Two Months

Happy Two-Months Birthday to Eliza,
Happy Two-Months Birthday to Eliza,
Happy Two-Months BIRTHday to Eliza,
Happy Birthday to You!

Eliza's not getting as much press as Hayden yet, so I thought she deserved her own special entry in honor of her two months birthday. I can hardly believe it's been two months already! Seems like forever and not even a day all at the same time. She's filling out nicely, isn't she?!!

This is the closest to a smile I've been able to capture so far...

Lots-o-leaves!

State College is an interesting place. It has phenomal drink specials (nickel draft night! quarter well drinks!) and enough pizza places to let you try a new place each day of the month (or at least it seems that way, I haven't really documented this). It also has terrific ice cream options, hence the frequency of ice cream mentions in this blog. :) The other thing State College has a lot of this time of year is LEAVES. Lots and lots of leaves. Somehow we have managed to do a decent job raking them up, and Hayden was introduced to the joy of playing in a leaf pile. Her smiles and silliness make all the hard work of raking totally worth it! Below are photos from two separate occasions of leafy fun.

Here's her first venture into a pile. I'm not sure why she kept her hands up. Reminds me of how most people enter a swimming pool - hands up until you get used to the temperature. I finally convinced her to throw some of them in the air. She thought that was fun and made for a neat picture. This came back to haunt me later...
Such a cutie! (and how great that she's willing to wear her mittens!)
Even Eliza got in on the fun, though she didn't toss any into the air. I think Eliza needs to be able to sit up better for this to be a cute photo. But alas, by the time she sits up, there will be snow instead of leaves. Guess I better bundle her up well for that photo!Now a day or two later, in the morning, it was just a beautiful fall day and I thought I'd take a picture of our tree in the front yard in all it's colorful glory. Note the large pile of leaves the girls had been playing in. And also note the large amount of leaves STILL on the trees! Our raking duties were not yet done (nor had we done the backyard yet!).


So a little while later, we did some more raking. And there was some nice weather so we had a picnic outside on the lawn to enjoy the sunshine. I didn't get the camera out for the picnic but I did manage to capture Hayden enjoying the leaf pile. This time around she was much more into it. She started by taking huge handfuls of leaves and bringing them over to throw them on me and Ellie.

And then she just dove straight into the pile itself.

I didn't make Eliza go leaf swimming this time around. Instead, when I finally put her down to go play with Hayden, she just napped peacefully on the picnic blanket.
I'd invite everyone to come play in the leaves with us, but the leaf sucking truck just came by yesterday and took away all the leaves. While we still have a few, there's not quite enough for a giant pile. But I promise we'll be able to throw a huge leaf pile party next year, if you're interested! Like pizza places and ice cream, those leaves are just a part of the State College experience!

Fall Follies

Finding time to blog these days is tough. We keep ourselves pretty busy. Someone is always needing a meal, a nap, a diaper change - and that's just me taking care of me! (ha!) You know we've done some fun stuff this fall - like adding to our family, picking out pumpkins, playing in the snow, and celebrating Halloween. These were some pretty fun big events but we also do little fun things too, which keep our day-to-day life entertaining. There aren't always as many pictures of these events, but sometimes I manage to pull out the camera. So here are some (literal) snapshots of the little things in our life this fall... in no particular order...

We play with Blizzard... Hayden actually really tries to play with her sometimes by throwing a toy for her or chasing her outside. Blizz isn't really sure she likes the attention, but she usually plays along.
We paint vegetation - primarily gourds. :) This is best done in your pajamas!
We introduced Eliza to the Creamery. She's the little yellow part below my chin. We went shortly before Halloween, on one of the last warm days and had two YUMMY flavors - my favorite was Monster Mash. (look it up!)
We've taken a lot of naps - sometimes in strange positions...
and sometimes they are hard to wake up from...
Eliza is especially good at napping. She really likes to nap in her swing! (thank goodness!)

There's been a little bit of sisterly bonding. Hayden is a big fan of the bonding sessions; Eliza not so much.

We have gone to the grocery store A LOT. And Hayden sometimes helps me unpack, if I have to feed Eliza right when we get home. Notice how neatly everything is lined up and how the bread is standing up straight!We've started doing some tummy time. Sometimes this is best done on Mommy's knees!

