What's Up, Chahwee?

Big brother Max decided yesterday that he needed to get down and have a conversation with Charlie. She was happy on her tummy for much longer with him there!

Messy Face

Here is a shot of Charlie's messy sweet potato face. Looks remarkably like the pic I posted a year and a half ago of Max's messy mac-n-cheese face, doesn't it?

Someone Needs a New Marketing Person...

This is the truck delivering a load of bark to the house across the street yesterday!
I'm guessing they're from the town of Boring, Oregon, but it doesn't speak too highly of their product, does it?

Bye bye water!

This is one of those shots that will send Max to therapy one day, but is too cute for Mama to keep to herself! This is long, skinny Max waving bye-bye to the bath water as it finishes draining from the tub.

My boys

Dada spent a good deal of time this past weekend either upstairs demoing the second floor in preparation for adding bedrooms for the kids up there, and outside cutting down a tree. Needless to say, he got both really dirty and really tired! Here he is taking a lunch break and talking with Max.

Animal Crackers

This is too adorable to not share with the class.
Today I was preparing lunch for Max and he decided he wanted soup, which is all of the chunks of veggies and noodles from a can of veggie soup (Mama gets the broth). I asked him if he would like crackers with it, and he said, "Yes, cracka's!" So then I asked him what kind of crackers he would like. He promptly said, "Animal cracka's." Well, the kind of animal crackers we have are a little sweet, so I asked him if he would like fish crackers instead. His reply: "Animal cracka's in my soup!" (Guess what song Mama sings to him to get him to laugh?!?)

Naughty Dada

There is Max in the background running around, happy that his parents are in the room with him while he is playing, oblivious to...

The naughty poses in which his father is positioning his figurines.

Snow Day

We woke up this morning to snow falling, and falling, and falling. Completely unusual for us here in the valley! We have probably a good 3 inches accumulated of a nice powdery dry snow. Max liked the idea of snow when he was looking out the window, but once he and Dada were outside he wasn't so sure!

He kept looking at the snow hitting his sleeve and mitten, and stood there for a long time before Dada finally walked over and took his hand for their walk.

There go my boys! It was about 1 block later that Max insisted Dada pick him up and continue the walk on Dada's shoulders! Such a tough little outdoorsman.

Trains

We managed to fit Max's new train table in his room, and he loves to ask us, "Fix the track?" Which in Max language means, "Will you play trains with me?" Lucky for Max both Dada and I like figuring out new formations for the tracks. In both pics Max was happily playing with the trains and I had to holler at him to say cheese until he looked at me - and he refused to smile! But photogenic Dada smiled until I took the picture, and although Charlie was also not smiling, at least she went with the flow for the sake of the pictures.

War of the Words

Dada and I have not been agreeing what body part names to teach the kids. Dada has 'special' names for things and I prefer the actual names. One day this past week I was changing Max's diaper and was in the midst of refastening his pants when he started poking at the front of his diaper with his hand. I asked him if he needed to adjust himself up there, and he looked up at me and said, "pecker." Wonder who is winning the war?!?

Jammies!

Dada typically puts Max's jammies on him, and Mama puts Charlie's on her. Last night after we had each gotten them changed, they were in the same jammies! Charlie is fitting into some of Max's hand-me-downs, and he has bigger ones in the same print. How cute are they?!?
Max is telling Charlie a story above and Charlie is cooing back at him.

Max decided he needed to lay on the floor the same way as Charlie.
Do you think he'll have the same smile on his face when Charlie is bigger and stealing his toys? ;)

Movin 'n groovin

Two nights ago I had Charlie on the floor to kick her legs and wave her hands and such, and she surprised me (and herself) by rolling over onto her tummy. I let her play like that until she was tired of it and then put her back onto her back next to me. She continued to pull up her legs and before long had rolled back over to her tummy again. She only spent about 10 seconds on her tummy before rolling over onto her back again the other way - like she was going to roll across the room or something. I was really wishing I'd had the video camera on her! My little girl is getting so big! Now, we just need to work on the whole sleeping through the night thing...

Dada's Helper

Last week, Dada sold our glider chair on craigslist, and needed to clean up the chair and make sure it was all in working order, including tightening all of the screws and bolts. Of course, as soon as Max saw the tools out he had to help Dada with the project. He pretty much pushed Dada out of the way and actually knew what to do with the allen keys!

What a good helper. Dada can't wait until Max is old enough to mow the lawn, clean the gutters, take out the trash.....