Oh yes, my dears, I do!
All the kids like to climb here.
Eve said the first one wasn't good because she couldn't see her face very well (when she looked at it in the preview screen). She liked this picture much better :)
“By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life.”
? Tina Fey, Bossypants
I highly recommend this book. Even better, get the audio book and listen to Tina Fey herself. HYSTERICAL!
There are lots of big developments going on around here. Both kids are rocking at their swimming lessons, growing stronger and more confident each time they get in the water. Lex has three wiggly teeth, one of them is super wiggly! Eve can write and spell “I love you mommy” all by herself :) But one little milestone occurred to me this week that made me a little sad. I can’t remember the last time one of them came into our bed at night for cuddles. They used to come in every night, at least one of them, sometimes both. Usually I’d pull them in to bed to snuggle. When I heard shuffling by my bedside I’d reach out my hand and rub their head first. A sweet touch secretly designed to clue my groggy self in as to who’s standing by my bed. A trick that lost it’s effectiveness towards the end as Eve’s hair grew in. Then I’d pull them in for snuggles or sigh and get up and put them back to bed (what was I thinking!) But now I can’t even remember the last time one of them showed up for midnight cuddles. Sigh. A sweet, sad little milestone.
Alan and I signed up for a family membership at the aquatic center. Alan has been going to the gym every morning before work, I make it there sometimes, and the kids just started swim lessons again! They were super excited! They are in the same group again, this time with one of Lex’s classmates that they both like. Good times. I’m going to try and swim laps twice a week while they’re in lessons, though today I managed to chat with several parents and barely even look at the chilly lap pool. Oh well, maybe Thursday! :)
Halloween is here again! There are tons of Halloween activities in our area. You could be Halloweening from Thursday-Monday, with multiple activities each day. You could, but we weren’t, of course! This year we went to a Halloween party at Eve’s school yesterday and trick-or-treating today. That’s enough for this family.
The PTO at Eve’s school held a great Halloween party. They had lots of goodies and games and arts & crafts and tons of fun things to do. It was Sunday, mid-afternoon, and almost all of Eve’s class attended. We had a lot of fun.
Astronaut Lex. Princess Eve would not pose.
As I said, she did not want to pose. Despite his best efforts. (Check out his teeth, by the way. Those front two on top are sticking so far out. Both are loose, but one is super loose. It almost looks like he's lost a tooth but really the wiggly ones are just moving sideways. Funny!)
First things first, a plate full of goodies. The the little bee in the middle is Eve's friend.
Then we made some paper plate bats. It was a fun project. Lex also made a spider, but I don't seem to have a picture of that.
Lex likes craft projects. He worked hard on his bat and spider.
Eve got a butterfly painted on her face.
Proud boy with a black bat.
They had a huge piece of paper up and they were asking everyone to sign it.
Lex worked hard on this too.
While Lex concentrated on just a few projects, Eve tried her hand at everything, including painting blue frosting onto nondescript sugar cookie shapes. She took one bite and left the rest on the table. :)
Don't all princesses eat powdered donuts off strings? (there were a lot of princesses at the party!)
We ended the afternoon with some pumpkin bowling.
Tonight, after force feeding the children a healthy(ish) dinner, they donned the costumes again for some chilly trick-or-treating. They were both SUPER excited for it this year!
Laying out the costumes
Halloween - 2011 (Posing for the camera was a requirement for trick-or-treating. Eve obeyed.)
Alan went trick-or-treating with them. He was dressed as Johnny Bravo, but I think he looks more like the terminator in this picture :) Alan's bare arms and Lex's helment didn't last long!
A Lego pirate! :)
The loot!
We all dug in! :)
They lasted for about a half hour before coming home. I think they had almost as much fun at home, watching for trick-or-treaters.
Eve loved doling out candy to the trick-or-treaters. This guy took off his mask and started chatting with Lex. I guess they go to school together.
Do you like my costume?! :)
Now it is late, my house is asleep, and I am chilly and eating candy. I think I need to go to bed. Happy Halloween!! Tomorrow starts my favorite month (if only it was warmer!) and swimming lessons. Busy, busy. Good thing we have plenty of candy to help us power through!
We had our first snowfall Wednesday night but it was mostly a dusting. Saturday night brought the real stuff. We got about 4″ but other parts of the state got up to 18″. Wet, heavy, powerline downing snow. We lost power twice Saturday night but were part of the lucky crowd that got it back quickly. Other parts of the state were out for a day or more. We woke to a beautiful winter wonderland. Beautiful if you don’t mind the fact that it’s still October.
The kids were thrilled, of course. We went outside and shoveled off the porch, made snowmen, and played on the swing set.
