Babysoroos

On Sunday we carved pumpkins. Yes, we all did. Yes, we gave Ben a knife and told him to stab a pumpkin. He cackled. (It was a special pumpkin-carving knife and it wasn’t actually dangerously sharp.) He certainly seemed to enjoy using it. 🙂

Today, he wore his costume, the “Hawaiian Lion.” The background: Ben has several Hawaiian shirts, and he loves them. But last summer, he couldn’t say Hawaiian. Instead, he called them his Lion shirts. And if he saw anyone else in a Hawaiian shirt, he called it a Lion shirt too. It sort of morphed into this Hallowe’en costume of a lion in a Hawaiian shirt. And now he can say it.

We went to a non-scary family Hallowe’en party at a local church tonight, and it was a huge party! On the way, we stopped to Trick-or-Treat at the houses of two friends (our neighborhood isn’t very pedestrian-Trick-or-Treat friendly, and it was freezing), and while Ben could happily repeat to himself “crick or treat” in the car, when we got to the first house, he held up his pumpkin bucket and said “Bucket.” At the second one he said nothing at all. Oh well. I’m sure next year he’ll have the idea.

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On Saturday, Ben turned 27 months old. Two and a quarter. Getting so big!

We haven’t been good about taking photos every month lately, but decided to try to take some on his quarter-birthday. It was a gorgeous sunny fall day so we went to the park.

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…on the face and in the hair. Sometimes he’s good about feeding himself yogurt, and sometimes he’s better about smearing it all over his head. 🙂

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I realised as I was reviewing the new site that I hadn’t posted any pictures or updates since 16 weeks, and we’re now almost 26 weeks! So, everything’s going fine. The bump is getting in my way much earlier than the last time, but I think that’s because my activities are so much different this time around. Getting down to and up off the floor, bending over, picking up a toddler… not quite the same as sitting at a desk and walking around downtown on my lunchbreak. Other than that, though, it’s been pretty uneventful once I started feeling better. Here are a few pictures taken while Granny and Granda were still here. We took advantage of the opportunity to try to get some family pictures!

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Sorry for the recent absence of new posts. Aside from having grandparents visiting, we’ve been working on converting to new blog software that will make lots of things easier. And this is it!

So, welcome to the new site!

We’ve moved all the old posts and photo albums over, so things shouldn’t feel too different. But there are new features as well:

• you can leave comments on any post to let us know you’ve been here (and please do!)
• we can use categories to help organize the posts by subject matter
• the archives are listed by month instead of by year
• the new photo albums show you where you are in the album, e.g. 3 of 10
• there’s an automatic slideshow

We’ll try and keep the site updated more frequently again. Hope you enjoy it! And just click the Comments link below a post to leave us a message.

At the end of September, Granny and Granda came to visit from Northern Ireland. We had a fantastic time with them, Ben loved having constant playmates and I enjoyed showing them around the island and appreciated their help and their company. The weather, which had been feeling like fall since August sometime, improved drastically the day they arrived, so we were able to enjoy lots of outdoor stuff.

We went to the beach the first day they were here and Ben actually decided he wanted to go into the water — that was more interest than he’d shown all summer! And it was warm enough to let him, too. So, stripped down to his undies (we weren’t prepared for swimming), he got all wet and covered in sand and had a great time trying to get the rest of us wet too. Unfortunately, because we weren’t prepared, there are no photos. Oh well.

We introduced them to our coffee shop, went shopping a couple of times on the mainland (once to an outlet mall I’d never been to where we bought the new baby some winter things!), went to the park (where it was too hot!) and for walks in the woods. They came along to both of Ben’s schools and to a midwife appointment where they heard the baby’s heartbeat and got to see the birth center. We made apple tarts with apples from our garden. We finished building Ben’s toddler bed — Granny played with Ben (getting in and out of the red car then the blue car then the red car…) while Granda and I worked on the bed. We finished it on their last day here and Ben has been sleeping in it ever since.

The last weekend, we drove up the island to Deception Pass, the bridge that’s the only way to drive on and off Whidbey Island. It connects to Fidalgo Island (which is actually a peninsula), where there’s a small mountain with fantastic views. Luckily, you can drive the whole way up, so we did. 🙂 On the way home, we stopped at a pumpkin farm and although we were too late for the tractor ride out to the fields, we still ended up with some great pumpkins.

Ben talked a lot, learned lots of new words, gave great hugs and kisses, and has been telling anyone and everyone who would listen for the last week that “Granny Granda on PLANE.” I think he misses them.

Ben’s vocabulary and speech in general has improved enormously over the last few months. He can form correct sentences, is learning to use “my” and “I” at the appropriate times, and likes to repeat any new word he hears us say until he knows it. But he still has quite a few cute mispronunciations that we love and will miss terribly when he gives them up:

• pay-liff — play with
• die-sa-saur — dinosaur
• gerbital — convertible (as in car — like daddy’s red car)
• lass right — that’s right
• lezberry — raspberry
• mank — milk
• heli-hoppiter — helicopter
• bulldodoze — bulldozer

And of course he has a very expressive face. These are just a few recent goofy/happy/sad faces.

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Ben started a toddler class at our local co-op preschool on Monday. He’ll be going two mornings a week, and I’ll go one morning a week. He seemed to enjoy himself. We’re also going to do a Parent/Toddler group at the Waldorf School one morning a week. Going to be busy!

Of course, we had to get the requisite “leaving for the first day of school” pictures…

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Just a few random pictures from the past week.

We picked, washed, (ate) and cooked LOTS of blackberries this weekend. It was fun, Ben particularly loved the picking and eating parts (as evidenced by the color of his face afterwards), and we found the making and canning of jam very satisfying. Ben was only mildly interested in that part, but he certainly seems to enjoy *eating* the jam.

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For his birthday, Ben got his own kitchen from us and all the grandparents. He had a long dramatic tantrum the night it arrived because he wanted to play with it, but couldn’t because it was in many many pieces in the box. After he went to bed, we spent a little over an hour assembling it, and he’s been cooking up yummy meals ever since (and making us taste them, over and over again). He even likes to clean up – he asked for his own sponge so he could do dishes. At first he was frustrated that the water didn’t work, but then he discovered he could just open my water bottle and pour it in the sink. Problem solved. 🙂

I think it’s a hit.

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