Punkins

They are everywhere!! Last night we drove 40 minutes north to the little town of Piermont to see jack-o-lanterns. This little town sponsors this event each year and goes all out for it. There must have been 1000 carved pumpkins to see. Part of them were in a field, part were in a simple cornstalk maze, part were just in large arrangements on the side of the road. They were some of the most intricately carved pumpkins I had ever seen Most were anyway-- there were a few that looked like someone punched them a couple of times, put a candle in it and called it done. In any case, Dillon enjoyed walking around and spending some time with her friend Pierce, whose mother's idea it was to go see all these pumpkins in the first place.

So, today, we went to a local farmer's market and picked out a "punkin" of our very own. Still haven't decided whether to actually carve it or just leave it whole and let Dillon roll it around. I guess we'll see what the weather's like tomorrow. No way am I carving it inside. There's enough mess in the house without adding pumpkin goo to the mix! There are a couple of community sponsored Halloween events tomorrow that we're planning on attending. Of course, Dillon will be looking o-so-cute in her ladybug costume.

Just a quick note about the cute things she does. Apparently, when I put a hat on her, I often declare "cute!" afterward. The reason I know this is that she finds things to put on my head, then stands back a little and says "Cute!" :-)

Boo-boos and kisses

She has finally figured out kisses! We can say "Give me a kiss" and she'll lean in and smack her lips together. More often than not, she's just kissing air, but she's figured out the idea. She's also figured out that boo-boos are made better by kisses, so now all little hurts require kisses. Very often the babies hurt their toes and need kisses. Mom and Dad get boo-boos and need kisses. Satchmo has been the attempted target of a few kisses, but so far that's a no-go.

Speaking of Satchmo-- those two are like siblings. They torment one another endlessly. She torments him on any occasion he is sitting still in a reachable place-- like the couch. He torments her any time she has food. He steals food from her so she steals and eats his food. For a while we were letting her give him his treat after he went outside, but ended up chasing her through the house too many times trying to get the treat out of her mouth. Now she doesn't get to give Satchmo his treat anymore!

We're still working on raking up the 2 billion leaves in the yard. Dillon thinks it's pretty fun to stand in the middle of the pile you are creating. She also thinks it's fun to throw her ball into the pile. Unfortunately, the ball is only 4" in diameter and quickly drowns in the leaf pile, so that's a short-lived game! She had a good time playing in the fairly empty storage shed yesterday. "Daddy sit," "Door" (translation: close the bottom half of the door please, momma)"Dillon out, help" (translation: I want you to help me out of here so I can promptly crawl right back into her and ask you to shut the door again). We worked on "Dillon, rake leaves," but that, like giving Satchmo kisses, was a dismal failure.

Imagination

There's still lots of pretending going on around here. Her babies get lots of diaper changes. "Duckie," this obnoxious music-playing plastic duck sits at the table with her during lunch so she'll eat. Duckie gets a bite, Dillon takes a bite. But now she's starting to show her imagination. We were grocery shopping last week and I bought some canned pumpkin to make pumpkin bread. I handed it to her just to give her something to hold. She put it to her mouth and tipped it up, then said "coffee!" No, we don't give her coffee, but she does see us drink it. This evening she crawled into this rolling kitchen cart thing we have and said "Daddy! Push car!" As it was being pushed, she said "beep beep!" Lots of giggling went along with this. It's interesting to see how she is starting to pretend that an object is something else, whereas before it was mostly imitation. (I knew I needed to stop feeding the plastic duck at the table!). She's gotten a lot more into the kitchen stuff and likes to pretend she's cooking when I am. The cardboard stove I made her out of boxes and duck tape has become one of her favorite toys. She also likes it because she can move it from place to place.

We went to the park for a little while today & let her swing. It was pretty cold, so we didn't stay all that long. We did, though, come home, eat a snack and warm up, then go outside here at home. I worked on raking some leaves and Dillon worked on jumping in them. Pretty cute. She hasn't quite figured out how to throw them everywhere. Or maybe she doesn't see the need since they are already everywhere. She wanted to help rake, but gave up on it rather quickly since the pile of leaves was already as tall as she is.

