Happy Halloween!

Jess the giraffe and Elsie the flower seemed to enjoy their second Halloween today. The weather was absolutely beautiful, they got to pick out a pumpkin, and they learned a new word: "candy". I now understand why some parents wait years and years to introduce them to the world of sweets, since all they wanted was more, more, more. But they were polite about it and shared with each other (mostly that is). Following is some pictures for the grandparents (and anyone else who wants to see) who didn't get to see these little guys all dressed up:

Carving pumpkins for the first time is always an experience. After Jess declared five times in a row, "Yucky in there" to the inside of the pumpkin, he decided it was actually fun to play with the guts.

Since I didn't let them use the knife to cut the face out, which was a source of great contention, I let them add their own little twist to the pumpkin with markers.

Checking out the final product

Raiding our own candy bowl.

So far, suckers and smarties seem to be the favorite candy (in reality they haven't had much else)

The Cousins Came to Play

Last weekend my sister Jody came out with her two boys to visit, and we had an action-packed weekend around here. In two days, they managed to hit the zoo, the Children's museum, an indoor pool/rec center, and the natural history museum. One of the best parts for me was watching Elsie and Jess interact with them, and I saw a glimpse of what they might be like if they had an older brother or sister to rile them up. All of a sudden, they want to really jump on the bed and tumble off onto the floor with summersaults. This came after watching their cousins wrestle and have pillow fights. Ethan and Owen, being boys, were also much more interested in Jess than Elsie at this point. They spent a lot of time asking him questions, or trying to get him to say certain things. But Jess was unusually shy at times with all the attention, and so Elsie, who wasn't getting nearly as much attention would come over and answer the question for him. Since Jess usually does most of the talking, it was interesting to see. And don't worry, Elsie didn't feel bad. She got lots of attention from the rest of us.

These are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks. I've gotten behind on the blogging again while trying to study for the boards ( I know, not a good enough excuse. Will try to improve.)

Jess, like most little boys his age, is fascinated with trucks and trains. But he gets really really excited about bikes -- maybe taking after his uncle Scottie?

Taking walks around the block with Poppie

Elsie, playing in the leaves with her new purse. She was so excited to get it that she carried it around the block with her and wouldn't put it down. Jess was a little jealous at first, but they've both seemed to have gotten over it a bit.

Will she be a girly girl? We'll have to wait and see. She's definitely not as excited about trucks as her brother is, but she doesn't like to have her hair done either. I'm still undecided.

Always together, encouraging some type of mischief.

Jess looks like his daddy in this picture, I think.

Jess's First Haircut

As you can see a bit in this picture above, Jess's hair was getting a little bit long and hippie-like. Which was fine, except that he was growing a pretty good mullet in the back and someone asked if we had two girls (even though he was dressed in brown and blue boy clothes). So we decided that it was time to go for the first haircut. Overall, he did great, and although I got a little bit teary-eyed watching that baby hair come off, he looks like a cute little (bigger)boy now.

Elsie just came along for the ride, as she really doesn't have enough hair to cut yet. But they both enjoyed getting to ride in the fire truck. Actually, they enjoyed it so much that we could hardly get them to leave the salon when we were done.

He hardly even noticed what was happening.

In this picture, Jess reminds me of his cousin Owen at this age. I guess that makes sense, since people used to say that he looked like me.

The only part that Jess didn't like was the razor with the buzzing noise. He has always hated, and been slightly afraid of, things that vibrate. Like those supposedly soothing bouncy chairs and crib vibrating apparatuses -- every time we turned one on when he was a baby, he would start to cry.

The first sucker ever -- a big bonus!

And of course Elsie got her own sucker too. Since they had never had one before, when we gave the suckers to them they took them and started hitting themselves on the forehead with them. But after I showed them how to lick them, they were quite pleasantly surprised. The ladies in the salon got a good giggle out of it all.