October 24, 2011: What you see...and don't

What you see: October has been very busy!

Zoo visit with friends...

 A (super) quick visit from Alex where we celebrated his birthday...

 Cars...lots and lots of cars...

 Dinosaurs back at the Heard museum...

 Close-ups...sometimes they look sooo alike and other times look different...

My sous chef, Liam is always asking to help me cook...we learned that we only eat the food before cooking if mom says its okay...like the raw green peppers from stuffed peppers.  And we learned that we only use a small amount of pepper on butternut squash...

Pumpkin painting in Houston...you can tell from the pics it was good food, some very creative pumpkins, and lots of family fun!

 How cute are Liam and Kaitlin?  Not related but they sure look like they could be...

 So fun hanging with Carson, Mayce and Aunt Steph!

 Cousins!

 Playgroup (with face painting by Daphne!) at Chuck E Cheese...

 Bryn def thinks she is one of the big kids now...

 Still going on our nightly walks after dinner, only now its almost dark so Liam calls them "spooky strolls" and looks for ghosts, spiders, bees, and skunks with his flashlight...luckily we have seen none of them!

 Yup, still teething on everything...but nothing to show for it yet!

 Liam sees to be more successful just playing in the goal...offense and defense, he's always ready :)

 Liam participated in a bike-a-thon to with his classmates to raise money for St. Jude's research...

 Soccer and bike-a-thon in one morning...tired but happy!

 Lazy mornings sharing toys...especially now that they both are really trying to play with the same things...

And...Nick and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary!  We had a wonderful dinner out, went to a movie, and didn't come home till 2am!  Sad though that the only picture was on Nick's phone of me and the dessert...well it was a really good dessert :)

We also went to the World Series together to cheer on Murph and the Rangers!  It was perfect weather, an exciting game, and a wonderful night!

 And what you don't see...

It's Amelia and Alex's birthday today!  We did get to see Meha for a minute to give her a present...even though she was sick with the tummy bug that she may/may not have caught from Bryn when she baby-sat recently....

To be fair Bryn did have a mild tummy bug...I had a REALLY-horrible-48 hours-losing-5-pounds tummy bug...Nick was nauseous...and Liam was fine :)

We have now started speaking to Liam's tummy...or rather it speaks to us.  In his deepest voice he will often tell us what his tummy is thinking.  Sometimes it's about food "I want Goldfish" or sometimes just  talking to us "I love you Mommy" (think in a growl).  And we are to speak directly to the tummy in return :)

The other day when he was eating chips and guacamole Liam told us "this is spicy, it puts hair on my tummy" :)  

Liam is spelling!  It kind of happened without us really trying.  We have been playing with bath letters and he keeps spelling out letters that he is seeing all over.  So we started doing a word of the day...not every day, but about 3-4 x a week.  We spell it out in the bath, sound it out phonetically, spell from memory, use it in sentences, and look for the word in our environment.  Right now he can spell 'hot', 'cold', 'sunny', 'rainy', 'yes', 'no', 'word', 'mop'...it's obviously pretty random and sometimes Liam just grabs some letters and we see what we can spell.  We were in a weather kick for a while there too :)  Nothing like having my 3 year old tell me that it says 'hot' on the cream of wheat box! Will post a video soon of him spelling...

And yet, as smart as Liam is, I love that he is innocent enough to still say "abracadabra" every night to magically open the garage doors for us after our walk (while mommy pushes the button from my pocket)...

In the next 2 weeks we will have a big birthday for Bryn, wedding for Alex and Tippy, and a new baby cousin...actually all on the same day!  Going to exciting, but I'm tired just thinking about it :)