Our awesome pumpkins

Cadence painted the base, then I added the faces. Cadence decided it wasn't quite good enough and added a few details in black crayon. And then we put them on our doorstep. Awesome!

My Motherhood Superpowers!

So, I've decided, motherhood has given me superpowers. Honestly. Here's a few:

1) I can run on virtually nothing. I do not need to recharge at all! A few hours of sleep is now merely a luxury and I can run off of water and a handful of crackers for hours on end. Pretty impressive stuff.

2) I have super smelling powers. I can smell a dirty diaper from across the room. Half the time, I can even tell which one it is by subtle differences in the smell. I'm just that awesome.

3) I have super hearing. Even with headphones over one ear listening to something, I hear the tiniest fussing from the girls' bedroom and I'm out of my seat and halfway to the girls while James, who has both ears uncovered and is usually closer to the room, hears nothing.

4) I am tri-lingual, whereas before I had kids I couldn't even pick up Spanish. Now, however, I understand, almost fluently, English, Cadencian and Meganese. James is still learning the languages, but he's picked up a fair number of words as well.

5) I have super-speed! I can dash across the apartment and grab a toy from Cadence before she smacks her sister over the head with it in the time it takes her to form the thought and raise the toy up. I can also get breakfast done, diapers changed, clothes changed, and a diaper bag packed and be out the door within 15 minutes of waking up. How's that for speed?

I'm sure there are others, but my super mind-reading powers are warning me that Megan's thinking about trying to wake her sister up...

Potty Training Success

I know I'm probably jinxing it, but I must brag about my awesome daughter.

We just bought her own potty Tuesday morning. Tuesday night, Wednesday night and tonight we let her spend the hour before bathtime diaperless. I figured, why not? She normally needs a diaper change an hour before bathtime anyway, so why waste a diaper when we can make full use of that hour?

Anyway, Tuesday night she ignored everything, just loved being diaperless. Wednesday night, I didn't notice any change. We were back in their bedroom playing for most of that hour and I was talking to my mom on the phone, Cady's potty was in the living room, and she would run back and forth frequently, which is perfectly normal. I'd ask her if she needed to go, she'd tell me "no" and we'd move on. But Wednesday night when I was cleaning up I realized the potty had been used! I was thrilled. Cadence had realized she needed to pee and gone to the potty without having to be prompted to use it.

She did the same thing tonight. Except I caught her this time, so Megan and I did a happy dance for her. Both the girls thought it was great. Cadence immediately sat on the potty again, but no luck that time, lol.

I know we've still got several hills to get over. For example, she does great diaperless, but how will she handle underwear when the time comes? When do we risk no diapers at night or during naptime? How are we going to handle running errands? She's going to have to tell me when she has to go potty.

But, I'm still feeling pretty optimistic. I was going to go full steam ahead tomorrow, but my full steam ahead means no errands for the first day and being home for most of the second. But with groceries needing to be replenished tomorrow and a family reunion luncheon and other stuff on Saturday... We'll put off the full-steam approach until Monday.

Oh, and today I reserved the place for the girls' combined birthday party. It's nothing fancy. But with 20 people coming just for family alone, we definitely couldn't do it at our place! Luckily, the Pizza Hut in the Southwest has a party room that's free to reserve. We were thinking pizza anyway, so it works out nicely in the end. Now we're debating what presents to get. Hmm...

All about Megan (and a pumpkin shot)

Megan has surprised us with how much she's learned just over the past week! Yesterday, she had James and I laughing over the "words" she's picked up from her sister. While meowing with Cadence, we were both surprised to hear Megan utter a low "mow!" When we meowed again, she grinned big and repeated the sound.

Then, as Cadence ran in circles shouting "whee!", Megan bounced and repeated "whee!" Right now, if you say "whee" she laughs and throws herself at you, expecting you to do something "whee-worthy", such as throwing her up in the air or spinning her around.

Then, the girl began clapping and saying "yay" with a big grin on her face. It amused us so much we kept clapping and she'd keep clapping and saying "yay".

She is much more confident on her feet. She's finally taking steps without thinking about it. She bounces on her feet without support, catches herself when she begins to wobble, and continues to take steps forward. It really is quite cute. She's still trying to go too fast for her feet sometimes and will fall on her face most of the time. But she just grins big, gets up to her hands and knees, and takes off crawling as fast as she can to find a place to stand herself up again.

