Spaghetti-eating Zombie

Alice loves to draw on the windows in the morning.

Today, she came home with this colorful creation, and declared that it was a zombie that liked to eat spaghetti.

Simon playing and Alice crying in the cushions

I originally started taking this video because Alice was having a rough evening and was crying a lot, but she would talk about what was bothering her while she was crying and it was quite funny because the drama of the crying was completely disproportionate to whatever minor thing she was upset about. But after I started filming, she soon got her emotions under control.

Marshmallows

Simon pooped in the potty for the second time ever today. The last time he pooped in the potty was over a month ago. At this rate, he should be potty trained in time for kindergarten. He was pretty happy about his marshmallow reward!

Fun with letters

Today at the park, Alice stuck a stick into a hole on some playground equipment, then put another stick on the end, making a Y-shape. Because I have trouble making conversation with children, I always seize upon these types of discussion topics. So I said, "Alice, what alphabet letter is that?"

She looked at it for a second. "Y."

"What are some words that start with Y?"

"Yo-yo. Yellow. Yubber."

I hadn't heard of that last one before, so I said, "Yubber? What's a yubber?"

Without a moment's hesitation, Alice replied, "A machine that makes swimming pools."


****

A couple of weeks ago, we were driving back from Pullen Park and I was asking Simon questions to try and keep him awake, so he could take a proper nap at home. We always have to remind Alice not to answer questions directed at Simon. I was asking Simon basic questions like "What animal did you ride on the carousel?" and "What color was the paddle boat?"  After several questions, Alice complained, "Mom, why aren't you asking me any questions?"

So I started asking her some questions."How many pedals were in the pedal boat?"

"Four."

"What was the shape of the steering wheel?"

"A circle with a line coming out of it."

"What letter of the alphabet does that look like?"

"Q!"

"How many bridges were there?"

"Two."

"What shape where the bridges?"

"Rainbow shaped."

"What letter in the alphabet has two rainbow shapes?"  I was thinking of an m.

"S!"

"Good! Can you name five words that start with s?"

She did, with a little help. (I can remember what the words were.)

"Can you think of any other letters that have two rainbow shapes?"

"G." (lower case)

"Great! Can you name five words that start with g?"

She did, with a little help. (I can remember what the words were.)

"I can still think of one more alphabet letter that has two rainbows..."

She had trouble coming up with the last one, but I said I'd give her a coin for her piggy bank if she could figure it out and finally at home she came up with the m.

Simon at Dragon Park

We wrapped up our four-day weekend of excursions with a trip to dragon park, where we apparently failed to take any decent pictures of Alice. Simon continued to demonstrate his new and improved climbing skills, and a good time was had by all.

O Christmas Tree

On Saturday, we went to the tree lot a couple of blocks from our house and picked out our Christmas tree. The lady selling the trees gave our kids the first candy canes of the season. Simon crunched his up quickly, and Alice actually ate hers, which was surprising because she doesn't normally like mint.

Zac strung on the lights while the kids were napping, and we made a video of Simon coming out to see the tree for the first time, just like we did last year.

Then, we all decorated the tree.  Alice loved unwrapping the ornaments. And this year, she finally understood that she shouldn't put them all on the same branch.

Simon was happy to discover we had so many train-themed ornaments, although he struggled with the concept that they weren't functional train toys. He kept taking them over to his train tracks and trying to drive them.

Hemlock Bluffs

On day 3 of the holiday weekend, we planned to go to Hemlock Bluffs. Alice complained because she didn't think we should go to a forest two days in a row, and said she wanted to go to an indoor place. I told her we would absolutely not go to an indoor place on such a beautiful day. Although most of the time we try to appreciate Alice's strong opinions, assertive nature, and persistence, she can certainly drive us nuts.

We continued our constant and often futile quest to get good pictures of the kids...

Simon walked down all the steps at Hemlock Bluffs for the first time. I've been carrying him down these steps since he was in utero, so I was quite happy to see him do it all by himself.

Simon and Alice had a lot of fun playing on fallen down trees!

Simon loved running on the bridges that make up a large portion of the path at Hemlock Bluffs.

All in all, he did a great job hiking and exploring!

Although, here he is with his big blue eyes imploring me to carry him back up the steps.

Back at the top, Alice wanted to walk on the railing.

So then Simon also wanted to do it and kept shouting, "No, daddy! No!" every time Zac tried to hold his hands or otherwise prevent him from falling off.

But in the end, we all survived!

Bold and Brave at Schenck Forest

On the day after Thanksgiving, we steered clear of the stores and headed to Schenck Forest. Actually, we tried to go to Prairie Ridge, but it was closed. It was a beautiful fall day, and because we were slow in the morning and didn't arrive there until nearly 11am, the first thing we did was sit down in a patch of sun in the leaves to have a snack. I can always tell when Simon needs a snack because he completely refuses to walk. Once he was properly fueled up, he hiked most of the way on his own.

Once everyone had obtained enough energy, we headed off into the woods. We don't hike much, actually. We just let the kids play with sticks, pretend to fish off bridges, and climb on fallen down trees. These mornings in the woods are so enjoyable.

We try to encourage Alice to "be bold and brave" (a phrase borrowed from Thomas) and do things that she's a little bit afraid of. Here, we encouraged her to climb all the way up a fallen tree. It wasn't that high off the ground, but she still had to conquer her fear to get to the end--and she did.

Then later, she was surprisingly unafraid to scoot across this tree that had fallen over a stream. She scooted all the way to the other side and then back again. Unfortunately, Simon also wanted to crawl across, and yelled at me to not help him. I decided that I would rather not fish him out of the river, so I convinced him to go climb on other logs that were not suspended above water.

Thanksgiving

For Thanskgiving this year, we were headed to Zac's dad's house. Zac had made two apple pies the night before, one to take and one to keep. Simon saw the pies when he came out for breakfast and said he wanted to eat it. We decided then and there to start a new tradition of eating pie for breakfast on Thanksgiving. Who has room for desert after a big feast?

So, as you can see, Simon didn't really enjoy his pie for breakfast after all. But the pie was actually quite excellent, and Zac ate all of his slice without spitting any out.

Then, we headed off to green park to wear the kids out so they would take early naps so we could get going to Burlington earlier. Alice packed up a bag of toys and rode her scooter to the park. She also had fun riding it around in the tennis courts. She's still not very good at actually gliding on it, but she's getting a bit better now that Zac retro-fitted it with lower handle bars from another scooter that I trash-picked one day last summer.

Cam had told us about Simon climbing this green ladder when she took the kids to the park. But I was still surprised to see it first hand, as it seemed he had really struggled to climb anything just a few weeks ago.

We had a lovely dinner and socializing at the Arcaro-Burbridges, but we somehow failed to take a single picture. Alice was not behaving particularly well that night, probably because she barely ate anything, but Simon was pretty cute, so we figure we broke even.