scan her up. They emailed me back and aren't doing princess ballet in the summer, but they do have Little Dancers, which I guess is ballet, tap, and something else, maybe gymnastics. Paige agreed to that, so I just have to go by the place and scan her now I guess.
Last night Paige and Cason got in a pretend argument about who first saw the dog walking by with his owner. They were crossing their arms and trying to look mad, and both kept saying "I saw it first." Actually Cason just said "Doggy, FIRST." Here's his arguing face:
Oh, and I misjudged this dog.
She's a protector. I know not too long ago she was more naive, she trusted everyone. But apparently she's grown up and matured. Ha. Yesterday the guy came to spray for bugs. Jess and I graduated with him, so he stood at the door for a second asking me how the pregnancy is going. I was holding Gia by her collar, because she gets really excited when someone first comes over. Cason was kind of hiding behind me and peeked out. The guy saw him and kind of leaned toward him and went "Boo!' Gia was NOT pleased with him. She actually barked, which is VERY rare for her, and it was clearly an aggressive bark. (Which I've only ever heard her do once, and that was at a REALLY creepy guy that was trying to sell us something.) She even kind of lunged toward him a little. I was quite surprised. Anyway, people have asked me if she's protective and I always said "Oh no, she has no idea she'd ever need to be." Well, here and now I publicly admit my mistake. I take it back. She's a guard dog.

Day Of The Fathers

First of all, Cason in his new alligator hat from aunt Teetee:
Second, we were driving yesterday, and Paige was saying something that made Jess and I crack up. At just about the same time we both told her "You're so funny Paige." She was still kind of laughing at her joke, and she goes "Thaaaanks guys." Haha.

We had a nice Father's Day. It didn't start off quite like I wanted, we were going to make Jess some chocolate muffins for breakfast, but didn't have everything we needed. So we were still working on that when he woke up instead of serving him a breakfast in bed with his card and gift. Ha. Oh well. We're just doing small gifts, so I got him an updated mouse pad for work. He still had the one I got him for his first Father's Day ever, so it had a picture of Paige at like 7 months old. So now it's more recent, and includes Caso. I took the picture a week or so ago, and didn't show him so he'd be seeing it for the first time on his mousepad. I took a LOT of pictures before I got one with them both smiling and looking at the camera.
Then we puppysat for a couple of hours.
Paige and Cason were both so happy, and there were two puppies, so they could each hold one.
Paige loved it, but Cason is pretty much obsessed with them. He'd ask to "carry him" and if I didn't have a puppy in his arms within 2 seconds he'd start hyperventilating like he was having a panic attack or something.
Dad, Trudi, and Coco stopped by for a short Father's Day visit too.
Paige was really proud of how she cared for the babies. She also broke out the new Dr. kit Grama got her. She was embarrassed when we watched her "treating" the puppy, so I had to be sneaky to get a picture. She LOVES that doctor kit, she has had it with her 24/7 since she got it like 4 or 5 days ago.
Now then, happy Father's Day to all our wonderful dads and grampas. But especially to the father of my kids. He's seriously the best dad. There's no way to top him. We love you Jess. I'll finish with a picture of him that Cason took tonight. I believe it's the first photo Cason has ever taken. He bestowed this honor upon his father.

Caso's First Time At The "Big Movies"

We're working on moving our kids' bedtimes earlier, so we've been waking them up at 9 in the morning. That's actually quite a bit earlier than they WERE sleeping. I didn't mind getting to sleep until 10 or even 11 sometimes, but poor Jess was kept up late. Then if he wanted any time to do anything together after they were in bed, then he had to get up for work on barely any sleep. Anyway, the first morning was hard, but I feel a lot better getting up a little earlier. Cason was getting used to it pretty easily, waking up at 8:30 on his own after the first day or two of it. But this morning he slept until 9, when Jess got him up. He still wasn't really "UP" exactly. Poor little guy. Although judging by Jess' face, he apparently wasn't either. Ha.
Pretty soon Caso popped up and was good to go.
Today we took Cason to the movies for the first time. All four of us went actually, along with Dan, Veronica, and Lily. We saw Toy Story 3, although Paige insists it was Toy Story 23. They all loved it. They were so dang cute, all 3 kids lined up between us, eyes glued to the screen. They would do their cute exaggerated laughs at the funny parts, and Cason kept fake screaming at any "scary" parts. He loved it. People loved ME, taking pictures in the dark theater. Haha. I only did before the movie started though. This is the only one that came out. He was much happier than he appears.
We're ALSO trying to get him back to napping, although he usually only goes 30-45 minutes. So he fell asleep in the car on the way home. As he was starting to doze, I told Jess getting a milkshake at Sonic would take the perfect amount of time to get Cason fully asleep before we drove home. Ha. So Paige and I got icecream. We hung out in the car while Cason napped.Then Paige and I painted a picture for the baby's room. All my art is so flawless. Haha. Oh well. I have to touch it up some and in a few months add pink or blue somehow. Maybe just a collar on the dog or something.
How do people paint nice straight lines?

Anyway Grama's birthday was yesterday, and I didn't blog. So happy birthday Grama! We all love you!

Pringles and Pilates

I've been doing my pregnancy pilates dvd for several weeks, and the kids love doing it with me. They usually want their own drinks because they see me get an ice water when I do it. Then they bring snacks along too. One day we were doing it and they were feeding me pringles periodically, during the workout. Haha.

This morning Paige got bored about 1/2 way through and went to the playroom. After a while she came and got me, and said "Come see I cleaned the kitchen." She looked so proud, so I paused the dvd and went to see. She had lined up some of her kitchen supplies neatly across the shelf and stood next to it smiling.
Now I can see that it actually could use a cleaning.

I love how Cason talks lately. He's so expressive, he makes the best faces to emphasize what he's saying. And he just says funny things. He tells me things are "messed up" all the time lately. Like yesterday I was quilting, and I was spreading it out flat on the ground to pin something. Cason walked across it and wrinkled it up a little bit. He pointed to the wrinkle and said "Mess up, mama. Surry." He's so cute. That's another thing, he's tacking on the name of whoever he's talking to at the end of the sentence. There's usually a tiny little pause before "mama" or "daddy" or whoever. He asks all the time where we're going, or what I'm doing. He'll just say "Going, mama?" or "Doing, mama?"

He also thinks it's so funny if he accidentally trips or runs into something. Yesterday he slipped in the pool. His feet flew out from under him and he slid to his back with a HUGE splash. His eyes were gigantic and he looked so scared for about a second. Then he realized he was okay and he started cracking up and making this face at me and Paige: