Linking up with Like Mother, Like Daughter for this week's {pretty, happy, funny, real}

{pretty}

 

They sure think they're pretty!  I need to actually attach this mirror to the wall, because they absolutely adore giggling at their reflections in it!

{happy}

Well, this certainly made me happy - John Paul got all the things down necessary to make the two of them trail mix for snack, gave each of them a handful of nuts, raisins, craisins, and banana chips, closed the bags, and put them all away.  All while I nursed one baby and Cecilia played with another!

 

Then he took their plates to the table and moved their chairs so that they could sit next to each other.

{funny}

It's like they're conspiring together!

But mostly they're just stealing each other's toys!

And another {funny}:

I told her to smell the flower, hoping for a pretty picture...

And this is what I got!

{real}

They sure love their dad!  And a recorder never fails to entrance a baby.

Check out more {pretty, happy, funny, real} posts at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

Potty Talk

Seriously, these are all conversation we've had in the bathroom.  So...  Skip it if you don't like poop talk?

Cecilia:  What comed out of my cwotch?
Me:  Pee came out.
Cecilia:  And what makes pee?
Me:  The things you drink, like milk or water.
Cecilia:  NOT wine.
Me:  No, you don't drink wine.
Cecilia:  Just Jesus dwinked wine.  And John Paul.  I just dwink water and milk!

That might explain why he can never swing straight...

...

Cecilia, smushing her tummy together:  I have no bewwybutton.  A ape ate it!

...

Cecilia, looking down at the products of her defecation:  Oh!  I see a man and a woman in my poop!

...

Cecilia, smushing her tummy together again:  A ape ate my bewwybutton!  Or maybe a cheetah...  I saw a cheetah in my sweep.  In my dweams, and it was a nice cheetah.  It was NOT mean!

...

Cecilia, during a 5:30 AM bathroom break:  My pee comed out fast!  A cow poops in da hay.  Wemember when we went to Cox Farms when I was a baby?  And I ate a snack on da hill when I was a big girl!

...

John Paul, bursting into the bathroom when I had had the audacity to close the door:  You get no privacy, Mom!!!
Cecilia:  What are you doin' Mom?  Are you poopin'?  I want to see your poop!  Wow Mom, you had a wittle poop!!!

And they wonder why the whole reason I work part-time is so I can go to the bathroom by myself...

...


Cecilia:  Mom, may I pweez come in da bafwoom?
Me, sitting down:  Well, you're already in here...
Cecilia:  You have a big booty, Mom.  Because?
Me:  Because I'm a grown up.
Cecilia:  And I have a wittle booty.  Because I'm a girl!
Me:  Yup.
Cecilia:  I want to see your poop!

...

Cecilia:  How many months old are May Cwaire and Ewizabif?
Me:  10 months old.
Cecilia:  And when dey have deir birfday, how old will dey be?
Me:  They'll be a year old!
Cecilia, whispering:  And dey not be dead...

Then I guess we'll never find out if she has the sixth sense...

WIWS - 46-degree edition!

We woke this morning to a rather chilly house!  I looked at the temperature and saw it read 46 degrees - definitely cool enough for a sweater and hat!  The problem with cooler weather though, is that the layers required mean getting dressed takes a muuuuch longer time...  Add that to the fact that the kids all slept in (well, Mary Claire & Elizabeth were up around 7, but John Paul & Cecilia were up at 7:30 and 8!), and we walked into Mass just in time for the first reading.

 

Sigh.

 

I hate being late.  At least we didn't have the babies with us...  They stayed home with Andrew to nap, and he hit up his regular EF Mass later in the day. 

 

Luckily, being late meant we didn't exhaust the kids' good behavior at all!  They were good all the way through Mass, so they got to say hi to Father without having to apologize for the behavior (Always a plus!).

 

I have to say, I love how much they love our pastor - ever since we saw him at Costco the one time, Cecilia is OBSESSED with him!  And every time we go back to Costco, she wonders why he isn't there buying eggs again.  And every time we eat eggs, she talks about how Father bought eggs, TOO!!!

 

Anyway, here's what we wore:

 

 

Well, John Paul wore shoes, too...

