Pumpkin Prep/Nana Graduates

Halloween is almost here. We'll post some costume pictures soon for both kids, but what's the fun of spoiling the surprise now?

It's been rainy and gloomy much of the week, which actually made for a perfect night carving jack-o'-lanterns the other night. The actual carving turned out to be a mom and dad project, but the prep work was fun for everybody, especially scooping out the seeds.

Funny story below ...

Yes, Maya's got a couple of Beanie Babies in her shirt. It's a game that got started with her dad on Sunday afternoon that has continued through the week, even at school where her teachers says she puts all sorts of things up in her shirt then laughs and laughs.

The funny story, however, is how we got the Beanie Babies ...

On Sunday afternoon, Amy and I took the kids to the mall. Starting at Kohl's, where we got Owen some flannel sheets, we got distracted and Maya managed to leak through completely. Fortunately, we were at a store with baby clothes, so Amy quick bought a pair of sweat pants while I got Maya into a new diaper. We bought the sheets and moved on.

Amy had a couple of things she needed to pick up next, so I took the kids to the carousel. Owen quickly got on his standard ride, a bunny, but Maya was more picky. She finally settled on the horse right next to Owen. She was comfortable being right next to her brother ... but Owen wanted his own space, which is OK, so he moved to the other bunny on the complete opposite side of the ride. At this point, Maya didn't want to sit on the horse anymore, so she ended up sitting right next to her dad on a bench, which was actually perfect as we enjoyed clapping our hands to the rhythm of the music and had a lovely time.

The kids were both getting munchy around this time. We normally get a smoothie for the kids at the frozen yogurt stand in the mall, but it is now closed. Fortunately I found out the coffee place sells a passable substitute.

So the kids were sweetly sharing their smoothie as we reunited with mom and headed off to get what we needed most on this trip, a new parka for Owen.

We got into the department store and navigated the escalator with two kids and a stroller (now filled with coats and bags) in tow. Maya was tired of being of being carried at this point so, finding the coats, I set her down so she could walk around a little.

Not more than 45 seconds later, I was showing Amy a possible coat for Owen when we saw three racks of children's parkas fall over domino style behind her. Owen started crying and we rushed over to assess the situation.

We didn't see Maya immediately, but then we noticed a rustling in the ski pants. She stood up (the down-filled pants made for a nice, soft landing), but walked out crying as the smoothie she was holding had spilled and, as you can imagine, she was a bit startled at being buried in an avalanche of Columbia activewear.

That's when Owen started crying. He, too, was perhaps a bit startled by the situation, but I think the bigger issue was that he caught sight of the smoothie on the floor and wanted it back, which made Maya cry louder, which made Owen cry louder, etc., etc.

Some other shoppers helped us stand the racks back up, and some store employees also came over to help.

We got the kids separated for a while until the crying had mostly stopped. Amy at this point was ready to go. But just then an older store employee who had helped us came over and said she'd just been on the phone with the store manager. They said the kids could each pick out a stuffed animal from a nearby table to take home free of charge.

Maya lasered in on this deal in a second.

We went over to the table and she quickly picked out a little Yorkshire terrier and a baby kitty. Owen, who needs no additional stuffed animal other than the Sammy Salami cat he already has, was happy to let her have both.

So now she has her kitty and puppy babies ... who also happen to be fun to stuff into her shirt.

Now this isn't to say Owen didn't have any new critters come into his life this weekend. We went to the farmer's market on Saturday morning, where Owen got himself a balloon skunk.

And, no, I cannot confirm if this skunk's odor defenses come from the balloon artist having bad breath when he blew it up.

CONGRATULATIONS NANA!

We're all very proud of Nana who finished the radiation treatment for her brain tumor yesterday. I drove up to be with her on her last day.

Nana has done an outstanding job working through these treatment and all of the food issues and other side effects. It was amazing to see how she's found a community of support at the hospital, not only with the medical staff who has been caring for her five days a week the past six weeks, but also with the other patients coming in for their own care. We visited with many, there were lots of hugs and exchanges of email addresses and phone numbers as mom is now on her way to the next phase.

Just look at how happy the radiation technicians are with her ...

Great going, Nana!

Burying the Lead

It's been weeks and weeks since my last post.


Here's the quick recap.


Ending September (look the kids are still in shorts), Owen attended his first birthday party for a friend. His buddy Alex, who he's known since he went to day care at Kim's house, and who is now his classmate at Scribbles, turned five at the end of the month. They had a big party at the Children's Discovery Museum with face painting, games, and lots of running around.



Owen also made me this pizza (below), which was notable (at least for me) for the whole fish on the top.


... and the orange slice.

Below: Alex (center) and the other guests.

The next weekend we went back to Tanner's Orchard. It was easily 20 degrees cooler, but we had a wonderful time nonetheless.

