Last week Edie kept saying she wanted to do an "adventure" and refused to eat dinner, brush her teeth, or anything else until she had done her adventure. We weren't sure at first what that meant, but it turned out it just involved playing around the house wearing hats. Marty has been on his share of adventures lately. Here he is climbing up the stairs.
But what's this, you say? How could he possibly be adventuring without a hat? Rest assured, my friends, he has a hat.
And just in case you don't think that sitting placidly by a crib and a tiny Christmas tree while absently watching some cartoons isn't adventurous enough for you, then perhaps you should consider that you can go on an adventure every night at dinner, if you dare to.
You can't really tell from this angle, but his whole face and nearly all of the hat are completely covered in chocolate. Marty is what I would call a bold eater. Edie wears her fair share of hats, too.
This was an adventure in Marty's room, where we mostly rearranged things and got ready for bed. Tamsen came up with a much better adventure the next day, though. Edie saw a scrap of wrapping paper and announced it was her map. Tamsen sat down with a marker and drew everything that Edie told her was on the map. It was a pretty great map!
Like, a REALLY great map.
Again, hard to tell in this picture, but Edie told Tamsen that there was "some grass" on the map, so she faithfully a small lawn and labeled it "some grass." Edie thoroughly enjoyed it for about two days before she completely forgot about it, which was a pretty solid return on investment, actually. Every day is an adventure around here.
I was looking forward to this holiday weekend, but it turns out the kids were looking forward to it even more than I was. Edie was looking forward to a weekend of loafing on the couch and watching TV.
Marty was looking forward to a weekend of eating everything in not only our house, but in all houses.
And Edie was looking forward to a chance to dress herself for church today. Can you tell?
Her necklace is a string of beads she put together herself today. Marty assisted by cramming beads in his mouth and drooling a lot. All told, it was a fun weekend. We spent a lot of time hanging around the house, setting up Christmas decorations, and good-naturedly destroying things. I'm looking forward to doing it all again come Christmastime.
I've mentioned it before, but Marty is just out of control with how much he loves to climb on things. More than once I've been sitting in the living room and noticed too late that it was quiet, walking into the kitchen to find Marty perched precariously on the table with a guilty look on his face. I'm glad he's found something that he's good at, but I'd feel a little better if he had any sort of exit strategy for the situations he gets himself into. Perhaps even less fortunate for us is that his new favorite activity is finding something heavy and pounding it against the table until one of us runs over, snatches it out of his hands, and hauls him away. He does this with books, his milk cup, parts of the Roomba, or even just his hands. (Can't take his hands away from him, alas.) Again, it's great that he's identifying and building talents, but come on, little boy. Be cool.
Edie goes back and forth between being really sweet and really not so sweet. Just today, Marty snatched her Kindle from her, and rather than screaming at him, she picked up a book, handed it to him, and said, "Marty, do you want to play with this instead?" He was happy to make the trade. Tamsen came into the room, and just as I was about to tell her how kind Edie was, she grabbed his binky and started smacking him across the face with it. Two steps forward, one step back, I guess. Yesterday morning, we were sitting at the breakfast table when Edie pulled out her copy of Goodnight Moon and read it out loud, cover to cover. She asked if she could do it again as soon as she was done. After three times, I figured I'd better get a video of it. She's pretty good, considering she can't actually read!
Edie's been a little sick the last couple of days. She was sounding a little hoarse yesterday, and this morning, when I got her up and asked how she was feeling, she responded with the saddest, wheeziest, "Better." Tamsen, ever on the ball, pulled our her phone and got a quick recording of her. It's sad, but also hilarious.
What shopping cart is she asking about, you may ask? (I can't remember what she was talking about in this video, but I'm pretty sure she was talking about her shopping cart.) The last time we went grocery shopping, she saw one of the big carts that has steering wheels on it and demanded that we use that next time. Next time was yesterday, and she was very vocal in reminding me that we needed to get a big cart. We did, and it was wicked.
