Cousins

I can't say enough about how much I love that Catherine and Toby are so close in age. Not just for them, but being able to share the adventures of parenting with Jen and Phil is priceless. What's funny is that now that the two kids (Jen and I realized we're starting to call them "kids" instead of "babies") are getting older, into the toddler age, they are starting to act more like brother and sister. They get along so well, but they can really fight, too. They know each other well enough that they can really push each other's buttons to no end. It's actually pretty amusing!

The funniest "sibling" story recently is one of these last weekends when we were at Jen and Phil's and we were all out in their garage. Phil has a big stereo that happens to be at kid level, and in no time the kids were pushing buttons on the stereo and learned which buttons turn it on and off. Catherine pushes the button to turn on the stereo, the music comes on and she dances to the music (so cute - she kind of waddles her butt and has a big smile on her face!). Then Toby says "NO!" and pushes the button to turn it off. Catherine looks at him in disbelief, and promptly turns it back on. The music comes on, she dances, and Toby says "NO!" and turns it off. They did this back and forth for about 10 minutes. We were rolling on the floor laughing. These kids know how to entertain!

It was SO HOT this last Saturday that we went to get a kiddie pool. Before we got there, Toby was already sort of refusing to try it. He just really wasn't interested. But then Catherine gets there and bolts toward the water, splashes and squealing with glee. She nearly jumped in before I could even get her swimsuit on. Then naturally Toby wanted in on the fun. Funny how that works, huh?

We were loading some stuff in the truck, so the kids got to play in the cab. They both had sets of keys that they were playing with. And what do you know - they both already know that the key goes in the ignition. Toby even sat down by the steering wheel, put the key in the ignition (but didn't turn it of course), and put his hands up on the wheel and bounced like the truck was going. He is so freaking smart!

Here they are playing a B-E-A-OOtiful duet on Jen's piano. They were playing nice and actually played some pretty decent music next to each other. Hmm... budding pianists perhaps?