Halloween at Wellington Park

Tuesday was Halloween, and the county schools and daycare were closed, allegedly for a teacher workday, but probably to avoid any costume controversies. If they had any sense, they'd take the day after Halloween to close schools.

At any rate, I took the day off and stayed home with the kids. We went to Dragon Park, and Simon rode on the tire swing for the first time ever. He didn't want pushed too hard or crazy (he really is the opposite of Alice), but he did pretty well.

That evening, we went to our friend Andrea's house for pizza. We know her from daycare and she lives in a different part of our neighborhood. She has two boys, a year older than Alice and a year younger. They invited Genevieve and her parents over too (also from daycare).  So the kids ate pizza at one table and the adults at another (plus Simon because he was too terrified of their dog to be left alone.  Their dog is the size of a cat.)

(clockwise) Alice, Murphy, Genevieve, Glenn

Then, at 6:30, we headed out to trick-or-treat, joined by Emry, Alice's friend from after-school-care who is a year younger than her, and whose mom works with Zac. We quickly realized why Alice liked Emry so much: he is boisterous and energetic just like her. They ran from house-to-house. Simon did a great job and didn't want us to come up to the houses with him, so we just loitered on the road while the kids ran up to the doors.

(Glenn, Genevieve, Simon, Murphy, Alice, Emry)

Our cul-de-sac is kind of in the middle of nowhere in the neighborhood as a whole, so we'd heard that most people go to one of the more populated ends of the neighborhood to trick-or-treat (which is what we did with Andrea and the kids).

Back at our house, we trick-or-treated in our own cul-de-sac (everyone still had bowls filled to the brim with candy since so few kids had come out here), then turned all of our lights on in case anybody came by, since it was only about 8pm. We had exactly one person come: Parker!

The kids made out pretty good for just an hour of trick-or-treating!  We live in a generous neighborhood: lots of chocolate, even a few full-sized bars.

Pumpkin Carving

Carving a jack-o-lantern is an important holiday tradition.  This year, Zac let both kids draw their own design on the pumpkin.  Alice did fine, but Simon kept drawing really tiny little faces. Finally, we were able to adequately convey what he needed to do and he drew a larger face.

Steering wheels

Sunday morning was rainy, so Zac took the kids to Marbles while I did school work and laundry. Zac said it was the first time ever that Simon didn't play with the trains at Marbles. Instead, he was focused on any vehicle with a steering wheel.

Simon's airplane

Simon loves to go out on the garage in the evenings while Zac is puttering around out there and put stuff together with the scrap wood. He'll build walls, and houses, and towers (all of which Zac failed to take a picture of). One night he excitedly came in the house to get Alice, saying he had built a two-seat airplane for them the ride on. (Unfortunately, Alice was playing with Parker and wasn't available to ride on the plane then.)

Money!

Alice has a new found understanding of money since we started her on an allowance over the summer. So she was thrilled beyond belief to receive $10 in the mail from Grandma Cam and Don. I held the money hostage until she wrote the thank-you card, and then made her put half of it in her savings.  But, the good news is, thanks to this windfall, she now has $20 in her "spending" envelope and is finally at her goal of saving $19 to spend at the gift shop at the Durham Museum of Life and Science. The story there is that one of the times I took her there over the summer, she picked out everything she wanted in the shop and it came to $19 total. So she has been very diligent in not spending her money and saving it for that. It's funny, of course, because she could have bought some of the things before reaching her goal, but for some reason she wants to buy everything all at once. The other funny thing is I don't think she remembers what she picked out, so when we go there again, whatever she chooses will probably end up being more or less than $19. But it seems like a good experience to just go through the discipline of not spending any money for 15 weeks.

Simon, meanwhile, has no concept of what money even is, so we had to quickly wrest his money from him and put it in a safe place, since he is in a phase where he likes to tear and shred paper, or crumple it up and claim it's a rocket ship, or write his name all over it in purple marker....  Further proof of how clueless he is is that a week later, I put the Halloween card in his room and he asked if the card was money.

Playground

On Saturday morning, after breakfast and time on the in-house obstacle course, I took the kids to Jack Smith park.  Simon does a great job playing now, and it quite happy climbing on things, but especially things that look like a spider's web.  He also loved jumping around the rocks, and I regret not getting a video of that.

Alice at the symphony

A friend of mind at work invited us to the North Carolina Symphony's Young People's Concert (her husband is in the symphony and gets free tickets to hand out occasionally). Alice squirmed and whined about being thirsty and needing to go potty (even although we took care of both right before sitting down) for most of the concert. I guess for someone as hands-on as Alice, just watching music must have been strange, and based on her behavior, it certainly was difficult. But when the youth ballet came out to dance and act out Peter and the Wolf, she perked up and became interested. She enjoyed the Peter and the Wolf part so much, it inspired me to show her Fantasia, which is conveniently on Netflix right now. She loves it.

Alice poses with the dancer who played the cat in Peter and the Wolf

Raleigh is the "City of Oaks" so our mascot is a giant acorn. Coming from the Buckeye State, it makes total sense to me to have giant nuts as part of the culture here.

Daycare trick-or-treating

Zac went to the trick-or-treating at Simon's daycare (it's always on the community workday at my school so I can never go).  The parents who can come line up on the playground and the kids come out and the parents pass out candy.

