Teresa

 I know the sentimental posts are supposed to come around birthdays, but the other day I was looking at my girl and realized what a little person she is becoming. Has become. And it happened over night! She is not my little baby anymore, not even my little toddler. Her personality is bursting at her seams. She just gets it now. She gets jokes, and sarcasm, and she gets that she is the 'big girl'. She (usually) gets that sometimes she has to wait for things, and that she doesn't always get what she wants. She just gets it. Her imagination has really exploded in the last few months. She is always coming up with fun little things for us to play out, with roles for all of us. She even provides the dialogue sometimes. She remembers everything, she keeps surprising me by bringing up something from a year ago, or more. She knows how funny she is, and how much she loves to be the center of attention. I was looking through some old pictures, and I can't believe how she has grown.

 I miss that cute little face, and those soft curls.

 But I'm loving having this big girl. She is so much fun. I know she is going to be challenging. For sure. But I'm so excited to get to continue to watch her grow. I'm excited for the fun relationship we are developing. I hope she always says things like "I'm so glad you are my mother, and Nora is my little sister" (and, that she's glad we have Daddy too, but she "just hopes that he is a genius"). Or at least thinks them, even if she doesn't tell us. 

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh

Nora has always loved the feel of wind on her face, but her response to getting fanned with this cardboard was just awesome. Of course she wasn't performing as much once the camera came out, but we still got some cute videos.

Please ignore my uncombed hair...

Wind from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Noraaaaaaaa from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Marc turns 30 and other miscellany

Marc turned 30 this week! He will be thrilled that I am sharing that with the whole internet, lol. We had a bacon themed birthday, although, now that he's getting up there in years we'll probably have to cut back on stuff like that...

We decided to put Wegman's to the test to see if it could measure up to HEB frosting. It was pretty close. Not quite as good, of course, but close enough. As cute as Marc is when he eats cake, Nora is just a smidge cuter, so you get pictures of her instead:

Our wonderful neighbors watched the girls so I could take Marc out for some birthday sushi. We did some awesome family photos before we left:

Teresa was less-than-thrilled to participate. But she perked up to take pictures with the birthday boy. Or "my man" as she likes to call him.

I got Marc a smoker attachment for his grill and he was excited to break it in by smoking some ribs. We were lucky to get some gorgeous weather and the girls had a blast playing in the backyard while we waited to eat. 

  

  

  

Nora's pretty hardcore.

    

Teresa liked the ribs pretty well, but Nora just couldn't get enough! Despite her petite frame, girlfriend can really eat.

Our cute little princesses - we got lucky at Target the day after Halloween and scored some princess dresses for cheap. The girls could hardly wait to get home and get them on.

We picked up our copy of Brave today, the girls had fun doing Merida related art while they were waiting to watch it.

Things They Say

It's that time again....

Teresa is hilarious, as always. And a big rascal. One morning we were laying in bed and she said to me, all matter-of-factly "Mommy, your hair is really dirty. I think we need to wash your hair in the shower today".

One day in the car, out of the blue, we had this conversation:
     T: "Mom, do you wish your legs were longer?"
Me: No, I like my legs as long as they are. Why, do you wish your legs were longer?
     T: "(big sigh) Yes."
Me: Why?
     T: "Because! Then I could be a gigantic giant!"

Every thing makes her nose itchy lately. "Spaghetti makes my nose itch", "frowning makes my nose itch", "this carseat makes my nose itch", etc.

Below picture? I asked her to show me her socks, and this is the pose she struck. Yep. That's my three-year-old.

She is medium sized. She will often say "Daddy is tall, and Mommy and tall, and Nora is little, and I am just medium sized!" or, randomly "Mom, am I medium?".

One day Nora balked when she saw that T was finishing her juice. T's response? "Nora. It's gone. For.ever."

Nora talks so much now. Honestly, she surprises us every day with the things that come out of her mouth. One day a few weeks ago she was sitting, organizing all her pacifiers. She would line them up "One, two, free, fow, five". I'm thinking maybe it's time to take the pacis away when your kid is old enough to do that...