This shopping cart is virtually the only thing she's talked about over the last two solid days. She loved it. We will be visiting the store again very soon, I assure you, and not just because I only bought cookies and Cool Whip yesterday. Marty did not get to sit in the cart, but he is making the most of his time at home by climbing on literally everything in the house. It's impressive and incredibly frustrating at the same time. I almost wouldn't mind if he climbed if he just knew the way to get down. So far, he's settled on "falling right on his big, fat head," which hasn't worked as well as we would like. Here he is, determinedly climbing up to read a book yesterday.
Who needs a chair when you can just perch precariously on a bookshelf, right?
My parents were in town this week, and let's be perfectly honest, they were not here to see me. They came all the way from Oregon to visit the kids, and I'm really glad to say that their visit paid off. Edie is usually standoffish with them, but she was more than happy to play with them, sit on their laps, give high fives, and everything else a grandparent could possibly want. Marty let my mom give him a bath and hold him in a lobster towel.
Edie explored a historical house in Kentucky with my dad.
Marty did his best to climb a rock wall with only a little bit of assistance from my dad.
Edie sat with my mom and colored a turkey at her school's fall festival on Saturday.
And on top of all of that, we celebrated my dad's birthday on Friday. When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he just said "MEAT," so we all went to a nice barbecue restaurant in Kentucky. He got a big ol' slab of ribs that he thoroughly enjoyed. I felt a little left out, so I decided to snack on some baby back ribs of my own.
All told, it was a pretty great week. I'm glad my parents enjoyed seeing my kids, and I'm just as glad that my kids enjoyed seeing my parents. It's no fun that they live so far from each other, so I'm glad that this visit really counted.
We had a lovely week, playing games and making food and blah blah blah you just want to see the kids' costumes, don't you? We had our church Halloween party last night. There weren't many kids Edie and Marty's ages, so I feel confident in saying that their costumes were the best of the night. Marty dressed as the "See My Vest" version of Mr. Burns. You can totally tell, right?
You can TOTALLY tell. No one else who was there knew who he was, but we did, and that's what's important. Edie, on the other hand, had the sense to wear an easily-recognizable costume.
My parents got this for her when we saw them for her birthday over the summer. She's been fascinated with the Daniel Tiger costume ever since, but only from a distance. She would announce to us that she was going to wear her Daniel costume for Halloween, but if we asked her to try it on, she'd say, "Um, no thanks." But yesterday morning, she surprised us by asking to put it on. She wore it all day, even coming with me to have our car's emissions tested. She was still very reluctant to talk to anyone or do anything at the party, but she enjoyed wearing the costume, at least. She and Marty still gang up on me whenever they have the chance. I was on the floor in Edie's room helping her find Waldo tonight (she's really gotten into the Where's Waldo? books lately), and Marty took advantage and belly-flopped on my head. Edie smelled blood in the water and jumped on my stomach immediately after, both of them howling with laughter amidst my shrieks and screams. In other murderous news, Edie and I had the following conversation this morning. EDIE: I want to take you off. ME: You want to take off my what? EDIE: (thinking) Your head.
Marty's learning more and more every day. The other day, he learned, with absolutely no prompting from either of us, how to use Edie's slide in her room. He walked up, climbed up the ladder, sat himself down, and slid right down. He seemed really pleased with himself and immediately went back for another go. No really, look for yourself.
You might think that he picked this up from watching Edie slide, but she's been largely indifferent to it for a few months now, so it seems like he picked it up entirely on his own. To think that he's sliding on a first-grade level at only one year old! We're just so proud. He's also learned how to karate kick Edie in the face, which she enjoys much more than you might think.
This is a game that Edie calls "squish," in which she lies on the ground, and then I set Marty on top of her. Marty, completely unaware that there's any sort of game going on, scrambles to get off of her, stomping on her stomach, arms, face, etc. in the process. She loves it, and he always ends up laughing by the end of it. Kids are weird, I dunno. I don't have any pictures or videos of this one, but Marty figured out how high fives work the other day, and Edie's more excited about it than anyone. I'll hold out my hand to him for a five, then Edie wants a turn, then Marty wants another one, and soon I'm just going back and forth, back and forth, for five or ten minutes, both of them laughing hysterically. They're learning new things every day, and it's a real kick to watch. (Ha! Kick! I made a joke there, you guys.)
