Getting Ready for Halloween (Sneak Preview at the End!)...

Pumpkin patches, sewing costumes, bookstore trick-or-treating and Halloween painting!  We have been in full Halloween mode over here for the last few days, so I have a lot to document.  I'll give you a sneak peek at the boys' costumes at the end, with the promise of better pictures to come after the Big Day. 

Jamesie and Crunchy Cody at the Pumpkin Patch last weekend.  James wore the appropriate pumpkin-picking attire, cody forgot his pumpkin John-John at home.

Sean is getting really good at using complete sentences lately.  In this picture he was saying over and over, "That is a pumpkin.  That is a pumpkin."  Yep, sure is.

We went pumpkin-picking with Sean's farming buddy Gabe.  Gabe started school (yes, he's only 1-- he's a genius) a few months ago, so Sean hasn't been able to see him as much and gets SO excited at the prospect of hanging out with Gabe... 

...so excited that neither rain nor snow nor hazardous materials can stand in their way of a good time.  Looks like these two got caught just in time.

On the way home from the pumpkin patch Sean told me he wanted to paint "a little mouth and some little eyes" on his pumpkin.  When it came time to paint, this was what he actually wanted. This was all his idea ("Yellow Hat Man on Seannie's and Georgio on Jamesie's pumpkin")-- I am merely the conduit of his genius. However, the other side of the Man pumpkin has a little mouth and some eyes that a two year old hand painted.  Its pretty cute, i just forgot to get a picture of it.

Today we went to Barnes & Noble for the weekly toddler storytime.  Gretchen and I like to meet there on Thursdays with the kids because they are so entertained with everything going on we can just sit and chat for a few hours.  We're usually the last to leave.  Today all the kids dressed up and "trick or treated" around the store.  It was a good pace for the little guys, and Sean nearly had a heart attack when he realized people we giving him candy for nothing.  Jamesie is reusing the St. Francis costume of Sean's from two years ago...

...and looking cute as ever. He is just killing me lately with how sweet and adorable he is. 

And Sean is again aiming high and told me he wanted to be "A Pope" for Halloween, once I described to him what costumes are and that we can chose to dress up as something.  We have been working on the costume for a few weeks, so he has been getting more and more excited about it.  He looked awesome today.  In this picture he is sheparding his flock (Greta the Farmer) to get cookies from Mr. Jeremy, the story time reader. On the way into the store Sean was (audibly) chanting "Seannie is a Pope, Seannie is a Pope." 

The Pontiff enjoying story time.

Bless you, my children. 

Fun in Anderson

We went to Anderson to visit Cody's family and friends a few weeks ago, and I never got around to posting the pics, probably because there were so many good ones, I couldn't decide how to sort through them all.  In an effort to document at least part of the full weekend, I just grabbed a smattering of cute photos from the weekend below:

This speaks for itself.  Amazingly cute and hilarious.

Ditto for the baby on the John Deere.  I couldn't get enough of this one.

So much so, our family picture was centered around the Baby on the Deere.

After church on Sunday we played outside for a long time, in pretty warm temperatures.  Sean took all of his clothes off, save underpants, navy blue socks, George hat and loud blue velcro shoes, and ran around for hours like this.  

On Saturday cody's friends Allen and Jill came over with their two boys.  The eldest is about 11 mo older than SB, and the little guy is just weeks younger than Jamesie.  Suffice it to say clothing was optional during this playdate. 

Sean at breakfast with Scooby Doo--found in Aub's room where he slept all weekend.

Another new friend for James and Sean-- baby Hogan came over to play for a little bit on Saturday.  He is one month younger than Jamesie...

Same Moms and same babies about a year ago!!  My how they have grown!

Halloween Crafts on a Budget

I read about this easy and cheap craft in a paper last year, and now that Sean is old enough to enjoy some arts and crafts time, we tried it this year.  I thought it turned out pretty cute:

We collected glass jars for a few weeks, cleaned them out and painted them.  Sean used Halloween colors and made "stripes and dots" on his.

I made a cute little ghost family. 

Then we put candles in them and made them light up! (Sean's candle in the foreground)

We put them outside last night on our front porch for festive decorating :)

Sean gave his candle to St. Francis

and paid him homage.  Appropriate for all-hallow's-eve.

Cody showed Sean the full moon and night sky as a just-before-bed treat last night too. 

Stay tuned for some painfully cute halloween costumes in the next few days!

Game Day

Special thanks to our wonderful babysitter, Victoria, for the matching ND shirts!  She is a freshman at Holy Cross this year and brought back these sweet presents for the boys on her fall break this week.

First Spelling Lesson

Sean has a ton of magnetic letters on our refridgerator that he likes to "spell" with.  The other day he told me he spelled "Cody."  I turned around to see "pne+t."  He then pointed at it and told me he had spelled "Bridget."  At least he has an imagination.  At the time I was doing the dishes and couldn't help him re-spell immediately, so I told him to find a c, an o, a d and a y and told him what order to put them in.  He was so proud with the finished product (so was I!) that he actually let me take a picture of him with his handiwork, which he rarely does.

After the thrill of spelling Cody, he told me he wanted to spell Mommy.   We had to get creative with an upside down W (sean's idea), and two n's stuck together to make all those M's in mommy.

These pictures memorialize how Sean addresses us lately too... Cody is "Cody," and I am "mommy."  E.g.,

"Cody will be home for dinnertime?"

"Cody play fish with Seannie?", and

"Mommy watch George with Seannie," and my favorite from the other day:

"Mommy need her coffee."

Who's that Baby?

Morning awake time at 6 months...one in 2008, one in 2010...

I think the ears give it away :)

So for some reason blogger won't upload the last two photos with the correct orientation, which they are on my harddrive.  I can't figure it out.  Oh well, you get the idea.  Also, I couldn't decide which one to use, so you get three babies for the price of two! 

Happy Half-Birthday Baby!

I can't believe its been six months since we met Jamesie!  He is wonderful and lovely and all things sweetness and cuddly.  He is soft and smells like a baby and loves his mama.  He's a good sleeper, a great eater and his big brother loves kissing him.  He's a keeper!

What a handsome little fella

King for the day!

I've always wanted two little girls to put in matching sundresses....

But two too-cute boys in matching Baylor shirts is just as nice :). 

Especially when the big boy reminds you as you are getting him dressed in the morning, "Baby has Baylor shirt too. Neece gave it to you" ("you" in this context really means "me.") and actually wants to be dressed in matching outfits with his baby brother.

Sure, he wants Baby to dress like him, but actually touch him...now that's another story.

Now that's better! Two boys in matching outfits holding hands.  What more could a mama want?

Reading with Dad

Before and After

Remember these skinny little legs?

Amazing what 10 months and 16 or so pounds can do:

And just for fun, because we have our camera back, here are some more shots of that skinny little baby playing in his exersaucer: 

I still think of James as a newborn, even though we are nearing his 6-mo birthday.  So, when he does something like smiles....

...or purposefully reaches for and plays with a toy...

...or even stands up in his exersaucer... I am so amazed!  Each little milestone is a wee bit bittersweet-- it makes me sad my newborn baby is growing up, but it is so fun to watch him explore his world and discover things.  Just this week we started solid foods (which has done wonders getting him to sleep all the way through to 7 a.m.) and I thought it looked so funny to have a "newborn" in the highchair!  Much to my surpise he fit perfectly and stays sitting up throughout his meal.  Cute, but a little sad.