Fuji Kids: Part 1

I have decided to change the title of the blog to "I wish I wrote more, but..."

Ha. Just kidding. That title would be so appropriate, but alas, it is a trifle unwieldy. I do love a good ellipsis though "..." but for now, we'll keep the title as it is.

I feel like the fates are against me ever blogging again, because even as I write this, the screen is literally jumping up and down and right and left with no warning. It's like my blog is having a seizure. Maybe the shock of being updated is just too much for it. If it looks weird to you, be patient with us, we're epileptic tonight.  (Another possible title: the Epileptic Ellipsis).

The storied mountain itself at sunset. Taken from base by my fave photographer, Tim.

		Speaking of Fuji-san, our daily lives have changed a bit, as both Adelaide and Graydon are now enrolled in Fuji Kids Montessori youchien. Fuji means wisteria in Japanese and I don't know if there actually is any wisteria at their school, or if it's called Fuji because there is a wonderful view of Mt. Fuji as you approach the school. Either way, it's easy to say and remember, and I'll take what I can get. My Fuji Kids One of the annoying things that happens when a person starts to learn a foreign language is that they then pepper their native tongue with tidbits of their newly acquired language.  I know it's annoying, but here I am doing it anyway. In part, because I'm trying to think in Japanese instead of mentally translating and in part because we don't really have an American equivalent to youchien. It translates to kindergarten, but that isn't an exactly equivalent term. In America that means a grade that is part of the educational system, meaning everyone attends, and it's one year. Here, youchien is not required, though most children do attend one, and they last for three years. Most Japanese children begin their formal education at age 3, five days (sometimes six!) a week for roughly five hours a day. The school year begins in April and you are placed in classes by your age at that time. So if you're five in April, you're in the 5 year old class. In our case, Addie attends five days a week. She gets the bus at 9:15 and comes home at 3:30. Graydon attends somewhere between once and four times a week, and the oddest thing for me is that I have no say in his schedule. The school sends out a calendar for the entire year that lets you know what days the preschool meets for the two year class. This past week he went once. Next week he goes four days. (Note: I think that is God's gift to me for my birthday week, as Graydon is firmly entrenched in what I oh-so-fondly refer to as "the jackass years".)  Yes, I'm referring to this guy. Super cute. Super difficult. Japanese women have the highest rates of working after becoming mothers out of all the first world nations, and it is easy for me to see why. The schools are incredibly accommodating. You can drop your child off as early as 7:30 AM and pick them up as late as 6 PM. School care is also available on Saturdays. For an additional fee you can have the bus pick your child up and drop them off beginning at age three. Lunch is provided every day, and it is invariably nutritious and  delicious. Tea and snacks are provided for children who stay for later care. You can also sign your child up for lessons after school, including foreign languages, dance, and sports. This all begins at age three, remember. This week's lunch menu. Pardon the shadow of my head. It's getting late and the niceties are going out the window. And it is surprisingly affordable...that is, after the initial mammoth payout to get started. There is definitely some sticker shock involved with the registration fees, uniform costs, school supply costs, and so on. It adds up to a few thousand dollars, which is done in part to discourage parents from bouncing around from school to school. It's an investment in the truest sense of the word. But after that? About $300 per month for full time youchien. I believe we paid $200 for Addie's two afternoons a week preschool last year, for comparison.That could be more or less depending on how often you order school lunch and do extra care, but still...very affordable considering the level of care you're getting. Never in life did I think I would send my child to school looking like an extra in the Sound of Music, but it is pretty cute. I say "formal education" but at least at Fuji, the emphasis is really on play and developing independence. This fits right in with the Montessori philosophy, which Tim and I both love. Their motto is "Help me to do it myself", which is basically parenting in a nutshell, at least in my view.

The school itself has won awards for its design and I was instantly smitten when we toured. The entire building is designed to be on a child's scale and to encourage play and exploration. The roof is a large flat circle with slides down to the ground that encourages the children to climb and run in circles until they drop.

The school! That large surface with all the kids on it is actually the roof.

Montessori also puts a lot of emphasis on exploring the natural world and using natural materials in play and learning. This meshes seamlessly with the Japanese aesthetic, and it's very, very well done at the school. There are no walls between the classrooms, only the type of accordion partitions you sometimes see in church basements, so it feels very open and free flowing. The buildings were all constructed around any existing trees.



 For safety, the openings in the roof are surrounded by nets. The nets are hand woven by Japanese fishermen using their traditional weaving methods.