For those of you wondering, our talks went well. Actually, the Sunday School president asked me to email him a copy of my talk so he could use parts of it for preparing a course on how to teach or something like that. So I guess it was good enough. I tripped over my own tongue far too often, but I do that whenever I get nervous or upset, so I wasn't too surprised or embarrassed, just laughed at myself, repeated the word properly, and moved on. James's went well too. I admit I didn't pay a ton of attention. I'd already ready over his and spent the 15 minutes of his talk making faces at my girls. What can I say? I'm head over heels for those two little blonds!

Cadence got to her paint her Halloween pumpkin. I carved the bigger one, but it turned out really lame. Cadence's, however, turned out pretty cool. She got COVERED in blue paint (which, by the way, I know I said this post is all about Megan, but Cadence can now identify colors. At least, if you ask her for a blue crayon, she'll hand you a blue one for all of the colors. Blue and yellow she knows well enough to name on sight, but the others she just recognizes the name. Again, I was completely stunned. I've been going over the colors with her, but two days ago she just gave me a confused look over the whole thing. Then today...)

It's not quite Friday yet

Cadence has successfully learned the name of every animal in a board book we have. She's got butterfly, sheep, pig, cow, bird, chicken, monkey, frog... all of them. Well, no, she calls the goat a cow (can't blame her, it's got the black and white coloring) and she stumbles over guinea pig (who wouldn't?). But the other 20+ pictures she can point to and name and is quite pleased with herself. She'd go through that book a dozen times in a row, so long as I happily cheer her on and praise her each time. She loves showing off her words! She'll proudly point out people and name them every chance she gets. She even knows the animals names. Lately, every puppy she sees is "Oreo" (Nana's dog).

Recently, we got rid of cable television in our household. I must say, I'm loving it. We didn't really watch a ton of TV, but I never bothered with turning it off during the day so it was constantly on. At the end of the day, I'd be irritated with how long it had been on. Over the past 2 days, it's already been on less. The radio's been on more. It's been pretty nice, all around.

We've got some small plans for the weekend. Originally, we were going to go to a pumpkin patch and go crazy with that. But James is going out with the missionaries Saturday morning and then he'll need the afternoon to put his talk together. We're both speaking in Sacrament this Sunday. I've been working on mine for the past few days so that James can have full use of the computer and everything else on his day off. So instead of going out and paying twice the cost for a pumpkin on Saturday, just for a few photo ops, we're going to purchase ours from the store when we go grocery shopping tomorrow. We'll just take a bunch of pictures of Cadence painting her pumpkin (since she is painting instead of carving the thing for obvious reasons) instead. We will be doing that Saturday afternoon, and James will take a break from his talk to join us for that one.

Megan is beginning to mimic her sister recently. James swears Megan repeated "Spongebob" after Cadence. I didn't hear it, but I'll believe him. Mostly because I've sat in the girls' room and heard Megan repeat Cadence's "whee" often enough to believe Megan will repeat just about anything her sister says that sounds fun to say. We're encouraging the walking thing around here. I'm not trying to push her into walking sooner than she's ready, but I am trying to build up her confidence, since I think that's her problem. She thinks about walking, then gets a worried look on her face and lowers herself to the ground again. Lately, though, she walks fairly capably while holding on to just one of my fingers. A little wobbly still, but she was needing both hands held only a week ago.

Name that tune

Cady's discovered songs. I think it's a combination of nursery and me, because I start singing songs and she's suddenly singing along (as best she can). She gets so excited and runs in circles the whole time we're singing together. So, let's play name that tune. I'll give you her "lyrics" and you try to guess what song it is (most of htem should be pretty easy):

1) "I mumumum gah ahh mumumum ear as mumumum hoe mumumumum ear.... leemee gah mumumumum teeemeee... do... sim day"

2) "Heh ... toe ... heh... toe ... eyes ... nose!"

3) "A C D C E S E blah blah blah M M O P coo res 2 vee... Y N C!"

4) *mommy sings* "SNAP!" *mommy sings* "SNAP!" *mommy sings* "SNAP!"

Her current favorite book is "The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly". We leave it in the car and as soon as she's buckled she kicks her legs and asks for "Fy? Fy?" until we hand her the book and then she will point ot the pictures and name them all (except the spider). It's a relatively easy story, of course, so I'm able to repeat it from memory and she'll pretend to flip through the book as I "read" it while I drive. She thinks it's funny.

