In Her Mouth

I keep waiting for Amelia to stop putting everything in her mouth. Once she does, we'll be able to have so much fun. Until then, we handle the days where we're stuck inside with many short activities. Short because I end up having to stop them due to everything ending up in her mouth. *sigh* I am encouraged because all of her friends are doing the exact same thing; so this too shall pass.

 

We had our deck replaced this week! And a bolt in a tire. These two things kept us home bound for 2 days, so we dragged the water table inside and filled it with beans for play. It's been a favorite, although we're still working on not eating 'play beans'.

She discovered that she can sit on the bottom shelf of the island and still play; she dragged the table around herself.

We spent a lot of time watching the workers tear up boards and replace them.

Playdough

It's done and I love it! No more worries about massive splinters for Amelia!

Yup, Daddy was home. Their fancy special pump in Wyoming was (and is) still broken. So he kept moving his flights back. So we had a semi-normal few days where he went to the office and came home to play.

Food is fun! 

We get a kick out of the way her hair stands out after being in a pony tail all day.

"Why fold towels when you an read me a book?"

Since we're in a townhome, we don't mow or rake or take care of the leaves across the yards. I'm not sure if this leaf pile in a corner of the parking lot was kid-made or windblown, but we went and sat in it to see if we'd like playing in the leaves. She liked throwing them up and watching them fall. But not so much sitting in them. Thankfully, she didn't try eating them. During this visit.

But this neighbor's cart was way better than leaves. We pretty much have to stop and sit in it every time we come home.

Airplane!

Is this child labor?

Halloween Cupcake!

So when you sit down to consider your kid's halloween costume, you never dream that you'll plan it entirely around the fact that your kid has very little tolerance for hats/hoodies/headgear. I may have been diligent in keeping sunhats on her, but I didn't want to battle a halloween costume that involved head gear.

Introducing Amelia the Cupcake!

(chocolate of course!) 

One of our local shopping centers had some activities for kiddos so we went with our friend Ethan the Lion. Most of the activities were for older kids but we had fun trick or treating at some stores.

They had a magic show in a movie theater. Since we got there early, Amelia had fun going up and down the stairs and meandering through the aisles.

The show ended up very much for older kids, so we entertained them with snacks for about 15 minutes and then decided to head out for trick or treating. You can tell by the missing frosting and cherry that Amelia was done with the costume.

Ready for lunch and nap

After dinner, ready for trick-or-treating!

Trick-or-treating was very successful in our opinion. We only hit up our little court, but many families had their lights on. About half way through, Amelia realized that she could take what was handed to her and put it in her bucket. There were a few tears when masks were used. And she tried to enter a few houses when she saw the dogs and cats inside. But overall, being outside after dark and talking with a lot of people made her giddy.

Opening and closing our front door while her parents handed out candy. (Note the pumpkin doorstop)

 

Extra Time with Daddy

We've had a lot of fun with Daddy home these past couple of weeks, and the fun was extended as there was equipment failure in Wyoming and so Daddy was told to stay home for a bit longer. We didn't argue with them. So our mornings and evenings have been full of giggles and rough-housing with Daddy; we let him work during mid-day.

We made applesauce from the apples we picked in the Shenandoah Valley.

Some late night canning will allow us to have apple sauce for some weeks!

This child is playing with our head. She doesn't eat fruit (besides bananas), unless she's standing on a chair and dancing around. Go figure.

She's still climbing on items both large and small.

So Patrick started this game with her a few weeks ago that she loves - she'll come and kiss you through the bannisters either by the front door or going upstairs. It's a sure way to get a giggle. Also, we discovered that if we hug each other or kiss each other, she's sure to come running and tug on our pant legs, wanting to be picked up for an Amelia sandwich. So we've decided that instead of calling for her over and over, we can just give each other a hug and she'll come quickly.

We have a new aquisition hanging out in our play area - a frog potty. Hopefully she'll get used to it for some weeks and we can introduce potty training more easily. It was pretty funny when Patrick took off the wrapping and she immediately sat down on it with a book (below).

I babysat for a friend whose son, Joey, is about a month older than Amelia. They had fun 'vacuuming' the kitchen and played together pretty nicely for the morning.

We had a short evening visit by Uncle Nathan! We're glad that his work brings him into town!

I went for a pot lid and they were all gone! Then I caught her in the act of reorganizing the pot lids in the hutch in the dining room.

We took a short afternoon visit to a county park that also has a working depression-era farm. We got to see piglets and other animals.

Amelia had fun with Mommy's scarf and bracelet after she went to our church's women's tea.

First introduction to an uncut pineapple.

What's the most fun thing about a pumpkin farm to a 1 year old?

The slides of course!

We took Amelia to the same farm/pumpkin patch that we did last year (it's pretty popular around here) and she would ask to go down the slides over and over and over. We had to call it quits so we could see the rest of the farm before lunch/nap time. There are a lot of slide photos; I really did try to pick the ones where you could see how much she loved it.

We stopped to visit the animals.

Goat petting area

And then there were more slides

They have a "Farm Chores" pavilion where kids can pretend to do just that. Turns out that the parents end up doing most of the work...so here is Daddy pumping water so Amelia's ducky can float through the race course.

She also could have camped out at this play area. The kids were to scoop the dried corn into their plastic pots and then (be carried up the stairs) dump them on a conveyor belt where they dropped off the end and bounced everywhere and made a lot of great noise. Amelia actually understood that scooping corn meant that she got to pour it on the belt and was happy to do so.

Last year we held out on her and didn't let her drink the apple cider. This year she got to taste it and definitely kept asking for more.

The corn crib was also a favorite. She had fun scooping the dried corn and dumping it into Daddy's hands. It was a little harder here to convince her that it wasn't for eating herself.

Picking out her pumpkin to take home.

Attempting a photo with all of the pumpkins.

She was ready for a nap, and this photo is too funny not to post it!

But we did wrangle one sweet family photo out of her.

Yay for autumn!