A good view of the roof and the nets. The inclined glass structures are skylights.

The kids are allowed to climb the trees and jump down into the nets. They warned us on our school visit that sometimes children do get hurt and that we would need to be basically OK with that. Their attitude is that little mistakes with little consequences are the best way for children to learn. We completely agree. Besides, it looks like so much fun!


 


They also grow food on site, including rice, sweet potatoes, and eggplants and the kids are involved in each step of the food production process, from planting all the way to harvesting, washing, and eating the produce. As if that wasn't enough, they also have ponies and ducks at the school and the children get to ride the ponies on their birthdays.

It's basically the coolest school ever, and I wish I was five again, which is an envy I usually reserve for naptime.

So Tim and I love it, and I think the kids are liking it, especially Addie. Graydon...well he takes off running when he sees the bus and I usually have to drag him out of a pine tree kicking and screaming, but he'll come around. I hope. 

The computer is still seizing, so I'm going to break this into two parts. Part Two will contain all of my funny stories thus far. That's what we call a teaser in the biz. ;-) 

Our precious eldest girl. We're so proud of her! Even better, she's proud of herself.

But before I share the funny stuff, it would be remiss of me not to mention something very serious.

I'm so appreciative of this opportunity for a thousand and one reasons, but the one that sticks out to me the most is that we're very fortunate indeed to be based in a country where educating women is both allowed and encouraged. It could so easily be otherwise.

For so many bright young girls, school is a financial impossibility, or worse, downright dangerous. Every day when I watch Adelaide board the bus with her friends, I am grateful that I don't fear her being shot like Malala Yousafzai or kidnapped like the young woman taken by Boko Haram in Africa. The tears in my eyes are not from fear, but pride. Someday, she might be the President, or a surgeon, or a librarian, or stay at home parent. She could be anything and probably will be many things. Opportunities await. I never want to take that for granted.

Martin Luther King Jr., speaking on the steps of the State Capitol in Alabama, said "...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Tonight, I am thankful to be living on the far side of that arc as well as the globe. And if her school is a series of arcs, well...that's just perfect.

A Low Bar is Key

I'm kind of drunk* right now, but what the hell, I'll take a stab at this anyway.

(*Fatigue drunk, just to be clear, not alcohol drunk. Sadly.)
 
In the aeons since I last posted, we have produced a beautiful and beloved baby girl. We named her Emilia Mae, brought her home with pride and love, and then promptly proceeded to lose our minds over the next weeks. And I will very definitely post her birth story, hopefully soon, but for now, I can't even process anything more complicated than the alphabet. And I might miss some letters there, if given a pop quiz.

Baby love

So there's the usual newborn fatigue and sibling processing going on, but Emilia also has reflux and is possibly colicky, possibly just high maintenance, but either way is attached to me 24/7. Like for real, for real, I'm either nursing baby girl, wearing her, or sleeping with her.

Also it's finally spring in MN, which means it's time for the Ewalds to contract a killer death plague and disappear into the sick locker for a while. Which we have done, and 2014's plague consists of some sort of mild and yet still soul shrivelingly awful influenza complete with fevers, chills, and muscle aches that actually made me cry on Friday morning.

Sick Locker 2014: Fevers of 104, aka Life Sucks

Though to be fair, I was attempting to get three small children to the doctor's by 8 AM in order to start our medical clearance for the military, and that might have brought me to tears on a good morning. The fever and chills just made it more fun.

Allow me to share my life with you.

Scene 1: Hallmark Moment

Emi is crying, because I'm not holding her. Addie is crying because I gave her water in an orange cup instead of a blue one. Addie pushes her cup away in a tantrum, and of course, knocks it over. Water is everywhere. Graydon is crying because his hands are dirty. Wait, his hands really are dirty. Is that...yes. Yes, his hands are covered in poop. He has diarrhea, probably from "Advil tummy" and went excavating in his diaper. In his distress, he is trying to clean them on anything and everything he can reach. 

Scene 2: Motherhood: NAILING IT

My mom goes back to NC on a Tuesday, right as Emilia's colic is hitting full force. Emilia has a screaming fit that lasts for two hours. She cries. I cry because I can't soothe her and because my Mom left. Tim comes home and my eyes are swollen shut from sobbing, I'm topless because I accidentally soaked my shirt with breastmilk after forgetting breast pads, and my hair is matted with spit up from Emilia's reflux issues. 