Megan's... Megan's just stinking adorable. She's really good at just being absolutely adorable. Every time you look at her she wrinkles her nose at you and grins. It can just melt your heart. She's stubbornly refusing to walk. She'll hold on to my finger and take several steps and I've tricked her into taking half a dozen unassisted steps a few times, but she's such a stubborn little girl! She's actually getting really good at standing. She's crouching while standing, though not confidently, and she's working on standing without having to pull herself up. She's good enough at standing up from a semi-crouch (she'll put her hand on something a few inches higher than the ground and stand from that). Today she actually thought about walking before she took a few steps. Mostly I think she decided I was close enough and she'd worked hard enough to stand, she might as well walk rather than lower herself back to the floor and have to stand up all over again.

I wonder if she's as much of a perfectionist as I am...

Lazy days

There's really nothing more enjoyable than lounging around with my camera, my two girls, a bucket, and a baby toothbrush. It started with me trying to get a better shot of my recent hair cut, but the girls kept climbing all over me (they're very good at distracting me). So I got suckered into grabbing snapshots of them.

Cady's new thing is climbing into buckets. She'd lay around in this thing all day if she could. Give her a book, her doll, and a sippy cup and she's good to go:
She was laughing and squirming so much when I grabbed her to get a shot of the two of us, that I took a dozen and this is one of the few that wasn't blurry from her laughing so much:
I attempted to get a similar shot with Megan, but the girl refused to put the darn toothbrush down! If I ever leave the bathroom door open for longer than two seconds, Cadence is darting in there to rescue the two toothbrushes from their lonely perch:
Snagged Cadence for a trio picture. She looks kinda goofy and Megan looks like she could care less, which means it's pretty much the perfect picture of all three of us:

Kern County Fair

We started off our morning with some family over for breakfast and Saturday morning's Conference session. What a great way to start off the weekend! Fruit salad, cinnamon rolls, and some lessons directly from the words of the prophets.

Admittedly, we chose to skip the afternoon session to go to the Kern County Fair (we'll catch up tomorrow). With James's work schedule and the funky fair hours, today was the only day we could go. As the Houston news is still up in the air, for all we knew it would be our last chance to go, so go we did! Cadence has recently mastered the names for cows, chicken, bunnies, and horses, so I was especially eager for her to get to see the things in person, rather than just as pictures in a book. I have to admit, I was disappointed in her relatively casual reaction to each new animal. But we'll blame some intestinal issues she's had the past few days that are still sorting themselves out for her lackluster mood.

Cadence admiring the baby chicks with Daddy:

Megan pointing to the bunny:

After admiring the livestock, we escaped the smells and went to the small kid activity area. Cadence was intrigued by the different activities set up, but her all time favorite were the pedal-tractors (that Mommy had to push because her legs weren't long enough to reach the pedals) and, of course, the "music-making" stall, where they'd hung different metal items you might find on a farm with metal rods to make music with.

It started to rain as we wandered through the kiddie carnival area searching for a ride that Cadence was tall enough for. At 34" she was about 2" too short for pretty much all of them. James attempted to win with a BB gun game, but every time he had just a tiny corner of the star remaining. We enjoyed the rain, though! With as humid as it's been, it was nice to have a warm sprinkle come down on us. Megan wasn't too thrilled with it, though, and curled up tight against the rain (when the forecast calls for 93 degrees the night before, you don't think to grab a jacket on your way out the door). So we left before Cadence got to ride on the swing ride, which she was tall enough for.

Afterward, we left the girls with Aunt Robyn and James and I returned to the fair for a simple date night. We did nothing worth mentioning, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

And as one might be able to see from the pedal-tractor picture... I have had a very recent hair makeover. During the girls' nap time, I scampered off to cut off approximately 8" of hair (maybe more?) and then darkened it to a tone more appropriate for winter. I'm loving the haircut. I've been needing a "mom cut" for awhile now, with how long and bulky my hair's gotten. Here's the best shot I could get that really shows off the cut so enjoy:

Blast from the past

Thought it'd be fun to compare the befores and after a year can create.

Cadence, around the end of September 2009:
"Taz meowed at her and Cadence instantly grinned big and repeated her "mom" sound, almost a perfect mimic of the pitch and feel of Taz's regular meow. Only then did I realize, Cadence was not saying "mom", she was meowing!"

"Cadence went with me today, so James could run an errand with the car, and did surprisingly well. She charmed everyone in the waiting room and even did well when I wasn't holding her during my exam and when I was being weighed. The doctor said she even sat quietly and looked at us when Megan's heartbeat was audible."

