Man oh man! Where has October gone?? We're already halfway through the month, and I feel like September just ended. I love October. If you can have a favorite month, October is probably mine. I love the drop in temperatures, the pretty fall leaves, the hot chocolate, and the return of my sweet cinnamon pumpkin wallflower. Oh yeah, and Halloween. The kids are crazy about that one. Here are some random happenings so far this month:
Zach is still loving preschool, hooray! Here he is, all lined up and ready to head in to class with his buddy Hudson (in the orange shirt), and Hudson's twin brothers. He's learning a ton, and maturing so much! I guess he listens better than we give him credit for, ha, ha. They just finished a two week fall break with no preschool, and today was the first day back, thank heavens! He was very excited.
While on his break, we met some friends at the park one afternoon and got some delicious cupcakes afterwards. Leah crawled right up to Zach (who was sitting in the grass with his) and swiped a huge handful of frosting off. Zach was not too happy, but you can see the pleased look on Leah's face.
Lucy finally had her dream come true when she got to do a sleepover at a friend's house! I'm always too uncomfortable to let her sleep over at people's houses when she gets invited to birthday parties of kids from school that I don't know, so we kind of have a standing no-sleepover-rule, much to Lucy's dismay. Our good friends from church have the same policy, so their 9 year old daughter Lizzie hadn't had one either-- and since it's kind of a major rite of passage in the gamut of childhood experiences, it didn't take long for us to decided we were totally fine with Lucy spending the night there and she HAD. A. BLAST!! They had nail polish, movies, popcorn, crafts, and got to make breakfast for Lizzie's family the next morning (toast and water! Mmmm!).
The Sunday of General Conference weekend we kind of have a tradition where we make a big breakfast, since Conference doesn't start for us until noon. We get to enjoy a nice leisurely breakfast and lounge about in our pj's. This October the weather was still so warm we even ate outside!
Leah enjoying her pancakes and scrambled eggs. Yum!
She has learned to wave "hello" and "goodbye" and to clap when she does a cool trick, like stand up by herself. With all four of us cheering her on constantly to walk, you'd think she'd have mastered it by now, but (thankfully) she's still content to just cruise along the furniture.
Lucy recently had the day off for parent-teacher conferences, and she got rave reviews! Her teacher didn't have enough good things to say about her. She is smart, funny, likable, a good helper, friendly, artistic, and kind to everyone. She also has become a very proficient reader, and is reading well above grade level. And she's good at math. Hallelujah! Heaven knows she does not get that from me! When I asked the teacher what we could work on at home, she just kind of laughed, and was like, "Nothing!" I am SO proud of her!! We took her out to frozen yogurt that night to celebrate.
Zach-O needed a pat on the back for being good at preschool, too.
Leah was pooped after our excursion and fell asleep on the way home. She is doing really well sleeping at night-- just waking up once to eat around 4 or 5, but she is a totally crappy napper still. She ends up crying for an hour in her crib, so I feel I've tortured her, and then only sleeping for about 30 min. and waking up just as grumpy as before. And then times that by two naps. Guh. Why do I always get the insomniac babies?!?
Last week to celebrate the final day of Zach's fall break we headed with some friends to the kids museum in Rockingham. We got there about an hour after it opened, and we were the FIRST ones there! It was crazy! We had the ENTIRE museum to ourselves for about two hours before anyone else came. It begs the question, Why did they build it in the middle of nowhere? But who am I to understand North Carolina...
Peek-A-Boo! Leah had the whole baby section to herself. She could crawl around like a madwoman with no one to tell her no!
Zach playing with Will on top of the fire engine. They had a really cute puppet show they put on just for us since we were the only ones there. Lucky us!
Of course, October means we've pulled out the Halloween decorations, so my sneaky Zach unscrewed the Frankenstein head and stuck his there instead, and said, "Hey! Look mom! I'm Franken-Zach!" Pretty good, kid, pretty good.
Hmmmm, X-ray vision is very helpful when figuring out if Leah has poopy pants and it's safe to sit by her!
Gotta love the piggies and polka dot leg-warmers! She is looking soooo grown up! I can't believe she'll be one next month.
Jonathan had work off on Columbus Day and decided what he wanted to do most of all was have a huge rocket launch. He's become quite a collector and built at least 6 or 7, but it's really hard to find a good place to do it because there are so many dang trees around here. We recently found a big field behind our house, and although we were probably trespassing, we had one wicked rocket launch with the whole gang! 3, 2, 1, BLAST-OFF!
