Pumpkin Carving

 

 We had a quiet Saturday planned today, so I told the kids they could carve pumpkins this afternoon since its only a week until Halloween and quite chilly outside. Austin and I helped some, but the older kids did all or most of the work by themselves. It was a fun afternoon and now our porch is just a bit more festive. Asher carved Natalie's pumpkin for her (the little white one) and Heidi was all about getting her hands in the pumpkin goo!

Twenty Months

 Natalie is now 20 months old, and is not shy about showing her opinion or her displeasure. She is starting to get quite independent about what she wants and just like Trevor, will help herself to it if no one else does it fast enough. She is constantly pushing chairs and stools around to get what she wants, especially to pour the water out of my water filter. She often gets herself a drink (usually overflowing the cup or pushing the button just to watch the water come out), then gets down and walks around with it. Its only a matter of time before she spills the water, then slips on the wet floor and cries. We have to be on alert all the time to her climbing up on things, but she tends to get quite upset if her plans are foiled. 

Her language is blossoming beautifully. She can say so much and loves to mimic what others say. Her speech is getting clearer, but there are still times I'm not sure what she is saying and have to just guess at it (and when I ask "did you say . . . ." her answer is almost always "no" regardless of what she really said). 

Natalie loves to walk down the stairs holding on to the rail or holding on to my hand. She also loves to jump- off a chair onto our love sack or just on the floor. She doesn't always get off the ground, but sometimes she does and she is so pleased with herself. 

Despite her strong opinions, she is still the family favorite and we are sure glad to have her. 

Here are her the least grumpy of her grumpy photos of the day:

Fall Walk

We have a long weekend because of Canadian Thanksgiving, so I had the last-minute idea to go camping before it gets too cold and we are stuck inside all the time. Austin wasn't going for that, so I tried to talk him into going on a hike about an hour away from our house. He also didn't want to do that since he wanted time to putter around in his workshop, so we ended up just going to a little forest area about 10 minutes away. It was very pretty, lasted just long enough to avoid melt-downs from hungry, tired kids, and we avoided the rain that started up soon afterward. I'm so glad we went! I told the kids in the spring that we could go here all summer, but the bugs were pretty bad then. Now they are almost non-existent, so I made the promise to the kids again that we can go at least once a week until it gets too cold. We had a nice little morning and can't wait to do it again.

We asked the kids to take a photo of us together, and of course Natalie wanted to stand with mom. Too bad Austin's head was cut off ;)

Natalie got carried most of the way, but she kept asking to get down despite her constant tripping over tree roots. She was particularly interested in the little bridges along the path and wanted to go back and forth across them.

 

Pumpkin Patch

There's a little roadside farm that sells pumpkins so close to our house that we drive by it several times a week. I've always kind of wanted to stop there, but thought it wouldn't be that great. The kids and I decided to go there to get their pumpkins for this year, and we are so glad we did. It was so much fun picking out pumpkins here rather than just grabbing some from the grocery store where we usually end up getting some. There were lots of different varieties and we ended up buying quite a few little extra "decoration" pumpkins because they were only $1. I also got a nice little pie pumpkin that I'll probably use to make pumpkin soup and the kids found some decorative corn of many different shades. The kids went a little crazy and wanted to buy many more pumpkins than we actually did, but they had fun pulling their little wagon around. They also tried to talk me into buying a hay bale and some corn stalks for decoration, but thinking about throwing them away after Halloween, I said no. Heidi was absolutely set on a white pumpkin, but the only ones they had were either too small for her liking or too big for mom's wallet. We finally found her a nice yellow one, which was different than most of the others and appealed to her very much. Trevor found one covered in bumps that he loved, Asher got a giant one, and Leif found one that was just perfect for him. I'm not sure what Natalie ended up with since everyone overruled her decisions and made a choice they thought was better for her. She just had fun going along with everyone else.