Halloween Bugs

Halloween night and it's rainy and blustery here in Nashville, so most neighborhoods have postponed trick-or-treating until tomorrow night. So, we "celebrated" by creeping our way home from day care on slow-rolling wet roads while the kids explored the candy in their treat bags from school. Once home, we made orange-tinted pancakes in the shape of pumpkins, witches' hats, arched-back cats, and also a lady bug and butterfly.

Why those last two? Because those are my girls' costumes, which they've enjoyed wearing a few times already and will don once again tomorrow night for the official trick-or-treating. Tomorrow also happens to be Claire's birthday, so we'll celebrate that a bit too, while I continue prepping for her farm-harvest party on Saturday!

Here are some pics of my little bugs enjoying the Halloween event at the Louisville Zoo a few weeks ago. BGC stayed behind in respite care for the weekend, but I will brag on her that she was a finalist in our neighborhood Halloween party's costume contest! She's a sweet pea in a little bunting. So cute!

There were no zombies or vampires at this kid-friendly event, but bears are what really scare my girls!

As in, a guy in a bear suit. The actual polar bears didn't bother them.

Sesame Street Mini-Party

Given how much I love throwing kid parties with a cute theme woven throughout, the thought crossed my mind earlier this year how it might work if one of our guest kids had a birthday during his or her time with us. I imagined meeting up with the child's family at a park or somewhere convenient for them (if unsupervised visits were approved, of course).

As it turned out, BGC's birthday was a few weeks ago, about six weeks after she came to us, but her family would not be able to join us for a party. I certainly wanted to celebrate her (and her mom made a point at our first supervised visit of asking me to send pictures of BGC on her birthday, party or not) but wondered what we should do. Invite a bunch of our friends and family over, like we would for Kate or Claire's birthday? Just sing to her at dinnertime, the five of us around the kitchen table? She's only one, and doesn't eat table food yet, so she wouldn't remember it or even get to enjoy a bite of cake. What to do?

As it turned out, I thought about the people who have seen and helped us care for BGC in her time with us, and I thought of our church family. Like the rest of our PKs, she has been at church at least three times a week (Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening) and everyone has welcomed and doted on her as they would any new child in our community. Since our Sunday evening service, The Road, is a smaller and more casual gathering that always includes dessert afterward, I had the idea to have a little mini-party in that time when everyone is milling around after the service, enjoying cookies or cupcakes and starting to break down the tables, sound equipment, etc.

My chosen theme was Sesame Street, mainly because I wanted to make these cute cupcakes I'd seen online! Since I was working with just a tabletop instead of a whole house (our downstairs, at least) the other thematic elements were just napkins, balloons in an Elmo basket, a little card I designed (since invites weren't necessary), and Elmo himself!

 

Claire thought the cupcakes were pretty tasty (even if she just licks the frosting off and leaves the cake!) I wish I could show you how cute BGC looked in her red dress and rainbow party bow, but here's a glimpse along with a very handsome shot of our dear pater familias.

To update/clarify on a few things: It is looking like BGC will be with us until at least April or so, and that is just fine. She fits into our family so well, being toted along to gymnastics and church and being doted on by two big sisters. We enjoy our visits with her parents and feel confident they'll work their plan and be reunited with her in the spring. She has some developmental delays, so we've started several therapies to help her catch up. (I'm so grateful to my premie-mama friend Nancy for helping me know even where to start!)

And if you don't know what "BGC" is all about, it's short for her blog alias, "Baby Girl Chandler," which itself is a reference to my favorite, most quotable show, Friends, which Matt likes to remind me began almost twenty years ago and went off the air almost ten years ago. Eeek!

Fall Fun on the Farm

 

 

You know I can't resist fun fall family excursions. On the first weekend of October (my favorite month, and it's almost over already!) we took the kids out to Lucky Ladd Farm about 30 miles away to enjoy the festivities. There were animals, mazes, slides and rides, and of course pumpkins!