Simon said he wanted to be a cicada again this year, so we found the hat and wings from last year in with the toys in the basement. The hat was missing an eyeball, but we eventually found it (shoved in a purse in Alice's bedroom) and Zac sewed it back on. We failed to really think about the outfit more than that, because we are excelling at being slacker parents. But Simon felt like he was a cicada, and that's all that really matters. Right?

The bottom two pictures were taken by our friend (and former real-estate agent Elizabeth).

My students in Alice's class

The school I teach at does Community Work Days, where twice a year, under a teacher's leadership, students participate in a variety of community service projects on campus and in the community. The health teacher at my school, Katie Kritzer, takes her community workday group to Ms. Jones's class (Alice's class!) every year to do health-related activities with the first graders. So just by coincidence, some of my students spent the day with Alice's class.  Alice didn't say much about it, other than that she made a stoplight cookie (that must have been the most exciting part).

Katie, the health teacher at my school, texted me this picture of Alice's class with RCHS students.

Kids building things

On Thursday night, the kids used the time betwixt supper and bedtime snack to build things. Simon loves to work in the garage, putting together things with random scraps of wood and boxes. Meanwhile, Alice and Parker constructed a fort in the living room.

Snug as a bug in a rug

Pumpkin seeds!

Ms. Georgiana sent me this picture of Simon from daycare today:

She said he had a blast playing with the pumpkin seed goop.

Parents were supposed to sign up to come carve pumpkins with their kids. Zac and I think this is absurd, because why take off work to do stuff with our kids at daycare that we are going to do with them at home anyway? So we don't feel very guilty about skipping events like this, except when Ms. Georgiana texts us pictures of our cute kid, parentless with his pumpkin seeds.

Teacher's Night at McDonals's

One thing that drives me nuts about elementary school is the constant fundraising. And they do such a good job getting the kids on board. All week Alice has been talking about teacher's night at McDonalds (we buy food and McDonalds donates proceeds to the school) and how much she wanted to go. I hemmed and hawed and refused to commit to anything. "But I want to see Dr. Douglass go down the slide!" she would keep saying. Dr. Douglass is the principal and apparently he promoted the event by promising the students they'd see him go down the slide at the play place in the McDonald's.

Finally, on the way home that evening, I relented and told Alice and Simon if they ate their supper really fast we could go to McDonald's for dessert.  It was fish night, so they unfortunately succeeded in eating quickly enough that we had time to go. So we all piled into the car and drove up the road to McD's.

It was even worse than I imagined. The play area was a madhouse, of course, but what I had failed to imagine was that they would all be screaming. Zac used some app on his phone and the sound levels were declared unsafe without ear protection.

The good news was Alice had a blast. She found a few friends and played like a maniac. She seemed to forget all about seeing Dr. Douglass go down the slide.

We let the kids play for a bit, then got them ice cream cones, then let them play for a bit more, then left. If I'm deaf in old age (more than I am already) this will be the cause.

Only 12 more years till college...

This is how we all feel some days, Mrs. Bones. But you just have to pick yourself up and keep going. No need to be so dramatic.

Decorating

One morning, Simon was so proud to show us all of his decorating. He had ripped a gazillion plastic ribbons off of a pom-pom and hung them over everything.

(The next day he did the same thing, except all over the house.)

Calculating

The girls playing with calculator. 

(Oops, guess we forgot to feed Simon for a few days!)

Breakfast arrangement

They felt so clever for thinking of this way to eat breakfast.

Simon's First Playdate

Simon had his first ever playdate today with Donovan, his friend from preschool. We totally failed to document the cuteness adequately, but they had a blast playing at Dragon Park together. Then we came back to the house and had Chinese take-out for lunch and popsicles for dessert. We waited so long to have a playdate for Simon because he was always so content going along on Alice-centered outings, and he is so good at playing by himself that it seemed like a playdate would be pointless (especially during the peak of his bug phase). But he was ripe for a playdate. He was so happy the whole time and the next day asked if he could have another playdate with Donovan.

Alice came along on the playdate too, and luckily Parker was able to join us, so they kept each other occupied, while we watched Donovan and Simon and visited with Donovan's parents.

Authority Figures

Police officer: Arrest people. (Notice the frowny face and open handcuffs!)

Mother or father: Keep me safe on the swings.

Principal: Bring people to the office when they [???] been bad.

Simon's Work

Progress?

Alice and Parker

On Sunday, I had planned to take the kids to check out a new park, but Parker came over to play, so then it just seemed easier to stay parked and have someone else keep Alice occupied.  The heavens were certainly smiling on us when we ended up with Parker for our neighbor!

After they got tired of playing in the back yard, I took all three kids to the Dragon Park, where they found a rock in the weeds and pretended it was their dragon egg they had to take care of.

Gingko Girl

Hooked on Phonics worked for me!

Chair shortage

Someday they won't want to sit on me, or even near me, so I know I should cherish this.

Alice's creations

Zac's office ordered some furniture so Zac came in to a lot of foam sheets. He brought some home for the kids to play with. Among other things, Alice made an airplane held together with toothpicks and two boots.

Some of Alice's doodles from school (I think she did them in after-school care).