Birthday Trip

My birthday isn't until Tuesday, but Jess can't take the day off so he took me to Vegas on Saturday. We ate at Sweet Tomato. Paige asked about it on the way there, trying to decide what she'd eat. When we walked in we were getting our trays and she goes "Oh YEAH, we came here with Grama!" It took me a second to figure it out, but she was right. It had to be when she was MAYBE two years old. It was SOOOO long ago. I wish I remembered why we were in Vegas with Grama, because maybe that would help me figure out how long ago it was. But yet again I'm so amazed by Paige's memory. Even AFTER she told me it took me a minute to remember it happened, and I called Grama to tell her and it was the same for her. Anyway, the kids liked the food.
Even Neely tried some bread.
I got to do some birthday shopping. We went to Anthropologie, so Jess could get me a couple of my carousel plates. I also sold some of my bird dessert plates on ebay so I could afford to buy the other two and have the whole set of 4.
I also got to go to Target, and FINALLY to Hobby Lobby for the first time. I LOVE it there. Too much.

This Made Us All Quite Happy:

Juggernaut's Portrait

Yesterday Cason did his first real drawing. He's sat down before and scribbled for a minute, and then gone off to play. But this time he sat down, put the Juggernaut down on the paper, to model for him, and started drawing. I don't know if it was his own idea, or if he's watched Paige when she gets things to set in front of her and draw them.

It was the first time I could recognize what he was drawing, there was a round body, and legs, which he drew while telling me "...and wong wegs!", and eyes and a mouth.
He gave it to me when he finished, and then got some more paper, to draw one for Paige. Sweet boy.

Neely had a doctor's appointment yesterday too. She was sick the last time we went, so she had to have her shots postponed, and they did them yesterday. She was pretty mad at us, but recovered quickly. Then she and I hung out in the waiting room because it was pouring rain and I parked at the FAR end of the parking lot. It didn't let up, so I finally had the girl at the desk hold Neely while I went to move the car closer. When I was buckling her in it was still pouring, so I was trying to block as much of the doorway as possible to keep her dry, and I was buckling her as fast as I could. So then, like a wonderful mom, I pinched her thigh in the buckle and made her cry again. Like three pokes in the chubby thighs wasn't enough pain for one day. :(
She was fairly happy the rest of the day, but we had our roughest night ever, last night, by far. I ended up hanging out on the couch in the living room with her all night, while she alternated sleeping and waking up all hot and sweaty and sad. When she was awake the only thing that helped was if I cuddled her and turned on Yo Gabba Gabba. We didn't sleep much, but miraculously she finally started smiling again around 8:30 this morning, and seems to be her sweet happy self again.

"Surf's Up"

The kids have a new Hello Kitty sprinkler. It's really cute, Hello Kitty's surfing on a big wave, and she spins in circles, spraying water everywhere. They were excited to try it out this morning. They all got their suits on and we went out front, where the grass is still in good shape.
The fact that Hello Kitty's on a surfboard reminds me of something Paige said a few weeks ago. They were in the little pool in our backyard, and Paige was lying on her back on her new little floatie thing. She put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes, and did this exaggerated relaxed sounding sigh, and kind of whispered, "aaaaaaaaah, surf's up." Haha.

And apparently during the fireworks the other day Tyra saw Paige whip her light stick around and heard her tell Lily "look, it looks like a fan." Then she fanned herself and said "I do declare!", in an exaggerated southern accent so it sounded like "AH DOOO Declaya!" Haha. That's my girl.
Anyway, back to today's sprinkler run. They're all careful about where they let the water hit them at first.
Eventually Caso got braver.
He still wouldn't jump right over it, but kept trying and chickening out at the last second. So then he covered up in his beach towel and did it. Then he ran over yelling "YES!" all proud. Ha.
Neely watched from the bench with me, happily. But then I took away the leaf she wanted to eat, and she was less happy.
Then we came in to rest.
When Neely woke up I took her to my room to do a photo shoot, because what's cuter than a plump body baby in a swim suit?
Then Paige came in to visit Neely.
And complain to me about how she does all the work "around here".

8

The baybuh turned 8 months old on Saturday. I have all our picture folders REALLY organized, so I was putting the last of her 7 month pictures into that folder, and I noticed we're drawing WAY too near to the 12 months folder.

I also noticed I took well over a thousand pictures of her last month. Ha. I'm gonna love it, that I'll have all of those when they grow up and leave me in their dust. :(

She weighs 21 pounds, and according to OUR measurement she's 28.5 inches long. Not sure how accurate that is.

She's crawling EVERYWHERE, and fast. She pulls up on everything now too, but so far doesn't seem too interested in letting go.

She's starting to show little signs of having a temper. Weird. ;)

She wants us to bring her EVERYWHERE with us lately. If one of us walks by her when she's on the floor, she'll start crying, and speed up her crawl, trying to catch us. Then she realizes she won't be able to catch up, so she'll stop crawling, but stay up on her hands and knees, and lower her forehead to the ground and just cry like that. It's so cute and sad.

She's our cuddly little koala baby.
She loves all of us lots, and follows her siblings all over the house, trying to keep up. She gets really happy when Jess gets home from work. He gets in trouble with her if he doesn't give her all the attention at first.
We call her Neely(obviously), Meewee, Needle Dweedle, Honeybee, and my favorite, although Jess came up with it-HoneyDipper (or sometimes Honeydip).

Jooooly 4th

Our whole weekend was nice. Neeliam got together again, and were especially cute. Liam gave Neely tons of big smiles all weekend. Neely wasn't really feeling herself, but I still saw her giving him some pleasant little smiles.
They had their choice of pool size at the Snay house later. Haha. This picture is awesome, all the kids in different pools, doing their own thing.
We also found out Paige is definitely not afraid of snakes.
And of course we had the usual barbecue for the 4th, at Mollie and Tim's. Here's our kids' pre-barbecue portrait.
Mollie, as usual, provided lots of fun for the little folk.
Caso bonded with Skifter.
And got quite filthy at the snowcone station, but patriotic filthy.
We watched the fireworks from the front lawn, and Neely hardly noticed them. But she and the other kids and babies loved the light sticks Mollie got.
Cason especially liked when Michael taught him to stick them in his nose.

Hungry Birds

Our kids have all had the same kewpie doll hair as babies. So they don't get a real first haircut like some kids. Since it takes so long to fill in on the sides, I have to keep the back short forever so it doesn't grow into a mullet, because I'm pretty sure they'd hate me one day if I let that happen.

So yesterday I had my mom trim the back of Neely's hair and above each ear, and I guess it's technically her first haircut. :)
She loves Gia more all the time. Lately we set her up in her high chair with some little cereal puffs to eat while the rest of us have dinner. Tonight she was sharing with Gia, and laughing when she licked her fingers.
Any time Gia walked away Neely was leaning over the side as far as she could, searching for her.

The other two have been playing their own Angry Birds game. Cason loves that game ever since playing it with Noel, at Lauren's wedding. He's only played the real one a handful of times, but they both love it now, and yesterday they made up their version. They take turns, one being the pig and the other being the "hungry bird", as Cason calls it. They're each at one end of the couch, and the "bird" leaps at the "pig".
Then the pig slowly falls over and rolls off the couch. That's about it, but they have had so much fun. The first time they played it they did it for quite a while, and Jess said he heard Cason tell Paige "I WUV this game Paige!" like 5 times. Haha.