Scene 3: Feel the Burn

I attempt to hustle the two bigger kids into the shower with me. Emi is grunting and working herself up into a crying fit in her bouncy chair. I have approximately 4 minutes to get myself and the bigs cleaned before she blows. I herd my two eldest into the spray and hurriedly rip off my own clothes. In my hurry, I accidentally also rip a dangling thread "down there" assuming it's part of a my admittedly crappy underwear. (I am not wasting good undies on post partum, y'all). It is not. It is my episiotomy stitches...which I have just ripped out.  That smarts.

Scene 4:  The Future

Tim comes home and all three kids are crying while I am swigging cooking sherry and singing "Jesus Take the Wheel" at the top of my lungs.


OK, #4 hasn't happened yet, but give it time.

 So all of that is hard and I've cried more in the last three weeks than I did in the last year, but it's totally worth it for this.

Gang of three

How did I get three beautiful, smart, healthy kids? We are truly blessed and it's that long term view that gets me through the short term chaos of transition. It's always hard to add a child to your family, even when everything is "perfect" and it hardly ever goes perfectly, am I right? Still, we have not yet visited Intensive Care so this worlds, galaxies, universes even, better than our transition with Graydon.

And during those moments that everyone is crying, I just try to find one grace note, and hang on to it for dear life. Like the following: it might be noon and Addie might not be dressed yet and Emi might need a diaper change and yet another feeding and the beds aren't made but just look at their darling faces and how much they already love each other.

Sister Love: this one melts me.

So while we've kind of lost the plot here, I know it will get better in the coming weeks. We don't have much to focus on besides our family. Just Tim finishing his thesis and defending it. And saying goodbye to our friends and family here. And moving out of our house. And moving to Tokyo. Total cakewalk.

It reminds me of something my friend Danielle says that always cracks me up: like the old MadTV skit, it's all about "Lowered Expectations" for the next few ...um....years?

Brother Love

And So It Continued (Christmas Season Retroblog Part 2)

I left off my last blog with the cliffhanger of two birthday parties looming approaching and that was a small lie fib stretching of the truth, for reasons I will get into momentarily.

But first, I actually forgot that before we had the birthday parties, we had our last Ortho Holiday Party, which is always a great time. Even though I have been pregnant for three of them. I think that speaks to the "fun" aspect of it, because I cheerfully endure the indignity of maternity pantyhose and swollen feet/face/well-everything-really and waddle out to celebrate the holidays with our family-away-from-family.

Me, Tim, and E3 at the pre-party

The 5th Year Women, missing only Ashley and Laura.

The whole year, minus the Swanns and Walkers. In our year we are responsible for 26 children...and counting...so it's always an event when we can all meet up. 

Now back to the birthday "parties" and my confession about the small truth-stretching. For those who don't know, Addie's birthday is December 16th and Graydon's is December 30th. I actually gave Addie and Gray a combination birthday party. I figured I have maybe one more year where I can get away with this, so I made the most of it.

Incidentally, when separate parties are demanded, I foresee years of Addie having decent-ish parties and Graydon having pizza and leftover cupcakes because Christmas is over and New Year's Eve is tomorrow, and listen kid, we're glad you were born but WE ARE ONLY HUMAN and anyway it's your fault, you shouldn't have been SO LATE and impossible to birth, and yes, poor, poor G Man. It's not his fault. Except that it is, Mr. I-Decided-To-Be-Born-The-Night-Before-My-Induction. We wanted a better birthday for him, but I think that horse has already left the barn. In a very leisurely "in my own good time" fashion, which is very Graydon.

Carrying on.

Once I decided to combine the celebrations, the issue then became choosing common ground between my two children. Addie likes princesses, art, and dolls. Graydon likes fighting, wrestling, and rough-housing, in no particular order of preference. After contemplating such possibilities as "Kung Fu Princess" and "Hulk Monet", I finally decided that they both liked balloons, so voila, "Addie and Graydon are Growing UP!" and balloons galore. Sixty, to be exact. You have no idea how many balloons are in a 60 balloon bundle until you're putting them in your minivan.

Sadly, I never got a picture of all the balloons together for two reasons.

1) Because my children kept seizing handfuls of ribbons and dragging them off into their rooms while screaming gleefully.

2) Because my ceiling is an old fashioned "popcorn" ceiling which does not play nicely with balloons. All the aforementioned screaming and dragging pretty quickly decimated the numbers.

We lost about half the balloons that night, but the survivors were surprisingly tough. I recently committed a lot of heli-cide with a pair of scissors on the remaining stubborn stragglers because I was so tired of seeing balloons, but this was about a month after the initial purchase.

