The tortoise and the hare

Simon has a turtle jacket and Alice has a bunny jacket, and as we were walking out to the car this morning, it occurred to me that they were like the tortoise and the hare.  So we had to take a picture.

Alice's artwork

Alice's drawings are progressing from scribbles to actual pictures.

N&S in NC

Nelson and Stana came down for a visit, conveniently timed so they could watch the kids for us while we were in DC for the wedding.  We weren't sure how the kids (especially Simon) would do without us for so long, but according to the grandparents, everything went fine and the kids were great.  They took the kids to the park every day and on walks and bike rides around the neighborhood. In fact, when we got home, the kids were playing together so happily they didn't even notice we'd returned for a few minutes.

S&Z in DC

Our friend, Laura, was getting married in Washington, DC, so we decided to make a weekend of it and abandon our kids for two nights and three days.  Nelson and Stana came down to watch them, while we enjoyed a weekend sans children.  The funny thing was that even though the kids weren't with us physically, they were always with us.  We kept commenting, "Oh, Alice would love this Spinosaurus exhibit!" or I'd think something like, "Simon would've gotten a kick out of that stuffed chicken."  Of course, there were plenty of times that we also said, "Thank goodness the kids aren't with us.  Could  you imagine them in this restaurant?"  The whole weekend felt like a time warp back to the time before kids, and brought back so many memories of our former life as travelers, where wandering around a new city was normal.

Friday afternoon we arrived at our hotel and checked in, then went to the National Geographic museum about a block away where we saw exhibits on the Spinosaurus, food, and the robots that landed on Mars.  For supper, we found a Nando's nearby, thus marking the third continent we'd eaten at that Portuguese chicken restaurant (Namibia, Malaysia, USA).  The food was awesome.

On Saturday morning, we walked down to the mall and took selfies in front of famous landmarks and visited the Hirshhorn modern art museum.

Saturday afternoon, we went to Laura's fancy wedding.  It was beautiful, fun, and well-planned (she has a teaching background and it showed).  The meal was delicious and we were lucky to be seated at a table with someone who worked at the CIA, so that was super fun.

On Sunday morning, we went to the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum out by Dulles International Airport.  We saw the plane that dropped the Atomic bomb, the Discovery space shuttle, the Concorde, and a Blackbird, among many other aircraft.

But I think my favorite object was the Airphibian: part car, part airplane.  As the guide explained, although technically it worked, so many compromises were made in trying to be two things at once, that it was not actually a success.  This could be a metaphor for many things, but to me it is symbolic of the trade-offs one makes in trying to maintain a work-family balance.  I'm not great at either, but technically it's working.

Thomas

Alice's daycare always does Halloween early for some reason, so on Friday we put on her Thomas the Tank Engine costume and took her to school.

When we got to her classroom though, we discovered another Thomas!

Dancing with Alice; Simon at work

Just another Sunday morning

Our friends Kate and Rob came over for supper last night.  Kate was cleaning out junk from her basement and brought a box of stuff for the kids.  It included a giant pop-out book of an Edwardian house.  While Simon was napping, Alice played with it for a lot longer than I expected.  She especially liked taking the paper dolls up the stairs, although she was frustrated that mom doll did not fit up the stairs very well.

Alice's imagination is taking off and so she is quite good at playing now.  She's still pretty high maintenance sometimes, but when she gets into something, she can be engrossed for a while.

Batman

I showed Alice how to make a batman face, but she couldn't figure it out at first.  Then, one morning, she was so excited when we went to get her out of bed because she had figured it out.

Marbles

Although Saturday was a beautiful day, it had rained a lot the night before, making most outdoor activities untenable.  So we headed to Marbles.  Our strategy these days is just to split up, since the kids are at such different ability levels.  I took Simon this time, and he played a lot in the toddler room.  What he likes the most these days is steps with something to hang on to.  He will go up and down a bunch, just practicing that skill.  It seems to me he should work on just walking on flat ground first, but I guess the steps are fun for him.  He also had a lot of fun playing in the farm animal area, with the plastic insects, and with the wooden trains.  Even although he doesn't walk, he can still get around and enjoy the activities with a little bit of help.

According to Zac, Alice spent a lot of time painting and sawing.  Not much new with her.  As we were leaving, they had set up pumpkin carving stations in the main room, with local surgeons doing the carving.  It was a pretty awesome idea, actually, although a bit creepy.  This guy carving Alice's pumpkin is a pediatric surgeon.

