Toddler misbehavior and quotes

I wish I had more to write, but I don't, really.  Life is busy.  I started running again and my hip started aching and I'm not sure what to do about it.  I'm going to go join the gym one day this week (maybe tomorrow!) so I can start swimming and spinning, and try to skimp on running for a week and see if that helps.

I just put up IKEA lights in Tadpole's room the other day.  The IKEA website isn't working right now, but they are the pink flower and green beetle wall lamps, with the switch on the cord.  I stupidly hung them above the head of her bed, where she can easily reach them without getting out of bed.  So now she turns them on and plays after she goes to bed.  It seems to be mostly role-playing in which her bigger frog is the mamma and the di.sney frog that she takes everywhere is the baby.  Since it's bright in there, I can watch her from the doorway, and it's sooooooo cute.  The other night, though, she was up until like 10:30, and I kept going to the door and whispering "TADPOLE!" and she'd jump and turn and look at me, then put her head down on her pillow and cuddle her frogs like she was going to sleep.  Then I stayed there to watch one time, and after like 5 seconds, she picked her head back up and looked over at the doorway to see if I was still there.  So we have bedtime issues all around, now.

Today, we went to visit my mom, which entailed going out to lunch at a rather fancy Mexican restaurant, riding on a small train, and doing a bit of shopping.  My mom has been training Tadpole to say "I'm gorgeous" and Turtle to say "I'm adorable".  Which I think is kind of obnoxious, but well, that's my mom.  If I put a stop to all her obnoxious behavior, we would have an even worse relationship than we already do.  Anyway.  Tadpole started saying "I'm the gorgeous and you're the dorble!", but then she decided to switch it and say "I'm the dorble and YOU'RE the gorgeous!" (they're still more fluent in Italian than English, and those aren't English words they already know). That made Turtle very mad, which I think was Tadpole's goal.  She likes making him mad.  So then they started arguing in English about which one was the dorble.  Then Turtle said that Tadpole was brutta (it's a way of saying mean or bad).  I said that we don't say that about others, and he started shouting "YES YOU ARE!" and she started shouting "NO I'M NOT ARE!"  Maybe you had to be there, but it was really funny.  Like I said, their English is still lagging a bit behind (but catching up quick!).

The other day, Tadpole also told me several times that she was doing yogurt with her feet.  And I couldn't figure out what she was talking about.  And then she did downward facing dog.

I just wanted to get a few of these funny little things they do down on "paper", because otherwise, I will forget, and it's so so so cute.  But now it's getting late.  My 5pm self was really kind to my 9pm self and went ahead and packed the kids' lunches, and since we ate leftovers for dinner, cleanup wasn't too bad, so now I can probably just about go to bed.  Good night!

Labor Day camping trip - Mammoth! Tufa towers! Lots of fun!

It was a lovely weekend!  We went camping!  In the Mammoth Lakes area!  And it was really awesome and a great time was had by all.  We drove in on Friday, leaving just after lunch so the kids could nap in the car.  The first half of the drive was lovely!  The second half was awful, due to thick smoke from the Rim Fire.  After a few hours of driving in smoke, and getting closer and closer to our campground with no end in sight, we started making alternative plans in case camping wasn't going to be an option.  Luckily, about 15-20 minutes before arriving, the smoke cleared up and we drove in the twilight up an abandoned-seeming road to one of the most beautiful campgrounds I've been to in the US.

We hiked in a gorgeous mountain valley.  We canoed around a beautiful mountain lake and then played for a long while at the beach there.  We tried to go to a bluegrass festival, but they upped the prices for tickets not bought ahead of time, and the festival didn't look at that cool, so instead we rode the Mammoth gondola (the kids loved it) and hung out in the Village.  We stopped at Mono Lake.  We drove home through the smoke.  The only real bummer is that the combination of campfire smoke and huge wildfire smoke really irritated my eyes, and after a doctor's visit this morning, I am confined to glasses for a week.  Which is worse because in their irritated state, they're super sensitive to the sun, but I don't have prescription sunglasses.  Boo.

Here are a few cute pics taken by my sister and her boyfriend:

Turtle getting dirty at camp - this is just the beginning.  It got a lot dirtier than this:

Tadpole posing at camp, near the bear box:

Pausing to smile for a photo while climbing on rocks, their favorite camping pursuit:

Drumming around the campfire in the evening.  This was an activity they came up with all on their own, and they sang loudly to go along with it.  It was pretty funny.  Especially when Tadpole kept shouting at her father to "stop breaking my song!"  We're not really sure what she meant by that:

Sitting on a log barrier at Mono Lake

Tadpole posing among the tufa towers.  Mono Lake is a very cool place.

All's well that ends well, I suppose, as long as my eyes get back to normal in the next few days, I guess.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.