 

I'm not sure about the blazer with a maxi skirt - I'm on the lookout for a denim jacket, but I'm not sure I would wear a denim jacket to Mass...  Ideas?

 

Oh, and when I'm not veiling I try to wear a hat - kind of a plus because hats stay on better than the veil!

 

Cecilia's in her Easter dress, layered with her new fall boots, polka dot tights, a cardigan (not pictured) and her new (consigned) fall coat.  Too cute!  John Paul's rocking his same old khakis, dress shirt, belt, and a sweater vest that *might* last until winter's end but will probably be retired fairly soon...

 

And a couple blurry pictures sans-blazer...

 

Hat:  Zulily

Sweater:  Limited via Twice (I just sold them some clothes and they gave me an extra $10 credit in addition to what they paid me!  Sweet!)

Belt:  Kohl's?

Maxi:  Gap

Booties:  DSW

Blazer:  Banana

 

The belt is pretty nice because it's one of those elastic ones, so I can easily pull it down & pull the sweater up to nurse the babies, and I don't have to take it off completely.  Win!

 

The kids are all down for their naps after a kind of fabulous morning with a lot of REALLY good playing together (including the babies!!!).  I'm amazed at how much they can entertain themselves, and I looooove how much Cecilia wants to include the babies in whatever they play. 

 

Although clearly I need to keep a better eye on them...  I left the room for a minute and so did John Paul and Cecilia, and I returned to see somehow Mary Claire was sobbing, trapped under the baby bathtub they've been using as a boat, and Elizabeth was holding it down and drumming loudly on the bottom.  Yeah, we won't call her a bully but she's definitely the dominant personality between the two of them.

 

Happy Sunday to you!  Linking up with FL&P and all the lovely ladies there :)

7 Quick Takes - Free Camera Edition!

--1--

So BzzAgent sent us a free Playskool Showcam to review and it's a HUGE hit around the house!  I knew that John Paul would be enthralled, because it's something electronic and he always wants to help me take pictures with the real camera.

Prince John Paul couldn't find his manly cape, so he had to settle for Elizabeth's baby blanket.

 

Lest he become an addict, "camera time" is limited to no more than 30 minutes per day, and he must share it with Cecilia during that time, and he MAY NOT FUSS or whine when camera time is over or he will lose camera time for the next day.

 

And it's actually working great as a behavior modification tool!

 

But not just that - it's actually really fun!

 

The picture quality is kind of terrible, but I don't think you can expect much from a children's camera.  It's durable, holding up great even after being dropped several times.  It has this cool little projection mode so the kids can show us a slideshow of the pictures they've taken.

 

AND!  And and and!!!  You can add funny little mustaches, sunglasses, even little animations to the pictures!  If I had a cable, I would upload some of the pictures because they're even kind of hilarious to me...  See, John Paul will take a picture of my head on a chicken's body, and then the picture gets animated so the chicken lays an egg and the egg hatches and out pops a little baby chick with the face of whoever got their picture taken last.  And it's all kinds of funny to watch Mom-Chicken lay an egg that hatches into a Poodle-Chick hybrid.

 

Seriously, SO funny.

 

Anyway, it also eats batteries like nobody's business.  And is like, $50.  But if you've got parents/grandparents who like to buy expensive gifts for your kids, and you want your kids to keep their darned hands off our camera, I think this is a really fun gateway camera!

 

--2--

 

And now, since you read through all that, here are some pictures!

 

I really really love how they just sit on each other and have no concept of personal space.  It's just how it's always been, you know?

--3--

Her eyes are getting less and less blue but they still haven't settled on any particular color...

--4--

That little pursed mouth means she probably found a little bit of paper and is clamping her jaws shut so I don't try to retrieve it...

--5--

They have two toy strollers and a toy ride-on truck, so of course she had to take her floofy dog for a walk in a giant laundry basket.

--6--

Oh!  Cecilia breakthrough!

So she wakes up every morning with a bruise on her head because she insists on sleeping in the crack between her bed and the wall, which means she wedges her head into the wooden bedpost.

