Per special request from Riannon below is a picture of Cadence's freshly cut bangs.





Not sure why the ponytail is orange, but it is. I told you the bangs were Z and N shaped!
Actually, Cady drew this today and said that it was a picture of her new haircut. She doesn't look very happy in the picture. Bad hair day? More like a bad hair month now, my dear.

She's been drawing a lot of pictures lately.
In fact, I could probably devote an entire post to mostly the pictures she's drawn in the past month or so, on her dry-erase board....And now that you're interested, I will.



Portrait of Daddy. Notice the mistache and gotee. And of course, the ears, cheeks, arms and legs all popping out of the head.





Mommy.





Auntie Kris (our good friend)

Hmmmmmm......We seem to be losing limbs as we go along.


And finally, pictures of Cady with her styling new haircut, standing next to her self portrait tonight. She did say that next time she's going to go to my hair stylist to get her hair cut. So, that's a plus.

I didn't think it would ever really happen. She usually doesn't get her hands on things that she has no business getting in to.
But yesterday.....it happened.
She was in the bathtub and I had cut her bangs before putting her in there. She got really queit, but was playing in the tub so I didn't think anything was happening of any significance. Well, I had left the scissors in the bathroom, and she had gotten out of the tub and cut her bangs further.
As far as I can tell, she flipped her hair forward and cut it from the back, creating not only more bangs, but a higher forehead. The bangs were pretty much Z and N shaped across her forehead.
So, reluctantly, we cut her bangs shorter than they've ever before been cut. It still looks OK, at least it's even. And so much for losing the layered look on the back of her hair.
I'm just feeling really fortunate that we didn't have an accident. I felt so badly about leaving scissors in her grasp.

Cady and I had a fabulous day today. We decided the night before that we were going to the park. So, off we headed. Cool looking Dora sunglasses in one hand, a bottle of her best chocolate milk in the other. My two hands were filled with everything else. But off we went, ready to take on and conquer the park!
We started in the sand. SHOES .....OFF! SOCKS......OFF! Now, squish the toes in the sand the way God intended it to be! Now, run around and fall on purpose, then toss the sand in the air freely. Because if God did not intend for sand to be sprinkled around, He wouldn't have made so much of it.
Then to run toward the pond as fast as we can. Oh the joys of seeing mossy laden waters and 4 ducks. They liked all 4 courses we had to offer, bread from Cady's sandwich, a few doritos crunched up, pieces of Mommy's sushi California rolls....and of course, gold fish food, intended for the brown fish that hung out below the mosses. We saw you, li'l fellas! You too seemed strangely infatuated with the sushi.
But NOW, it's off to the daring swings. The little girl swings you say? With the straps and diaper shaped rubber encasing? Ohhh......No No No.. These were the BIG GIRL SWINGS! While she hoped no one heard her saying, "Mommy, help me get up here. Please" she kicked her feet forward and backwards at the moment I told her to. I swung next to her, and for a few moments we were two elementary school girls....me a bit older, she a bit younger, both normally feeling a long way away from that time in our lives, but never before feeling much closer to the wind in our hair, or the memories I've had that she is just barely out of grasp from experiencing. We've each never felt that close to that time in our lives, yet so far away from it.
But she was a big girl now. Swinging in the big girl swing. I moved behind her, and continued to push her as she laughed and told me that her tummy and her back tickled as she was being pushed.
My baby is not a baby any more. But tonight, she let me rock her in the rocking chair, and asked me to hold her like a baby while I sang songs to her. It's like she's swinging on that swing, ready to go faster, but wanting to make sure she doesn't lose ground.....and me too. She keeps me feeling innocent. She keeps me remembering what sand thru the toes felt like when I was a child..... Or air thru the hair feels like when your next goal was at least one more time. She keeps me singing Christmas songs in February, from a rocking chair.

Cadence's latest obsession is with Horton. She absolutely adores Horton for his convictions, or perhaps it's his stubborn nature. Maybe it's a bonding she has with him, because he, similar to a three year old, still believes in kindness, and love, and things that others cannot see or understand. She started with the book, Horton hatches the egg. And now she has us read, Horton hears a Who, very often. If she's given a choice these days, it's one of those two, or occasionally, How the Grinch stole Christmas. She has other books. Let me tell ya, before we adopted her, I picked out some wonderful books! And she likes them, but she LOVES stories with Horton. We have a few Dr Seuss books that have several of his stories in them. Guess which she always chooses?




Horton hears a Who! will be in the theaters on March 14th.
I'm fairly certain that this will be her first movie theater experience.

See the trailer here

She sooooo owns her daddy!!

Well, we all seem to have gotten over the bug that invaded us. It was a horrible flu that made us all feel sort of like we were taken over by the plague for three days each.

So, now that things are back to normal in our home, we've been able to enjoy a bit of the Chinese New Year celebration. Today we went to the same event that we went to last year. We were thrilled when we realized we were going to have photos of Cady enjoying the same waterfall again, outside of the production.
Below are a few pictures of last year and this year.

Last Year




This year





In this final photo, she was "reading" the tablet in front of her (shaped like a book). The story went something like this:
"Once upon a time, Cady and Mommy and Daddy went to China on an airplane. When they were in China, they got Melody. Cady and Mommy and Daddy all hugged and kissed Melody, then they came home and lived happily ever after. The End."
Cool story, kiddo. You're going to be a wonderful big sister. And I bet you'll even share your waterfalls with her.