Before I overwhelm you with photos

I thought I would just post some stuff.  I realize that somehow over the past, oh, month or so, I have gotten way behind on my photos in this blog, and I need to get caught up.  But, since that post would take up a lot of room on its own, I thought I would go ahead and post some of the million adorable things that are going on around here.  And, what the heck, maybe some of the not so adorable things that have happened. 

First of all, let's start with the major communication boom we have had.  Gradually, Maggie and Ben have both graduated from one word announcements to stringing a couple of words together.  Ben mostly puts things together like "Benny eat", "Maggie doing?" "Daddy, are you?", "Meow go?".  2-3 words most of the time.  I LOVE that he is getting more verbal.  It is adorable. 

Maggie is clearly our verbal overachiever.  I mean, I am no expert in child development, and I can't really find any kind of an official breakdown of what your 22 month old should be able to say at this point.  But when I'm around my daughter and she says things like "I go get the milk, Benny" or "What you doing, Mommy?", "Maggie has 2 cookie" or remembers to talk about things we did days ago?  I'm impressed.  She talks all.the.time.  I feel sometimes like my entire morning is being narrated.  "Mommy hair wet.  Mommy shower.  Mommy robe.  Mommy sleeping.  Mommy need coffee?  Mommy eat O's.  More, more juice Mommy?" 

I am also Ben's favorite topic early in the morning, and right now, he is just so darn happy to see me all the time that it just makes my day.  He will randomly during the day stop what he was doing, yell "Mommy!" and run over to give me a hug.  He throws himself around my legs and clings and gives me big happy kisses.  His other new trick is basically doing tricks.  Whether it is climbing up to balance on the ottoman or on top of a laundry basket or just setting his toast up so it balances on an end, he is constantly doing tricks and then raising his arms in the air and yelling "Da!" with a big cheesy grin on his face, that boy likes to entertain. 

My kids are animal lovers.  For the first time recently, both Ben and Maggie started laying down in the tub.  Andy, who is in charge of baths, calls it being the turtle and the fishy.  They know the sounds of tons of animals, but when they are not sure Maggie gets quiet and Ben makes a random weird noise or a growl of some kind that he pretends is the noise.  One of the highlights of our vacation to Florida was when we got to feed the giraffe at the zoo.  Ben especially was just so excited to get that close to a  real live Ba.  He is also nuts about the dog.  He loves her, hugs her, kisses her, tries to ride her, and is really trying to learn how to take care of her.  He likes to "help" with the feeding, watering and wiping her paws when she comes in from outside.  I love that Lily lets them love her as much as they want to.  She kind of looks put upon, but she lets them do what they want, and I'm sure she knows that because they are ours, they are hers too. 

I know there are more things that I keep thinking that I need to write down, but sleep needs to come soon and I'm forgetting.  I really need to get out the video recorder to try to catch some of their words on camera.  Maggie and her elfagunks, Ben with his sweeping for sleeping, and just the funny little things they do and say.  Maggie can sing almost all of Twinkle Twinkle, Ben mainly likes to chime in with the "Up" part.  She will never do it when I ask of course. 

I don't want to end this with anything sad or depressing, so I will leave it with the fact that I am trying really hard right now to coordinate my pottery barn tastes with our garage sale budget.  It's very hard not to want things with a new baby on the way, and I worry about finances all the time. 

And since I don't want to end with that, I want to share my with my readers my happiness for a friend who is a fellow blogger who just this weekend brought home their baby boy from Russia after a very long journey through infertility and international adoption.  Congratulations to Heather and Chad!