Well, before her nap today she pushed the bed too far away from the wall to comfortably wedge herself in the crack, and she very proudly showed me how she slept on her mattress (sideways, but I'll take what I can get), and then told me, "And my head didn't hurt when I waked up!!!"

So let's hope this becomes a trend!

--7--

Our AC is broken.  It's really really hot.  I'm probably done.

Check out more takes at Jen's!

WWWW & FF

Oh acronyms...  Who doesn't love them?

Although clearly I don't understand them - WWWW should be WWRW.  Because it's "reading" and not "wreading."

Go ahead and revoke my degree - it's just in music anyway :P

My sister visited and left me with quite a few library books, plus I've had the chance to go on my own and check out some gems - here's what the kids and I have been reading lately:

 

They don't *always* read together...

 

But when they do, apparently Cecilia tries to kick the babies away...

 

(and those weren't even staged - they just happened to be reading two of the books here with another behind them!)

 

ONE

Anything by Sherwood Smith

 

Don't you love it when you discover an author who has written a LOT of books and you can read them ALL right in a row?  It's one of my absolute favorite things in life (like the TV shows you blow through on Netflix - way better than waiting for each new episode to come out!).

 

 

 

I just finished The Spy Princess and have started A Posse of Princesses (the description is horribly written, it's really good so far!).  Fair warning:  I read a lot of young adult fiction about princesses.  Honestly, I love YA fiction because there's almost never anything inappropriate that makes me uncomfortable (except the somewhat morally relativistic Tamora Pierce, but I can trust my judgment enough to read her books...).

 

Anyway, The Spy Princess is about (obviously) a princess who ends up being part of a revolution to overthrow her horrible uncle, the king.  It's very reminiscent of Shannon Hale/Robin McKinley/Dianna Wynne Jones, so obviously I love it!  If you're a fan of the princess/magic/fantasy genre, you'll love it too :)

 

TWO

 

Magic Tree House books

 

 

A friend recommended these as good first chapter books to read aloud - John Paul's reading level far surpasses these, but they're perfect for his (and Cecilia's) attention span, and the chapters are short enough for bedtime reading (I refuse to read long stories for bedtime - when it's that late, I just want them to go to sleep!!!).  We've only read one so far, Afternoon on the Amazon, but I'm planning on going back to the library and picking up more, because they love pretending they're Jack & Annie and going on different adventures!  The baby tub has been turned into a canoe so that they can sail down the Amazon River, and I'm a monkey who has to throw "mangoes" at them.  Yup, I get all the good characters.

 

THREE

 

The Magic School Bus

  

I love The Magic School Bus, the books AND the TV show.  Honestly, if there were a homeschooling curriculum based on the series, I think that's what we would do for kindergarten next year.  We have a couple of our own, and I just checked out The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor, which the kids are loving!  We've been making sea urchins out of play dough and toothpicks, and they've been playing Magic School Bus all day long this week - for some reason I have to be Arnold, although sometimes John Paul takes a break from being Ralphie (the fat one?) and Phoebe (the girl who always talks about her old school) and he's Arnold.  For some reason he says Cecilia is either Wanda (the Asian one) or Dorothy Ann (the know-it-all)...

 

FOUR

 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

 

 

I picked this up on a whim from the library and am glad I did!  Cecilia and John Paul love to be told the classic fairy tales, but I get tired of it...  Cecilia loves the pictures, John Paul loves that it's a book, and I love how the words flow -

 

"Aaah," she sighed.

"Bravo!" she cried.

"That is my kind of chair!"

 

Nothing like books that are fun to read for adults and kids alike!

 

FIVE

 

The Temperament God Gave Your Kids

 

 

 

I'm still working on this one - it's a short, easy read but after I read chapter about how to deal with your choleric child, I had to stop because IT WAS MIND-BLOWING.  John Paul is perhaps the most choleric person there has ever been and I had NO idea, and our temperaments clash so very much that all the conflict we have makes SENSE now!  This was recommended to me by several people, and I'm really glad I've started reading it.

 

Whew!  I meant for that to be short, and then it actually ended up being 5 books, so I'll link up with Hallie's Five Favorites (hosted by Grace this week!) AND Jessica's What We're Reading Wednesday link up.  Happy Wednesday!