Pumpkins

Multiple posts in one day! Making up for lost time, while I can.

These are the last pictures taken by our canon. :(

On our way to get some pumpkins, with my new ghostie mug. I love me some cute ghosts.
Neely wore her jeggings and moccasins. Ha.
They had lots of interesting looking ones again.
Cason almost picked another green, warty monster pumpkin like last year, but ended up going with a white one.
Paige picked a perfect round orange one again.
They picked out a cute little orange one for Neely, who was pleased. She started patting it and cooing at it.
We of course made them pose, but the sun is Cason's nemesis, so we never really got a good one of them all smiling.
It was fun anyway, and Neely's hair was in full Kewpie doll effect.

RIP camera.

8 Teef

Neely likes to collect objects, usually things like crayons or something with a similar shape. She works really hard to get as many of them in to one hand as possible, then she carries them around with her like that.
Also, as of yesterday, bottom LEFT 2nd incisor is in-8 teeth!

Math Clouds

I'm babysitting a little girl about 6 weeks older than Neely. I usually tell people I don't want to commit to full time babysitting right now, because I want to be able to focus on our bebes. But their usual babysitter's been sick, so I filled in one day last week, yesterday and part of today. So it's kind of like having twins around here. Lots of diaper changing going on. She's a really easygoing girl, so it's been pretty easy, other than a little physically demanding, since I have 2 babies who both want to do stunts all day long. Ha. They're both snacking right now, so I can blog!

Last week while Jess was gone I had all the nieces but Aivree one day, so 6 kids, including my own. It was pretty fun.

They played lots of games and did lots of drawing and crafting, so most of the house looked like this table:
Cason did a recognizable drawing of a person too.
Faith drew the happy faces on the rest of the page, to show him how to do it, but then he drew the person. So cute.

And Paige did this incredible drawing I call "Math Clouds":
She was doing clouds and a Pegasus flying, and then out of nowhere she decided she'd draw clouds shaped like a MATH PROBLEM! They're sort of overlapping other clouds, so it's not too easy to see, but at the top left corner she did cloud addition problems: 1+4=5 and 5+4=9.
Then they wanted to play salon.
Neely preferred to read books, and play with her babies, both of which are new interests for her.
She wants all the babies to ride the zebra. Even the tiny ones that go with the dollhouse.
We spent lots of time outside too.
Neely has been trying to say Paige a lot the last few days. She looked at another of these pictures of all the kids on the porch swing, and it was one that had Paige actually looking at the camera and smiling. Neely smiled really big, pointed at Paige and said "Pay!"

YES!!

After church this morning, we checked the freeway, and Jess found our card, banged up, but it worked and we have our pictures from yesterday! Including this one of our boy displaying his new talent.

Soccer and a Walker

Neely took her first steps yesterday! All 3 nieces were over, playing, and Veronica had just arrived to pick Lily up. When she first got there Neely tried to crawl out the front door to play out front. I pulled her back in and closed the door, and she wasn't happy. I tried to distract her by holding her hands and helping her walk. She let go of my hands after a few seconds and leaned back against my legs. All of a sudden she just took 3 steps forward by herself, stood for a second, and then sat down. I freaked out, and immediately realized that NONE of the other people in the room had seen it. So sad. There were like 6 of us in the room and I was the only one who saw. Mostly I was sad Jess missed it. It was only an hour before we left to pick him up. :(

Oh well, she took a couple to him at the park during Paige's soccer game today too. Speaking of which, Paige scored her first goal today! So cool. Before the game I was helping her get her shin guards on and she said "I hope I get a goal this time." And she did. We all cheered and she looked over, all embarrassed, but clearly proud and happy.

We also went to the pumpkin patch today, took lots of cute pictures. Then we left for the fall festival downtown, which was disappointing. On the way there a lady waved us over on the freeway, pointing like something was wrong. But when we stopped she just kept driving. We never figured out what she meant, so we just went downtown. We couldn't find the camera or Jess's phone once we got there, so we went back to look for it at the pumpkin patch. Didn't find it. Then we remembered the lady on the freeway. So we went searching and found our camera. Part of it anyway.
Jess had set it and his phone on top of the car while we buckled the kids into their seats, and then forgot them on top. So we drove on to the freeway with them both up there. Ha.

We never found Jess's phone, but I was just relieved the camera would still turn on, figuring I'd at least get the pictures off of it. (Especially since Cason figured out how to cross his eyes earlier today and I took some incredible pictures of it.) But we got home and realized the sd card had flown out of it too. So it's somewhere on the side of the freeway. :( I'm gonna try and find it tomorrow. So mad, not only is our camera a goner, but I got bitten by ants several times trying to find it and didn't even get the pictures. :(

What Happened?

What happened to the time when I posted basically every day? I don't know. It seems impossible lately. Neely is in the baby stage that's toughest for me. Not a bad thing, she's TONS of fun, but just so active and doing the craziest stunts, so I spend all my time chasing her around and removing her from whatever she's currently climbing.

And if you think our house gets cleaned you're mistaken. You probably don't think that though.

