Happy Cast-Off Day!

If there is such a thing as a perfect day, today was it. For no particular reason other than lots of great family time, beautiful weather, and our super adorable kids. Clarke took the day off from work and we all went with Huston for his 9:30 appointment to get his cast removed. He had cried every time we mentioned getting his cast off, and just truly seemed to have grown fond of it and did NOT want it taken off. I don't know if he was really worried about it hurting, but all he would say was that he was going to miss it. Thankfully, though, he woke up excited this morning and didn't utter so much as a word of complaint - just bounded up cheerfully to the doctor's office, immediately recognizing which door it was, and going right inside.

I love the picture below of the nurse showing Huston how the saw used to remove the cast actually kind of tickles. Huston giggled about it. He wore those silly pink sunglasses (and another pair of Arden's purple flower shaped sunglasses) all day. They were his "thing" of the day and he threw such a fit when I dared to tell him that they were actually Arden's glasses, not his. He said, "They are my glasses! They're real! They're my glasses, they're not Arden's!"

Sweet, silly boy.

Getting the cast off took no time, and Huston was super brave and awesome the whole time. We had contemplated going to the zoo, but when we saw the spring break traffic, we decided to skip the zoo in favor of the little train that runs outside the zoo. Huston suddenly became not so brave at the site of the train and kept crying and saying he didn't want to go on it. Then he ran away and Clarke had to chase him down and pull him up out of the dirt that he dove into in his attempted escape. Somehow Clarke managed to convince him to get on, and of course Huston immediately loved it. On the ride, we went behind a bunch of buildings - one of which is the kids' pediatrician's office. Huston immediately recognized it, even from our weird perspective and location, and said, "Isn't that the doctor's office?!" It never fails to surprise me how good he is at remembering places and locations. He's like a GPS with photographic memory.

Arden loved it too, despite the serious look on her face in this picture. She kept pointing and saying "Duck! Duck!" every time we passed ducks in the water. It actually was a really fun train ride, and just the right length.

After the train ride, we headed to Gloria's for lunch and ate outside to enjoy the gorgeous day. While we were eating, Huston said, out of the blue, "Isn't that just so great that I got my cast off? Now I have two hands!"

Arden had a blast running around after lunch through the gate that Huston kept opening and closing. He still has such a love for opening gates. And Arden has such a love for running away and trying to escape. Especially if she knows you want her for something, like to put her shoes on or to change her diaper. She gets this impish look of glee in her eyes as she prepares to run away, and never fails to squeal with delight.

I was trying to get Clarke to take a self-portrait of all of us in our Saint Patricks' Day green after lunch, when a nice lady passed and offered to do it for us. I can't believe that it actually didn't turn out too bad.

After nap time, we took the kids out to the park by our house for some more playtime because Huston was anxious to use both arms while playing. Then we came back home and Huston begged to watch "Up!" again. He's obsessed with this movie lately and watches the entire thing pretty much every day. A few weeks ago his favorite movie was Monsters Inc. No telling what it will be next.

And that was pretty much our day. Wonderful and relaxing and fun. I'm so grateful for my family, for spring break, and for a healed arm on my sunglasses-wearing, gate-opening, inimitable boy.

Recently

This is Arden on Sunday. She sat in her chair forever, surrounded by her books, just talking and reading and pointing at the pictures. I got some sweet video of it, too. She has quite the vocabulary now, with one of her first and favorite and most frequently used words being "up." She also says and signs "please" (leeease) and "thank you" (dant youuuuu). She can say "I love you," dada, doggie, and no no (this one cracks me up because she'll just bust it out randomly like when I try to feed her something she doesn't want she'll all of a sudden look up at me and say "nooo, noooo" and shake her head at me). She loves to say "yuck!" (a favorite learned from her big brother) and can say diaper, poo poo, and burp. All wonderful words, I know. She loves this book that we got for Huston when he was potty training about a little boy named Joshua and his potty. It tells you all the ins and outs of the body and she loves the page with the bottom on it. Last night Clarke read the side about how Joshua's body has many nice and useful parts, a head for thinking, eyes for seeing, etc. The opposite page says "...and a bottom for sitting and in it a little hole for making poo poo." (I know, I know...Clarke hates this book, for the record). Anyway, after he read the first page, Arden just pointed to the next page and said, quite matter-of-factly, "Poo Poo." It cracked us up.

She got her toe nails painted for the first time on Sunday. I was painting mine and she kept signing please the whole time. I was going to put the polish away, but she looked at me urgently, signing please and pointing to her toes. It was so cute! So I held her on my lap and painted her nails and she sat perfectly still. She's such a girly girl!

This is Huston playing outside yesterday. We had chalk out and he told me he was a painter and he was just painting the ground. Clarke and I always talk about how strange it is that Huston doesn't really play with toys. At all. His favorite things to do are to reenact real-life events. The other night he loved when I put on a pair of his glasses and he would pretend to fix them for me when they were broken. A few weeks ago he was playing with Bear Bear and he told me, "Bear Bear just keeps screaming. I've told him, like, five times, but he just keeps doing it on purpose." So, Bear Bear is also a big player on the pretending scene in his little world. Bear Bear had to get x-rays on his arm last week, because he broke his arm, too.

Huston is still such a big questioner. Everything is "why" and he'll ask you things over and over and over. So inquisitive. I can hardly ever get pictures of him because he runs away and gets so mad when I get out the camera. This past week he finally asked us to uncover the knobs on his bed, which had been draped with sheets for a year or so because he was afraid of them. Then he said, "Why didn't you know that I wasn't afraid of them anymore?" Speaking of afraid, he is still petrified of getting his nails clipped, especially his toe nails.

Those are all of my random thoughts for the moment. I just wanted a reason to post these pictures of my cuties.