19 month update

Our sassy little gal is 19 months.  She’s a crazy busy toddler who keeps us laughing with her hilarious (and often-times mischievious) personality.  She’s started talking SO much more this month.  I feel like she says a new word everyday.  Our favorite Molly-ism of the month is her new way of saying goodbye.  She has a perfect Miss America wave and she says bye like a little southern belle…”baahh!”.  I also love that when I say her name to get her attention she looks at me and shouts, “Huh?”.  One other favorite is how funny she thinks it is to catch people off guard in the grocery store by saying “Hi” very loudly to them.  It’s pretty funny to see their face as they try to figure out who greeted them.  When they finally figure out it’s the smiling little girl in the shopping cart, Molly just thinks it’s so funny.  It’s never a dull moment with Molly…possibly because she never stops moving from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to sleep.

Owen has been so fun this month as he’s started soccer and delights in practicing kicking the ball with Travis and me.  He absolutely loves his sister and tells me all the time, “Mommy, I love my sister.”  They are entering the stage where they’re starting to play together.  Their favorite activity is running around the house chasing each other.  They also love to wrestle…mostly instigated by Molly.  Owen is working on not freaking out when Molly takes one of his toys (and we’re trying to teach Molly that it’s not okay to grab one of the toys that Owen was playing with, hold it over her head, and run away as fast as she can…all the while shrieking with laughter).

We’re so excited for the Christmas season to begin with these two.  I can’t wait to see their excitment as the tree goes up (and then I dread having it up because I know Molly will not leave it alone for the entire month that it’s in our living room), as the Christmas lights go on the house, and as they start learning more about the reason we celebrate Christmas.  It’s going to be a fun December!  More next month, but until then I’ll leave you with these shots of my crazies…

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today was a fort-making kind of day

Lately it seems rare when we have nothing on the calendar.  There were an abundance of these days, it seemed, during the summer when we longed for routines to kick back into gear.  Now I relish the days we can wake up, stay in jammies most of the morning, and never leave the house.  Today was one of those days.

When I was a kid, I loved making forts.  My brother and I used to spend hours in the unfinished area under the basement stairs, making tunnels out of cardboard boxes and blankets.  This morning the kids and I created our first fort together.  We have no unfinished nook in the basement that’s perfect for fort-building, but we do have a pretty large dining room table that provides the bones for a really great fort.  Lots and lots of blankets later, this was produced:

The kids thought they’d died and gone to heaven. 

We played with the Thanksgiving pilgrims and Indians, read books by flashlight, and worked really hard on remembering not to stand up inside the fort.  Several bumped heads and tears later, this lesson was learned.

Owen played in the fort for 2 hours this morning.  Molly thought it was awesome but really delighted in knocking over all the army guys that Owen had so carefully set up.  I long for the day when she’ll just leave his stuff alone.  Will that ever happen?? 

This was one of those lazy mornings that I wish we could have more often.  I got the chance to play with the kids and I didn’t once worry about all the other things I should be doing around the house.  The laundry can wait.  The dust will still be there tomorrow.  It was just what we needed. 

…And then I realized I’d gotten too distracted while playing with Owen and Molly was way too quiet.  What was she doing??  Eating dirt out of one of my plants.  Awesome.

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soccer practice

Owen started soccer practice last week!  He’s been excited about this for quite a while and had a blast at soccer.  He is in a class with about 6 other kids ranging in age from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2.  They are learning basic soccer skills and lots about following directions.  The coaches do a great job with the kids and make it fun for everyone no matter what level of soccer players they are.

It was fun to watch Owen at his first practice.  He paid very careful attention to the coaches and was intent on doing everything they said.  Several times the coaches asked the kids to kick the ball down the field and into the goal.  Owen grabbed the ball in his hands and ran it down the field.  When he reached the goal, he laid down the ball and kicked it in.  We’ll be working on this one!

Here’s a shot of him practicing is ball handling skills…

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my last halloween post…i promise

It’s only mid-November, that’s not too late for one last Halloween post…right??  Regardless, it’s gonna happen because you just can’t do Halloween without carving those pumpkins.  And carve pumpkins we did.  As we’ve done the last couple of years, we’ve tried to get the kids into playing with the pumpkin guts.  Kids are supposed to enjoy getting messy, aren’t they?  Not my kids, as they’ve proven year after year.  I just keep hoping that one Halloween they’ll just dig their hands in and never turn back.  This is the response we got when we showed Molly the guts.

She didn’t want to stick her hands right into the mush, but she was all about picking up chunks we’d cut out to make the Jack-o-Lantern faces and putting them back into the pumpkin like a  puzzle.  Owen was much more into pumpkin carving this year than in years past.  He really wanted me to hand over the carving knife and give him a whirl at it.  Not gonna happen.  Notice how he’s eyeing that knife…

We entertained Molly for a bit with a great game of spooning seeds into a bowl (her very favorite activity right now is putting small things into a container or bowl).  But after a couple of minutes she discovered how fun it can be to accessorize with newspaper.  Here she is trying to wear a newspaper necklace.