 Kate fed the goats, and while Claire was interested, she was too afraid to let the goat near her hand. She walked around nonchalantly instead, hands in pockets! Somehow that seems "so Claire" to me, but I remember Kate doing that too at that age. Pockets are fun when you're almost two!

 

I love this pic. Cute kiddo with a pumpkin. She'll be two the day after Halloween, so she gets asked two questions a lot these days, occasionally mixing up the answers:

What are you going to be for Halloween, Claire?

"TWO!" 

How old will you be on your birthday, Claire?

"e-bug!" (ladybug)

The big girls enjoyed riding the barrel train (pulled by a tractor) and getting really dirty. Baby Girl Chandler mostly rode in the stroller, but enjoyed examining a pumpkin up close, too.

 

 

The corn box (like a sandbox, but with corn kernels!) provided some good sensory therapy for BGC. I don't talk about her case on here, of course, or personal details, but I'll say she does have some developmental delays and is getting various therapies. I was so glad to have my friend Nancy to advise me on where to even start getting BGC the help she needs!

Less than a week until Halloween! Thank goodness we can keep the pumpkin-themed fun going until Thanksgiving, or I'd be pretty sad.

No wild animals were harmed in the dressing of these children

Claire's 23rd Month

Claire turned 23 months yesterday, which means the big TWO is now less than a month away! I have to say, though, Claire's 23rd month might be more significant than that actual birthday milestone. She grew up so much in the last month (i.e. at the age of 22 months), due in large part to her big sister-ish status having Baby Girl Chandler in our house. BGC came to us about six weeks ago and it looks like she'll be with us another six months, at least!

Claire being attached to me as she is, I thought she would have a hard time with a smaller baby in the house, but the moment BGC came in, Claire became one of the big girls. She and Kate want to help feed the baby, dress the baby, change the baby's diapers. . . and Claire sure thinks she is big!

She loves to put the bottle to BGC's lips, let her take one suck, then pull it out and declare, "I did it!"

She now likes to pick out her own clothes (from a choice of two), buckle her own top buckle on her car seat (or any other buckle on any car seat or infant apparatus she finds), and drink from a open cup. She has strong preferences about which sippy cup she gets, when she uses them, and is quick to request one of her two favorite foods, even for breakfast: peanut butter and baked beans. And she gives a polite and perky "tan tou!" (thank you) whenever you hand her something. She's also very good at finding things. I can offhandedly wonder where my phone is, and she will find it and bring it to me.

I keep telling her that when she turns two, she'll need to use the potty and stop nursing. Those will be tough. I thought she would be easy to potty train because she wants to do everything Kate does, but for months, whenever I ask her "do you want to sit on the potty?" she says cheerfully, "No!" Then, suddenly a few weeks ago, when I opened the box of 2T clothes for fall and showed Claire the panties she gets to wear when she learns to go on the potty, she immediately wanted to sit on the potty! "Potty!" she'll exclaim, and it sounds remarkably like "Daddy!" So, she's been sitting on the potty some now, though she's only done anything in it once.

As for the nursing, she won't go easy. I thought our trip to Charleston in August would help wean her, but she was right back in the game when we returned. At 22 months, I started limiting her to bedtime only (and during the night, because YES, she still wakes up!!) and while she has had a few fits when realizing in the morning that this shop is closed, she's dealing okay. Cutting her off completely is going to be tough, though.

buckle buckle!

feed the baby!

So sad!!

Human Interest

We started letting Kate watch videos on YouTube because I wanted to fuel her enjoyment of gymnastics with videos of Olympic gymnasts and other competitive routines on bar and beam. That led to us finding videos of other little kids doing gymnastics, which I was also fine with.

One of those kids, however, turned out to be the child of a very camera-happy mom who appears to post at least one new, well-edited video per week of her three kids, complete with a theme song that plays while the kids' names appear over B-roll of the kids, like the intro to an '80s TV show or something.

