Trick or Treat!

Being that Nicholas and Charlotte have practically lived in their costumes the last few weeks, it's a bit anti-climatic now that Halloween is actually here. But no matter. We'll recap anyway!


It was super warm (in the 70s) when we started out about 6:00. Tom wore shorts and flip-flops. Charlotte didn't even wear socks or shoes. With Nicholas...he once again insisted on full gear, so we had the return of the sweaty monkey. (That sounds like a really bad B-movie!)


One fun thing about St Louis (maybe it's a Midwest thing?) is that the kids all tell jokes before getting candy at your door. They range from really gross high-school jokes (I shall not list any of those here), to super cute jokes told by toddlers. Last year, Nicholas' joke was:


Why did the moon hide behind the clouds?
-Because it had to twinkle!


This year, we took a joke from his fantastic joke 4th birthday card from Lulu (my grandma):


Why did the football coach run to the bank?
-To get his quarter back! (although he always said "quarters back", which doesn't make quite as much sense...but you get the picture)


Keep in mind that Nicholas does not have ANY pause between the joke and the punchline, and that he laughs at the end each time. It's hilarious.

Charlotte didn't mind hanging with Daddy. I'm sure next year she'll be keeping pace with her brother.

After going to a few friends' houses, we headed home to man the door. In the trick-or-treat arena, our house has a few things going against it: our direct neighbors don't turn their lights on, and the sidewalk doesn't run all the way to our front walkway. You might not think this is a big deal, but when you have a monkey on your front porch desperate to give away candy, it's not so great. In the picture above, he's actually yelling to kids across the street - "Come here for trick-or-treating! We have candy!" It was a little sad. While waiting for trick-or-treaters, a few times I caught him standing over our candy basket, quietly telling his joke, then taking a piece and putting it in his own bucket. At least he was following the trick-or-treat rules...even if it was with our own candy!


Charlotte couldn't have cared less about the trick-or-treaters, because that left more lollipops in our basket for her. She's never seen them before...but she's in love. Not to eat. Just to hold.


I attempted about 25 official Halloween pictures with the kids. Zero success at getting them both looking at me, happy and in focus. This semi-blurry one is the best of the bunch! It will have to do!


Happy Halloween!

Preschool Pumpkin Farm Party

Nicholas' preschool went to Thies Farm for their Halloween party this morning. All the moms, a dad, and a few siblings came. It was a total blast.

The class - Ms. Sally (their head teacher) is in the back.

Nicholas obviously had fun!

There's nothing that boy won't climb

Not a great picture, but pretty indicative of Charlotte's entire visit - pointing and saying "da! da! da!" at all the animals. In the above case, it was the goats.

A little brother-sister time in the giant wheel-go-round.

Nicholas and his entourage, Isabella and Telma, leaving the party.

Perhaps now I should mention that I witnessed Nicholas' first (I hope!) kiss today. Standing in the line for the hay ride, Telma (on the right in the above picture) came over and just planted one on him. I think I (and maybe him too?) was in shock. I managed to come up with "Maybe just hugs, kids", but really didn't know what to say! Was Nicholas two-timing his one true love, Isabella? :) According to Isabella's mom, she and Telma carpool to school and always talk about Nicholas. Apparently Isabella told her mom that Nicholas may like Telma, but he likes her more. Wow. I can't believe this is starting at age 4. Fighting off the ladies already! We're in trouble!

Charlotte has 3 Teeth!

OK so you can't see her third tooth (top right front) in these pictures...but it's there! That amount of drool can't lie! :)

100 Pieces!

Nicholas spent the last of his Toys R Us birthday money (thank you, Grandpa Doug!) on this 100 piece puzzle. I figured it wouldn't be the worst thing to get a puzzle that would take him more than 5 minutes to put together (his other puzzles are 63 pieces). It may have taken him more than 5 minutes, but he really had no trouble. The cutest thing was when he'd look at a piece, he'd say one of two things:

"I'm a little confused about THIS piece"
-or-
"I'm NOT confused about THIS piece!' - with a smile and a giggle as he placed it in place

So cute. I'm so glad I have someone else in the family who loves puzzles like I do!

Magic House Invasion

Nicholas' preschool had a Halloween party at The Magic House (our Children's Museum).

Posing for a brother-sister picture at the entrance. That was the end of Charlotte's hat. It was hot inside! Nicholas wouldn't hear of putting down his hood though. He became a sweaty, sweaty, monkey!

Fishing time!

Isabella arrives! Isabella is Nicholas' "special friend" from school. At his parent conference, his teacher told me all about the two of them. They have apparently bonded over their mutual love of puzzles.

Nicholas rode the two-story slide about 50 times!

Meanwhile, Charlotte played peek-a-boo with Grandpa

What a great way to spend our last night with Grandma and Grandpa!

Boo at the Zoo - Take 2

Tom's parents arrived on Tuesday night (Steve had a conference downtown this week), so we were lucky enough to be able to show them (and Tom who also came back to town on Tuesday night) Boo at the Zoo!

Spooky!

I'm fairly certain that glow sticks don't belong there...

Nicholas turned down the free ice cream (it was pretty cold out!), but did take a hug from the North Star penguin.

Charlotte LOVES her Grandpa King

Look up, Nicholas!

