stalling

Zane has been seriously stalling at bed time the last few weeks. It's tough, especially when he says things like, "Don't leave me," in a tiny voice. Talk about tugging on the heart strings! Needless to say, we've had a few emotional evenings. Even though he's been on a big daddy kick lately (and everyone keeps warning me it's only going to get worse in about a month), his absolute favorite is still "mama-daddy." We are quite the dynamic duo, so I can understand why he wants to hang out as long as possible :)

Being especially pro-daddy right now was convenient for celebrating Father's Day a couple weeks ago. They started out the day playing soccer together (green light, go!):



Then we took daddy to brunch to a restaurant with some cool gardens:



Zane got to look for bees, which was equal parts exciting (I want to see the bee!!), thrilling (Ooh! Another bee!), and terrifying (Oh no! Blow it away!), like any good adventure:



We also saw some fountains, which still usually gets a "Water!!" out of him:



Since I've been slacking on posts (I have excellent excuses!), here are a couple more pictures to catch up...

People, car, and, most importantly, bus and truck watching from a booster seat at dinner (sometimes its a success, and other times it's a struggle to keep him from sliding out and under the table - "I'm sliding!"):



We were being particularly silly in this one and swapped sunglasses. You can also see how ginormous my belly is getting... Zane now says, "I want to see that belly!" Then he proceeds remove any layer of shirt or stretchy pants in the way to lay a big slobbery raspberry on it. :) He pats it sometimes too and says ,"Hi baby!"



Then one morning while we were getting ready for school/work, he decided to go under the dining room table to color. He said, "I'm in a tunnel! You can't reach me!" and then giggled at himself for a few minutes :)



Zane still hides under his blanket (he's quite sneaky!), so one day I asked teddy if he knew where Zane went because I couldn't see him, but I could hear him giggling. Now he occasionally throws his blanket over his head and says, "I'm giggling!" Then he cracks himself up. So much fun! :)

five years old!!!

Our sweet, rambunctious little girl, Molasses, is 5 years old today! Somehow I think she has years and months mixed up because she acts much more like a 5 month old puppy. :) But she still has her quiet snugly moments:



We all sang Happy Birthday multiple times to her and she got some extra goodies. Which then made Zane ask for cupcakes for dinner. Instead, much to Molly's delight, we had tuna sandwiches :)

Zane helped us battle the dandelions in the yard this weekend, and he insisted on wearing one of my "glubs."



He also managed to climb into our tree all by himself, and then got stuck even though he wasn't really far from the ground:



We hung out at the playground for a while too, checking out the bumblebees, driving the cars around, swinging, and of course, playing in the sand. Even with two shovels, he opted for filling the dump truck by hand:



The only thing that got him more excited was cooking, which was handy when we had to convince him to come inside. Zane can make a mean scrambled egg, mashed potatoes (even though he is still boycotting potatoes in all forms), stirs "rabioli" into spaghetti sauce, and even helped to "spin" the tuna salad tonight. Now when you ask if he wants to make something, he runs to get one of his chairs to stand on at the counter. He's become much more demanding though ("No, Mama! Hands off! I'm spinning it!"), and makes sure I know my place as his sous chef. :)