Ponytails, Bee Buses and Rueda de Casino.

Selfie with my babies.

Lily can put her own hair in a ponytail now.  What?  She's not even 3.5 yet!  I'm pretty sure I remember the first time I fixed my own hair in a ponytail and I was at least in Kindergarten.  Maybe even first grade.  Perhaps I was a little behind the curve.  But still.  I couldn't believe it when I saw her fashion up a little ponytail like she'd been doing it for ages.  She is pretty picky now about how she wants her hair done.  Ponytail, bun, braid, two braids, Anna hair, Elsa hair, etc.

I mentioned to Joel that I wanted to learn how to do a fishtail braid after seeing one on a young lady during our vacation.  Well Joel, the involved awesome Daddy that he is, Youtube'd 'fishtail braid' and determined that it looked easy enough.

Daddy did a great job but he needs more practice with actually putting the ponytail holder in.  You have to get it pretty tight because Lily's hair is so slippery.  Immediately after the braiding session, Lily ran back to her room and the ponytail holder fell out before she got back there.  Bummer.

Since vacation, dropping Lily off at school has been a total nightmare.  She has cried and screamed and clung to me for dear life every single day.  It's horrible.  I've had to peel her off of me and sort of shove her at one of the teachers and then bolt to the sounds of her screaming "MOOOOOMMMMYYYYYYYY" at the top of her lungs.  Today was the first day were she only just pouted and cried a tiny smidge as I was leaving.  Hopefully we're turning a corner.  Tyler has been totally fine this whole time for school drop off.  He gives me a kiss and then takes off to play.

I took Lily with me to the dentist 2 weeks ago.  It was kind of a bust in that they didn't even look at her teeth at all.  They had told me to just bring her along and they'd let her sit in the chair and they'd count her teeth or do some other 'games' to get her familiar with the process.  Well after my cleaning, the dentist was running out and I said, "Oh, I brought Lily so she could learn the process and sit in the chair and get used to the idea."  The dentist said, "How old is she?"  "Three and half."  "Well usually we would have already scheduled her for her own cleaning by now so that's what you need to do."  And then she left.  I was really annoyed because that is NOT what they told me to do 6 months ago or I WOULD have scheduled her an appointment by now.  Uggh.  Oh well.  At least I got to spend some time with Lily and take her out to lunch, get ice cream and stop by Daddy's work to say hi.

Tyler's most used phrase these days is "see that" and a variety of versions of that: "lemme see that," "wanna see that," "I see that," "see that?"  I feel like I'm always describing Tyler's behavior as "so cute."  But it is!  I really don't know of any other way to say it!  Him running around with big eyes, raised eyebrows and pointing at stuff IS so cute!

Tyler is completely obsessed with school buses.  But he insists upon calling them "bee buses."  He used to say "boo bus" because he can't say "school."  But some how "boo" became "bee." It's really cute (see, there I go again).  Joel tries really hard to correct Tyler but I think it's too cute (!) to correct.  Sometimes in the morning, he can hear one going down the road and he runs to the window in our room to check it out.  Now that school is out, we don't see buses as often and he asks "where bee bus at?" if he doesn't see one.

In fact he loves to ask "where (fill-in-the-blank) at?"  "Where Daddy at?"  "Where Sissy at?"  "Where bal-loon at?"

We're starting to think about maybe considering the process of potty training Tyler.  We bought him a potty seat and I sit him on it every morning and before bath.  He hasn't actually gone yet, but he's pretty excited to sit on the toilet for about 4 seconds.

Popsicles in the bathtub!

Joel and I finished up our Rueda de Casino dance class last night.  Rueda is a Cuban version of salsa dancing where you dance in a circle and change partners.  There is a caller who yells out specific moves.  Think Latin Square Dancing.  We had so much fun and I'm kind of sad that it's over.  There is a continuation of the class over in Bloomington on Tuesday nights but I don't think we can swing that.  Cost of the class, plus cost of a babysitter for 3.5 hours, plus cost of gas, plus the extra 1.5 hours of commute time..... Sigh.  Sorry about the picture quality.  These are screen shots from a video which is posted on Facebook.  Notice how Joel and I are dressed alike.... This was the SECOND time we did that.  The instructor noticed and said, "Hey, you guys like to dress alike!"  Wow, so embarrassing....