All seems to be going well with Courtney coming to the house to watch Dillon on my work days. She takes her to the community playgroups which she says that Dillon really seems to enjoy. Poor Courtney, though, her car rolled down our driveway on Monday and rolled into a rock at the bottom. It did some damage to the bumper and the muffler. Thankfully she & Dillon were not in it at the time. Not sure what happened. Maybe too many leaves out there-- I better get Dillon trained on how to rake those things. She's got more energy that any of us!

At the park 


Yummy chili! 

Just a quick note tonight. We had chili tonight & Dillon enjoyed it a great deal as you can tell from the picture. She's having a night in which bedtime is meaningless. So, it's now 9:41pm and she's wandering the house just as happy as a clam while her parents are exhausted and ready for her to wear out. We don't want her to go to bed because she's tired-- it's because we're tired!! Even Satchmo wants her to go to bed. He's in his house and she's poking at him through the holes in the sides saying "doggie, doggie, house, doggie, bed, doggie, sleep." Poor Satchmo. Poor Mom & Dad.

Hiking

We went hiking on Friday! Dave got home really early, it was a beautiful day, the colors are gorgeous- we just couldn’t resist. So, we loaded up the backpack, some water and snacks and off we went for a hike around the same mountain pond that my friend Ginger & I hiked around. Dillon has now decided that the backpack is only fun for a little while and that walking is much more fun. So, needless to say, we didn’t really hike all that far despite being gone for almost 2 hours! It was fun letting her walk on the trail and to her credit, she stuck to it pretty well. Much more difficult was getting her to stay in forward motion—there are LOTS of fun things to look at in the woods. As an added bonus, she got to see a dog jump into the water, then shake all the water off. She was just in heaven!

Hiking with Daddy 

Dave was on call at the hospital yesterday, so it was just she & I. We went to the local farmer’s market in the morning. The pumpkins are starting to appear! It was fun seeing all the kids there running around the pumpkins. It’s also kind of sad to think that this particular farmer’s market shuts down in about 3 weeks until next April. That means winter is coming.

I took her to one of the local parks in the afternoon after a much-too-short nap. She’s now brave enough to climb right up on the playground equipment, walk across the little bridge thing to the spiral slide and head on down. She used to wait on me to go down with her but no more. Once she gets to the bottom, she walks right around, goes to the steps and climbs up to do it again. Of course, I’m up there to make sure she doesn’t decide to go down one of the structures that have to be climbed down. She has such a good time of it!

sliding 

It seems as though she’s getting a molar. Ugh. She’s been really emotionally fragile and everything sends her into tears. She’s also been running a mild fever. I can feel a hard, raised area in the right molar area of her mouth. It also looks a little red and swollen. Most of the rest of her teeth have come through relatively easily- this time seems to be agonizing at best. She’s also been particularly attached to her Daddy. She’s spent lots of time today cuddled up on his shoulder or in his lap. He admits that he hates it that she feels bad, but really enjoys the snuggling with her. I think she misses him a lot when he’s on call. Really, I do too.

Back to a dull roar

My apologies for the delay in posting new entries. The last 2 weeks have been pretty stressful and nothing I really wanted to document. The child care situation I referred to in the last post ended almost as quickly as it started. It was just a poor match between us and this particular lady. Each day that Dillon was there, the situation got worse. Never was it a matter of Dillon not being cared for, but just one where all parties were unhappy. She has a fairly small space that the kids spent their day in, which did not work well for Dillon who wants to roam. Besides the unfortunate falling apart of yet another child care situation was the fact that my normally very social baby has suddenly become very scared of me leaving her somewhere. We went to our playgroup that we’ve been going to for the last month or so and she cried and wouldn’t let me put her down. It took her a good 15-20 minutes before she believed that I wasn’t leaving her. Never before did the thought even seem to cross her mind.

