For the past two years, I have taken a picture of Lucy next to her age carved in a pumpkin. The tradition continues, although I almost forgot this year!
This year, since Lucy was not in to carving her pumpkin, I taped each kids age on the pumpkin and then we painted over it. Hank's zero didn't turn out great because I picked a bad spot on the pumpkin, but oh well... you still get the idea.
We took these pictures almost two weeks after Halloween.... I meant to do it on Halloween while they were in costume, but we were too busy running around so I figured having them in other Halloween stuff would work too!
And here is a series of Lucy "through the years". Her first year we did ".5" because "0" seemed weird, but looking back, I wish we would have just done "0" because now .5 seems weird... whatever...
And these last couple pictures I took before going outside that day, so I thought I'd include here. Just love Hank's eyes in these shots!
This past month brought lots of new, fun changes. I almost feel like Hank has become more aware of what's going on and understands how to "play" more. For example, we went in to get Lucy after a nap one day and Hank grabbed one of her pacis and proceeded to taunt her with it. Reaching out and offering it to her and then pulling it away as soon as she would reach out to grab it. It was pretty cute. He also has started to drop things into boxes and shake his head no when he doesn't want something. I don't think I've noticed any new words this month, but I'm guessing he was pretty focused on mastering the most exciting skill this month... walking! He's finally getting pretty good at walking and has started to prefer that mode of transportation over crawling.
He continues to be a big cuddler and prefers when I'm sitting down playing with him or holding him. Every once in a while he'll find something interesting (or dirty, or dangerous) enough to distract so I can cook dinner or clean dishes, but typically he wants his mommy's full attention... I guess I can't blame him!
Things other people notice about him - his old mad hair line, or soft bald head. How big he smiles and how friendly he is to other people. How easy going and laid back he is. What a bruiser he is, climbing and falling all the time and not crying much about it. And that he sucks his thumb and cuddles a ton. Whenever people see him sucking his thumb, which seems to be a lot lately, they always comment about it saying that they think it's "soooo cute" but then precede to tell me what a battle it was for their child (or someone they know) to give up thumb sucking and how long it took for it to go away.... so I'm not really sure what to think about that.
In terms of eating and sleeping, he has pretty much stayed the same. He is still going strong with two naps and slept pretty well for the most part this month, typically taking two 1.5hr naps. Some days he would sleep shorter than that and be cranky, but he would usually make up for it with a longer second naps. He has been doing great at night too, sleeping typically from 7/7:30pm - 7/7:30am. He still nurses 4 times a day although his middle of the day feedings seem to be really short so I've been offering him whole milk with lunch and dinner to over compensate. I also want to start getting him interested in regular milk because I'll probably start the weaning process within the next month or so.
He can sometimes be a picky eater but I've been trying to stand my ground and remind myself that he won't starve himself to death. For example, I made pot roast one night (which is so fatty and delicious and good) and he would only eat the potatoes, not the meat or the carrots. Or I'll offer him a meal I've mad for dinner and he won't eat it and then when I try again the next day for lunch, he eats a ton of it! Not sure if he just isn't that hungry, or is wanting to just start exert some control, but hopefully this is just a phase!
Here's a short video. Hank has been doing this little "dance" move with his hands whenever he gets excited. This night he kept climbing on top of the kids table, rolling his hands while squealing and then jumping to dad. It was so funny.
Our week started with some pumpkin carving/painting with Jadyn and Jordyn. Lucy, dressed in her pumpkin outfit, said "I don't like pumpkin carving", I think because it was too gooey to scoop out the seeds, so she painted her pumpkin instead.
I didn't have as much fun Halloween stuff planned as I'd wanted (eating rice and beans for a week not only put things in perspective but also zapped my energy) but I did get creative with our pancakes on Halloween morning!
After naps we were off to Mimi's to trick or treat! My little flower and puppy dog...
Two busy bodies make pictures really hard to capture these days...
Lucy was having a blast despite the cold, but this little puppy dog was pretty sleepy towards the end...
After 10 houses at Mimi's, we headed over to see Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Matt, Uncle Nick and Uncle Ross (who was in town) for another 10 houses. Lucy loved it! And I loved that she was totally content with only going to a handful of houses at each grandparents.
I think these pictures are from a few weeks ago. But, I figure I'm still thankful for these things... so I'm still going to post!
A few weeks back Ben took a day off work and we went to the Children's Museum. I'm so thankful for Ben and the fact that he loves being with our family as much as I do. We had a great time playing together! A fun Halloween week! More pictures to come on this, but we had lots of fun dressing up, doing Halloween crafts, eating Halloween food and trick or treating!
Pig tails. Enough said.
Our church's hunger challenge. My friend Heather just posted about this and does a great job explaining all the details, but the challenge that most moved me was to eat rice and beans for a week. I think something like 28% of the world's population eat rice and beans as their only meal, one time per day. We were challenged to not only eat similarly for a week (although we were "allowed" to eat it three times per day) but also to donate any money we saved from our grocery budget for that week. This was tough. I mean really tough. I was constantly hungry, constantly tired, and so sick of rice and beans after the first day - but so eye opening. I'm not sure what it looks like for me to begin to change the way things are in this world, but I do know that no one should have to go hungry in a world where most people, especially most americans have way more than they need. I also realized two other major things: 1. I complain (whether outloud or in my head) about a lot of stupid, pointless stuff. When you are hungry, you don't care about anything besides when your next meal is coming. I challenged Ben (and myself) to just say "rice and beans" to me whenever I start to complain or whine about something. I hope I never forget how trivial most of my problems are given that three billion people are starving. 2. I need to be more thankful for EVERYTHING. Even the ability, energy, capacity to work out. Something I would normally complain about doing, I realized is actually a major gift. I have enough food/provisions in my life to go leisurely burn off calories/energy. Three billion people barely have enough calories to survive. Wow.