It was a good and normal party, and I think the kids were happy, which is all that mattered to me. We had wild rice soup, challah rolls, chips and a delicious variation on seven layer dip, a fruit plate, a cheese plate, and a veggie plate, with cupcakes for dessert. My only disappointment is that I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy running around, but I did get a few with the singing and cake.

Just slightly thrilled with the attention!

Should I succumb to madness/poor memory and do a party again, I am determined to take more pictures. Even if the guests are standing around starving and parched with thirst, roaring for drinks and food. I will just take pictures of that too and it will really give us a feel for the event.

Clapping for himself and/or the amazing singing

The joint party was on the 15th and Tim and Addie's actual birthday is the 16th. We saw Randy and Terri the day before their birthdays, because they were kind enough to keep the kiddos for the entire weekend to give us time to get ready for our various festivities that weekend.

Trains and cars! Jackpot!

It's too bad this is so out of focus, but the expression on his face makes me laugh so hard. "It's like, so totally, ermahgawd, this is to.die.for!' 

The Brogans met us for breakfast. Addie kind of likes Calum, if you can't tell.

On the morning of Addie's birthday, we went out to breakfast at Daube's, our favorite local bakery. Their doughnuts are amazing. Let the record reflect that I will absolutely miss Daube's when we leave. As will my children. All three of them, because E3 insists that we eat there at least once a week. Little tyrant.

Graydon kinda likes doughnuts.

We went out to dinner that night with Mary and Steve and the kiddos at Chester's, a local favorite. I didn't get any pictures because Chester's is always super dark and moody and "We might be in Rochester but we will make it loud and dark and trendy so you can pretend you're elsewhere", which I appreciate, along with the excellent food.

And that was basically it for the birthday celebrations...except for one last thing I want to remember. If you are related to me or Tim, or in any way offended by frank sexual speak, stop reading here.

All the twisted folks are still reading. Don't worry, I totally would too.

Tim and I put the kiddos in bed that night and collapsed beside each other in small heaps, pretty much exhausted after three straight days of celebration and two children cracked out on sugar and lack of sleep. I said "Do you remember when birthdays used to guarantee a new piece of lingerie and really creative and athletic sex?" And I am sure I was not mistaking the look of alarm on his face when he warily said "Yes". I'm not sure if it was the thought of "athletic" with a woman the size of a small whale or just the thought of any effort at all, but he was clearly frightened. I started laughing and said "Yeah, me too. Right now, sleep sounds better than sex. Sleep is my new sex, in fact. My favorite sexual position is officially 'comatose'". And then I knew I was right about the fear on his face, because for the first time, I heard my agnostic husband say "Amen". And that's really the best way to sum up three birthdays and the holidays with three children, all of whom are four and under: "Sleep is the best gift one can give or receive."  

First Day of School!

As the post title suggests, today was Addie's very first day of school EVER, which is kind of a BIG DEAL, at least in my mind.

Her choice of outfit for today included special "glitter shoes" and a dress my sister Des got for her

 She was incredibly excited, so much so that she put on her backpack about an hour before we left. She grudgingly let me snap a few pictures, but was really too excited to care much about hamming it up for the camera.

 A grudging "Cheese" followed by "Mom, can we go?"

We had gone to visit her classroom and meet her teacher last week, and she remembered the entire drill. She found her hook, hung up her backpack and went straight into class without a single backward glance at me. I was so proud of her, even as I was a little sad for me. She is so ready for independence and for learning, and it is really harder for me to admit that it's time to let her take those first steps away from me than it is for her to take them.

Her choice of backpack: penguin!

Meeting up with BFF, Calum, before school. They are in the same class.

Rather than subject the world to my handwriting, I just asked Ads some questions today. The whole "chalkboard" thing is awesome and Pinterest worthy, but only if your handwriting doesn't look untied shoelaces.

So, for posterity, an interview with Addie, faithfully transcribed (minus only my laughter):

Addie Ewald 09/05/2013
Mrs. Batterson's T/R "Creative 3s" class

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up? 
Addie: A kid.

Me: A kid? Well, by definition, you'll be an adult when you're grown up. I was thinking more about what kind of job you wanted to do when you were big.
Addie: I want a job where I'm a kid.

Me: OK then. What are you most excited about learning?
Addie: How to drive

Me: Is there anything that worries you about school?
Addie: No, not really.

Me: Well, that's good. I'm so excited for you. Are you ready to go get some knowledge?
Addie: What's knowledge?

