Happy Halloween

The Wizard of . . . Star Wars?

Brendan has wanted to be a Storm Trooper for Halloween since the summertime. I am not sure he knows they are the bad guys, but whatever. So I purchased his costume a while ago. Eva, however, was slated to wear a chicken costume I had from a prior year when she was sick and couldn't wear it. Well, I tried it on her and now it didn't fit. So I went looking for little girl costumes. When I came upon this one I said to myself, "This is Eva!" and promptly bought it.

After I realized that Darby would be in the lion costume we already had I was curious to see if I could get Bubbs to wear a scarecrow or tin man costume. No way. Oh well . . . would have been cute. I tried to teach Eva that she was Dorothy but she kept saying she was 'Rella (Cinderella, a princess). Whatever.

Anyway, we went to our ward's Trunk or Treat on Friday. Brendan was raring to go but Eva hadn't a clue as to what was going on. She was a little scared and wanted to stick with Daddy but he was staying by the trunk, handing out the candy with/sneaking tastes of the candy to Darby. I finally dragged her with me and, after a few times, she got the hang of it.



Jason also took them out last night for neighborhood trick or treating. Many of the houses in our neighborhood are decorated and the one across the street even set up a haunted house on their driveway. The kids came home with tons of candy (which Daddy and I are eating while they are not looking) and Eva now lets me put her hair in pigtails without screaming. Its a win-win. :)


One last funny thing to tell. When I went in this morning to wake Eva up for church, she pops up and shows me a bite size candy bar in her hand (that must have been there all night), and says, "Candy, Mommy?"

My favorite time of babyhood

Darby is now 9 months old. She has reached my absolute favorite time of being a baby. I love it when they are age 9 months to 12 months old. They are learning so much and literally changing daily. Their little personalities come through too. Its so fun!!

Darbs has made some big changes lately. She has two teeth, she rolls all over the house (she's fast too!) and she has started to learn to sign. She also babbles. It sounds a lot like "mama" but I am pretty sure she hasn't attached that word to me yet. She gets up on her knees like she wants to crawl but we have no forward motion yet (and that's fine with me). I do have the stuff to babyproof the kitchen on hand though. She is getting very coordinated and will take balls and blocks and drop them into the proper places in her musical toys. She's almost strong enough to pull herself up to standing position but not quite.

Darby LOVES to eat. If she sees anyone with food, she will plead with her eyes and fuss until she gets a taste. I swear she has a hollow leg. She will eat yogurt or puff snacks, a jar of baby food and still nurse a bit. That might account for her 30 inch height.

She has regressed a bit in her sleeping. It all started with the croup and continued with the teething. I'm afraid I gave in a bit too easily and never let her fuss, so now I am paying the price. She now gets up around 5am but if I nurse her she will usually go back to bed. Gotta get her back on track though, for my sleep's sake.
All in all, she is a delight to have in our house. She's usually so full of smiles. Her siblings love her and she thinks they are funny. Her whole body gets excited when she sees her mommy and she reaches for her daddy to go "running" with her. We love our little Darby Doodle!

Regional driving

You may have heard the term "California stop" when it comes to driving. It means that you don't really stop at a stop sign, you slow down and roll through it. Well, if Californians have a driving maneuver that is named after them, then I'd like to coin one for North Carolinians. I have run across this over ten times since we moved here, and that was less than 3 months ago. I will call it "Carolina cutting". This is in reference to the crazy way that drivers here take curves, swinging wide through the middle of the curve and into the opposing lane of traffic just a bit. It is especially hazardous when the curve is blind, but they do it nonetheless. There is one such curve on the way to Brendan's preschool and I have frequently been on the receiving end of a potential sideswipe if I had not braked coming around a corner on my side of the road. It is also scary when they exit the turn lane of an intersection and cut the corner close, missing my front end by inches as I wait at the stoplight. I also have never been tailgated so much in my life as I have been these past months. And I thought Southern life was supposed to be slow-paced.
However, in my experience, the slow drivers were in Arizona, and they were usually elderly and they almost always were wearing a hat. I don't know what the connection is but it is real. Feel free to test out my theory. If someone is really slow in front of you, check and see if they have a hat on. I bet they will. And I am not the only one that sees this pattern. Google "drivers with hats" and read some excerpts. See what I mean?

Communication

Starting with Brendan, we have begun to teach our children baby signs around 9 months of age. We have found that it has many benefits, foremost being that it cuts down on the tantrums since the child can be understood. Since Darby was so interested in food much earlier than the other two, we started teaching her the sign for "more" at eight months. Well, I did. I modeled it for her and even moved her little hands to do it. Then I'd give her another bite of food. I didn't expect her to get it but it was a starting point.
On Sunday, Jason was feeding her. He decided he would try to teach her "more" (not knowing I had been working on it with her). And guess what? She made the sign for him. Little stinker. She and I had been working on it for over 2 weeks and Daddy swoops in and gets the glory. Aw, man! Or maybe it was the pumpkin chocolate chip cookie he was feeding her. Hey, at least I made those. Do I get some credit for the breakthrough?