Something else we hear from her a lot is "Mommy! Why do dat?". Or Daddy, or Teresa, etc. Any time we do anything she doesn't approve of.

The other day we were in the car I could hear her repeating softly to herself "I so cute, I so cute, I so cute". Our girls don't lack in confidence, that's for sure.

In a similar vein, if Marc is home when she gets dressed she always goes running to find him "yook Daddy, yook at me!"

I'm always sad when they lose some of their cute baby words - Nora loooooves, loves Tinkerbell and used to call her "Tip-bo-bew", and it was pretty much the cutest word ever said by anyone ever. In fact, she even had us all calling her that. And then a few days ago she just busted out saying "Tinkerbew" like a big girl :(. She also used to say mermaid and Mulan "moo-ma", but corrected them both this week as well.

The Halloween Post

I'm warning you now, there are a lot of pictures in this post. I whittled it down from almost 400, though. You're welcome.

Teresa decided this year that she wanted to be a ballerina kitty cat for Halloween. Nora got no vote. I was pretty excited because they were really easy costumes to put together. Also, I'm pretty sure I was a black cat for Halloween for at least 4 years in a row. I made their hats and tails, with the tail being one of T's favourite parts, she kept trying to see behind herself to make sure it was still there. With all the hurricane hoop-la we weren't sure if they would get to go trick or treating so I let them put their costumes on a few days early just to play:

We carved our pumpkin on Tuesday night. I know it's Halloween blasphemy, but I really don't love carving pumpkins. But, since the girls are old enough to care now we figured we might as well start this year.

Teresa was so, so excited the whole time, she just couldn't wait. Below is Nora's reaction to our poor pumpkin getting cut in to. She was sobbing "no, pumpkin, no, Daddy" as Marc started sawing.

She got over it fast, though, and had fun getting her hands in to scoop out the guts. 

Mmmm, delicious.

Immediately after the above picture she tipped her chair over and crashed to the floor. Poor babe has been having a rough week in that regard, I think she's bonked her head at least twice each day this week.

We were so blessed this week, hurricane Sandy was not as horrible here as had been predicted. Considering our power goes out if someone sneezes too close to the line, we believed the power company when they warned we might be without power for a few weeks. We lost half our power early in the day on Monday, and it was only completely out for about three hours all together. Anyway, the girls were thrilled that trick or treating was able to carry on as expected. They could hardly wait to get into their costumes on Halloween.

Hehe, I had let T wear her costume to the commissary earlier in the day, and had just quickly put on her cat makeup. An older woman was complimenting her outfit and said "oh, I bet you did that make-up all on your own!". T said no, she didn't, and I fibbed a little and told the lady I had helped her do it, to which she replied "oh, I bet Mama didn't help you very much, though", lol. I guess I need to work on my face painting skills.

Coloring is one of Nora's favourite things to do, and while I was putting her make-up on she kept saying "you color pictures Mama?". I let the girls do my face when I was done with them - they both loved it, of course, but Nora took it so seriously, she would study my face for a bit and then add some more make-up, then pause to reassess before adding more.

                                     

To my complete and utter shock, they both kept their mitten 'paws' on the whole night.

Teresa was very adamant that they were ballerina kitty cats NOT kitty cat ballerinas.

Nora was so funny, every time Marc tried to snap a picture of us she would pretend to bite me. She says "I funny, I funny", little rascal.

 Tails.

They were so excited to go to the first house, especially since it was our good friends and neighbors house. Nora thought she needed to eat all the candy she got there right away. 

Charlie and Jenneth went trick or treating with us, they moved in next door to us a few months ago. The girls just love them so much, today I asked Nora if she was ready for her nap and she said "ummm, no, I go see Jennef".

Nora thought a few of the houses were 'too scary', and when we walked past a man in a bear suit she stuck her hand out at him and said "NO!", but they both thought this headless horseman was such a 'nice horsey' :).

I just thought Nora looked so cute up there, with her tail hanging down Marc's back.