Owen is becoming much more fearless when it comes to all physical play, including, doing his best beagle impression and climbing to the top of everything he could.

While Derring Do is his new middle name, he did take time to tend to his little sister. I love the hand holding picture below.

But Maya was nonetheless in a clingy mood that day, deciding she wouldn't go on the Cider Barrel ride with him like the last time.

Instead, she chose to mostly hang out with her mom and Auntie Pam.

Which was, as you'd imagine, a wonderful time ...

The big fun began for us this past Saturday when Daniel and Erica arrived with Baby Esme for a weekend visit.

After a brief hello and aclimation to the house, we got out for a walk.

Wanting her to feel like she was part of the family, we took Esme to the most important sightseeing stop in Normal -- the fire station.

There we ran into Firefighter Luke, a wonderful guy who always goes the extra mile with kids (good news as Luke's wife, 9 months pregnant, was also at the station that day).

Owen got the tour of a lifetime, capped by an impressive personal tour down to the basket on the ladder truck.

Even from the back, the view was pretty amazing!

While Owen's dreams were realized at the fire station, Maya's came true back at home.

She LOVED that little baby. Wherever Esme went, Maya followed. She brought her toys, constantly looked after her, and inserted herself onto the same lap where Esme was sitting.

See what I'm saying?

It was hard for little Maya to see Esme go on Monday morning. And questions of "Baby?" followed for most of the next couple days.

They're going to be good friends!

Catch up time ... again!

Sorry again for the multiple week delay in posting something to the blog. It's been a very busy time the past few weeks.

Here are the highlights:

• One of us got older
• We enjoyed the final days of summer
• We sat in a bunch of fire trucks
• We played in the water
• Someone began a new job

And Dad went to a conference, coming home just in time for shows to begin at his theater, which means our schedules have changed even more.

Happy birthday, Amy!

Amy turned 33 on September 12. Both sets of grandparents drove into town, joining us and Auntie Pam, who lives just down the way, for a day of celebration. I actually had to join the party late as the 12th was also the day I flew home from the Arts Midwest conference in St. Paul.

But it was a fun birthday nonetheless. It was filled with cake ...

presents ...

and party favors ...

... especially for the two grandpas, who Maya delighted in bringing every acorn in a centerpiece candle bowl Amy got as a gift. There must have been 50 of the little things, and Maya went back and forth to the bowl, delivering one at a time until each grandpa's hand was filled to overflowing.

Maya has been using many more words lately. She is an expert at "Owen," "Daddy," and "Mommy," and has taken great interest in our well-being. Now when she wakes up, one of the first things she does is ask about whoever isn't in the room at that moment, wondering what they're doing and making sure everything is OK.

Open House

The Normal Fire Department held an open house the following weekend, on Sept. 19. Regular visitors to the station, I headed up with Owen and Maya thinking we'd probably seen everything already ... but we hadn't even scratched the surface.

It was a marvelous day! Owen got to spray a fire hose ...

... and sit in every engine the city owns, as they trucked all of their other trucks in for the day.

The highlight for Owen, though, was taking a long, close look at his beloved Snorkel 10.

10 is the oldest truck in the fleet, but is definitely Owen's favorite. It's nearly 30 years old and will likely be decommissioned soon. Every time we visit, we tell the firemen that Owen will gladly take it off their hands and are told to "Make an offer," as no reasonable offer to drive the truck away would probably be refused.

I'm all for it. Put 10 in the back yard and there we'll not only be the most popular house on the street for the kids, but I'll have considerably less mowing to do ...

Here are a couple more pictures from the day. You can see Owen was in heaven!

Bye, bye, summer!

The weather in the final days of summer actually felt like summer, a surprise in our unseasonably cool year. Owen and Maya both got sick at the end of the month, leading to a trip to the ER for Owen as his seasonal bout with croup returned, and several days off school for both.

Fortunately, everyone's energy returned for the weekend and we were all ready to get out and enjoy the spectacular weather.

We returned to a favorite play area, Tipton Park, a great area with a spray park and lots of playground equipment. I think this was Maya's first trip to the spray park and she had a great time. We walked through little fountains taller than she was and she laughed every time, quickly turning around and grabbing my hand again so that we could go back through.

We stayed and played for quite a while ...

Then returned home in time to watch Iowa go 3-0 with a win over Arizona. Indeed, fall has arrived!

Lastly, Amy began a new job on the 14th. She is now a social worker for Passages Hospice, and so far she seems to be enjoying it very much. She will be providing social work care to hospice patients throughout the region, but primarily in the Peoria area. The company has taken great care to make sure she has all of the tools she needs to do her job well, and Amy is delighted that she can finally focus on the patients instead of the profits.

She has been quite busy learning all she needs to to do the job well, but I have already noticed a change in reduced tension and increased happiness.