Me: Oh, you know, just information about the world around us.
Addie: What's the world around us?

Me: Um, well, the things we see...cars, people, buildings, plants, animals.
Addie:What are animals?

Me: OK, now you're just being silly.
Addie: What's silly?

After school, I asked her how things went and she said "Mom, it was very frustrating." I was concerned/confused and asked her why, and she said "Mom, I'm just really slow and tired. Can I go lay on the couch and watch a movie?" My daughter, the 13 year old  the 3 year old.

 I'm choosing to believe that it drained her, and she was just surly because she was over stimulated, but maybe it really was frustrating. When I think back to the first few days of a new job, it often IS frustrating to learn the ropes and the codes of a new place. It's not so much because the learning process is arduous, it's just because the feeling of being at sea until you've got it all down can be upsetting. 

I've spent so much time in school (21 years, I do believe, which makes me kind of gag/cry/laugh) that it's like second nature to me to fall into classroom mode. But I had to learn all of those things and that's what she's working on this year. I had kind of forgotten that you have to learn how to walk quietly in a hallway, how to sit and listen respectfully to classmates, how to take instructions from other adults, and how to function on your own in a new space and setting. It's good for her, and hopefully both the crazy excitement and frustration will soon smooth out into quiet enjoyment and a lifelong love of learning. Or maybe she won't be interested until they get to the driving part of the nursery school curriculum. We shall see.

"Oh, the places you'll go! "

The Impossible Dream

...getting a good shot of both my children at once. I guesstimate that it happens once out of every 100 attempts. I have about 10 seconds before the photo shoot degenerates into a wrestling match.

 

I also have this enormous backlog of pictures and blog posts right now, and I'm not quite sure what to do with it, honestly. It's just way too much of a hodgepodge to put in one big post, even one big picture post.

I think I actually do stick to my goal of blogging twice a week...success!... it's just that I'm not publishing that quickly...fail! Mostly because all of my blogging takes place pre 7 AM and that's not always my most coherent time.




Anyway, I'm not gone, and I am blogging.

And much like throwing meat to hungry lions, I thought I'd throw out some recent Addie and Graydon pics before my parents and siblings destroy me. My musings on life are well and good, but they really just want to see the punkins.

It might take me another month or two to get a decent photo, but in the meantime, at least they love each other. Most of the time. 

The Sick Locker

Sick, and yet still cute. Only kids can manage this. This was after a fever broke during nap.

"Man plans. God laughs." ---Yiddish Proverb

Touché , Jewish folk...touché. 

I did indeed have large plans for blogging and life-ing but we got a visit from our old foe, RSV, and we have been shut inside the sick locker ever since. 

I hate the sick locker. We use the word "hate" a lot in our culture...you know, we hate Ke$ha, we hate idiots that write condescending articles about moms with iPhones, we hate the word "moist"...or maybe only I say I hate those things? However, I actually really do HATE being in isolation with sick kids. 

And I am not talking about a runny nose and a slight cough. That's what I like to refer to as "winter" and since it lasts an ungodly amount of time here you just learn to buy the industrial size of Boogie Wipes and move on with life as usual. 

I just told him that Puxatawney Phil was a false prophet and that winter would last sixteen more weeks.

 I might have mentioned a time or ten that winter decided to stick around.  This is from my friend Catherine's FB profile, and it's too good not to share.

Even the natives have dropped their usual scoffing at the soft "cake eaters" in moderate climes and are now restlessly eyeing the forecast

 An extension of winter means an extension of "winter illness" season. So two weeks ago, Addie went to bed perfectly happy and then woke up at midnight choking and unable to breathe properly due to a nasty attack of croup. An ER visit for an emergency nebulizer and some steroids fixed her right up, but she was quite unwell for several days after that with persistent fevers and a nasty cough and a general malaise which she explained as "Mom, I'm getting really slow."

Asking to go to bed at 7 PM one night.

 During a follow up visit to family practice, they mentioned that her croup might have been caused by RSV, which actually relieved me. Because you know, Graydon already had that as an infant so I thought he'd sail right past it.

Stupidly, I forgot that Addie also already had RSV, which is why Graydon got it as a three week old.

As soon as Addie started to recover, G man went down and he did not fare so well. Addie is robust. She gets sick very rarely and when she does get sick, she doesn't stay down for long. I'm not going to get into the whole saga, because he's fine now, but it took us a few doctor's visits and worried nights and a set of chest x rays and some antibiotics and a home inhaler to get over it.  And that's the short version.