We also went on a night hike (sorry, no pictures) where the guide took us all around the outdoor enclosures and we peeked in on the resting animals. I learned quite a few things! Did you know that sea lions are really blond, but their fur looks brown when wet? Did you know that snakes are not poisonous, but rather "venomous" because "poisonous" means you ingest the poison, not are injected with it? What else...what else... Did you know there is a type of enormous endangered frog called a "mountain chicken" because it's eaten in the Caribbean islands like we eat chicken in the US? OK...enough random facts.

We had a great, LATE, night. We can't wait to go to Boo at the Zoo next year!

Family Tree

Yes. It is in fact 2:10am and I've just finished the Family Tree we have to turn in at school tomorrow. Nicholas' class has literacy bags that are taken home for two nights and contain books, an activity of some sort, an art project etc. Nicholas' from Wednesday was the Houses/Family topic. We just took it out of the car this afternoon (whoops..I mean Thurs afternoon!). Turns out that besides reading a few books and drawing a picture of your house, you needed to create a photo family tree - 3 generations. They are making books all about themselves that I'm imagining the family tree will be part of. This is by far the most complicated thing we've had to do, but I figured, how hard can this be in the age of digital photos? Let me just tell you....REALLY HARD. Between finding photos on the computer/websites/'07 Christmas cards, then printing those pictures, then reducing many of them because they were still too large for the tiny spaces they needed to occupy, then cutting them to size...it's been a long night. (Perhaps here I should mention that I was out until after 11 for a neighborhood Girl's Night, so it's only been since then that I've been working on it.) My plan was to let Nicholas glue these on in the morning so he'd at least be a little involved (he lasted through about 10 minutes of computer searching this afternoon), but at this point I want it done so it can be in his backpack ready to go. He did do the house picture this afternoon with Grandma King, so we've got that going for us.

Why, you may ask, am I writing a post about this at this time of night? I have no idea except that once I got it into my head to stick this on the blog, it had to be done. And now it's here. Goodnight!

Already a Fan

I think it's a combination of her love of the Cardinals, her love of hats, and her love of anything belonging to her brother!

Boo at the Zoo

Tom is in Mexico on a business trip, but we were feeling pretty stir crazy this afternoon, so the three of us loaded up the new wagon (minus the roof) and ventured out for Boo at the Zoo.

The graveyard was a little scary...

We went to the Children's Zoo area for a Halloween show.

I had not realized until tonight how much Charlotte loves animals. She lost her mind when the various animals (armadillo, snake, rats etc) came out on stage.

She REALLY loved the tree kangaroo. The baby was born in January, but emerged from the pouch for the first time in July. He's about half the size of his mother at this point, yet manages to still squeeze into the pouch.

Nicholas took a turn pulling on the way to dinner...though it's quite heavy on the uphill path!

On the dinner menu was "Cookie in a Costume", which was plain sugar cookies that you could frost and sprinkle. Few in the world love sprinkles as much as our boy.

The was a mechanical skeleton playing the organ. Or as Nicholas referred to it - the "oregon". They also handed out "globe sticks" as party favors. :)

Fun was had by all, and we'll definitely be returning with Daddy before Halloween!

"Now Missy"

The scene - We're all four out for an early dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. Tom gets up for something leaving the three of us at the table. Charlotte, new at the whole "drink milk out of a sippy cup" thing (we started last week) spit some of her milk out at the end of a drink. Nicholas walks over to her and says:

"Now Missy. You may not spit. Unless you are brushing your teeth and you have toothpaste. Do we have a deal?"

He then proceeds to shake her hand, goes back and sits down at his chair. I was dying...and then replaying all the times in my head when we've made deals with him and shaken on them. Yet another reminder of the endless recall of a four year-old. I am glad to know that the "no spitting" mantra has taken firm hold.

Party in the Patch

Our town, Brentwood, partners up with a few other neighboring towns' Parks & Rec departments to host Party in the Patch every October. There are carnival games, a huge bounce house, a bonfire with storytelling, firemen handing out candy, a hayride...all the cute small town things. It was our first test run of this year's costumes.

I can't stand how cute she is...

Our warm and cozy monkey

Watching her brother collect candy in the haunted graveyard.

This was something called "Money Hunt" where they hid coins donated by a local bank under hay and the kids had 30 seconds to find them. Nicholas ended up with 5 nickels. I think he was more interested in throwing the hay around willy-nilly than collecting the money!

It really was the biggest bounce house we've ever seen

I was amazed that she kept her hat on almost the entire time!

Yes she's eating a hot dog bun. It was carnival nutrition at its finest.

Nicholas liked all the games that involved throwing things (shocker). He got two of the three milk bottles toppled over. But for some reason he completely didn't get Ring Toss. He kept trying to throw the rings vertically instead of horizontally (if that makes sense). Clearly we'll have to practice up for next year's Party! :)

Paging Dr. King....

The nurses at the Surgery Center gave these things to Nicholas when he got his tubes. Today was the first day he's tried them on.

This evening the yellow hospital jammies were resurrected to complete the "scrubs" effect. He gave all of us tubes in our ears so we could hear better. I imagine we'll be seeing more of this outfit in the days to come!

Charlotte Stats - 12 months

We had Charlotte's 1-year appointment today -

Height - 31 inches
Weight - 19 lbs 12 oz

That makes her 25% weight and 95% height!

We skipped shots since she has a cold, some scratchiness in one of her lungs and one ear that's a tad infected. She's on 10 days of antibiotics at which point we'll go back to make sure she's in good shape, and give her the immunizations she needs. Besides this little sickness, everything else is right on track.

The Wagon Ventures Out

Is that joy or what?