Why, why, why?

Alex has very few words to her vocabulary. Learning to speak is just coming slower to her than for the average child. But I'm positive that that has a lot to do with the fact that Austin speaks for her. It's a pretty common occurance around here for Alex to walk into a room and say 'ah ah' and Austin to follow behind her and say 'I think Alex is trying to say she wants ____'. At this point, she'll nod or say yeah to whatever Austin said and that's that.

Her use of words are coming faster now and she probably has about 20 or so to her vocabulary -- the main ones being mama, daddy, nana (as in Ryan's mom), mil (as in milk), ba (as in ball and bus), mine, yeah, hi, bye and baba (as in blanket, bottle, baby, brother, raspberries and any word she doesn't have a word for making this one a tough one).

She's picking up a new word every few days right now. And it's her newest word that floored me. And when I picked myself up off the floor, I was ready to send her out the door just so I wouldn't have to hear her say it again.

No she didn't drop the f-bomb or something like that.

She said 'why'.

And then she stared at me and waited for an answer.

Austin was a little over 3 when he became a why monster. It started with 'how come?' but quickly moved into 'why?' To this day, he often asks 'why' 5 or 6 times (or more) a minute. Every answer you give is followed by why until you have no more answers left and you grumble 'just because' in frustration. Most of the time, it's just plain annoying although there are some times that he asks very thought-out questions, like the time we had a whole coversation about why there were no people when the dinosaurs were living.

But the other day, I said 'lunch time guys' and Austin got up and ran to the kitchen but Alex looked up at me and said 'why?'.

Now thankfully, right now, although she waits for an answer, she takes anything at face value. So all I have to say is 'because we're hungry' and that's enough for her to get up and walk into the kitchen (I could probably just say because booga booga and she'd also accept that as an answer).

But seriously, she has the ability to speak just 20 words. Why, why, why, why, why does one of them have to be why?

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Happy Halloween!

Alex's favourite doll right now is Mickey Mouse, so it was rather convenient that we already had a Mickey Mouse costume that Austin wore last year! She loved wearing the costume, and in fact, even now, two days later -- she wants to keep putting it back on!

This year, Austin decided he wanted to be a fireman.

The kids had a great time trick or treating. At first, Alex wasn't really sure what to make of the whole thing, and after a few houses, she didn't want to walk anymore. But when Ryan tried to bring her home, she'd have nothing of it!

So, Ryan pulled her around in the wagon the rest of the evening, but apparently, now that she understood that every house gave her candy, she wanted to get out at every door and hold out her basket!

So, of course, now we have way too much candy in our house! Especially since we didn't get that many kids this year -- so there's also a lot of leftover candy!

And, since I'm posting Halloween pictures here; the weekend before, Ryan and I went to a Halloween party dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat:

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