Saturday Anecdotes

As always, Cadence will probably dominate this entry. Megan is adorable, but she is barely crawling, so her stories are less interesting.

So, to make sure Megan is not neglected, we will talk about her first: Megan is doing great with solids. I've noticed she's mimicking me when she eats, and it's funny. Like most moms, I go "aaah" when I want her to open her mouth and then make a "aahhmm" sounds as I close my mouth and then "mum mum mum" like I'm chewing. I realized Megan was making the same noises. Not always at the right time. Sometime she'd skip the "aahhmm" and we'd make a mess because the spoon was not always in her mouth completely (so banana puree goes squishing out the corner of her mouth, oops). She's so cute about it!

She is also obsessed with Hanna. Every time she sees Taz she's interested, but every time she sees Hanna she goes completely wide-eyed and still and then begins squirming like crazy to try to get to her. Hanna sits patiently, lets her work her way over to her, and then jumps to safety when she's just within reach. Today I caught Megan halfway under the end table in our living room trying to get to her, lol. Silly girls.

And now Cadence...

James' brother was in town and was also allowed to bring his son to visit family in Taft. Always happy to see Jared and Talon, we dropped our plans and drove out to Taft instead. Talon was a big sweetheart with Cadence, who was crazy about her bigger cousin as soon as he started talking to her. He's got a sister about her age, so he's got some experience in handling toddler girls. Cadence, though, seriously was over the moon with him. Every time he came into the room she followed him. When he went outside she wanted to go outside too. As soon as she saw him, she was offering to let him hold her precious blanket. And she'd chat with him. He was great about it, shared his crackers, talked to her, helped her with the sidewalk chalk, and even held her other hand when we walked down the steps outside.

Lots of big girl steps for Cadence starting soon. In a few weeks, we'll probably buy a forward-facing-only booster seat and move Cadence into that one and then give Megan the convertible car seat. We discovered our van has a built-in carseat, but after doing a little research, I feel more comfortable purchasing a booster seat for Cadence. Really, that's a milestone for Megan more than Cadence, I suppose.

Also, we officially got Cadence a booster seat for the dining table (getting the high chair ready for Megan to move into soon!). She loves sitting at the table with us. Quite frankly, I enjoy having her at the table too. It makes me more likely to sit down and eat dinner. And sitting down to eat dinner also means I'm more likely to remember to pray over my meals. Cadence is so cute about prayers, by the way. Not at dinner time. At dinner she's too focused on the food. However, every night we say a bedtime prayer after our story together. At first she would just watch me, but now she climbs out of my lap and rushes to kneel by her bed and waits. Then, once I start saying the prayer she crosses her arms (kind of) in front of her and rests her forehead against her forearms. She usually crawls into bed before I say "Amen" if I take too long, but it's still absolutely adorable. After prayer, I spend a minute or two trying to steal kisses while she squirms away and covers her head with her blanket. But after that, I turn off the light and sing to her (while I'm picking up toys in the dark, lol) before shutting the door and letting her go to sleep.

Our last big step (hasn't really been taken yet): We bought a padded seat insert for the toilet. No serious plans to potty train yet, but Cadence has a new habit of peeing after her bath. And, since I am in the habit of diapering Megan first, sometimes Cadence has nothing on to catch the mess she makes. So, I'm thinking of taking advantage of this bit of scheduling information and letting her sit on the toilet after each bath. If she takes to it, yay. If not, well, at least she gets used to the idea. And if the whole idea tanks, we have the seat bought for future use (so if you get no tinkle updates any time in the next few weeks, you'll know this daring plan of ours did not work out at all).

And, Cadence is hitting another vocabulary eruption. Just over the past few days she's added a few words to her arsenal: cracker, dideh (blanket, for those of you that don't speak Cadyese), outside, please. And she's gotten really good at answering questions, though she has only one possible answer: "no".

Ah, yes, one last Cadence story: Cadence now carries off entire one-sided conversations. Today, when her cousin was nowhere to be found, she walked into Dama's bedroom and had a conversation with Pandora, Aunt Jen's cat. Nothing but talking. She also enjoys holding a remote to her ear and walking around having a phone conversation that always begins with "hi!" and ends with "bye-bye", at which point she'll pull the remote/phone away from her ear, act like she's putting it down, then put it back at her ear and start all over again. In fact, I have video of this... on my camera, at my mom's house. Tomorrow I intend to get that camera and do an overload of pictures and video. I promise (for those of you that care)!