Commercial

And now I'm going to take a short break from vacation pictures to share a few small updates.

Eve is obsessed with shoes. It's rather amusing. She even says "shoes". She loves to put on my flip flops (with or without her shoes on), BUT she finds them extremely frustrating and screams and stomps her feet when she can't quite get them on right for walking. Wonderful mother I am, I spent quite a while video taping her rather than helping her. It really is funny. She's still obsessed with her belly, loves showing it off, and also says "belly". I keep saying she's about to have a vocabulary explosion. She's also really good at coloring. It holds her interest longer than John, even now, and she does a good job of filling up the page...as long as we can keep the crayons out of her mouth.

John hasn't worn a diaper, even at night, since we got back from Portland. I'm so proud of him! He has even gotten up in the middle of the night, gone to the bathroom, and gone back to bed on his own. He may do this more than we realize, but he typically announces it...rather loudly. Again, I'm so proud of him. As far as his coloring, he's getting better and better at coloring objects rather than scribbling on the entire page. Actually last week he came home with a color sheet from Spanish and had all the colors in the right place. I'm sure he had lots of help, but still I think he's showing lots of improvement. He now knows red and yellow in Spanish. He's been helping me a lot lately, which I think is really nice (although sometimes it makes things a little more difficult), and he's been clearing his dishes and trash from the table. Really starting to get some nice manners. What a sweet boy. One sort of bad thing, though, is he's recently picked up an accusatory tone...not sure from where. He walked in the other day and I had a few groceries still on the floor and he said rather sternly "Who did this!?" It was funny, though, the other day when I had cleaned the car during nap time. We were getting in later in the evening and in the same stern tone he asked "Who cleaned this mess!?" To which I proudly (and pleasantly) responded..."I did!"

We got "Booed" the other night. Something that's done in our neighborhood. People will gather some goodies, drop them on the doorstep, and ding dong ditch. We were about to go to bed when it happened the other night, so the kids and I went to the door and found our special treat. John was THRILLED! He alse kept asking why they ran away. I explained that sometimes it's fun to leave someone a surprise and not let them know who it's from. We Booed Grandma the next day and thoroughly enjoyed it. Of course she could see and hear us "hiding", but she put on a good show and John had fun. Later he was sure to tell her that we were the ones that brought the treat. We'll have to work on it some more before next year.

One last super sweet thing. The other day Eve and I were in the car going to pick John up from school. In the parking lot I asked "Are you ready to go get John?" She squealed and got so excited. When we got inside, she was sitting nicely on my hip, but as soon as John walked out the door she started wiggling around like crazy. I put her down and they gave each other the biggest hug. I'll keep that mental picture for a long long time.