No eggos, just chicken, thanks

That pretty much sums up the last few days... the randomness of a couple of toddlers.

Let's back up a little bit. Last Sunday morning (at 8:30 AM) we ventured off to the NC State Fair. My mom (aka Memere) was at the beach with her high school buddies, so my dad (aka Poppy) tagged along too. Aunt Dithy was in town, so she also joined in the fun. It was a GORGEOUS day - perfect for the fair. The kids had fun looking at all the animals and mimicking the sounds. Did you know that a CHICKEN says "COP-a-doodle-doo?" Last time I checked, a ROOSTER says "cock-a-doodle-do" but there is no sense in arguing with a 2 year old about such trivial things. Even little Kate got into the cows and their MOOOOO-ing. It was cute. Here are a few pictures, but you can check out the "Mat's Mac" link too.


Pot belly pig races


Kate's ready for a nap


Brett and Todd cruising


Time to go fishin'


Back to cruisin' for babes


Ginormous Smokey the Bear


Equally amazed by something...


Blurry, but cute - those pumpkins were over 600 pounds!!


Aunt Dithy, take me over there!


Let me in! I'm NOT too little!

Wednesday morning was Costume Parade day at the ECLC (Brett's school). Out of 12 kids, I think that 8 of them were in tears at any given moment, but it was cute either way. I'd never thought about how they actually travel from Point A to Point B with 12 kids and only 2 adults. They have 12 colored rings, all tied together with a LONG rope. Each kid grabs a ring and off they go - 12 kids in a row. In the process of going from the classroom to the courtyard, they managed to wrap themselves around a pole - I couldn't help but to laugh. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the chaos known as the Costume Parade!












Pretty impressive - they're ALMOST all facing the same direction at the same time!

I'll leave you with the conversation between Brett & Todd tonight:

Todd: "Brett, do you want to eat Eggos with Daddy tomorrow morning for breakfast."
Brett: "No eggos, just chickens"
Todd: "No, Brett - EGGOS, not EGGS"
Brett: "no EGGOS, just CHICKENS"

Costume Practice

We just did a quick trial run of the costumes for this week. Brett is Towmater (from the Cars movie) and Kate is a lady bug fairy. They're so excited about their costumes - at least for today!





On an unrelated note, did you know that Christmas is only 2 months away?!?!? I take after my mom and mother-in-law and I'm done with at least a good chunk of my shopping! For those of you that are still in denial and wait to shop with the rest of the normal people, I set up a nice little site for your shopping convenience. Basically, it's a list of ideas so that you don't have to think that hard, at least for us. By all means, if you see something that you like better, go for it! Some of you out there should return the favor - I'm really stumped on some of these "perfect" present ideas! Welcome to the holiday season!

Pumpkins, and Doctors, and Fun - OH MY!

Whew - what a week it's been! We'll do a quick run down:

Sunday - Marquette Alumni visit to cheer on the Green Bay Packers to a victory!
Monday - Pumpkin carving day at school
Tuesday - Kate's well check and both kids' flu shots (more on this later)
Wednesday - Our snack day at school, parent meeting/breakfast at school, mommy worked the rest of the day
Thursday - Rhyme Time and then mommy worked again until 9pm
Friday - visit with Aunt Erin and to the park and to McDonald's (for apple dippers, of course) and now everyone is home resting, and mommy is typing (and thinking that she wants to rest too!)

Ok, so backing up to Tuesday - Kate's 15 month well-check. Developmentally, she is doing FANTASTIC! She can already pass the 18 month ASQ with flying colors - yay Kate! She is 30.25 inches tall (50th percentile) and she is 18 pounds, 7.5 ounces. If you click here, you can see that Kate weighed 18 pounds, 15.5 ounces at her last exam, 3 months ago. Needless to say, everyone is concerned that she's not gaining weight. She's dropped down to less than 3rd percentile on her charts. She's always been petite, but she WAS still growing on her own little curve. Now she's fallen well below her own little curve, so now we're back to weight checks again. We go back in a month to see how much she weighs then. In the mean time, we're working hard at increasing her calories and making sure that she gets 3 good meals and 2 snacks a day. I feel like all I think about now is what to feed Kate again in 2 hours.

The day after her appointment, while we were at the breakfast at Brett's school, I was talking to another mom who happens to have gone through this before with her son. She gave me several good ideas and told me that they see a great specialist at Duke if we have to go that far. I'm trying not to overreact and hope that we don't have to go that far, but it's good to know that there's someone to talk to about it all!

