This week in Kindergarten Robyn's class talked about "community helpers:" police officers, teachers, fire fighters, and doctors. For years Robyn has said she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, and the conversations at school brought that interest back to the forefront. The long-scattered doctor's kit was reassembled and for days Dr. Robyn has been making house calls to various siblings, parents, and stuffed animals.
To go along with their pretend play it occurred to me that it wouldn't be hard to make up a handful of felt band-aids, especially since I was already sitting at the sewing machine when the thought struck. And since whipping up band-aids sounded positively whimsical compared to wrestling the horrid piece of cheap satin I've been doing battle with this week as part of making Christmas dresses, it didn't take much deliberating before suddenly we were in the medical supply business. A few scraps of felt, some leftover grosgrain ribbon, and fifteen minutes later we had band-aids.
No flesh-colored bandages here! (Unless you're a smurf.)
Since the band-aids were made of felt they actually stuck to surfaces surprisingly well...including baby clothes.
Poor baby apparently was in pretty bad shape: good thing Dr. Robyn was there to patch him back together!
Our Thanksgiving tree made quite the band-aid magnet.
It started with Matthew. I put him up on the counter to keep me company while making brownies. Then Robyn slid over a chair and hopped up to play with Matthew. Then along came Amber to hang out with Robyn. Then Katie realized something was going on--without her! forbid!--and climbed up too. I turned around and suddenly it was obvious that brownie batter was no longer the sweetest thing on my counter.
Just in case your blog reader isn't already bursting with posts about pumpkins and other October festivities, we thought we better put up a few pictures. Just in case. After all, we'd hate for anyone to be deprived of their annual fall-photos fix. (Besides, I promised certain grandparents I really would finally update the blog!)
A few weeks ago Bryan's folks were able to drive up here for a last-minute weekend. Even though it was a quick trip, we really enjoyed being able to see them and the girls were glad to have grandparents along for a trip to our favorite pumpkin patch.
Getting to ride in the wheel barrow out to the patch was probably one of the girls' favorite parts of the day.
They miiiiiiiight be getting a little old for the whole wheel barrow thing though. Good thing Daddy's strong!
Grandma sneaking some snuggles while keeping baby warm. (We are fiercely in denial here that winter is actually going to come.)
Family photo. Everyone say, "Apple Cider Donuts!"
Although we bought the pumpkins early in the month, we waited until Family Home Evening just a few days before Halloween to carve them, thinking they would last longer that way. Katie was pretty traumatized by the whole thing once she realized we were going to actually start cutting up her beloved little pumpkin. I could almost here Charlie Brown's little friend Linus wailing, "You didn't tell me you were gonna kill it! Auuughhh!" when she started crying. Poor Katie!
Robyn had no qualms about gutting her little guy.
You might notice Amber's pumpkin is a little teeensy bit larger than the others. This is not (necessarily) because we love her more than the other kids. On the Saturday before Halloween Amber brought her cute little pumpkin from the patch upstairs to our room, which also happens to be pretty much the only carpeted room in the house. She walked in, announced, "I think my pumpkin is getting mushy," then accidentally dropped it on the floor. Shplatt. The next comment was Amber calming saying something like, "It looks like throw-up," followed by Bryan going, "AAAAAhhh! AAAAAAhhh! AAAAAhhh!" At that point I leaped out of the shower in the master bathroom expecting to find burglars or dead bodies. Discovering Amber's pumpkin reduced to the consistency of oatmeal in a pile on our carpet wasn't that far off.
Since we were then effectively down a pumpkin, Amber and I made a quick run to the grocery store Monday morning, just in time to gawk in amazement at all the empty shelves as shoppers frantically bought bread, milk, batteries, and water ahead of Hurricane Sandy. Thankfully, most people apparently don't consider giant pumpkins emergency essentials, so there were still piles of gargantuan, grocery-store-style, pumpkins waiting for us. Rather than race off to a farm to find something smaller before the storm hit, we coughed up the cash for this big fellow and called it a day.
Pumpkins beware!
Spooooky!
Matthew slept through most of the carving activity.
He probably wishes he'd slept through all of it.
Really, though, with a pumpkin that big we just HAD to know if it was big enough for him to fit. :)
I suppose wearing a pumpkin was good practice for Baby's Halloween costume. I remember buying our little pumpkin outfit on clearance Halloween afternoon when Robyn was about eight months old so we could go to a party with Bryan's sisters that evening. It never occurred to me that someday we'd be on baby number four and still using it.
Our sweet little pumpkin.
Not having to make Matthew a costume also freed up time to have a lot of fun with the girls' clothes.
Amber really wanted to be a fairy this year. While we were brainstorming how to do it (we didn't want to necessarily be a Tinker Bell-esque fairy) we came across the book Flower Fairies by Cicily Mary Barker at the library and loved the old-fashioned illustrations.