Lex wrote his name on the tree with snowballs. You can sort of see the E and X here. He was so proud of his idea :)
I thought my quince tree was a goner. Turns out it just needed a good shaking out :)
After lunch we went to a Halloween party at Eve’s school. When we got home the snow was mostly melted and the snowmen were looking sad. Eve and I shoveled the porch again and then she decided to finish off the snowmen with the shovel! Then her and Parrish spent a good amount of time trying to rebuild them. Crazy kids.
October snow, you decided. Trick or treat?
(Not that it matters what I think, as I’m pretty sure mother nature doesn’t give a hoot about my opinions on winter. When I was buckling the kids into their carseats Lex complained that he was too cold and I said “Get used to it. We’ve got six cold months ahead of us!” Seriously, six months! Sheesh!)
Going through the pictures on the camera I came across a few random photos I meant to post over the past few weeks. I didn’t get around to it then, but here they are for you now… (turns out it was more than a few and mostly about Eve!)
Eve made her magazine debut last spring, but once again her face is around town. Here is a picture hanging on the wall outside her old preschool classroom…
… and here she is promoting a Good Beginnings lecture earlier this month. When I asked if she minded seeing her face on posters in the schools and around town, she shrugged and said, “nope.” She’s cool like that.
I love her artwork.
Lex made a really cute treasure box in Pre-K art class and Eve has waited two long years to make one of her own. Sadly Pre-K this year doesn’t get art class (apparently they normally don’t, Lex’s year was an exception) so on a whim we decided to make her a treasure box at home. With an empty milk carton, scissors, paper, and lots of tape we went to work. The closure isn’t great, but otherwise it’s a pretty cool treasure box.
Don’t think I forgot about the other artist in the house. Here is a picture he drew of the aquatic center. We got a membership this month and they start taking swimming lessons again (starting tomorrow, in fact!) They’re both pretty excited.
Grampy Don came to visit a few weeks ago and brought Eve a make-your-own book kit. She got right to work.
Page one says “This is mom baking a cake.” I especially like the crown. And the legs.
Every night I lay down with the kids at bedtime. Most nights they argue about who I should lay with first. I like to think I’m a genius mommy, but sometimes it comes to me slowly. After many months of this, and all kinds of lame threats on my part, I finally solved the problem. A simple sign.
We got our first snowfall last Wednesday night. Eve wanted to play outside all morning.
A (pretend) nap at the bottom of the stairs? Yes, please!
Eve’s weefy puppy had NO stuffing in her, at all. Eve has been asking me to do surgery on her, just like I did on Lex’s doggie years ago (I tried to find a link for this but instead found this adorable photo and this post about previous surgery on Eve’s puppy, I’d forgotten about that!) Yesterday I got brave and donned my surgical hat (figuratively!) and fattened puppy right up. Eve says she is feeling much better now.
Lex filled our living room with puzzles yesterday and then took pictures of them all :) He is definitely a budding photographer. A boy after my own heart.
Eve had a playdate this morning with two little girls from her class. She has been so looking forward to this day. It went fairly well. The girls were all nice and well behaved and they played really nicely together. It was fun.
Lex brought home his pumpkin pot home today. He made it in art class at school. They’ve been working on it for weeks and I get happy every time he tells me about it. Mostly because I love hearing him say “pumpkin pot.” :)
Ok, I guess that’s enough random photos for tonight. Now on to the Halloween photos!
These colors always remind me of Tupperware from the 80’s. How’s that for a random Sunday morning post. :-)
We carved pumpkins today. I almost skipped it altogether. The kids mentioned it once or twice over the past week or so and I promised we’d do it… but I almost “forgot” because it’s not my favorite activity. It went well enough today though. The kids drew faces, I cut and carved. They somewhat helped with the gutting process, but they were both pretty uninterested in cold, orange, squishy guts. Eve did what she could. Lex moved on to other things pretty quickly and left me to finish up his. :)
Doesn't she look thrilled? :)
Lex is not much for touching wet, squishy things. He never has been.
Pumpkin heads! (what, doesn't everyone take pictures of their kids under the table?)
We closed the shades and turned off the light and tried to make it dark :)
They both wanted their pumpkins to have hair. I did my best.
Two little pumpkins sitting on the table...
We put them on the porch, but I have to remember to bring them in tonight. We’re supposed to get 4″+ inches of snow tonight!
Lex makes great “creations” with blocks and Legos and paper and all sorts of things. Often he’ll take pictures of his creations. Even more often I’ll take pictures of them! Sometimes I remind him about the blog and offer to let him post his pictures. Tonight he took me up on the offer! What you see below is Lex’s first blog post. Exciting, huh?! He wrote the title and picked the photos to use and together we uploaded them. By that point it was getting late and we had a game of Life to play before bedtime, so he narrated captions to me and I typed and navigated the WordPress interface. I’m an old pro at that! He was pretty excited about the whole thing. Someday you may see more from him! :)
I had him write down the number of each photo he wanted to add, instead of flipping between programs as I normally do. He worked so hard at it. He's so cute!