It has all worked out, though. Courtney, the girl that has done most of our babysitting in the past was available to come to the house the 2 days a week that I am working. She gets Dillon dressed, takes her places, plays outside with her, and takes a nap with her (after rocking her to sleep, thank you!). Dillon, in turn, looks very happy when I come home. She also just spontaneously says Courtney’s name on the days Courtney isn’t here. Hopefully this will last for a while.

So on to the cute things she is doing. She’s still a total chatterbox! She’s starting to put together more 3 word sentences. “There’s a circle” is a fairly distinct one. Its funny how many people will stop us in the grocery store to comment on how god her vocabulary it—because she & I have been chatting the whole way through the store! She’s also really into poop right now. She’ll tell me that the baby has pooped, so I’ll get her a wipe. She’ll make this big production about lifting the baby’s legs (and all babies are subject to this special treatment), wiping the baby’s bum and then putting a diaper of some sort on the baby. We also have to talk about how everything poops. She’s particularly fascinated with the fact that Satchmo poops. She’ll go on & on about it for most of a morning if she happens to notice him pooping outside.

We went to the park this afternoon so she could play on the swings. It’s definitely getting to be fall—the high today was around 47 degrees, though it isn’t supposed to continue being that cold. I didn’t dress either of us warmly enough, so we both had cold hands when we left the park 45 minutes after we got there. But not before watching a squirrel puttering around. She kept calling it a mouse and asking to pet it. I explained that it is a wild animal and we don’t pet wild animals—only look at them. She seemed OK with this, though we did follow it around for a while from a safe distance. And true to form, there was the inevitable question of “Squirrel poop?”

Thankfully not right then, it didn’t!

Circles, ABC’s and hugs

Those are the current topics of fascination for Dillon. She has figured out circles and points them out all over the place. I handed her a slice of a sweet potato a couple of days ago and she proudly pointed out “circle.” Sure enough was. She finds them in books, around the house, outside- you name it. Sometimes she can point out squares but they frequently get mixed up with triangles. I’m just impressed she knows circle. She also knows that letters are “ABC’s,” that being her generic name for all letters. She also finds letters everywhere, including in the airport. We were sitting down to eat at Chili’s in the Charlotte airport (during our 6 hour layover) when she pointed to the large A on the wall indicating Concourse A and told me “ABC’s” She frequently will request the ABC song during diaper changes. Of course I often get as far as D and she tells me no. I’m not sure if that’s a commentary on my singing or just all she can absorb for the moment. I’ll request that comments on that point be kept private!

As for the hugs- they are the best. She will come up to me out of the blue, announce “hug!” and throw her arms around me. Even better is when I wrap my arms around her and pick her up off the ground in a big bear hug. Then it’s a hug accompanied by giggles. Last night it was a round of hugs for Momma and Da, then a request for “kiss.”
She gets the idea that you lean in for a kiss, but doesn’t quite get the pucker up part. She’ll get really close, then turn her cheek to your lips. Maybe she’s just practicing being a princess.

She started Monday at the new babysitter’s. The day went smoothly with the distinct exception of naptime. The sitter thinks I should stop rocking Dillon to sleep so that she learns to go to sleep on her own. The sitter provides lots of comfort to her, but doesn’t want to start rocking her because the other kids will want to rock as well. Really makes me question continuing with this sitter, but admittedly, Dillon seems pretty happy there otherwise. My feeling is that I absolutely love the time with Dillon when we are nursing and rocking and she is drifting off to sleep. I can’t imagine not doing it because there’s no doubt in my mind that she loves it as much as I do. My other feeling is that I truly believe that she will have no trouble falling asleep on her own when she is 15 years old despite the fact that I now rock her to sleep. What’s the hurry in making her independent anyway- she’s only 19 months old? A soapbox for another day, I suppose. As for now, we’ll keep on nursing and rocking and loving every minute of it.