We  had the humidifiers on blast in the kids rooms.

Frankly, it really sucked. It's hard to see your kids suffering, even when you have confidence that all will be well in the end. But when your kids are that ill, you can't see anyone, you can't go anywhere, and you can't really DO anything to take their minds off of how bad they feel.  There were a great many sleepless nights especially when Graydon was sick. I slept upright with Graydon on the couch for several nights with the humidifier beside us and I had a lot of uneasy dreams about being on a lifeboat in the ocean. All of which makes sense when you consider that I usually woke up to find water beaded up on the couch and our blankets. 

Poor little G man was not feeling so super at this point.

Long story short, it was tiring and scary at times, but I think we are now healthy and caught up on sleep. We have been released from the isolation of the sick locker and it's amazing. Just being able to run errands during the day feels like a privilege. And you know what? It IS a privilege. Too often I forget that for a lot of people, the sick locker has to become a way of life.

Resting together

So I am newly grateful for health and wellness and energy and rest. 

And, as an added bonus, the weather has been really nice the past few days. Granted, it is supposed to be quite chilly again for the forecastable future, but we do have flowers springing up in our yard.

Spring is about to break out of the sick locker too, and not a moment too soon. I think everyone is ready to welcome a new season.  

Halloween!

The elusive Sasquatch, caught on film in a witch's hat and dimples, clutching a small pumpkin...

Every year I think to myself that I'd like to make a bigger deal out of holidays and every year I find myself thinking "Huh, I guess I better do something" about two days before the event. I think my problem is not lack of enthusiasm so much as lack of organization. And also lack of funds. That plays a very large role. 

Adelaide does not suffer from lack of enthusiasm. Graydon, not so much.

Sure enough, this year our meticulously itemized budget had a big fat ZERO in the "Costumes, Festivities, and Merriment" line. (I make the categories and Tim accommodates even my most outlandish suggestions. But then he retaliates with his ZERO.) Fortunately I was able to cobble together a witch's outfit for Ads out of a big black tutu and a hat and Graydon was first stuffed into a too small pumpkin outfit on loan from a friend and then wallowed into a too large duck outfit also on loan from said friend. So it was all good and the kids loved it despite the last minute nature of things.

Addie loved her outfit. So much so that this is one of the few shots that I got of her because mostly she was a blur of sugar high motion. The vest was an addition for trick or treating because it was chilly out there!

The vest was an addition for trick or treating. She didn't want to wear a coat that would hamper her tutu.

See? Blur of motion, all the time! 

 I did manage to catch her sitting still with the candy bowl a few times.

Serious stuff!

She was especially fond of her hat because she is fascinated/appalled by spiders right now. She knows that they live in webs but she firmly assures us that spiders live only in the jungle and that they eat bugs. Bugs and dung. Sometimes she substitutes "gross stinky poo poo" for "dung". She picked out her tutu at Target in typical Addie fashion. We had wandered around looking at all the cheap Chinese made costumes that were around $30 and then went over to the regular kids section. She saw the tutus, said not a word to me, and just started taking off her clothes in the Target. Why, you ask? So that she could put the tutu on immediately. I knew we had a winner. She was bummed that I didn't have a broom small enough for her but she pretended and insisted on wearing her tutu and hat to bed during her nap today.

Graydon also loved his costumes. Well. Not really. The first one was a little small.

Mom. Seriously?

Notice how small the hat is, in particular. It's a yarmulke. Oy vey!

So we moved on to the duck, which was originally intended for Addie. She gave me the toddler equivalent of "aw hells no" to that though, so the duck moved down to Graydon. He was still not a big fan.

Still not impressed.

The hood was a little big. And also the body. And the arms...well, everything really. But it was warm!

We then attempted a few family pictures, which all failed miserably. These were the best ones. And by "best" I mean ..."not good but better than a poke in the eye" quality. We are all looking at the camera and that's a success in my book.





It wasn't our best picture taking event, but we had a good time. We had friends over to eat and then trick or treat and a good time was had by all, especially the kidlets.

I do have one last funny sequence from Halloween day to share. Graydon has a Superman shirt with a cape attached that I got him a while ago, planning to take pictures of him when he starts walking. Well, I put it on him for Halloween day and during my cleaning I looked up to see that he'd found a noble steed.

Tally-ho!

Uh-oh, I think I'm busted!

So proud of himself! Notice that Rocky is now at the very far right of your picture. Such a patient and sweet little fellow he is!