Eve has been amusing me with her
creativity lately. One of her favorite things to do now is
“take” things out of books and give them to people. For
example, while reading a book last night she asked me if I
wanted a giraffe and then proceeded to use her sweet little
pincher fingers to “take” the giraffe off the page and put it
in my hand, and then one for her, and one for Lex. I was
reading her a Richard Scary book the other day and ended up
“holding” an alligator, a mouse, a car, and Goldbug in my hand.
She gets so happy. One day she ran in to the dining room with
her pinchers fingers tight and said “want some tea?” I was
expecting her to get me a pink plastic tea cup, but instead she
released her fingers in my hand and said “there you go!” A few
minutes later I saw a book with a tea party picture opened in
the living room and I’m sure I got one of those cups of tea :)
She cracks me up. She also LOVES the easel we have and spends a
lot of time coloring with dry erase markers or regular markers
(on the paper side). Sadly she also spends a lot of time
coloring on herself and then “wiping it off” with another
marker, so I have to take the markers away from her more than
I’d like to. She also found a big paper bag the other day and
has been carrying it around with her, filling it with all sorts
of stuff. Last night it was so full she had to drag it behind
her and you could hear her coming from a mile away. Sweet,
silly girl :)

We brought home
maple lollipops for the kids from a little gift shop this
weekend. Just a little something. I’m always amazed at Lex and
sweets though. He was SO excited to get to finally open the
lollipop (I didn’t let him when we first got home because he
didn’t nap and he was a cranky pants!). He was so excited and
he sat at the table and licked it a few times and talked about
how yummy it is and what it tastes like and looks like and
licked it a few more times and then put it down and said he
wanted to save it for later. Hmm… Eve on the other hand went
to town! I ended up taking it away after awhile because she was
making a HUGE mess and I figured that was enough lollipop for
the moment. Lex gets very excited about treats, but regularly
eats just half a cookie, or just a little bit of the lollipop.
I’ve even seen him leave popsicles partially eaten. He seems to
know how to regulate himself pretty well in that respect. I
could learn a few things from him! Although, the one treat that
NEVER goes unfinished is brownies and ice cream at Gammy and
Popcube’s house! He loves those!

We had a busy, busy weekend. My parents
came up to babysit so Alan and I could go to a friends wedding.
The wedding was an hour away and Alan and I got a hotel room
and turned it into a mini-vacation. It was a lot of fun! The
wedding was held at a B&B.; They had the ceremony in a
field at the top of a hill and the dinner reception in a
restored barn. The whole thing was beautiful. I have lots of
pictures that I’ll post soon.

Here we are before the reception. Aren’t we pretty?
:)

And here we are well into the
reception.

We
got back at naptime on Sunday and, of course, the kids wanted
nothing to do with napping. After trying for awhile I gave up
and took them to the science museum instead. They have a great
outdoor water park that is always a hit. This is the first time
we’ve been there since the weather has been nice. They LOVED
it! It’s fun to see Lex year after year playing with the same
exhibits. I was thinking about finding a few old pics of him in
past years, wearing the same hat and playing with the same
exhibits. They had fun, came home and ate a huge dinner of
yogurt, zone bars, bagels, etc., had a quick bath, then went to
bed in tears of exhaustion. Asleep by 6:30pm :) Then I went out
to meet some friends for drinks! Whewh! We are all looking
forward to a recovery Monday!

I also have a ton
of photos from the museum. The sunny day and bright colors
makes for good photography. I’ll try to get them posted on the
datdec site. We also saw the train go by, twice, and they were
pretty excited. We’re going to have to take a ride soon.

What impresses me most about Lex’s reading is that
he just reads anything and everything. I sometimes forget that
this is unusual for a 4yr old, but am often reminded in public.
Today a man held the door for us a the museum and Lex stopped
to read a sign. I was trying to hurry Lex along since this guy
was holding the door, but the man was just fascinated watching
him read. He finished the sign and came right over to me, and
the man just was amazed and asked me about his reading skills
and pointed Lex out to his wife (Lex had already run over to
another exhibit by this point). Here he is reading about the
stone xylephone exhibit. He is such an impressive
boy!

A few weeks ago I discovered carpenter
ants hanging around on the front porch and working their way
under the siding. These are very big ants! Someone told me last
year that ants don’t like the smell of cinnamon so you can dust
cinnamon along your doors and windows to keep ants out. It
seemed to work well last summer. So I grabbed my BJs contain of
cinnamon and applied a generous heaping to the ants and the
wall. They scattered! Then I made a thick line of it along the
door jamb and closed the door. The next day when Alan was home
I showed him the whole situation and the few ants who were
brave enough to still be hanging around. He tried to put some
more cinnamon along the wall and under the siding. While he was
doing this Lex came over to see what was going on. Alan
explained what he was doing and Lex got concerned because “we
eat cinnamon, it’s not for putting on the ground!” Then he sat
down to watch. A few minutes later he noticed the cinnamon
container and read it, exclaiming, “Oh! Dad! This is GROUND
cinnamon. It’s not food, it IS to put on the ground!” :) Get
it? Ground cinnamon? :) That boy cracks me up!!

