Sniffles

A new month means a new daddy date (yes, I do realize, it's kind of halfway through the month now). This time they went ice-skating. Rhianwen was SO excited. She drew a picture of it before they went. She loved it once they got a walker for her...or should I call it a skater? They skated for 2.5 hours! You can see her glide and even hop in the video below:

Look who's raking the leaves voluntarily! They have been waiting and waiting until there were enough to rake into a pile for jumping. They are quite a duo and definitely feed off each other most days. I went to vote and had to take everyone with me in the evening before supper. Rhianwen and Alden bounced into the building and immediately started talking to all of the poll-workers. Here's how the conversation went:

Alden to a line of poll-workers (it wasn't very busy): "What are you talking about?".

Poll-workers: "Oh, nothing much. What is your name?"

Alden: "I'm Tigger!".

Rhianwen: "And I'm Rabbit".

Both bounce off towards mommy but then decide to clamber all over a set of wooden seats lined against a wall. Happily, a poll-worker intervened with some "I Voted" stickers to give me time to cast my votes without worry of broken necks.

They've started doing little art projects together. Alden and Rhi will both draw things on the same piece of paper and decorate it with stickers to make a complete work of art. Here they are working on our Tom Turkey for Thanksgiving. But when they are doing their own thing, it comes out with lots of colorful scribbles, waves, lines, circles, and occasionally a monster or jellyfish(Alden's contribution), and Rhianwen will fill in with people.

It's been exciting to see Corwin joining in pretend play with the kids too. He loves the castle and the people, and he also is really good at driving cars around. He even makes a Brrrm Brrm noise consistently when he drives things around.

Family devotions has been fun especially now that Corwin is joining in. Rhianwen has speculated multiple times now about how we will get to heaven. Mostly it goes like this: "We might go to heaven by dying or we might go in a chariot." We keep trying to convince her that the chariot is a very rare occurrence.

We do have our first colds of the season, but the title of the post refers to Cor-baby's new game. He loves to sniff at us and have us sniff back in return. Rhianwen did this too, but she was more open-mouthed and flamboyant about it. I didn't have any good video, but maybe soon. I just love that he is playing games now. He's also waving and pointing a lot. He loves to point to people that he likes, even if they are complete strangers. It's like he's saying to them, it's your turn. Go ahead and do something to make me smile. He says, "Hey didi!" to greet us. He's still climbing whatever he can! I can't believe I have a climber before I have a walker!

I just have to put up loads of videos of him. He's too cute.

"Hey didi!"

Drawing.

So, her printing needs work, but pretty good for not having been taught much. I'd love to take the credit, but sadly, it's just kind of happened without me.

More family togetherness. Montessori model at work...ah yes, genius. Corwin loves looking at the Very Hungry Caterpillar book. This whole blog post has made me see how much our family does things together. I am so thankful God is answering yes to our prayer for unity and a strong bond among siblings.

He's even learned to count to five using cheerios and butternut squash...just kidding.

His favorite spot out front. I keep thinking I should just make my planters into mini-sandboxes for him.

Alden with falling leaves. We have enjoyed showers of them. So magical! I love fall.

The cutest Alden quote:

Mommy (after hugging Alden goodnight): "Thank you for that strong hug."

Alden (shy smile while tucking his chin into his shoulder): "I'm a strong man....somtimes I pull down trees. Not big trees, little trees."