Trick or Treat

Tonight was Trick or Treat in Des Moines and our little fairy had a pretty great time. I'll let her tell you about it.

"Here's my happy face Mom, now how about some of this candy..."

"Say what, that candy isn't for me?"


"Okay, well if I'm gonna need to go gather my own candy let's get this show on the road. Enough pictures."

"I'm ready to conquer this street. Bring it on."

"WHAT!?! It's not time to go yet, that's a mean trick Mom and Dad."

"At the first sight of other kids out there I am so out of here!"

"Whew, that was a lot of work but wait until you see my loot."

"Told you, it's pretty sweet huh?"

"Mom says I can have one thing and after MUCH deliberation it's decided: M&M's!"

"Chocolate on my face, sugar in my blood, climbing on Dad and greeting all our trick or treaters. Life is good."

"Brr, it's getting cold out here. Let's snuggle under this blanket Mom."

Well, you heard it. She had a great time and we had fun watching. It only took her one house of some nerves to get into the groove of saying Trick or Treat and holding out her pumpkin. After that she strolled up and down the street with confidence. That is until the kid in a Shrek mask came to our house and she started yelling "No, no, go away!"

Big Girl Room

We worked all day today to get Molly's new big girl room ready. We have been talking about this move for months to prepare her to go from the "baby" room to the big girl room. She was so excited all day and helped to move her clothes and books and toys over. While Mike gave her a bath tonight I put the finishing decorative touches on and placed her big girl present in the bottom drawer of her dresser. We had been telling her all day that at some point today a new big girl toy would be in her room. She was so excited to find a box of princess dress up clothes and kept saying as she put the outfits on that babies don't wear dress up clothes. Bedtime was a breeze and so far she has been up there for about an hour without a peep. Fingers crossed that she stays that way all night. What a fun day, it was kind of sad to see my little baby in what looked like such a huge bed, but I am so proud of the big girl she is becoming. I still need a few more decorative pieces for the walls and the top of the dresser, but I am really happy with the way the room turned out.

All tucked in and ready for sleep!

Happy, happy guy

I'm trying to see if I can learn to post from my phone. We'll see if it works...

Pun-tin Patch

On Friday we took our second annual trip to Howell's Pumpkin Patch. I fell into the trap of having these super high expectations about the idyllic family day with wonderful family pictures based on our experiences last year so initially I was a little disappointed. What I didn't plan on was that we went at 4:30 so the sun was in our eyes, Molly is now a very enthusiastic two year old who is no longer interested in sitting among a field of pumpkins and would rather be running and doing all of the activities and finally an unfortunate incident with an (almost) six month pregnant lady and the giant slide (thank goodness there is no photographic proof of that one). But, in retrospect we really did have a good time. Molly thought it was heaven on earth with all the pun-tins, pony rides, swings and corn-bins. I got some good pictures to remember the day and most importantly it was an afternoon spent with my two favorite people.

Molly-ism's

Okay, first of all can we all just take a minute and look at these pictures and wonder where my baby went and who is this big kid sent to replace her? She's been rockin' the braided pigtails lately and she just looks so old to me! The last picture is the face I get when she gets annoyed with me asking her to say cheese.

There are a lot of words that Molly says wrong that I think are so cute and I wanted to write them here so I can remember. I don't know what proper parenting etiquette requires, whether I should be trying to teach her the right way to say these things, but for now I just think it is so cute.

In Molly-ese L's come out as a Y sound, C and K come out like a T, and G's sound like D. This in itself creates some cute phrases. My Dad is known as Lumpy and one of Molly's favorite places to sit is on Yumpy's Yap. Also I am so thankful it is fall because the way she says Pun-tin is so cute and there are an abundance of opportunites to hear that throughout the day. Other words I love are her-bade (parade), her-prise (surprise), mato-mato (tomato), tin-ta-bell (tinkerbell). Oh also, she has learned that talking about poop can sometimes get a funny response from others and I have been working with her on when something is appropriate so now she will say something about poop and follow that up with "That is app-o-pi-ate Mommy." Funny, funny girl!