November 7, 2007 - Happy 4th Birthday Gabrielle!

Today was Gabrielle's 4th birthday. I can't believe how time flies. Gabrielle loves your approval and is seriously wounded if she disappoints you. However, don't cross her or you'll get stopping of feet and a serious temper tantrum going on. She is loving preschool and catching on to things so much more quickly than I anticipated that she would. What a blessing she is in our family! Here are some snapshots of her special day:

Gabrielle on her way home from preschool with her birthday crown and sucker.

Baking her birthday cake with mama.

She picked McDonald's for her birthday dinner.

Tinkerbell tea set....her first present.

Ready to open the rest of her gifts.

Strawberry Shortcake Beauty Salon

Disney Princess Karaoke radio

Giving the microphone a try.

Tinkerbell Dress

Blowing out the candles

Happy Birthday Gabrielle!!!

November 2, 2007 - I Can Read!

Nicholas came home from school the other day with a book. A book for him to read. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, there are 4 boys in Nicholas' class that are ahead of the rest of the class. In order to keep those boys challenged his teacher has begun giving them books to bring home and practice reading. I was amazed. He is only in Kindergarten.

After he practiced reading his book a few times, I decided to record the experience for posterity. Here is a clip of Nicholas reading his first book. Max the Cat.

November 2, 2007 - A vacuum cleaner fedish??

Sam loves the vacuum cleaner, he thinks it is so funny when it comes toward him - it's like he's daring us to get as close as possible. If he hears the vacuum in the other room, he'll take off immediately to find it.

October 31, 2007 - Halloween

Prior to their Halloween Party - Nicholas' school has a Halloween Parade. The kids get to walk from the school, down through downtown Ravenna. The stores and businesses hand out candy to all the kids. They walk to the end of the block, cross the street, walk back up the hill and back to school for their party.

Nicholas walking in the parade.

Getting some candy from Guiseppe's Pizza

Nicholas finds us along the parade route
The girls loved seeing all of the different costumes and were able to recognize some of our neighborhood friends.

My bottle is gone mom....here you go!

Ready to go trick or treating that night

Sam is all bundled up and ready to hand out candy with Grandma

Trick or Treat

When we got home the kids dumped their candy out on the floor to see what they got. With his snowsuit on Sam couldn't get to the candy. So he resorted to going after the candy like he was bobbing for apples - using his mouth.

Allison checks out her candy
I'm free of that snowsuit - now where did that candy go!
I got the candy, but the only thing I taste is a funny wrapper.
Maybe there is something better in this bucket.

October 29, 2007 - Preschool Halloween Party

Gabrielle and Allison pose for a picture before we leave.

Sam has to get involved. Lookin' good in his bat shirt as his costume.
Wow, where did that show of affection come from.

We'll be back in 30 minutes for the party, Allison.

Gabrielle reaches into the witch's brew to collect rubber worms. She came in first place and won a prize for grabbing the most worms.
Sam appears to be a chick magnet already.
Concentrating on throwing the hula hoop at the pumpkins.She did it!
Making a ghost sucker.
Decorating her fun foam pumpkin.
A group picture

Cookie timeTreat time
Allison gave up on trying to pick up the messy cookie and decided to dive right in.

October 28, 2007 - Carving Pumpkins

With Halloween approaching we got out our carving knives and proceeding to undertake the task of carving out 3 our of 4 pumpkins. Funny thing, Sam didn't really seem to care that we didn't carve his pumpkin. Here a few snapshots of our evening.

Papa works on Allison's pumpkin with Allison looking on, she had already decided which shapes she wanted for the eyes and nose and mouth. Gabrielle works on de-seeding her pumpkin.
Sam finished his snack of cheerios and decided to check out his pumpkin.
The finished products.

October 28, 2007 - Mmmmm, pasta!!!

Sam has decided that it is much more fun to feed himself, that to be spoonfed. He loves to shovel it in, sometimes double-fisted. We have discovered that we need to spread his food out the entire width on the high chair tray, and as far away from him as possible. This makes him need to work a little harder to get the pieces, it slows him down a bit and he usually can keep his fistful at a portion size that he can manage a little better. So far, we haven't found any food that he has refused to eat either. From past experience, we realize that the chances of this eating habit lasting throughout toddlerhood is doubtful, but we'll take it while it lasts.

October 27, 2007 - Pumpkins!


Would you believe that with all of the beautiful weather we had this fall, we picked one of the coldest weekends to go get our pumpkins. Both Nicholas and Gabrielle had field trips to a pumpkin patch or apple orchard, so we just headed to a farm market stand near our house to purchase our pumpkins. We got them there 2 years ago, and they have a wooden tractor/play area that the kids loved. We decided this would be a good place to go again, especially considering the weather.

Measuring up!

The tractor/play area

Sam checks out one of the few pumpkins they had left.

Sam checks out the tractor, too.

Posing for a picture

"Driving" the tractor.

Wrong way Allison, you're supposed to go down the slide, not up!

This is fun!

October 25, 2007 - Patty Cake, Patty Cake

Sam is 9 months old today. His newest achievement these days is that he loves to do patty cake. He has finally figured out how to get those two hands to come together when he actually wants them to.

(You'll have to excuse my starting to call Sam a girl, I kept hearing Allison in the background and then when I started talking to Sam I said girl instead....oops. However, around this house it's not the first time and it won't be the last.)

October 25, 2007 - Scratchies!!

We noticed a few red spots on Allison's trunk when putting her to bed the night before. Then she got herself dressed in the morning, so I never looked in the morning. However, part way through the morning I noticed what looked like a very puffy and red bug bite on the side of her foot. That reminded me of the spots the night before.

When I lifted Allison's shirt - this is what I saw... Then I started looking at the rest of her body....
I was appalled. She had spots covering her entire tummy, underarms, back, and legs. She wasn't itching or anything but kept calling them scratchies. I immediately thought they were hives, but I took some pictures and e-mailed them to my boss (a dermatologist) to confirm my diagnosis. He stated "that's quite the case of hives she's got there". The question was what gave them to her. He started asking if she had been eating Halloween candy yet, like red licorice etc. She hadn't been eating that, but she had been receiving candy corn for a treat whenever she went potty. That very well may have been the culprit, but we will never know for sure. We switched to a different potty incentive and after several days and many doses of Benadryl, the hives finally retreated.

October 17, 2007 - My First Wagon Ride!

I don't know why it took this long, maybe I was just nervous about Sam being able to sit up well enough in a moving contraption, but Sam finally had his first experience riding in the wagon. As you can see he was happy as a clam.