Back on track for the rest of October

Okay, let's give this a shot.  Hopefully Blogger is working properly again.  So I'm picking up where I left off, at our visit to the pumpkin patch in mid-October.

Liam picking out a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch

We got a really big pumpkin, too

Robin always loves bounce houses of all shapes and sizes

There was also an inflatable tent filled with blowing air and blowing balloons.

Both boys thoroughly enjoyed it

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After the pumpkin patch, we headed to my parents' house (we were in Longmont anyway, so it was easy.)  They put the boys to work helping rake their leaves

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Or was that to play with their leaves?

With Dada's help, they made a "house," or at least the floorplan of a house, out of leaves

I decided to jump in a pile

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Liam's just so darn cute, I take lots of pictures of him

On a particularly windy day in October, I decided to bring kites along to our playgroup

I have a very awesome parafoil kite that is very strong.

I probably shouldn't have used such a long line on an easy-to-unroll spool when four-year-olds were involved.

Suffice it to say, it got pretty high in the air and took a LONG time for me to reel in.

Oh well.  The kids had fun.

All of them

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Robin liked it so much he wanted to go out again later, though we don't have much of a kite-flying space near our house.  We went to a nearby empty lot, the best we had, and tried again.  Robin grew bored this time, though, and decided to take pictures instead.  Most were throwaways, but this one was neat.

A few Robinisms:
He says "Ma-rote" instead of "remote"
He uses the word "Menu" instead of "recipe" or "instructions"

Robin is absolutely in love with making books right now.  He's brought a fair number home from preschool, pages stapled together, sometimes with pictures, sometimes with random letters or real words, sometimes just containing squiggles.  He'll decide he's making the dinner menu while we're cooking, and will make a book, then ask us what we want to eat, and then ask us how to spell each food.  He's going through our stock of scrap paper at an alarming rate, but he's also getting good practice in for eventual reading.

One day at dinner, Robin said, "Do you want to hear my first joke?  The chicken crossed the road!"  (Laughs uproariously.)  "Do you want to hear my second joke?  The bike crossed the road and hit the chicken and the chicken got dead!"  (Laughs uproariously again.)

Liam's got a lot of words in his repertior now, and he learns new ones every day, it seems.  Today he suddenly came up with "choo choo."  Liam's really at a wonderful age, where he still wants to cuddle and comes running for comfort, but is also growing into an individual and making lots of discoveries.  He loves sharing his discoveries and is rarely defiant.  A year and a half is an awesome age!