We've also taken advantage of daylight savings and checked out the moon in the Happy Valley dusk. The scenic picture does not capture how pretty the evening was. We did manage a pretty good picture of the three girls (yes that's Eliza in the fleecy yellowness under my chin this time.)
We've also put lots of smudges on the glass storm door. :)
And I can't even tell you how many books we've been reading, over and over and over... (but I'm still tremendously proud of my bookworm!)
Hayden has also experimented with what she can and cannot do on her own. Case in point - she CAN fit into the block container but she CANNOT get out of it without help. Yes we were laughing at her and just had to document her achievement/distress.

Most recently we enjoyed a visit with Poppop who came up to stay with us before heading to Philly for a conference. We were so busy, this is the only picture we took with him! Come back again soon!
So that's life with us this fall. Hope all is well with you!

Part III- Halloween!!!

Halloween Day was a pretty fun day. In the afternoon, we headed over to Mandy and Scott's to help celebrate Noah's 3rd birthday. Unfortunately I did not take out the camera for that but the kids had a great time playing with puzzles and markers and eating cake. Then we headed back home to prepare for trick-or-treaters.

We never did take Hayden out to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood since the weather was cold and rainy. Plus we aren't all that friendly with our neighbors (the friendly ones keep moving away!) , so we just decided to stay in. Hayden actually had a great time handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters who showed up at our door. She started out in costume and slowly lost clothing as the night went by. Jason wasn't sure it was appropriate for her to be answering the door with no pants! What do you think? :)

To help us celebrate the holiday, and enjoy some adult conversation about babies, we invited Sarah/Brad/Logan and Ali/Matt/Lachlan over for the evening. Between the 10 of us, there was plenty of pizza and candy eating, door answering, candy distributing, Blizzard restraining, Hayden entertaining, and nursing. It was fun! I think Eliza set the record for the most costume changes, and Logan got the most mad at being put in a costume. I wanted to get all three babies together for a picture but they didn't do a very good job coordinating their schedules. One would be sleeping, another eating, and another getting changed or having 'quiet alert' time so it just didn't work out. Hopefully sometime soon.

Here are some of the most fun pictures from the evening - including all of Eliza's costumes!







Costume #1 - LION - the Nittany variety of course!
















Costume #2: crazy Halloween girl. (background info - this dress was given to Hayden but she never fit in it. The skirt/shirt seam doesn't stretch at all! We refer to it as the outfit where Halloween threw up on Scotland. And the hat is from Liesl - I think it's a bat ears hat, even though you can't really see the ears in the pictures - and I like to sing the batman theme - dunh-nuh-nuh-nuh, etc, BAT BABY!)











Costume #3 - chicken!























A dragon and a lion - does that make them a griffin together? (nope, wikipedia says a griffin is a lion and eagle, oh well).














Don't Sarah and Brad have the cutest little angry pumpkin?!




















Even Blizzard got dressed up - the Darth Vader costume made a reappearance!!! She was thrilled.

That's it for pictures. Happy Halloween! Enjoy your leftover candy!

Part II - Pumpkin Carving

On Friday evening, it was time to carve our pumpkins. Hayden had helped last year, but didn't seem to remember at all. We talked about how we would put faces on our pumpkins and turn them into jack-0-lanterns. And when I asked her if she wanted a happy or sad pumpkin, we decided on one happy and one sad pumpkin.

At the beginning, Hayden was very excited about the pumpkins.

We brought them inside, wiped them down a little, changed into short sleeves and then set to work. Hayden wasn't too keen on helping me pull out the "goo" inside the pumpkin. She'd pick up individual seeds I dropped to put them in the seed bucket (we were going to roast them), but she didn't want to reach inside. She finally consented to reach inside with a spoon. And she did ask if she could taste it. (I swear, she'll eat anything when we're in the middle of the "process." She's less adventurous, though still a pretty good eater, when we're actually at the dinner table!)
She did help me get some of the goo out and then we talked about what shapes for the face. She picked squares for the eyes and a circle for the nose for the sad pumpkin. And then she lost interest and decided to color with markers at the kitchen table. Oh well, probably improved my efficiency anyway.

So we got the pumpkins carved - one happy, one sad. And even put a candle inside each.

Of course, we did the obligatory poses with them the next day with Hayden in her pumpkin shirt. I'm not sure why she felt the need to put her arm around them but it made me laugh to see her do that. We even managed to get our littlest pumpkin in the picture!