Getting Ready for Halloween

T has really enjoyed Halloween this year. We pulled out the Spookytown decorations, carved pumpkins, read numerous books about ghosts, witches, and goblins, and even attended a "trunk or treat" last Friday with T's cousins. T is so excited to put on his ghost costume and take his "candy purse" trick or treating tonight. We don't usually have much junk food around, so he's been binging on "cany" for almost a week now and he's especially fond of kit-kats. I'm so sorry he apparently inherited my sweet tooth, but I'm grateful he also inherited my love of books. Our current favorite Halloween stories are listed here, and we read these and several others almost every day.

• Goodnight Goon
• Room on the Broom
• Ten Little Goblins

Goodnight Goon is a parody of Goodnight Moon. We've added our own sound effects to both books and I love it when T fills them in when I forget and when he associates them with pictures and objects outside of the books. Room on the Broom is a clever original story in rhyme that I never get tired of. Ten Little Goblins is a parody on Over in the Meadow. It's so much fun to sing and with its clever lyrics and cute illustrations ...
Over in the forest
Where the trees hide the sun
Lived a big mommy monster
And her little monster one.
"Scare!" said the mommy;
"I scare," said the one.
So he scared and he scampered
Where the trees hide the sun.
We visited the Plumper Pumpkin Patch on October 13th and acquired a plethora of pumpkins. T and The Scoot also launched some tiny pumpkins with big sling shots. We also watched others shoot tiny pumpkins out of an air cannon into a big field.

T waits for a pony ride. When his turn came around he didn't take it because he wanted the brown pony that the other little girl had already taken and he wouldn't ride on the white one. We used the pony ride tickets to slingshot pumpkins instead.

T searches for the perfect pumpkin

Monday night we carved the pumpkins that each of us picked at the Plumper Pumpkin Patch. The Scoot did some online research ahead of time and carved and awesome Jack the Pumpkin King from Nightmare Before Christmas. I barehanded my medium sized pumpkin and helped T carve his initials in his tiny one after he had sufficiently poked it full of holes with a mechanical pencil while The Scoot and I carved.

T and The Scoot in action

The family pumpkin trio

The Scoot's Pumpkin Jack

Mine! This was loosely anime inspired

T's ... That's supposed to be a "TM," but the tiny pumpkin was very thin and I overshot my cut mark on the second half of the "M" so now it looks like a wonky "N"

Speaking of pumpkins ... I got sugar pie pumpkins in my CSA this fall and have enjoyed experimenting with tasty pumpkin recipes including curry pumpkin soup, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and amazing pumpkin ginger bread made with home made pumpkin puree ... Delicious!

Eating with Salad Tongs

Since my last post (actually very shortly after) T began counting to ten without skipping any numbers. He can also sing large portions of his "ABCs" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" all by himself. He's still communicating so well, but has also started asserting his will with force. He had quite the temper tantrum the other day which left both the Scoot and I laughing as he ran bellowing, full steam, arms flailing down the hall to his newly converted toddler bed and threw himself into it. Needless to say he was really really tired. T helped The Scoot convert his crib to a toddler bed over the weekend and he's really enjoying the freedom of getting in and out on his own. He still does call for us to come get him at night though.

T's school informed us last Friday that they are ready to tackle potty training whenever we feel ready ... we're ready! So, T wore underpants for about half of the weekend. On Saturday we kept asking him if he needed or wanted to go and he would say "no" and eventually would produce a puddle. On Sunday I wised up and took him to the potty ~ every hour and this resulted in dry undies or diapers. He was dry when we got home from school yesterday and was still dry when we dropped him of this morning (with potty trips of course). We also dropped off some training undies and let his teachers know that they are welcome to use them any time. It will be so nice to be done with diapers. Regardless of what they do at school this week, I plan to go full undies next weekend.

T's creativity continues to surprise me ... for example, pretending the tire pump in his stroller is a weed whacker or leaf blower complete with sound effects. In the following pictures, T demonstrates that it's much more fun to eat with salad tongs than a fork.

Agility challenge #1

Agility challenge #2

Intermission - bubble wrap