look what i can do

in the midst of all our travels, visitors, and appointments, the kids continue to add to their bags of 'tricks' so here are the ones i could remember (or happened to have pictures of - thankfully!).

mason discovered that he can open doors at papa and nana's house. we have turn knobs at home but they have lever handles that are easier to open. now he is a man on a mission to try and open every door he finds. the most impressive is when he opens the closet doors (like in the picture). he pulls the knob and carefully moves his feet back out of the way to get the door open. he even closes the door slowly and moves his fingers out of the way so that they don't get pinched. the unfortunate part is that he is very, very close to opening the turn knobs and then we will be in the difficult place of childproofing for him but making sure that madelyn can still get into the bathroom... oh well. it is a short time in life to deal with these issues.


mason has come close to it before, but he actually fell asleep while eating dinner at papa and nana's. he was so cute. he dosed off and on before i took him down to get ready for bed. mason didn't get many morning naps while we were there and i think we were wearing him out. and it was much warmer in kansas than we were used to. matt and i are becoming such wimps when it comes to heat after living here for so long. it's hard to believe that i ever lived in florida.

matt has been got a lot of nights for different work functions so i have had to be a little creative about filling the evenings without daddy as my relief. after several rainy days we were all ready to get out of the house and the kids were both whiny from being off routine. a walk around the neighborhood! some fresh air would be good for all of us.

let me just tell you that pulling that wagon gets really difficult - those kids are heavy! thankfully madelyn asked to get out and pull mason. i was so happy and she actually stuck with it all the way home. let's just say it was much, much farther than she has ever ridden her bike.

today we went ahead and moved mason to the booster seat because he is just getting a little too big to fit easily into the high chair. mason wasn't really sure about it at first, but madelyn was really excited about it. she was trying to teach him how to eat out of a bowl and trying to help him with his water even though he is more than capable of drinking water all on his own.

the video doesn't really capture her excitement but it does show how she was treating mason like he had never eaten before.

i had to take an intermission during writing the post to wake the kids and take them down into the basement for almost an hour because the tornado sirens went off. we never lost power or satellite reception so it was a little surprising that the sirens went off. it was nice to be able to watch the weather radar and see where the storms were the whole time we were hiding out. the other good part about this impromptu family gathering was that mason took 5 steps to walk over to me! that was by far the most steps he had ever taken with no hesitation. and he was so proud of himself! madelyn was pretty excited too.

speaking of the storm, the thunder and lightning started as i was putting madelyn down for bed. she came out after a little bit and told me that she could hear the thunder and wanted to pray about it. so sweet. and after we prayed she didn't say another peep until we came to get her when the sirens started.

madelyn can be so silly and this week she was playing with a straw and holding it like a mustache. so i told her that if she did her, newly mastered, fish lips it would stay up on her own. she didn't quite understand until i gave her a demonstration and then she was a pro.

madelyn has been watching matt get dressed for work in the morning for a while now and when she found a spare tie she decided to give it a try for herself. she was so cute trying to knot it just right. she was a lot closer than i thought she would be and very pleased with herself.

never a dull moment around here. love.