Molly & Kate: October 2012

Did everybody enjoy the warm weather? We sure did. Well, as much as possible when we all have colds -- our first colds since Molly finished school in May! Kate's runny nose is bringing back memories of the weeks upon weeks that her nose ran last year. I'm so glad that's behind us.

Molly's been into her bike lately. Kate's been into it, too, when Molly lets her.

The tricycle's a bit more her size. Her feet don't touch the pedals, of course, but it's a shorter distance to fall if she tips over while Molly wheels her around.

Have we mentioned that we're living in a house of spiders? It's amazing how quickly a web gets rebuilt in this place, not to mention the variety of arachnids. This is the craziest so far...

It looks like an ordinary enough daddy longlegs hanging out on our ceiling above the dining room table, but Jim noticed the other day that the fuzzy ball against its body might be eggs.

Yup. The next day it was this...

I counted about 18 babies. They're still hanging out there. Just waiting to drop down our shirts while we eat dinner, I guess. :)

We had to meet Jim at work Monday so we could sign the deed and power of attorney for our house in front of a notary. It was such a nice day that we girls grabbed lunch from Wegmans and drove over to Webster Park to eat by the lake.

I think I'd forgotten how big Lake Ontario is. It was kind of scary, with the waves and a toddler whose whole purpose in life right now seems to be to get in danger. We escaped without incident. Phew!

We've been doing some longer walks now that Molly rides her bike and Kate rides in the stroller (until she gets out and then refuses to get back in ... a regular feature of all walks). One afternoon we wandered over to the high school to check out the sports practices after school. We watched some football and soccer, played on the bleachers and found a playground we would have tried if we weren't locked within the fence of the track and unable to find a way out.

In the heat Thursday Molly talked us into a walk/bike ride to Abbott's. I feel sorry for the woman sitting across from us who had to watch the sticky mess of runny noses, ice cream dripping on hands, dropped on laps, the bench, the ground, dragged through hair. It was gloppy. Tasty, though.

We tried to take a swing through the yarn store after but I very quickly scooted us back out the door. It's a bad idea to take little grabby hands into a place like that anyway, worse when their noses are running and they have dirty faces because the ice cream hasn't been properly cleaned up. I think I'll try that again sometime when I'm by myself.

Yesterday was another surprise warm one. We finally caught the Wild Wings bird exhibit at Mendon Ponds. So cool! I was all excited after to try the chickadee trail again, this time with bird seed. Molly collapsed before we even started the trail, saying she was too tired to walk. She wanted to go run and skip and jump on the running hills instead. We settled our dispute with a leaf fight.

I finally talked her into trying the trail but she was right. We should have skipped it. All those birds that were stalking us and begging for food last time were nowhere to be found. There were lots of people on the trail and some speculation that the birds just weren't hungry anymore.

We did have one close encounter with a bold chipmunk.

Then we grabbed snacks from the car and found a spot near the parking lot for an impromptu picnic.

We finished the day on the playground and we still playing at the moment the sun went behind the clouds, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped 10 degrees. Leaves were raining down. It was pretty wild.

Really it was way too much activity for girls who are sick but it was just too nice to stay inside sniffling all day.

I honestly don't know where the time is going. I guess that means we've settled into a rhythm in our new home, right? One week just melts into the next. Life is good.

We play in the backyard.

We go to Mendon Ponds.

We tried the bird song trail the other day and managed to trick two chickadees into landing on our hands even though we didn't have birdseed. A man who passed us on the trail told us there was a mother deer and some babies ahead. I figured with two little girls they'd hear us coming but apparently these deer aren't afraid of anything.

(disclaimer: Jim thinks this video is kind of long and boring for the blog. I don't have much else so I'm posting it anyway)