Happy Halloween!

The spooky news of the day is that the closing on our house has been pushed back to Friday or Monday. Buyers' lawyer lost power in the storm. I guess we won't be getting that big treat today we were hoping for. I'll just have to eat more Skittles to make up for it.

Happy Halloween!!!

Heat wave

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.

Playing

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)

 

 

And here's Kate being silly on her half birthday.

Sisters

I dropped the camera about a week ago (why do they make those little things so slippery?!!!!) and now the lens doesn't tuck in right when it's turned off... so, no camera in purse means no photos, which means I have no idea what we've been doing.

We signed the P&S on the house this week, though I'm not sure yet if the buyers signed -- some logistical stuff of getting everybody's signatures on the same papers. The inspection is done, though, and our agent says that's usually the biggest hurdle.

Oh, we started the weekly parent-child class at the church we can almost see from our house. It's pretty good. The kids are mostly on the older side of preschool age, which is ideal. I think Kate's the youngest one and Molly's not the oldest. Many of the families are homeschoolers but some, like us, are not. It's more crowded and a little rowdier than the (oddly quiet) Waldorf classes at Molly's old school. It feels like a good fit. Molly's been shy and mostly hangs out with Kate or the teachers, though she tells me she has talked a few times to a girl named Lily who's just two months older than she is.

It's so odd to me, actually, to see the change in Molly since the move. At the old house she was obsessed with "playing with kids," any kids and would drive me nuts begging to play with Teddy or whoever happened to walk by on the sidewalk even after a full morning of preschool.

Since we moved all she talks about are the aunties and Oma and Grandpa and Grandma. She never begs to play with other kids anymore. Ever. What a complete change!

Kate is much more of a playmate, so I'm sure that has a lot to do with it.

 

Kate is going through a wonderful language burst. She comes up with words unprompted, like "rain" or "Daddy home?"

She seems to have two modes, stunned with a blank stare or super giggly/super frustrated toddler. She's really into snuggling stuffed animals (as in laying her whole body on top of them and wriggling around in a vaguely inappropriate way). She's also so much more involved in what's happening around her, even when she doesn't say much. The other day Molly was crying about something and Kate quietly walked over with Molly's "heavy baby" doll and handed it to her, apparently trying to comfort her. I didn't even notice until Molly pointed it out. She's done it several times since. So sweet!

Happy "Thanks Mothers Day"

Molly just informed me that today is "Thanks Mothers Day"
I expressed my happiness, to which she replied, "Do you even know what Thanks Mothers Day is?
No.
"It's the day after Mothers Day, when mothers say thank you for doing all their chores. There's cake and ice cream."

Airport

Now that school's in session, I've been trying to talk Molly into going to fun kid places -- children's museum, zoo, etc. She's not into it. All she wants to do is ride a city bus. She's excited because there are bus stops near our house. All I can imagine is getting stuck in some scary part of the city with a crying toddler and being unable to get off the bus for another hour.

So while I think some more about how to make that dream come true for her, I decided to indulge her other request, which was to go see airplanes.

Molly's idea was that we would maybe hop on one, just to ride, and then get right back on another plane and fly home. I talked her down into just driving to the airport and hoping maybe we'd see a plane or two fly over before getting kicked out by security.

We were not prepared for how fantastic the Rochester airport is. They have this observatory area outside all the security areas, full of chairs (many child-sized) and a snack bar and floor to ceiling windows looking out on the runway. We caught several landings and take-offs, big planes and small. Molly had all sorts of questions about the fuel trucks, the hangars, whether planes crash into towers (?!?), whether helicopters land on the runways, too.

We got to talking about the difference between how airplanes land vs. helicopters, which Molly then felt compelled to experience. Here she is doing an airplane landing, then a helicopter landing.

Last night, right before she fell asleep she said, "Mommy, I feel like I want to go to the airport every day."

Kate was a good sport, too. She spent most of the time chewing on my checkbook and climbing onto tables. We'll definitely be back.

Offer

Good news! We just accepted an offer on our house!

Now we are just holding our breath hoping that everything goes through. Closing would be Oct. 31 ... and we don't even have to be in Massachusetts for it, which is a bonus because we've been really looking forward to trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood. :)

Speaking of the neighborhood, we had the cousins out for a visit this weekend. Aren't they cute?