Especially when Jess is out of town for work, like right now. It's been 2 days, and he comes home tonight. We missed him, but it hasn't been as hard as his other trips, probably partly because I'm much busier this time, being a mom of 3. I seriously can't do much of anything, I don't know how single parents do it. I'm not having breakdowns or anything like that, or even feeling stressed really, we're just living in squalor. Haha. And I did notice yesterday that my back and shoulders are all knotted up, because I'm not getting the usual breaks from carrying a 23 pounder around all day.

Alex and Faith are here right now, so I'm actually blogging while they entertain my bebes.

Neely said "ball" for the first time LAST Wednesday, the 5th. THE basketball t shirt has taught all 3 kids how to say it. It's the oldest T-shirt still being worn. It's Jess's shirt from+soem*-*9++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++6(sorry, Neely wanted to type, and I think I'll keep it.)...Jess's shirt from about 7th grade. Ha. It's so weird, it just has little basketball guys all over it, with arms and legs, and the BASKETBALLS are playing basketball. And the shirt says "I'll dance to that!" for some reason. Ha. But it's really comfy and I wear it all the time.
Paige was around a year old when it taught her. I was changing her diaper, so she was on the changing table and was pointing at the basketballs on the shirt like she always liked to do. She would do it every time I wore it, and every time she pointed at one I'd tell her "Basketball!" Well this time out of nowhere she said clearly "Backetba!" So cute. Cason learned from the shirt too, but started with just "Ball". Last Wednesday I was wearing it, holding Neely, and she pointed at the balls like usual, but said "Ba!" each time she pointed at a different one.

She's clearly been trying to mimic things we say lately.

Last Saturday Neely also got a new tooth, bottom right 2nd incisor. That makes 7.

Cason's been funny lately,
and finally decided on a Halloween costume.
The girls are fun lately too. Dancing a lot, and being lovey.
I babysat last week, a little girl about a month older than Neely. They were friends. Her mama told me to put her in the crib with her book when it was naptime. So I did, and we watched her on the monitor, to make sure she didn't try and climb out. The kids loved watching her, until she fell asleep and it got boring.
We've been trying to do a Halloween craft every day, if we get a chance.
I have more to blog about, and I'll try to do it soon this time.

It's October!!!

One of the two best months around. (The other is November, if you're wondering)

We've had lots of pumpkin based meals and desserts for the last several days.
Even Neely got a pumpkin and apple harvest baby food the other day.

I was so pumped that we could officially get out the Halloween decorations, and Paige was really excited to help me.
She wants to do all kinds of Halloween crafts, so I got on Pinterest for ideas, and now I have so many ideas that I'm overwhelmed and don't know where to begin. Ha.

But we did manage to do this one:
Trudi saw it on pinterest and told me about it, so we did it tonight. Cason's foot smeared a lot, but it's still pretty cute. Now I just need a ribbon to hang it.

Paige has been really in to writing letters to people lately.
My favorite part is how she wholeheartedly believes that her drawing of a stamp in the corner is official enough to take the place of an actual stamp, and that the post office will totally send this for her.

Cason's been telling me all his costume ideas, which practically number in the hundreds. So naturally I haven't made a move to begin anything, knowing he'll change his mind 3 seconds later. So far I've heard that he wants to be Toad and also Yoshi, both from the Mario games, Captain America, Iron Man, Bat Man, Superman, Eon Kid, Super Why, a robot, Robot Zot, and Moono from Yo Gabba Gabba.

Neely will be an owl, since she didn't arrive in time to wear the tiny newborn sized one I made last year.

Since she was basically 9 lbs, it probably wouldn't have fit her anyway. AND it gives me the chance to make a few improvements on last year's version.

She is 11 months old as of yesterday. Seriously time goes even faster with each baby. It's pretty unfair actually.

Her growth is starting to slow down a little bit, she only gained a half pound in the last month, putting her at 23 pounds now. She's 30 inches long.

She's still talking a lot in her funny little language. She made the lady next to us in church last Sunday crack up so many times I finally left to walk her around so the lady could actually listen to the sermon.

Her favorite newish thing is pointing at everyone and everything. If you are holding her she points at any person she'd like to go see or any place she'd like you to carry her.

She still likes to stand up in the middle of a room, and then gives you the biggest, obviously proud of herself smile. Clearly planning on taking a step or two some time soon.

She dances (the bouncing on her knees move) any time she hears music, or just gets excited.

She loves people, and gets shy when they talk to her, sort of leaning in to me if I'm holding her, and scrunching her shoulder in to kind of hide behind it. Then she does this weird thing where she rotates her arm inward, turning her hand to face out toward the person who's making her feel bashful. It's hard to describe, but she does it a lot. If she's sitting on the ground while feeling shy she'll hunch her shoulders and look down, and still do the inward arm rotation thing. Ha. That probably makes zero sense without actually seeing it in action.

She's a daredevil, constantly climbing and balancing on things. Her favorite is getting on the zebra, and even standing up on the saddle, bent at the waist so she can still hold on to the handlebars. I missed getting a picture of her standing all the way up, but this is her almost in that position.
She fake cries a lot lately too, clearly trying not so smile while she scrunches her nose and eyes in an attempt to squeeze out a tear or two. This picture of her trying it makes me laugh every time.
She's still the one.