It didn't take long before we were smitten with the beautiful pictures and decided Amber would be a flower fairy instead of a Disney fairy. I especially like how the vest turned out with all of it's bright pink petals.
On the other hand, Robyn has wanted to specifically be Disney's Rapunzel for a good year now (seriously: since last November 1!). I had a really good time putting her costume together. I think I look forward to doing costumes so much each year because you can do so much more in terms of trims, colors, and styles than you could ever get away with on a Sunday dress. I think I probably have as much fun making them (most of the time...there are definitely moments--most of them involving my dear friend Mr. Seamripper--when I want to skip the whole business :) as they do getting to dress up. The striped sleeves and long yellow yarn hair were my favorite parts of this one.
Posing on the stairs. I hadn't finished the hair yet in this picture, but you can see it in some of the other ones.
This must be the year of the yarn over here, because Katie also got to wear a woolly wig. I was so excited to have Katie be a Raggedy Ann! She didn't know who Raggedy Ann was going into it, but she loves baby dolls and she loves the color blue, so she was game after I explained it and showed her some pictures. I've always had a soft spot for Raggedy Ann and it was fun to turn our sweet little Katie into a living doll.
Our very own "RaggeggyAnn" as Katie calls herself.
Plus it was a great excuse to play with a retro pattern my mother gave me a while ago. I added an apron to the bib to make it a pinafore and I figure, minus the striped pants and wig, it can also work as a Sunday dress. (And if it still looks too Raggedy Ann-ish we can replace the pinafore with a red ribbon around the waist.)
Ahh...children of the 80's!
I also decided to make Katie a Raggedy Ann doll of her own. Decades ago my mom made me a blonde Raggedy Ann that I loved and I really liked the idea of being able to give Katie something like that from me. I figured it would be an afternoon project. HA!!! Turns out the darn little doll was by far (by FAR!) the most difficult Halloween sewing of the year. I got my first clue that we were in trouble when I had to cut out THIRTY pattern pieces. Thankfully, Katie loves her dolly (she's gone everywhere with her: bus stop, grocery store, etc.), so all the muttering under my breath at itsy-bitsy three-dimensional seams was, as dorky as it sounds, totally worth it.
Our Raggedy Ann's own Raggedy Ann doll.
And, as a bonus, Bryan likes it because it means Katie's costume is now fractal. Cool.
With costumes and pumpkins done we were ready to face all the fun of Halloween itself. Below are a few pictures from our various holiday activities this week.
The Church's Fall Festival:
Amber giddy with excitement at the ward Fall Festival that was scheduled, canceled, and then un-canceled following Sandy's fickleness.
Robyn trying to catch a donut without using hands. Imagine a dog trying to chase it's tail and you'd get the general idea. She didn't actually get it until it finally fell off on it's own. She was also the first child to try it at the Fall Festival and no one else wanted to try after they saw how hard she had to work for her donut!
The Fall Festival was the only time Katie let me put make up on her to go with her costume, and even then she only let me do her cheeks. While my dreams of drawing a triangle nose and cute little lower lashes just like a Raggedy Ann were dashed, we all still survived. :)
Being a "Room Mother" for Robyn's Kindergarten Halloween Party.
Robyn's teacher said it was ok if Katie tagged along for the fun, which was great! She seemed to fit right in with the Kindergarteners.
Katie even walked in the parade costume parade with Robyn.
This is a picture of Robyn's classroom during the party. She has the greatest teacher and is loving Kindergarten!
And, finally, Trick-or-Treating. It was a cold, wet, Halloween, so we did the whole coats-over-costumes thing. <Nostalgic Sigh> It reminds me of Minnesota where you were lucky if your pumpkin wasn't buried under a foot of snow.
Had to take a picture at this house for all of my apple-loving in laws.
The last stop: one final piece of candy from mom to round out a week full of sweets and treats.
We are hopelessly behind on posting pictures, but before just throwing our hands up in the air and giving-up on catching-up, I had to at least share these. My parents came out to NY for Matthew's baby blessing in September. It just so happened that the weekend they were in town there was also a sale on fat quarters at JoAnns, so, even though we were crazy busy, I begged them to let me run in and grab some. Dah Dee Doh very graciously offered to entertain the girls in the store while Mom and I careened over to the calicoes.
Later that week when we exchanged photos we were surprised to discover these pictures on Dad's camera. And now we know what Dah Dee Doh does in a fabric store. And guess what? It isn't look at fabric...
Besides living dangerously with Dah-Dee-Doh, we played hard doing more
traditional children's activities in Minnesota. Here's a round up of
the rest of our visit to the great midwest:
The Mall of America. No trip to Minnesota is complete without a stop at the "Great and Spacious Building." We went for Toddler Tuesdays, which meant free kid entertainment, free kids meals at some of the restaurants, and reduced-cost tickets for the rides at Nickelodeon Universe.
