Preschool Halloween Parade

Ben's preschool had a wonderful Halloween parade this morning. The kids preformed several songs and rhymes for all the watching parents (and one awesome Granny, too!). Then they had a costume parade around the building. It was great, and Ben did an excellent job singing the songs and remembering all the hand motions. He also came home with a massive amount of candy, which he is steadily powering through.

Here are some pics:

Our Fabulous Fireman!
Such a handsome guy! As we were getting ready to leave, he remembered his boots. He insisted that, being a fireman, he must of course wear boots. No matter that the ones we have are green froggy boots...boots must be worn!
Also notice the backwards hat. He has always worn every fire hat he tries on that way. He usually wears construction hats like that, too. I think it is just more comfortable that way:)



Ben and the rest of his preschool class showing off some great costumes!



The whole class preformed some wonderful Halloween songs and rhymes for the parents.



Very exciting preschool parade! Such excellent marching:)

Miss Moose Mouse - Announcement!

So, I can't believe I'm about to type this, but...Molly is potty-trained!

Seriously...completely potty-trained.

And it was COMPLETELY child-led.

In a million years, I never considered potty training her at 19-months-old. But it just sort of happened.

It all started about 8 weeks ago, when she was just hitting 18-mos-old. She was having a little "naked time" to get some fresh air, and she was sitting on the kitchen floor playing with some bubbles. I had her on the tile because I fully expected that at some point she would potty. But all of the sudden, she stood up and said potty and started to walk to the bathroom. I was deep in the middle of a load of washing dishes, so I was not particularly interested in stopping and taking a tiny toddler to "play" going to the bathroom, but I figured I should let her try since she had asked. Well, sure enough, she went!

I figured it was a fluke and it didn't happen again for a while, so I thought that was the end. But then it happened again the next week, and then again a few days after that, and then again. She kept asking and so I kept taking her. It just sort of progressed from there.

Once she had gone quite a few times, I started to wonder if I should just go with it. I wasn't really sure I should try. Our lives are so busy that I knew there was no way we could stay home for a few days straight to let her practice being in undies all day, but I didn't want her having accidents out and about, because I didn't want to pressure her, and didn't care if she potty-trained at this age anyway. So I was kind of luke warm about it for a week or two.

But I did end up buying her some undies to try at home. And, seriously, they are the tiniest, cutest undies you could imagine!! The smallest they sell are 2T size, but they are just small enough that they will work. Though 18mo size would have been better.

She did great with the undies at home, but we still had so many little places to go each day, such as preschool or Granny's house, that I kept putting her in diapers when we left the house. And then, one day in Target, we were on the very opposite end of the store from the bathroom, and she was in a diaper, but she insisted that she had to go potty. So, while being amused at the whole situation, I hauled Molly and the cart and all of our stuff to the entire opposite end of the Target. I parked the cart and took the 19-month-old into the bathroom, fully assuming that she had gone in the diaper sometime in the 6 minutes that it had taken us to get there and get everything situated.

Well, sure enough, the diaper was dry and she went at Target! And that was pretty much it. From that day on, for the most part, she has stayed dry in her diapers. And this past week, we have made the switch to undies full time, and we have been potty-free all week.

So that is it in a nutshell. And I have to admit, that, other than laughing at the fact that she won't be able to actually get herself up on a toilet for at least a year because she is so tiny, it is WONDERFUL to have a house free of diaper-kids!!

Random post-timing issues. If you are just checking in, check out the "Apple Picking" post below this one, it is the newest post.

Preschool "Fun Run"

We started off Aaron's birthday (9/26) this year with a bang! We participated in the "St. Stephen's Preschool Fun Run." It started with a 5K race for the adults. Ben and Molly enjoyed a brief ride in the stroller. I say brief only because Aaron was pushing...if it had been me, it would have been a LONG ride:) But we all did the race, so it was a great family event.



The adult's race was followed by a short run for the kids. Ben had seen both of us run before, but had never participated in a kid's run, so he was a little nervous at first and asked Aaron to run with him. Daddy was happy to oblige. Ben did enjoy wearing his (way too big) race shirt, though:)

They started off well, but as they neared the half-way point, Ben started getting a little tired, so Daddy helped him out a bit!


As they neared the finish line, Ben got down and found some extra steam for the home stretch!


Proud runners:

Apple-Picking!

One day recently after preschool, Ben and I were reading books on the couch while Molly napped, and out of the blue, he asked, "Mom, can we go apple-picking today?"

I thought about the logistics of it all, and was first tempted to say no. He wouldn't have fussed, I'm sure, because it was such an unusual request, and he probably wasn't really expecting me to say yes.

But I thought about it again, and decided to embrace the fact that this is the very precious and very brief time in our lives that we can pick up and go apple-picking on a random Tuesday afternoon if we want.

So I got directions to the nearest Eckert's Farm, and as soon as Molly woke up, we headed out!

The kids had SO MUCH FUN! It was a perfect day...cool but not cold or windy. There was almost no one at the farm because it was late on a weekday. We weren't even charged to get in.

We had a wonderful time playing on the tractors, seeing the animals, taking the tractor ride around the farm SEVERAL times, and of course picking apples.

Molly, especially seemed delighted that we could just walk up to the tree, grab an apple and take a bite! Of the pics shown below, none with apples were posed. The kids pretty much had their mouths stuffed with apple the entire time we were in the orchard:)

And to top it off, Nana came in town a couple of days later, and made some DELICIOUS apple muffins with some of the excess apples. Yum!

Puddles ROCK!

We love puddles!

Ben has had his green froggy boots for over a year now, and we finally found a matching pair for Molly. FYI, one of the blessings of living in the city is that there are lots of alleys, and they are often poorly maintained, which means LOTS of puddles!

The only problem with puddles is that, eventually, the call of the wild can get too hard to resist, and we end up in a dirty alley like this...

Bestill my beating "art"!

It has finally happened!!!! The day I have looking forward to for 3-and-a-half years now! Ben drew something!!

He has drawn lots of squiggly lines and such, but never tried to draw an object before. In fact, he is rarely interested in art at all. Its really not a huge deal. He has so many strengths that I never worried about his total lack of interest in drawing. Its more just that it would be so much fun to sit and draw together if we were imagining things and drawing with intent, rather than just scribbling for 3 minutes and then just done.

Plus, I have the artistic skill of a fly, and he has many family members who are quite talented with a paintbrush or pen, so I did hope that he would try to draw just a bit, so that he could see how fun it could be.

Well, here's how it finally happened. We were playing on the sun porch, and he was drawing squiggles on the chalk board. At one point, he said, "I'm going to draw you, Mama!" My heart instantly started racing:)

He drew...a squiggle. So I decided to try to see if I could get him to try a bit more. I asked, "Where are my eyes?" And that was apparently the magic question, because from there, he started drawing a whole host of things.

Here are the pics that I was able to get:



This first one is the picture of me. You can see my eyes, my legs, and the dots on top are my hair. It may not be a DaVinci, but it is definitely not a squiggle!



This one is a pic of Daddy, Mommy, and Ben. We each have a body, legs, hair, and eyes...I think.



After drawing several people, he then decided to branch out and draw fruit. You can see the kiwi (complete with fuzz), a banana, and some delicious-looking blueberries:)



And finally, a pic of the proud artist, showing off the raw materials of his creations!!!

Sadly, there have been no further drawing days. But I think he is just searching for his muse...I just KNOW there is a little artist in there somewhere:)