Funny races and funny faces

We had a wonderful day today. Although the day started at 5:20, much to my dismay, both girls were as sweet as could be all morning. After having a bite to eat, we drove over to Bernadette's to let Willy out and feed him breakfast. We came home in time to meet our landlord, who came to inspect our leaking windows, and then headed out to the new library in Ocean View where we borrowed a Mickey Mouse DVD, a ton of books, and attended a really fun story time, run by librarian Sarah. She took out different puppets from the "storybox" by her side as she read each book and sang lots of songs, including "Boom chicka-boom," one of my favorites from Girl Scout camp. (I haven't heard anyone else sing that song in 20 years!) After that, we headed home for lunch and naps. Caroline took a half-nap and Nora refused to nap at all, but we managed to have a pleasant afternoon nonetheless (I had a particularly moving bonding moment as I rocked Caroline to the Indigo Girls' "Love Will Come to You"). We delivered a Mt. Sunflower Tonka bar to our neighbor John and Caroline had fun reaching out to touch his face and nose, studying him carefully (John loved it!). Then we walked back over to Bernadette's to get Willy and bring him back to our house for the night. Monica, Thomas and Zach came over for pizza around 5...Caroline downed 1 1/2 slices of pizza, and Nora fell asleep on the couch watching Cinderella...they sure showed those boys a good time! Speaking of good times, Nora and Caroline made me laugh this morning as they had a crawling "race" across the rug...Nora would shout "Read, set, go!" and take off, and Caroline would just sit there laughing, not budging an inch. Caroline is also a woman of many faces now...when she's happy, she smiles, scrunches up her nose, and breathes in and out of it really quickly. And if you do it, she'll do it back to you. She also did her first version of what I think was a wink...as I was feeding her this afternoon, she smiled at me and then all of a sudden closed her eyes and shut them tight in a very deliberate way for a second or two. I did it back to her, and then she did it to me again, and so on and so forth for a few minutes. It was a riot! I'll have to try to get that on video. I'm posting a photo of this morning's "race," since both girls were so happy (note the lopsided bangs on Nora...which Mommy has since corrected).