Sometimes the videos feature a fun family activity, like going to a water park or doing silly makeovers on each other, and sometimes they are essentially scripted, the child gymnast acting out scenarios like what would happen if she found herself home alone, or if she woke up as a millionaire for a day. The dad is never in the videos, except for an occasional meet-him-at-the-airport video, and I get the impression that it began as an effort to show Dad what was up while he was traveling on business, or maybe off in Afghanistan or something.

In any case, Kate loves to watch this family's antics, knows the kids by name, and occasionally acts out a scenario she saw on one of their videos. I try to limit her screen time, and encourage the online videos to have their original purpose of athletic inspiration, so I get a little annoyed with her fondness for this random family.

"Why do you want to watch videos about some family you don't even know?" I might ask.

And then my words bounce back to me when I think of my blog reader. Why do I read stories about families I don't even know (or have only a tangential real life connection to)? Why do I smile when I see a new post from a blog I enjoy has popped up in my reader—complete with lots of photos from the latest family outing or birthday party?

Human interest.

The way "human interest stories" have filled glossy pages of magazines for decades, or given a "good news" angle to television news shows, blogs enable an extended glimpse into the moderately interesting lives of others—people just like us, or people not so like us.

This is why I started blogging, and it is why I started reading most of the blogs that I have enjoyed most in the past six or so years. I haven't posted here on The Parsonage Family in a month, partially because I've been busy and haven't felt like it, and partially because I confess I'm starting to get disillusioned with all the blogs that have replaced family stories and pics with sponsored posts, product reviews, and other trappings of social media success that make me feel like simple human interest isn't enough.

I applaud the success of those bloggers who are making a good supplemental income online. I still generally enjoy their posts, enter their raffles, and sometimes click on their affiliate links. . . but my favorite blogs to read are those who still embody the original meaning of the word "blog": web-log, essentially a diary or virtual family album. I love my college classmate in Texas and her play-at-home-mom adventures with her girls about the same age as mine. I love the mommy blogger in Arkansas, also with girls my own girls' age, who makes plenty of ad money on her uber-popular blog but keeps the focus on her family and on her readers. I love the single foster mom in NYC with two foster babies in a little apartment, with a vocabulary and aesthetic soooo different from all the Southern smocking and big bows of most of the blogs I read!

So, after a month's hiatus, I'm going to press on, sharing the sweetness of our little life. Here's a little glimpse of our last month:

Kate, workin' the camera as always (except when she's running from it, to be obstinate)

We visited our local farmers' market for the last time this summer. We joined a CSA, so we got to pick up a box of fresh veggies every other week!

Kate had her gymnastics "exhibition," basically a photo opp fund raiser for parents and grandparents to enjoy!

And they all got a trophy. Ugh. Don't get me started--that's another post altogether!

And I've been doing more classic scrapbook pages. Love it!

Summer Soiree

I can't believe it's already Labor Day weekend! My parents are in town and we'll be grilling out this evening. I'll have to string up the lights I got for my birthday "soiree" a couple months ago—about which I never shared here!

You may recall I'd been daydreaming about it for months, since Kate's "outsourced" fourth birthday party inspired me to plan a party for myself at my next birthday. I hung lights across our patio and crafted a variety of Pinterest-y hors d'oeuvres, and a few friends gathered to chat and sip sangria around our new adirondacks. My friend Maria did the photographic documentation for me :0)

You can find most of the recipes on my Pinterest board for the party: ginger brie bites, crab cakes, rose' sangria, caprese skewers, and of course tons of cheese!

I've been trying to share some of my various party posts on Pinterest (see the board of all of them: The Parsonage Family on Pinterest).

Check out and consider repinning:
Kate's Ice Cream Party
Claire's Rainbow Party
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails Baby Shower
Bird's Nest Baby Shower
and, just this week: A Virtual Baby Shower!

Sneak peak: I'm planning a farm/harvest theme party for Claire's second birthday in a few months. Our little foster baby has a birthday a few weeks before Claire's, so if she's still with us, we'll have to throw her a little party as well! Ideas?