Light-up Shoes

I had a half-day at work Friday, so I used the afternoon to run some errands.  Among other things, I had to get shoes for myself for a wedding coming up, and I had to get some white shoes for Alice, since she only inherited pink shoes from her cousin, and sometimes they clash with her outfit (1st world problems).  At Target they only had one kind of white sneakers for girls, so I found Alice's size and bought them without much thought.  After supper, Zac was asking how my errands went, and I started to talk about my first stop, a shoe store where I was looking for shoes to go with my dress.  Alice immediately interrupted and asked, "Did you get me shoes, mommy?  Did you get me light up shoes?  Murphy and Elsa have light up shoes.  I want some light-up shoes.  I like them!"  This was the first time she had mentioned her deep desire for light-up shoes, so  I was preparing her for disappointment, by saying I did get her shoes, but not light-up shoes.  However, when we took them out of the box, we discovered they were in fact light up shoes.  It didn't say anywhere on the box that they were light up shoes and I hadn't jostled them around enough in the store to notice.

Alice could not have been happier.  She had to put them on right away and run around with them.  She turned off all the lights and stomped around the house to activate the lights on her shoes.  Every two minutes, she would say, "I like my light up shoes.  Do you like my light up shoes?  I like them.  Thank you for getting me light up shoes, mommy!"  Over and over and over.  I've never seen her this way, and it was all by accident.  I think if I had set out to buy her light up shoes, I wouldn't have been able to find any.

Alice and Chewbacca

Some friends of ours got Alice a Chewbacca doll for Christmas two years ago.  If you press its belly, it "talks" like Chewbacca too.  Alice was first afraid of it, then indifferent, and now Chewbacca is her best friend.  It took a week of correcting to teacher her he is a Wookie, not a lion.  

Simon, who calls Chewbacca by the last syllable of his name, was also initially afraid of him, but now will occasionally work up the courage to touch him.

Safety first

You can never be too careful when eating peas.

Sunday morning at the park

 It was a beautiful fall day, so we walked to our neighborhood park, bringing some sand toys with us.  It's so nice now that even although Simon is still not walking, he can play in the sandbox and crawl around and enjoy the park.

Having mastered most of the basics, Alice is now finding new ways to interact with the playground.

Cowboy

Alice found these boots in a bag of hand-me-down shoes from her cousin, and put them on right away.  Then she went and found the cowboy hat, and went around the house saying she was a cowboy and singing "Yankee Doodle."

The Wiggly Ones on a Hay Ride

Yesterday we went to Iseley farms in Burlington with Zac's dad's family for our annual hayride and pumpkin selection.  The hay ride is kind of like a historical farm tour as well, since it takes about an hour and they stop frequently to talk about things, with the high point being seeing the baby cows out in a pasture down by the Haw River.  Under normal circumstances, this would be great.  But with the wiggly ones (ie-our children), it was a tough ride.  Every time we stopped, Alice asked, "Why are we stopping?" and she kept trying to get to the food they brought along for the cows.  But Simon was even worse.  He had taken his nap, then been in his highchair for lunch, then in the carseat for an hour and he was simply not going to sit calmly on our laps for another hour.  He wiggled and wormed and protested nearly the whole time.  He wanted to climb the sides of the trailer, he wanted to crawl around on the floor, he wanted to climb off the trailer and onto the tractor....he wanted everything but to be still.

We finally got back to the farm and he happily crawled around in the grass and through the pumpkins for a long time.  He finally got his wiggles out.

He kept crawling through the pumpkins.  Luckily he never impaled himself on the stems.

Then we went back to the Arcaro-Burbridge house and had a lovely dinner of chili.  Alice always enjoys going there, because there are so many toys.  Plus, Alice and Julian are getting better at playing with each other.

2nd Haircut

Simon had his second haircut tonight.  He screamed in terror for the first few minutes, despite my best attempts to distract him.  Eventually he realized he was going to survive the attack of the clippers, and calmed down.  By the time it was done, he was happy again.

After the haircut, it was time for a bath. Simon loves bathtime 

and we often have to keep him from climbing into the tub.

Bednight Snack

 Alice has been hungry this week - probably making up for not eating as much last week when she was sick.  Tonight for her bedtime snack she wanted peas (cold, right out of the fridge) instead of yogurt.  She followed this up with some cold leftover couscous.