Growing

It's here! Now we just need Matt to put it together....

Last Friday we had fun playing with Annabelle, one of our friends from MOPS. Her Momma, Alicia, has a newborn baby girl too. Not sure if she'll want to meet us at the park again. My monkeys never play in the same area, and at one point I looked over and she was feeding her newborn, watching Annabelle and wrangling Camryn off some steps--all at the same moment. Where was I? Oh, just peacefully, calmly pushing Cole on a swing. I promise I didn't mean for it to happen that way! I think (I hope!) that was the only moment that got away from me. Alicia is such a sweet friend and the babies play really well with Annabelle. We're looking forward to more park dates with them. Due to an increase in winds, we chose to have lunch in the back of Alicia's van instead of the rather chilly shade, getting blown away at the picnic tables. It was super fun hanging out in there--and eating Annabelle's carrots...!
Can you just see the pleading in Mario's eyes? Please little sister, please throw my ball for me???! She did a few seconds after the picture was taken. But the stare down for it lasted longer than Mario wanted it to.
We've been very curious about the super cool, double-decker fire trucks at the mall. I wasn't 100% the babies would nicely sit in them. Since Matt was along with us this trip, I felt brave enough to try them out. Huge success! They sat really well in it and took their steering of the wheels very seriously. The catch: That thing is enormous for Momma or Daddy to push around. It's also noisy and doesn't fit through many of the stores very well. And it was $7. I think that will just be a special treat for them when Matt is with us...and he can push the huge, noisy beast around!
We needed to go the mall because these babies are in need of shoes. They each only have 1 pair of play shoes and since we're outside playing all the time, it would be nice to have another pair on hand. I really wanted to get them Keen's. Some friends of ours have their little ones in Keen shoes and I find them so adorable. Not to mention the pair I have are super comfy and durable, so I figure the kid's ones will be just that too and perfect for playing outside and everywhere else. My favorite place for toddler shoes: Nordstroms! Yes, I'm very aware that I pay more than I would at other places, but the shoes they sell there fit my babies the best and they last. And last and last and last. The only reason we move on to other shoes that we've gotten from there is because they've outgrown them. I can't reiterate enough how durable the shoes we get there are. Any I've ever gotten from Target--busted after about a month's wear in them. These babies are pretty hard on shoes. Anyway--found the Keen shoes I wanted for them! And I'm glad we went in person to get fitted. Turns out, Camryn's feet have grown a WHOLE size. I wasn't expecting that.

Speaking of growing, Cole has been a sleeping and EATING machine lately. Perhaps that means he's going to have a growth spurt? Seriously, he's such a good eater. I hope it continues, but who knows? We went out to dinner after the mall and the babies actually behaved nicely. Cole was too busy eating to act any other way. Here he is polishing off all of our chip appetizer. We ended up just putting the plate in front of him so he could clean it off easier.

And then this is all that was left of his chicken fingers and sweet potato fries. Seriously, we didn't touch his plate, he finished it all on his own!
Meanwhile, this bugaboo ate her normal small share of some stuff and then kept trying to find ways into my lap. Hard to tell from these pictures, but she's covered in ranch dressing and ketchup.
Ranch is completely smeared on the side of her head in her hair. Needless to say we went straight up to the bathtub when we got home.
This picture is from the next night's bath. Poor Coley, he cut his lip and chin on the edge of a table at school. They said he was super brave and only cried for maybe a minute when it happened--and that he was very good holding ice on his lip. He acted fine when we got home and even had THIRDS of salmon for dinner. (The good eating streak continues for now!) After that though he started latching onto bear blanket and wouldn't let go of it to get into the bath tub. He screamed when I took it away and kept trying to crawl out of the tub, crying, until I gave in an handed it to him...in the tub. This is a new experience! He clutched onto bear blanket the entire bath and then held onto it, sucking on it too along with an ice toy, the rest of the night--and even went to bed that way. Guess it all caught up with him that night and bear blanket was the one, true thing that would make everything better.

...But I really don't want to make a habit of bathing with bear blanket. Another reason it's a VERY good thing we have two of them!