And check out who has two little teefers now.

Living in The South

Jason here. For years I have told stories to Christine about how different the South is, and not just in the way that they talk. I am sure it is different for the poor missionaries, but I really like living in the Bible Belt. I like how religion manifests itself in funny ways. Like last night, for instance, we went to a soul food version of In N' Out and the fries came in a bag that had a Psalm on it. Or how the first thing people ask you when they find out you are new to the area is, "Have you found a church yet?" Or how when I got some drinks and gum from a gas station and the lady rings it up, stops, and asks me if I want an Atomic Fireball. I figured she was having trouble selling them, so I said sure. She looked relieved and said, "The original total was $6.66, and I just didn't need any of that today."

I love it here.

Family photo shoot

The family picture on our wall features a 6 month old Eva. That's how old it is. Since I got my new camera I have been wanting to get have a new one to take its place. I bought a remote and a tripod, along with new outfits for the kids. I wanted an outdoor picture and since we are coming upon bad weather season, I decided that we needed to have this photo shoot pretty soon. So yesterday morning we dressed everyone up and went at it. It was not as bad as I had anticipated (we have had some doozies in the past). The kids were pretty good. The two older ones liked having their picture taken. I got a few good shots but I hope to do it again so that I can get just the right one for the wall. The one above is a product of Adobe Photoshop's GroupMerge, which is, by the way, AMAZING!
Here are a few more I snapped.

Bragging a bit

A week or two ago, I found a train table on craigslist for $40. Brendan has been wanting one so we snatched it up. This past weekend our neighborhood has a community yard sale and there we found a complete train table set of tracks and accessories for $10. Score!
I printed out the picture of the set up from the train set's website and gave it to Brendan. One afternoon spent by himself in his room yielded this result.


I must say, he is amazing!

October Tradition

For the 7th year in a row, Jason and I went to cornfield maze before Halloween. It has been something we do every fall and I was a bit sad that we might not be able to do it this year. I wasn't sure if they had one near us. Turns out there are several. Woo-hoo! I'd hate to break tradition. So on Saturday we went to Hubbs Family Farm Cornfield Maze. However, this time we went in the daytime and brought the kids.

It was a very different experience than our usual date night and hot chocolate afterward. This involved considerably more gear, more slides and more crying kids but less bundling up, less wandering aimlessly and less rowdy teenagers making rude noises and running into you. It was quite fun. The kids LOVED the barrel slides. Eva even went down by herself. Those things are pretty high and very fast.



We all enjoyed the hay ride and the kids prepped for the corn maze by taking on the mini hay bale one.



I think we beat the maze in our fastest time (let's not mention that we had a map and it was daylight). We bought some yummy homemade ice cream at the end of it all. I couldn't resist pictures of the kids in the pumpkin patch. Too bad they can never all look at the camera at the same time.

North Carolina Zoo

Since Daddy had the day off, Brendan skipped school and we went to Asheboro to the zoo. It is the largest natural habitat zoo in the country and it is beautiful!


If I were an animal, I'd live there. :) Jason described it as a forest nature walk with really cool animals.
The girls rode in the stroller mostly. Eva walked some of the way but she's slow and very distractible.



Jason took the opportunity to introduce Brendan to maps. He loved being the one giving directions.

There were 2 sections - North America and Africa. We only explored the Africa portion because the zoo is HUGE and the kids were getting cranky. It was a gorgeous day and the zoo was not crowded at all. There were little sidewalk games at some of the exhibits that the kids would play. Guess who won this game?


We made a day of it and got home in time for dinner, FHE and some "Daddy basketball" before bed. What a pleasant weekend.

I knew it!

Darby has been having REAL trouble sleeping these past few nights and days. I keep expecting her teeth to come in and so I have been talking about them in anticipation for a month of two with Jason. She'd be cranky, I'd say her teeth were bothering her and he'd do his doctor-ly exam on her mouth. Then he'd disagree and say, "I won't believe it until I see it".
So lately when I'd tell him that I could feel them like a ridge under her gums, he'd just nod at me with a weak smile. Two days ago he told me, "You're like the boy that cried wolf except you are the Mom who cried teeth!"
Well, guess what came in on Saturday? Yep, her first tooth. I had told him we'd see one in a day or two. And the other bottom tooth next to it is popping through too. Ah, vindication! You may know about teeth, Dr. McDaniel, but I know about teething babies.

Love you, Honey. :)