Let's see - what other funny things happened this week??? Oh, Brett got a small black eye at school on Wednesday. Apparently one of the kids tried to take his precious car. Oops! At least he was the one receiving the black eye and not giving the black eye! Of course, I haven't seen the other kid...

There were several funny things that happened this week that made me think that I really need to bust out the video camera and get some new video uploaded. I'll get there, eventually.

No pictures today (sorry). I forgot my camera when we went to the park this morning, but I think that Aunt Erin got some good ones, so I'll harrass her for some copied pictures. In the mean time, stay tuned for state fair pictures (Sunday), Costume Parade (Wednesday) and, of course, Halloween Party and Trick-or-Treating (Friday). Whew - another BUSY week!

Oh - and one more thing - a quick CONGRATS to our friends, Marci & Manuel, on the birth of their baby girl, Gabriella! We can't wait to see lots of pictures!!

Big hat, little girl

This is Kate's version of cheering on the Pack during Sunday's game!

Ma & Pa's Visit

Sorry for the delay in posting - we've had a BUSY week! Grandma & Grandpa came down for a visit and it was packed with fun stuff to do! We played outside almost every day, and we went to the airplane park, and Rhyme Time at the library, and lots of other fun stuff! Here are a few pictures from our action-packed week!


Watching the Packer's game and reading truck books - life is good!


Running down the "runway" at the airplane park


Kate was running too, but she's easily distracted!


Little ham or big cheese?


Showing off the dalmation that he made for his fire truck!


Making playdough bracelets with Grandma!


Posing for a quick pic with Baby Tad


Why doesn't this look like a good idea??


Little man


Kate looks concerned


More bubbles, Mom! More bubbles!


Miss Tiffani doing the monthly haircut


Pumpkins!


Someone alert the authorities - Kate is ACTUALLY smiling in a picture!

Pumpkin patch!

While Todd and I were at work on Thursday, Memere (that's Grandma Crovitz) took Brett & Kate to the pumpkin patch to pick out their own pumpkins. It looks like they had a blast, and they couldn't wait to show us their very own pumpkins as soon as we got home!



We're getting all ready for Halloween at home. We decorated the house this past weekend. Brett and Kate each have their costumes. Brett is going to be Tow Mater (again) and Kate is going to be a lady bug fairy, even though she wanted to be Lightning McQueen.

Success!

Brett finally had a GREAT day at school yesterday!!! He participated and ate snack and actually let go of his precious cars!!! Yay, Brett! Let's hope this keeps up :)

(Sorry, no pictures today...)

Fish and preschool update

Brett's day at school went MUCH better yesterday - yay! He only cried for a total of 15 minutes ALL day. When Todd got there at 11:15 to pick him up early (like we'd been doing), they said that he had done so well that we could just leave him until regular dismissal at 12:00. He was so excited to see us when he got out. I asked him what he did and he said "played with cars." The teacher said that he didn't really participate in the craft, but she didn't want to push it until he gets more comfortable being there in general. They've been talking about fish and reading fish stories and stuff. One of their crafts yesterday was to paint some paper plate fish. Since Brett didn't really do his, and I was looking for a time filler in the afternoon, I made our own paper plate fish and busted out some finger paint to let the kids go at it! Brett & Kate both had a blast, and they even let me help too!

Preschool Park

Brett is doing better adjusting to school, but he's still not quite there. We are making every attempt to help him in any way possible, so we thought it might be good to let him go play on the playground one day while school was out. So, Saturday morning - off we went. By now, Brett has been on the playground enough that he understands the "rules" - you go UP the steps and DOWN the slide, on your bottom, feet first. So that's what he did, about 100 times! He played on the other stuff too, and even let Kate play with him some! Meredith went with us, and Todd met us there after the gym. We took an obscene number of pictures, so here are a few (or 14).

Chalk Fun!

Fall has finally arrived in NC, and we have to take full advantage of the 2 weeks out of the year that we actually see highs in the 70s. Today, while I was unloading groceries, the kids found their sidewalk chalk and insisted that we draw, a lot. Brett drew lines while dictating that I draw more complicated things like cars, buses, trucks, and butterflies. Don't ask me where the butterfly fit into "cars, buses, and trucks," but it did. Kate is starting to get the concept too, but spends more time rubbing it on her pants and trying to eat the chalk. We'll get there eventually :)