Here’s my attempt at a picture of the kids together.  Seriously, taking a decent picture of my children together may be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. 

And a final picture of our scantily clad daughter and our awesome pumpkins.

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little chef

A few days before Halloween, Owen helped me make sugar cookie cut-outs.  We made sure Molly was fast asleep (because that’s the ONLY way anything gets done around here), put on our aprons, and got to work. 

Step 1:  Wash those hands!

Step 2:  Measure the dry ingredients.

Step 3:  Sift, sift, sift!

Step 4:  Mix, stir, and blend with the spatula.  (Funny story, Owen kept saying, “Mommy, can I use the bachelor?”.  I told him that it was actually called a spatula and he said, “That’s what I said.  The bachelor!”.  I guess you all now know what TV show is my guilty pleasure.

Step 5:  Yum…time to lick the beaters. 

Step 6:  The fun begins…it’s time to cut out shapes with the cookie cutters.

Step 7:  The cookies are out of the oven!  Time to let them cool.

Step 8:  Taste testing is a must.  You always have to make sure the food isn’t gross! 

Step 9:  Decorating the cookies with icing and sprinkles.  (Owen and his buddy, Jackson, got to do this together.  Jackson was WAY more into it than Owen.  Owen was really just there for the eating part.)

Step 10:  The eating part.  See what I mean?  Icing has been smeared on and there’s a significant lack of sprinkles, but there’s a whole lot of cookie eating going on!

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what in the world???

So this morning we were heading out the door to take Owen to school when this happened:

WHAT???  I mean really, has this ever happened to anyone else?  Not two minutes before, we’d been sitting at the table finishing up breakfast.  I’m so thankful that no one was underneath when this happened.  (Although I will admit that my first thought when I heard the crash was whether or not it had damaged my table.  Does that make me a horrible mother??)

After determining that everyone was safe (including my table), I called Travis telling him that he needed to come home right then because I had absolutely no CLUE what to do with a situation like this.  He’s a good man and turned around after completing 15 of his 45 minute commute to come to my rescue.  He examined it, determined that he had no clue what to do either, and called someone professional.  Unfortunately the profession fan man (that’s kind of fun to say, huh?) can’t come until tomorrow so we’re stuck with this enormously large and heavy fan dangling in the center of my dining room. 

I’m a wee bit nervous that our dangling fan might decide to complete it’s plunge any minute so I’ve covered the floor with pillows in an attempt to save my floor.  The table has been pushed as far out of the way as possible and the children and dog have been banned from the dining room.  And because it is dangling from wires, I’m a slight little bit afraid of what might happen if one of the wires were to snap.  I think of sparks and fire and all kinds of dangerous things.  The fan man seemed pretty confident that the wires would hold just fine until tomorrow but I wonder if he really understands that my enormous ceiling fan is precariously hanging from them…

It’s been a month of crazy things around here.  Last week the drain in the floor of the basement clogged and we had a bit of flooding followed by a hefty bill to unclog the drain.  The week before the washer broke due to a certain someone’s little stocking that got stuck in the pump.  This cute little sock cost us a pretty penny:

Please let this be the end of weird, expensive home repairs!

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halloween 2010

This year we went trick or treating with a little butterfly…

…and a scary dragon!

But before they donned their costumes on Halloween night, they were wearing these adorable Halloween t-shirts.  And I had to snap their picture in them one more time, since now it will be uncool for them to wear them outside the comforts of our home.

For the second year in a row, our whole family gathered at our house for the night’s festivities.  Here’s the group (Bubba, Nana, Grandad, Mimi, and Uncle Nate…plus the kids) before we set out:

Our little butterfly and dragon were really excited to get going, but I was so not above bribing the kids with chocolate in an attempt to get them to pose together for a pre-trick or treat picture.

Molly was excited to hold onto her butterfly basket.  She carried it on her wrist like a purse.  Very dainty. 

Owen remembered how to trick or treat from the years past, but this was all new to Molly.  Her big brother was excited to teach her what to do.  Owen was very enthusiastic about trick or treating this year.  Last year he was a little intimidated and we could barely get him to say “trick or treat” when someone would open the door.  This year he was eager, he was loud, and he was full of energy.  Molly caught on quickly, too.  She was excited when someone would hand her candy and she’d squeal, “COOKIE!”.

After a couple of houses, Owen was really in the mode.  He ran from door to door yelling for us to hurry up.  Molly was all about running from house to house, too.  She had no interest in being held or riding in the wagon that we’d brought along.  She simply followed her brother’s lead and the rest of us worked on keeping up.

There were a few houses that had some scary decorations.  I thought Molly might get scared by them, but she just pointed and laughed.  Here’s a shot of our family in front of the house in our neighborhood that goes all out every year.

In the past, we’ve made it to a few houses but never stayed out longer than about 30 minutes.  This year we lasted well over an hour, and we gathered quite a bit of candy in the process.  Some people are seriously generous with their candy.  The kids each gathered a few full size candy bars!  Back at our house, the kids were excited to check out their loot. 

Halloween was so fun this year.  Stay tuned for more Halloween weekend posts.  There’s just way too much for one blog post!

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