everyday is fun

it has taken me more than a week to get our vacation posts up, but there has been lots of other stuff going on too.

- madelyn has been very excited that it is finally cold enough for her to wear her 'cozy jammies'. and of course we had to get mason some too.

- about a month ago madelyn was asking me about the buttons on the water/ice dispenser on the refrigerator. while explaining what they were and what each one did i told her that crushed ice was papa's favorite. well this week she decided out of no where that crushed ice is her preference now. and she told us that she liked it just like papa.

- on sunday night the kids were having a 'party' after we had put them to bed. (house rule is that they don't have to go to sleep but they can't come out.) we haven't moved the video monitor into the room with them yet but were listening to them on the regular monitor. a little after 9 all the power in the neighborhood went out. that made it very unfortunate that they were still awake. madelyn was upset that her music and ceiling fan weren't working. it was also concerning that there was no light of any kind available. matt and i were using our cell phones as flashlights. i was actually surprised how quickly the kids both fell asleep after we explained the lack of power to madelyn several times. the main concern was for when the power came back on at some point in the night (the power company was guessing around 11:30) and all the lights, tvs, etc. in the house would come on. matt did his best to manually turn off as much as possible. at least we got things situated so that the lights and music in the kids' room wasn't going to wake them up. now i think i was woken up at least twice from the power coming on and going back off again. it was not the way that i wanted to start what was going to be a very busy work week - exhausted.

- the kids have been so funny to listen to after we put them to bed at night. once we get the video monitor moved back into that room i will try to take some video to share.

- friday morning i took the kids to run errands so that we would have food to eat. at the grocery store mason was hugging me and my belly, as he likes to do at shopping cart height, but madelyn started to cry because she wasn't getting any hugs. so i had to kneel down in the store to give her some hugs and kisses too. but all was set right when we went to sams and they could both ride in the cart. people were actually laughing because i could barely push the cart because they had me so doubled over with hugs. it definitely makes errands more fun when there is so many hugs and so much love!

- on the same trip to sams i let madelyn get a sample of peach yogurt. she shared it with mason and then even let him hold the cup and spoon to feed himself towards the end. but the amazing thing was that he took turns feeding himself and her too! like i have said before, their sharing amazes me. maybe it's the house rule that if you can't share it, you can't have it.

- mason can kick a ball now. he just started doing it the other day. this is a nice change from his habit of throwing them.

- yesterday when we stopped by the blue park on our way to my doctor appointment, madelyn used really great manners with a boy that wasn't being totally friendly towards her and she ultimately won him over. they played nicely together for a while before we had to leave. i told her how proud i was of her staying polite even when he wasn't. the best part was when she was trying to tell him about the toys she had brought to the park and he kept saying, "what?" she would start trying to tell him again and again he would say, "what?" after about four times through this routine madelyn said, "you can hear me." she was totally calm about it and was just stating what was an obvious fact given that she was only a foot or two from him. i just thought that it was really funny that she called him out.

- today mason went up to a sign on the wall at madelyn's school and said (what sounded like) "duck". i have thought that he says "duck" but this was the first time he did so unprompted. he still isn't 'talking' but there is so much effort on his part that i think it will be soon. he gets the number of syllables right when we ask him animal names from his picture book. he's getting there.

- mason only has one more molar to go before we get a little break in the teething for a while.

as you can see life is full speed ahead. and i have one more post before i am caught up - finally. love.