This is from my
phone. Notice how nicely they are sitting and smiling. Too bad
they never do that when I have my real camera! We got to BJs
today and discovered they have brand new carts, with TWO seats
up front!! This is awesome :) The kids always argue about who
gets to sit up front (though Eve generally wants to walk
anyway), but now there is room for both. They spent the whole
shopping trip in and out of the cart, trying both sides, etc.
Another nice feature is that if just one kid is in the seat
there is still room to put stuff down, like hats, cups,
coupons, etc. Very good thinking by someone at BJs!!

Happy 4th of July! We had an awesome day.
I was thinking about writing a long post here, but just looking
through the photos is making me tired. That, and the fact that
it’s almost 11:30pm! So for now here are two photos and a quick
summary :) This morning we went to see a parade, followed by a
little event with a petting zoo, games, and (most importantly)
a fire truck and an ambulance. Lex spent a long time running
through the ambulance. Then home for lunch and naps. This
evening we went to another event with french fries, balloons,
horse-drawn wagon rides, and a whole fire station full of
trucks and ambulances! A fireman told us the best place to go
to view the fireworks, so we headed that way. The kids ran
around with other kids, had a picnic dinner, and LOVED the
fireworks. Actually, around 9:00pm Eve started asking if we
could go home now. Then she said she needed a nap :) Alan got
out the stroller and she watched the fireworks in a state of
indecision: watch the fireworks or nap under the big sunshade.
But they were both super well-behaved all day. It was awesome!!
And naked day #2 was a success (through two clothed outings)
all the way until about 9:25pm when she peed on my lap. Yuck! I
actually think she was starting to doze off. Probably I should
have put a diaper on her by then :) But I’m going to call the
day an overall success!! I’ll post lots of pictures soon.
Tomorrow Alan’s parents are coming to visit and the boys are
going to do a deck project. They are very excited. I’m ready
for a 24hr nap! :)

Naked day went pretty well, overall. She
napped, naked, and woke up dry. We went outside for awhile and
I was hesitant to put pants on her (but more hesitant not to!),
but she did great! All went well until the evening when they
both were struck with diarrhea, which created a messy evening.
I just got done mopping the floors! :) We’ll try again
tomorrow. Or maybe we’ll go out for some 4th of July fun, since
we accidentally missed the local fireworks tonight. Silly me
assumed they were actually ON the 4th of July! Lex is very
excited about fireworks and he’ll be sad to find out we missed
the local ones. Anyway, a good day otherwise.

We were playing in the arts & crafts
drawer today and Eve decided to make a necklace. Lex, of
course, wanted to play too. I was surprised at how good both of
them were at stringing the beads on. Last time we tried it
neither of them were quite coordinated enough. They really had
fun today.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIetURzG3xs]

I read an article awhile back about potty
training in 3 days. One thing that caught my eye was their
suggestion to have the child go completely naked for the first
few days. They said that if the kid is wearing pants or
underwear they are more likely to be confused and have
accidents. I’ve seen this a lot in Eve lately. She wants
underwear but has lots of accidents, but then she will tell me
she peed in her diaper (while wearing underwear) or get upset
about peeing in underwear, even though she is really in a
diaper. Anyway, she definitely seems to be confused by that.
The other day I stripped her down after dinner and let her run
around for awhile, and after a few minutes she ran right to the
bathroom and peed on the potty! So I decided to try some naked
time for a few days to see if we can kick this diaper habit
once and for all! So far, so good! She was naked all morning,
very happily, and used the potty with no accidents. I was going
to hold off on blogging until tonight, but the below picture is
so funny I can’t resist posting it now. She used the potty
right before I took a shower, so I thought (hoped!) it would be
safe to leave her unattended for a few minutes. They were
watching a show, I took a quick shower, and came down to find
this:

 

The
silly girl got up, got her potty, put it on the couch, climbed
on, and peed! She was happily sitting on a potty full of pee,
watching TV. I’m so thankful that she didn’t pee on the couch
and also thankful that she didn’t try to get off the full
potty! Whewh!!! I told her to sit still for one second longer
while I grabbed the camera :)

This
picture is just to remind myself that it is summer and we do,
occasionally, see the sun. It’s been many, many days, but it
came out for a few minutes this morning. Yay!