Labor Day Weekend

With everything that's been going on this summer, we haven't really had much chance for a vacation of any sort. The three-day Labor Day weekend gave us a good chance to get out a little and do a few activities for our very nice kids.


Before we get into the holiday weekend rundown, here's a picture of Owen imitating an ad he saw in his mom's magazine. She was looking through it when he was having a snack. After showing him the picture, he was quickly up out of his chair and rummaging through the cabinet.


It's nice when you don't have to stage these things.

Day 1: Saturday -- Tanners Orchard

We drove up to Tanners Orchard on Saturday. A family favorite destination, Tanners has all sorts of fun activities for kids, terrific fresh apples and baked goods, and is always a good time.

Owen rode a pony (Maya would have nothing to do with them), we played on the hay bales, admired the flowers, and panned for precious stones.

The best part of the day, though, was the tractor ride. The kids got into their cider barrel cars and were pulled through the orchard. Maya and Owen rode together. Owen proudly steered his car the same directions the driver took. Meanwhile, Maya waved and waved at anyone who would look her way. (They're in the last populated car of the train.)

Day 2: Sunday - Nana and Grandpas

Then it was off to Nana and Grandpas. Nana begins her chemo and radiation treatments, so it was nice to squeeze in an extra visit. We had a wonderful time playing in the park and around the house, reading books and cheering the Hawkeyes narrow season-opening victory.

We then drove home and had a final trip to the pool for the summer. It was a great way to end the year. Owen met a very nice little girl named Kaleen who was seven and quickly took it upon herself to give him a swimming lesson. He's always been a bit timid around water, but with her guidance he was paddling back and forth across the pool, going wherever she would lead him.

Maya and I, meanwhile, played around and splashed like crazy. So far she seems very easy in the water. She planted her face right in several times trying to see what was on the other side of the surface.

Day 3: Monday - Monticello Railway Museum

Like many boys, Owen loves trains. Looking around for things to do in the area, we found this train museum about an hour's drive from home. The museum has many vintage trains, with cars set up so that you can walk through and see what things were like. It also has a working diesel engine with two passenger cars and a caboose that you can ride on from the museum site to downtown Monticello and back again.

We rode in the caboose on the way into town. Sitting up top where we could look out the windows over the top of the car, we had a great view and a fun ride.

Once in Monticello, we had lunch and played in a wonderful city park while we waited for the train to make its run to the museum and back. It was a wonderful summer-like day and we all had lots of fun.

The kids were both exhausted afterward. Maya (who managed not to nap on the drive back to Normal) laid down on a seat on our train trip back. Owen (who napped like crazy on the drive home) looked out the window and soaked it all in.

There was even a yellow train to look at when we got back. This was very good, because when you ask Owen what kind of train is his favorite, he always answers "Yellow ones."

Elevation

We love our little monkey.

This is actually a fairly simple story to tell. Owen just started climbing the basketball hoop one day. He goes up and down it several times a night ... much to the delight of the neighbor kids, who can't seem to master the trick.

He'll just hang up there, slide down, climb back up.

The view is apparently pretty good. He'll tell you about the spider webs behind the backboard, and about the bird poop on the roof of your car.

Fortunately, it's a trick that requires bare feet ... Which is good, because as the weather is getting cooler it means Owen's grandmas shouldn't have to worry about this much longer.

FABULOUS!

Maya had her first haircut last weekend. No "Bend-and-Snap" moments, but it was a definite day of beauty for our little sweetheart.

The look took a bit getting used to for her mom and dad, but we ended up loving the cut as her hair had been covering her eyebrows before, and with them visible her face took on a whole new dimension of expressiveness.

... although it's a bit hard to see here. She was VERY tired!

And watching the Teletubbies (see above).

Honestly, Mr. Fallwell, Tinkie-Winkie is the least of this show's problems ...

Shifting gears, albeit slightly, I have to confess my disappointment in my wife a week ago. She drives the kids to school, but we usually talk once or twice a day, as was the case a week ago Thursday. That was the day I went to school and as I was picking up Maya her teacher told me: "She kept her stocking on all day."

Indeed, Maya was wearing some hosiery the other day. Amy was putting on her stockings for work and Maya thought they were pretty neat. So she ended up with one of them on ... all day ... and through two conversations this somehow never warranted any notification.

To Amy, I would like to tell you this story. When I was in high school and Daniel was off to college, a kid in my school who we both knew and told lots of stories about, because he was that kind of kid, came to school one day with a perm. Less than a month later Daniel came home for the holiday and ran into this young man and his head of tight curls in the mall. As memory serves, Daniel came home and slugged me (with affection), but promising me I'd be in big trouble if I left him to discover something like that on his own ever again.

I mean, I could have stopped to pick the camera up on the way to school ...