Coloring while waiting for the Toddler Tuesday show to start at the Mall of America. Can you guess what Katie's favorite color is right now?
Old Navy had free balloons-on-a-stick. (There's a helium shortage after all, dontchaknow... :)
Playing at the Lego tables in Lego Land. This is Bryan's "happy place."
Grandma even splurged and treated the kids to a few kiddie rides at
Nickelodeon Universe in the mall. Hopefully Robyn's real bus next week doesn't go up, down, and around the way this one did!
The girls were squealing with glee on this ride: you'd have thought we were at Disneyworld, not in a mall!
Yeah...I think they had fun. Although the rides might have scrambled Amber's brain a little?
From the biggest mall to the smallest shop. Grandma had read an article in the newspaper about a funny store that stocked all sorts of bizarre sodas and candies which she and Bryan tracked down while I visited a good teacher-friend from middle school one afternoon.
Lollipops as big as your head and brands of soda you've never heard of = lots of fun for Bryan.
Each of the girls got to pick out a treat. Robyn found an assortment of candy jewelry and Katie found the world's fattest Smarties.
Dad took Thursday and Friday off from work, which gave us a chance to visit the Como Zoo and the Minnesota Children's Museum all together.
The Como Zoo is different from the Minnesota Zoo (and it's free, which is awesome) and I have to admit I haven't been there in years. In fact, the last time I actually remember going I think I was eight, and all I really remember from that trip was feeling really really hot, eating a bomb pop to try and cool off, then going home and being so feverish I had crazy dreams and talked in my sleep about "purple fingers."
Bryan's convinced it's ALWAYS cold in Minnesota. It would help if we stopped visiting on the coldest weeks of the summer. Having to wrap up in blankets to stay warm on picnics isn't helping my let's-move-to-Minnesota campaign.
Posing on the giant tortoise statue at the Como Zoo.
Thought this Lion taking a nap in his pool kind of looked like a gigantic hamster. (Right? Or am I crazy?)
Ahh...the big Don monkey statue. I *do* remember him from my childhood. (My Dad's name happens to be Don...)
Group shot sitting in the Como Zoo Conservatory. The Conservatory was actually much much cooler than I remembered.
Katie using her zoo map as a spyglass to keep an eye on Grandma and Dah-Dee-Doh.
Since we did the zoo on Thursday, that left the Children's Museum for Friday. We currently have a Children's Museum membership that admits us to museums all around the country, but starting in April 2013 the ACM (Association of Children's Museums) is changing their policy and from that point forward membership will only get you half-priced admission at museums on their list. That was good motivation to squeeze in a trip to the Minnesota Children's Museum on this trip while it was still free.
Matthew eyes the big fuzzy frog puppet warily.
It was all monkey business at the Curious George exhibit.
Robyn
especially loved the neighborhood area of the museum where she got to
dress up like a mail carrier (just can't say "mail-woman"...sounds like
too much of an oxymoron!) and deliver letters.
The oh-so-rare Amber turtle in it's natural habitat.
Robyn looking rather Glinda-esque with the giant bubbles.
Katie was especially fun to play with at the Children's Museum, earning herself a few extra pictures in the blog post:
So much fun!
They had an art room where the kids were supposed to try making different textures in clay using dinosaurs. Katie quickly decided that was a perfect waste of good play toys and before long we were having a dinosaur parade on the floor.
This was the biggest hoot. There was a play doctor's office where Katie fell in love with a lifelike little baby dolly. Apparently we express affection in our home by changing diapers, because that is what Katie did over and over and over. And, lacking any wet wipes, she did what any good mom would do and improvised, wiping him again and again with a stuffed small intestine from the anatomy display. Appropriate.
Besides exploring every attraction aimed at small children in the twin cities metro area, Bryan and I also had a chance to reconnect with some old friends. I'm kicking myself for not getting pictures of most of these get togethers--we must have been too busy enjoying the company!--but we did have a wonderful time seeing good friends from bygone days.
I did manage to remember to snap a few pictures of my friend Kirsta's baby shower though. I especially like the group shot of all of us. Hard to believe we've been friends more than half our lives at this point!
Kirsta trying on the baby's hoodie towel.
This watermelon baby buggy was our contribution to the spread.
And this is how it looked shortly before the shower when Bryan and Dah-Dee-Doh turned it into a rat-mobile....
Although it seemed like we were go-go-going most of the time we were in Minnesota, we did manage to sneak in a little time for the low-key good-stuff that makes going to Grandma's so fun.
Like eating homemade lemon-vanilla ice cream:
And watching movies in the basement:
And enjoying sweet Grandma-baby snuggles:
Thanks for letting us come visit! There's just no place like Grandma's!!
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