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Pumpkin bears missing!

Almost all of the Halloween decorations Katya was so attached to until last week (see "Pumpkin Knife") have dissapeared. I know we didn't put them away...so...where are they? Well, I found a pair of grey socks neatly laid on the top of the trash in the garbage can today, I'm pretty sure that is where the much beloved pumpkin "mommy, daddy, baby" bears and the smiling pumpkin candles went. Sigh. Bye bye dinky bears, we loved you.

November 1

Alexander asleep on our bed.

Halloween

First Halloween for "Einge-singe". Katya is dressed as a "lady skeleton", as her music teacher said, with shiny black shoes and tights. Alexander as a giraffe. Thank you mom and Lib for the awesome costumes!

We were planning on going to an event for little kids but didn't realize it was the day before Halloween. So we went for a long walk on the bike trails and then out for smoothies at starbucks where we watched other kids in costume come in so their parents could get a coffee break. On the walk Katya heard Cicadias for the first time and told me "scared bugs". A few days later she was telling me "baby brother scared bugs" which I think was her processing it and being less frightened.

We also heard church bells which she loved and asked me about. Last night she was saying "church bells" over and over. I told her that we would hear some later and then looked at the clock, it was 6 o'clock. We went out on the back porch and could hear them faintly. They ring every night at that time, I don't know from where, probably St. Clement's. I don't know how she heard them from inside the kitchen with the window closed. She must have really wanted to hear them.

Halloween

Katya in her pink wig and skeleton suit.

Wow

This kid is game - for what I don't know - but she looks like she's about to bolt out of that chair

Flying baby

Boston winter clothes, tv and giraffes

I know it's winter in Boston...could somebody tell my daughter.
We are having serious issues with clothes, which boil down to my wanting Katya to wear all her clothes and her knowing how to take them off. Here she is, yes, at the end of October in her fashion choice which she took off a pile of clothes to sort and give away (snffle).

She probably changed into it while I was nursing baby brother. She has defeinately figured out that I can't enforce much with my hands full.

Dan told her today that her hands were like icicles and she looked at them and said "bicycles?"

This is Alexander in his giraffe suit from Lib. We were amazed that Katya came downstairs, took one look at him and said "giraffe" even though he doesn't have a long neck like a giraffe.

Third picture. She must be watching t.v. look at that zoned out look.

"Pumkin... knife"

Katya has some elaborate game going on with these Halloween ornaments (so I will never ever be able to put them away.) Dan moved them around the other day when she needed to another activity and she threw a fit. Like everything right one bear is a mommy, one a daddy and a there is a baby. All of them have pumpkins on them too - a bonus since she loves pumpkins.

A few days ago we were in the kitchen together and she was on the other side of the table playing with the ornaments. I heard her say "pumpkin... knife" and ran over to her. She had a red crayon and a little glittered pumpkin which she was playing at carving into a jack o'lantern like the one she had made with Grandma a couple of days earlier.

hat and boots happy 2nd birthday

 

More birthday and why we love Peter Sís

She has now memorized almost every page in this Cat book. "Cool cat, copy cat...swish swish swish."

Here she is with a book by our new favorite author Peter Sís. We also have The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain and The Three Keys, which is about his childhood in Prague and his subsequent exhile from it. Of course we love the whole Eastern European history thing (with kids named Katerina and Alexander that can't be too much of a surprize). But we love the way he tells a story and how one book can be appropriate to a wide age range. Madlenka is on one hand a simple story about a little girl and loosing a tooth. But the captions add a whole level of multi-cultural content as she travels around her neigborhood and describes the people she meets. The Wall really is for older kids (us) but like all of them you can pick and choose whether to read just the story line or the story line and captions or even a part of the additional text on each page. The drawings work the same way. I looked for a long time at the page in The Three Keys where there is a ghostly image of tanks rolling on Prague in 1968 and when I found it it only added another level to the story. I wish I wasn't so tired or I might write this more eloquently. Seriously, check him out. His home page http://www.petersis.comWikipeda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sis

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still more 2nd birthday

more 2nd birthday

She loved the candles sooooo much. We have a new family tradition. Between every gift we lit them again so she could blow them out and she ate a couple of bites of cake! By the time we were done I was relighting them on the tiniest stubs of cake and had to hold them up with my fingers.

More 2nd birthday

These pink cowgirl boots were such a hit that I recently had to drag them off her before putting her in the crib.