Fall leaves

Sunday was another beautiful fall day, so we let the kids play in the leaves in the front yard.

Then we tried to take a family portrait and every single picture came out terrible.  Here is a sampling:

Alice's machine

Alice has been playing with the duplo blocks lately and she likes to build machines.  The first one had big long arms and she said it picked up crabs and ground them up.  When I first asked her about this one, she said it picked up dead bodies.  When I asked again with the video rolling, she had a slightly different version.

Box boy

The kids have gotten a lot of use out of our dishwasher box.  We've had it for weeks now, and although Simon was afraid to go in it at first, now he will often go inside to play.  It's hard to get a picture though, so here's a very short little video.

In it's latest incarnation, Alice has put the Bumbo seat inside and it's now an outhouse.

Harris Lake County Park

After the train ride and our picnic lunch, we drove to nearby Harris Lake County Park to check it out, since we'd never been there.  We didn't really have a plan, and since Simon was fast asleep, we thought we might just drive by then go home.  But one look at the fake climbing rocks on the playground and I knew we had to stop and let Alice play on the playground while Simon napped in the van with Zac.

We took a little walk down to the lake, which is the reservoir for the Harris Nuclear Power Plant.  A man fishing on the pier caught a fish and let Alice touch it.  I made sure it didn't have three eyes.

Once Simon woke up, we went to a different part of the park that had a little nature play area.  Simon and Alice both loved the tunnel, but Simon crawled back and forth so much I thought he was going to get tunnel lung from all the dust in there.

Simon also had lots of fun picking up sticks and poking around in the sand and leaves.  

Alice especially loved digging in the dirt.  At the end of the day, when we asked her what her favorite part was (thinking it would be the train) she said it was digging in the dirt.  So who knows, maybe she will be a paleontologist.

Finally, we walked down to the shore, where Alice plucked seaweed out of the water and gave it to Simon.

New Hope Valley Railway

I read about the New Hope Valley Railway in the newspaper many moons ago, and it sounded like a lot of fun for the family.  They only give rides on the second Saturday of every month, though, and it seemed like for months on end we would have something else scheduled on that day.  It was true for this Saturday too (Alice's classmate's birthday party) but since the party coincided with naptime and it was the train's last run for the season, we opted to ride the train.  It turned out to be the perfect way to spend a cool but beautiful fall day in sunny North Carolina.

The train station was about 25 minutes away.  Earlier this week we finally moved Simon out of his infant car seat, so now we have the pleasure of looking behind us and seeing both of our kids.

We arrived early enough to have some time to watch the model trains.

 The train itself was several open-air passenger cars, each with it's own tour guide.

Simon was a bit sleepy and snuggly in the beginning.

The train ride was about 20 minutes long, then it stopped and the steam engine came around and hitched on to the other end to pull us back to the depot.

After we got back to the station, we spent some time looking around at other old trains, and exploring the inside of a caboose.

Then we went back to the area with the model trains and had a picnic lunch, and let the kids wander around.  Simon was so tired by the end that he fell asleep just a couple of minutes after being put back in his carseat.

"Sick" day

Daycare claims Alice had a fever Monday afternoon, so she was prohibited from going to school on Tuesday.  I stayed home with her, and since she was actually perfectly fine, it was a fun day.  She normally has cheerios or oatmeal for breakfast, but today she requested toast in the the shape of an "E".  I was able to oblige.

After breakfast, we ran a bunch of errands.  We went to the library to get a new set of books, then we went to S-Mart to look at the fish and buy some more lunch containers.  Then I went to vote, which Alice was disappointed to learn is not the same as boating.  Then we went to the grocery store, and finally to drop off some stuff at the thrift store.  I couldn't resist going in, and Alice had a lot of fun playing with the toys.

We came back and had a late lunch.  After lunch, when it was time for her nap, Alice played perfectly contentedly.  Zac and I always comment on how right before bed the kids will suddenly play by themselves really well.  Although lately, Alice has often been playing really well by herself.  I think this is partly due to her developing imagination, combined with a better understanding of right and wrong (we used to have to keep intervening because she was doing things she was not allowed to do).  Plus, she's been interested in building things with the mega blocks for the past day or so, which has kept her well occupied.

I did put her down for a late nap, and she woke up as it was already starting to get dark.  She hadn't really commented on the time change yet, but seemed genuinely disturbed by the fact that it was getting dark when she woke up from her nap.

Walking with clothes on

Simon did some more walking practice after supper again today, this time with clothes on.

Toddling!

Simon has been getting closer and closer to walking, and has taken a couple of steps here and there over the last couple of weeks, but tonight was the night I would say he officially started walking.

 We played this walking game before with little success, as Simon would not dare to take steps without holding on to something.  However, this evening, when we played the game before supper, he was a little more confident and took a few steps.  When we passed him back and forth again after supper, he was getting better already. Later that night he was really starting to get the hang of it.

The reason he is only wearing a diaper is because Zac started to give him a bath, but then he appeared to be having a bowel movement, so Zac yanked him out prematurely.  So we gave him some more walking practice until he finally pooped.

And, from the archives, here is the video of Alice learning to walk at 10 months old.

Fall Walk

Sunday was chilly but beautiful, so we headed to Historic Yates Mill County Park for a fall walk around the pond.  We went there last year right around this time, too, and it makes a lovely autumn tradition.

First, we had to get everybody ready and out the door, with snacks, waters, and diaper bags packed.  For some reason this always takes forever, so that Simon ended up falling asleep in the van on the way there, since it was already time for his morning nap.

Simon woke up shortly after arriving, and we first played in the building that has lots of interactive things for the kids to do.  Plus, it was warm.  Simon had a lot of fun sticking things in and out of this fake pumpkin.

There were four puzzles, and Alice did each one.  Her puzzles skills have greatly advanced since I last saw her do one.  I helped her a bit with the others, but she completed this ladybug one entirely by herself.

When we were in the building, Zac found an unsharpened pencil made out of recycled money.  Simon ended up with it and kept it until the very end, where he dropped it off of the bridge and into the water below. I'm pretty sure he did it on purpose (based on all the gravity studies he is still conducting whenever he is in his high chair). At least it went out in dramatic fashion.

Trying to get decent family portraits is a nightmare, but the colors are pretty.

Simon loves walking around if we hold his hands or arms.  He'll walk for a long time, and today whenever we got tired of carrying him, we'd just let him walk for a while.  He seems to be getting close to walking unsupported.

  Simon really liked digging in the leaves with his pencil.

Alice could walk on the fallen tree trunk and balance all by herself.

Did I mention that family portraits are difficult?

Zac wanted to take a family portrait of our reflections in the water; that's when Simon dropped his beloved pencil off the edge.  I've (obviously) doctored the photo using the "heat map" feature.

How a ballerina superhero eats a banana

Alice has been interested in ballet lately, which means she always wants to wear her ballerina outfit.  I can't remember what, if anything, prompted her interest in ballerinas, but I have since shown her a couple of youtube videos of professional ballet.  Her attention span wasn't long, but she did leap and twirl around the house a lot more after watching them.  She has also been watching some Halloween song videos, one of which has a kid dressed as a superhero character, but it looks like he's wearing yellow dishwashing gloves.  Alice noticed that right away, and has been wearing Zac's various gloves around the house pretending to be a superhero.

And sometimes she eats bananas in really weird ways.