"Cadence has started doing a headstand thing. She'll put her head on the floor and then lift her butt up in the air. The other day I glanced over at her and she was grinning at me from between her legs, upside-down."

And today(ish):

-Cadence is talking up a STORM. She loves the sound of her own voice and will often proudly show off her words. She's mastered the word "Mommy" and it's one of her favorites, right along with "Megan" and "shoes". I don't even want to try to count how many words she knows now.

-Cadence LOVES going places. She'll wait at the door as soon as her shoes are on and bounce excitedly whenever I finally go to open it for us. She waits at the edge of the parking lot until I come to hold her hand and walk her to her side of the van. Can't say she behaves so well in the doctor's office. The last few times we've taken her, she's cried just because it's the doctor's office (even if the visit was for Megan) and repeatedly pleaded to leave. She still adores her sister, though.

-No more headstands, but she loves to dance and her new favorite thing is to run in circles as fast as she can, preferably around a stationary object (such as Mommy). She's also kicking and throwing balls. And she's trying to jump. So far she's been successful, but she hasn't quite figured out how to launch herself from the floor at will.


Megan, around the end of September 2009 (okay, so the picture's from July):
- "She's squirming like crazy. The doctor had a hard time getting her heartbeat because of her positioning. I tried to tell him he was putting the doppler right where her knees were and he'd have better luck from the other side, but doctor's don't listen too good. He did find it eventually and she was so pleased with his success she rolled over to give him a better listen."

- "Megan is definitely more active than her older sister. Cadence would be quiet for long periods of time and then get so active it almost hurt on occasion. Megan, however, is constantly squirming. In fact, those quiet moments are as rare as Cadence's active moments were."

And today(ish):
-Well, she still squirms like crazy. At this exact moment, she's curled up in my lap, but at least one part of her is wiggling at any given moment. Oh, and now she's reaching for the keyboard, lol.

-She's far more laidback than her sister ever was. She can walk and stand, but it's not worth it to her to practice, so she doesn't bother. Why should she when fussing gets her what she wants anyway (and what she wants 90% of the time is to be held)? She's surprisingly spoiled for a second child, lol. But she loves, loves, loves people. Especially her big sister.

-While far more laidback, I did have more quiet moments with Cadence than I did with Megan at this age, as predicted. Megan is constantly wanting and asking for attention. She's already cut herself down to one short nap during the day, no matter how I try to coax her to go down for two. She'll go down for a morning nap only if we run errands and she falls asleep in the car. But in the afternoon her longest nap is an hour and then she's up until bedtime. I don't know if she's more exhausting than Cadence was, or just having the two of them together is more exhausting. The answer should be obvious, but Megan can be so demanding, that some days it's hard to be 100% sure, lol.

Heels, Wrestling, and other stuff

Caught Cadence walking around in my heeled boots this afternoon. You could hear her clacking around in the kitchen and Megan was just following her around like a lovesick puppy. It was quite entertaining, actually.

They're playing together so well nowadays! They've even started wrestling, which is absolutely adorable. If I leave Megan on the couch, she'll crawl to the other end and lay her head on the arm of the couch. Cadence will quickly join her and they'll roll around, half sitting on each other, and giggle like crazy. Or on the floor. Or just about anywhere. They're almost constantly together nowadays. If Cadence is getting into the pantry, Megan is right there with her. If Megan's pulling laundry out of the basket, it's because Cadence tipped it over for her. I once walked into their room to find the four bottom drawers emptied and the two girls sorting through the clothes together.
We also had a fun story with Cadence at Nana's house the other day. Nana has one of those shape-sorter tubs, where you have to put the toy through the right shape hole to get the toys into the tub. Cadence was getting quite frustrated, despite our best attempts to guide her in the right direction. With a sudden determination over a particularly difficult shape, she simply lifted off the lid and put the difficult piece into the tub that "easy way". I busted up laughing, finding her problem-solving skills simply hilarious. She quickly went back to attempting to put the toys back into the tub the "right way", but I still caught myself giggling over her previous solution.

We also bought Cady's Halloween costume and are on the lookout for something matching for Megan that's not super expensive. I don't care to spend to much money on a costume they'll only wear once or twice, especially when they're both too young to really care.

But that's really all for now, I suppose. Having a blast with the girls. Enjoying James's new work schedule that allows him to wake up several hours earlier and almost doubling our daily time with him. We're so spoiled now!