The day before Thanksgiving...

Tim and I were laying on the floor in Casden's room. The baby was sleeping. Padget and Casden were playing and drawing on Casden's chalkboard. Padget makes a run for it out of the room. I brace myself, just in case she's going to run into me, but I have faith that my 5 year old can judge the distance. Wrong--Bonk! She knees me in the forehead. And then, in classic Padget form, she declares, "Sorry, Mom, but you should not have been there." Nice!

Casden has been using a very interesting pet name for us these days. It's "Doody". Probably more along the lines of "Doody=Poopy" than say "Howdy Doody". But he'll tag it to the end of such endearing statements. "Love you, Doody" "Good night, Doody" "Okay, Doody". And sometimes, he's parent-specific, as in "Doody-Mama" or "Doody-Daddy (which flows very nice!)". And he will call himself "Doody-Casden". I have no idea where he came up with it, but it is very funny and very Casden.

Casden has this odd accent--ever since he started talking. It's hard to describe, but everyone notices it. He also has some really adorable speech impediments, which I know he will outgrow in time, but I hope they stick around at least until Aidric is talking with cute impediments of his own. He has a hard time with words that start with "S" and another consonant. Like "sleepy" is "fweepy". We went to Dairy Queen after they got their swine flu shots last weekend, and he informed me that he had eaten all his "fwinkles". Other cute words off the top of my head include "hung-ee" (hungry) and "bloon" (balloon). There are so many more, but I can't think of them right now. Oh, he's very good with his manners, but has a hard time with the "th" sound so he says "No 'sanks!" for "No thanks!" And he has a hard time with "sp-" words. He'll tell you that something has "pots" (spots) or that he's drawing a "pider" (spider).

Nanny and Grandpa got us the book Elf on the Shelf. The story is that he is Santa's elf and every night he uses his magic to fly back to the North Pole to report on the kids' behavior and then he flies back and hides in a new spot. The kids are really enjoying this. They named the elf Fisbee (as suggested in the story), and Padget is so smitten by this elf that she blesses him every night in her prayers! Tim and I, however, are having a harder time with this project as the elfen magic seems to solely rely on Tim and I remembering to move the little guy. There have been quite a few days where Padget and Casden can't understand why Fisbee came back to the same spot. Tim has nearly been caught multiple times moving Fisbee in the middle of the day!

I think I hear Casden up. He has been getting out of bed in the time between his bedtime and our bedtime. The first night he did this, he scared the bejesus out of Tim. He was standing in our room, in the dark, in between the curtains looking across at the neighbors' Christmas lights. Tim nearly jumped out of his skin! Last night, Tim turned on the lights and gave me the all clear and then looked on our bed. Casden had been looking at Christmas lights (the curtains were messed up) and had apparently just crawled into our bed, covered himself up, and fallen fast asleep. It was so sweet! Less sweet was his 3 a.m. visit later last night. Yep, he was out of bed. Tim is putting him back in his own bed now. He was playing with Padget's hair ties in their bathroom sink. ?? He's a character, that one!