Ob la dee, Ob la da

The weather has turned cool, the days are getting shorter, and all of a sudden it seems like we're entering the holiday season.  Already?  Sheesh!  This post is dedicated to memorializing the little things my kids do nowadays, so I don't forget someday what four was like.

My Skylar, concentrating on drawing a kitty face on a mini-pumpkin.  She takes her artwork very seriously, and produces volumes of it weekly at school and home.  One of her best drawings is posted on the door to her classroom at school right now, showing herself, Paige, and four friends in a row, under the sun.  Once I get it home, I'll post a picture.  She always draws herself with lots of curly hair.

Paige and Skylar posing with the pumpkins they designed and assisted with carving.  To avoid the frozen cheesy smile they both have perfected, I had them look "scared" at each other.   Paige came up with the toothpick kitty ears, and then all four mini-pumpkins had to have them, of course.

They really wanted to hold the carved pumpkins, and these were the lightest/least likely to impale them with sharp points.  Note their same-but-different outfits.  They do this a lot lately - find similar outfits in different patterns so they coordinate.  They love each other dearly.  

Posing with some of our Goodwill Halloween decorations and my birthday bench from Gramma Mary on the front porch.  My first self timer picture with my new camera.  Not too bad.  

Behold, Her Majesties the Cupcake Fairy and Bee Princess.  Outfits are store bought and enhanced with accessories - wings and wands, and a fairy princess hat - handed down by cousins K & A.  We got all spiffed up and went to a Halloween Party with some of our original Birth to Three friends.  I'll spare you the pictures of Jim as Steve Jobs and me as an iPhone.  I did have fun joking that he invented me to please him.

My Paige, peeking up over the bus seat on the shuttle back to the car at the Mt Pisgah Mushroom Festival.  You can just barely see the Cinderalla face painting she requested.  She's holding her sparkly spider ring from Gramma Rotzie.  She's loving gymnastics class (particularly the trampoline and the swing) and has finally passed the 30 pound mark.  She can hold her weight up pretty well on the bars, and was doing very speedy somersaults with no hands last week.

The FM system continues to be a real asset for Skylar in the classroom.  Check out this link to an amazing video demonstrating the benefits of FM, and thanks to Annie Z for sending the link.

We've also started a weekly language class at the U of O, where S is the only hard-of-hearing child in a class of three with various language delays.  But the class offers two graduate students per family plus a program supervisor, speech assessment, activities, and reports, all the while supporting her IFSP goals and coordinating themes and sounds with her speech therapy appointments.  With this and gymnastics our schedule is full, but as someone recently commented, the kids have their whole lives to be over scheduled.  :-)