Let Me Hear You ROAR!!

Perfect

And as if that wasn't cuteness overload enough...

Safe to say we had a great Halloween with this little munchkin. Looking forward to many more!

Forever Flowers

So the other day Darrell wanted to get me flowers because he knew I'd had a few rough days at home with William, but he was out of his allowance money so he couldn't afford to buy me any (yes, we do allowances, and yes, it works incredibly well. I can't tell you how many "money" arguments we've probably avoided because of our allowance system). His solution? Make me a bouquet.

Is that not awesome? And I think I like it even more than a "real" bouquet because it'll last forever. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if he had used those scented markers--do you remember those? I don't know if I ever actually colored with them; I think I just periodically took the caps off and smelled them. (Actually... Now that I think about it... I'm pretty sure the markers were my sister's and I was forbidden from using them, which was why I just took the lids off to smell them without actually coloring. My sister and I were not exactly "buddy-buddy" growing up.)

Sneak Peak!

We took William's six-month photos a few weeks ago, and while we are still waiting on all the images, we just got a few sneak peaks that I have to share!

 

Love our little family!!

Baby "Suspenders"

When we got dressed up to go to the Speakeasy last month, we needed a cute mafia-esque costume for William. I started by perusing Amazon, and found some definite winners.

Can anyone say Mafia boss? All he is missing is a semi-automatic rifle

I think this is awesome--mafia party or not!

However, $20+ was a little more than we were looking to pay for something William would pretty much only wear once. And since Darrell wasn't planning to do anything too extreme for his outfit (black pants, white shirt, suspenders, tie, and fedora), we decided we could keep William's outfit simple as well--black pants, white onesie, and suspenders. Rather than buy a pair of suspenders (that again--he'd probably only wear once), I figured this would be a good opportunity for me to do some crafting; it didn't seem like it could be that hard to create a pair of suspenders fit for William. And you know what? It wasn't!

Here are the only supplies I needed:

A yard-ish of strap material from Hobby Lobby, black pants, and my sewing kit (with needle, thread, and hook and eyes)

All I did was sew the strap inside the front of the pants and the eye in the back, and then I put William into the pants and pulled the straps over him to figure out where I should sew the hook. Easy-peasy! And super cute when finished!

Although the suspenders worked plenty well, I would definitely do a few things differently if I were to do something like this again. For starters, I would get straps that had some elasticity to them; it would have been nice to have been able to sew them a little short and then stretch them to fit so that they stayed on his shoulders better through the night. On a similar note, I wish I hadn't bothered with the hook and eye at all; safety pinning the straps to the back of his pants would have guaranteed a much better fit, and I doubt the pins would have been uncomfortable for him. Live and learn, though--I'm still pretty new to this whole crafting business!

Lightning

Back in August, my book club decided that it might be fun to try reading a love story since that was a little different type of novel than what we had been reading (and no--I'm not talking like a trashy romance novel). So, we pulled out our handy smart phones and did some Googling. One of the girls found a list of "Best Love Stories for Book Clubs"; seemed like a pretty good place to start, right? One of the first novels on the list was Lightning by Dean Koontz. If you are thinking "so what?", then you have clearly never read any Dean Koontz. I, however, went through a serious Dean Koontz reading phase (we'll ignore the fact that I was in late middle school/early high school and the books were probably waaaay inappropriate), and was shocked that one of his books would be on a list of best love stories. One of the other girls echoed my sentiments, and because curiosity got the better of us, we decided to give the book a shot.

While I will definitely agree that the book has a "love story" element, everything else about it is very typical Dean Koontz--lots of thrills, suspense, science fiction/fantasy, and a few murders for good measure. And while Dean Koontz may not be typical book club fare, we did actually have a pretty good discussion about the book's approach to fate/destiny. I don't think anyone regretted that we read this book--although I'm not sure we'll be rushing back to read more Dean Koontz anytime soon.

As someone who has read and enjoyed lots of Dean Koontz, perhaps my recommendation to read this book (or anything by him) should be taken with a grain of salt. It definitely isn't going to be one of those books that changes your life and sticks with you for a long time (in fact, about halfway through, I realized that I had in fact read this one in my adolescence, but had pretty well forgotten all the major plot points. Although some of that may not be a reflection the book but rather a testament to the fact that I used to speed-read like a madwoman), but if you've never read any Dean Koontz I definitely think he is a writer that has a very unique "flair" to his novels--something that everyone should try at least once.

Time Travel

You know you are a (sleep exhausted) parent when you are discussing a problem with your spouse and the best only solution you can come up with is to build a time machine.

Yesterday was crazy busy for us and poor William was exhausted from being carted around and not napping well. As a result, he was way overtired when bedtime rolled around. And, like his parents, he twitches/startles while falling asleep, especially when he is super tired--and last night he twitched hard enough that he woke himself up three or four different times (and these weren't quick awakenings. He didn't start to twitch until he lost his pacifier, which usually took about twenty/thirty minutes after he was put in his crib. And then the startling took another ten/twenty before it got bad enough to wake him. So it was a lot of up and down for mom and dad). In trying to figure out what to do to remedy the situation, the best thing Darrell and I could think of was to build a time machine and go back to the beginning of the day and make sure we cleared our schedule enough to allow for him to get sufficient naps. And since I'm still here today complaining about the situation, it's safe to assume that our plan was unsuccessful.

Fun at the Orchard

So even though I have pretty terrible time management and soccer consumed waaaaaay more of my fall than I wanted it to, I still tried to make sure we had time to start a few fun fall traditions. And really, this isn't exactly a new tradition; Darrell and I have gone to the apple orchard a few times in previous years; this year we just brought William along! I really don't know how much of the trip he appreciated, and I'm pretty sure he just thought apples were fun new toys to suck/gum on, but eventually he'll learn how awesome it is. For this year, it was fun just to enjoy the nice day and have him be content taking part in the activities from his Ergo carrier. Because I know those days are numbered--soon enough he'll be scampering to the tops of the trees trying to get the highest apples!