This is a catch-up post. Pictures are from the last few days, though.

Galit visited us for the weekend!

Adventure Playground today - Noah playing the inside of an old piano

The Girl:

• Lately, she wants her socks on backward, inside out, and upsidedown, so the heel is on the top of her foot. This is what she wants. THIS IS WHAT SHE WANTS. Let that be clear.
• After I comb her hair, she wants me to put the knots back in. They're invisible knots that I pinch out of my hand and put on her hair. Then she's happy. 
• It's a little better this last week, but it's been taking sometimes up to 20 minutes to get her into the car. She wants to get in on Noah's side, but then she wants to go to the driver seat and pretend drive, and then Noah's seat needs to get buckled with him not in it, and again with him in it. Then she climbs out and runs away, laughing. Insisting that NOW is when it has to happen -- this has no effect. She wants to do it all "felf! felf!" When I try to put her into her carseat, she arches her back and wiggles in a way I can't overcome. I guess she's almost 3 years old so this is normal. But it's exhausting.
• She wants "one more chance" for everything. We know now that when we tell her "no," it's more like a warning, that she'll test, and ask for one more chance.
• She's talking a lot, often to herself, but with real words we can understand. Or she sings about the wheels on the bus. When we put her into her crib, we can hear her for the next half hour, talking and singing. It sounds like this sometimes: youputyourrightfootin, youputyourrightfootout andyoushakeitallabout wheelsonbusgoroundandround

The Boy:

• He likes to be "opposite boy," meaning he'll do the opposite of whatever we ask. We've gotten good at saying the opposite of what we want. 
• He's hearing about the election all over the place, and he wants to vote. The other day when I told him we were going to take a bath, he said, "Let's vote on it."
• He's been anunciating the letter L in a lovely way. It's like he's over-pronouncing it. 
• He can't say the R sound, and it's hard with the TH sound, so he skips 13 when he's counting. 11, 12, 14
• Daddy had an upset stomach. Noah wanted to know what it was upset about. har har
• He wants to know why they made poop with so many germs in it. By the way, he's out of diapers and he's been reluctantly going to new bathrooms. It's been a couple weeks since an accident.
• We went for a hike and he got so tired he kept sitting down in the middle of the trail. So tired.
• We went to a bonfire potluck at David and Alea's house, and he decided to ask around to see who wants chips. "Who wants chippies? Who wants chippies?"
• He and Aviva were "cooking," at the water table on the porch, and he needed a bunch of ingredients: sugar, eggs, mashed up tofu, mashed up broken windows, and magic flavor.
• He wants to help the planet and fix the drought. His idea is to cook with the doors and windows open, so the steam can go into the air and rise into the clouds and make more rain.
• Maybe, he says, when he's older and has a job, the job will be to go to people's houses and tell them what is going to be the weather. "Like if there's gonna be a storm, or I'm 100% sure there's going to be lightening. That will be my job just for a little while."
• For Halloween, we trick or treated and he wanted to carefully choose just the right candy to take but he wants it to be sweet and not too sweet but very sweet. "This much sweet" - (arms out wide). "And which one do you think I would like?" It was an important, big decision. When we got home, both kids ate some candy and then Noah got sick and threw up. Since then, he hasn't mentioned the candy (and we won't remind him. We'll just secretly eat it.) If he remembers, we can warn him not to eat too much because "remember what happened last time?"
• He was playing with one of my hairties, and asked what it is made of. I guessed elastic and maybe some cotton thread around it. He said "no, I don't see that. I think there's a little bit of dried flubber, to make it stretchy." (Flubber is glue and borax mixed, and it's kind of like play doh, but weirder).

Trick or treating: dragon, daddy, strawberry

Noah at Adventure Playground