Visit with Gran

We had a fun visit with Gran last week. Samuel was quite concerned that she know the rules and not come out of her bedroom until there was a 6 on the clock in the morning. However, he apparently decided the rules did not apply to him the first morning, as he paid Gran a surprise visit at 4:12 am.

Here are some pictures from our visit:

Swinging (only on the blue swing. Heaven forbid we suggest he swing on the red or yellow swing):



Checking out a ladybug on the ground:

Meg and Lilly came to visit one day too:

Becca is just starting to smile, which we love! Here she is smiling for Gran:

Becca is a month old now, and growing like crazy. At her 1-month checkup she weighed 10 pounds! She continues to be a very happy, calm baby. The other night at dinner, she even slept through the GIANT screaming fit Samuel threw about trying some soup. No need to tell most of you about that fit as I am sure you could hear the screaming with your own ears many states away.

When Samuel was a baby, we took a picture of him each month with a toy dump truck. It was neat to see how much he changed from month to month. We're going to try the same thing with Becca using a teddy bear as a growth marker. Here she is at 1 month:

Happy Halloween!

For the past 6 months Samuel had been telling us he wanted to be a frog for Halloween. He has this cute frog towel that I was somehow going to convert into a costume for him, until the hairdresser asked him a few weeks ago what he was going to be for Halloween, and he said Spiderman. Really? News to me. (However, this should not have been a surprise as he is slightly obsessed with Spiderman. One day we were watching a TV show where the character tells the kids at home to say their name, and Samuel said his name was "Samuel Spiderman Norwood")

So I attempted to find a Spiderman costume for him to wear. First we went to Walgreens, but they only had size 8-10. I tried to explain to Samuel that that size was too big and we would need to look somewhere else, but he had a complete meltdown. I told him we would drive to another store, and I stopped at a Halloween costume store down the road. Ye Olde Expensive Halloweene Shoppe to be more exact. They had plenty of Spiderman costumes in his size, but they cost $40!!!! Note to self: Do not ever enter that store again. Especially with a child who sees the costume of his dreams, has already been told no at one store, and has decided he needs a Spiderman costume NOW. From now on, I'm going someplace like Target. Alone.

Behold, the $40 costume:



Don't you love the muscles?

We went to a Harvest party at our church Halloween afternoon. It was really nice. They had all kinds of games and activities set up for the kids. Here are some pictures of Samuel playing some games:

Pumpkin rolling:





Ball toss:



Beanbag toss:



After dinner we went trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. To say Samuel enjoyed this would be a giant understatement. He was so excited that he could get candy from every house. He was also really good about telling people who tried to give him Reese's peanut butter cups that he was allergic to those.

If it's possible, he enjoyed handing out candy at home more than trick-or-treating. Each time the doorbell rang, he'd run to the door and give out candy. He tried to guess who each kid was dressed up as. One middle schooler was some sort of gory goth-type person, and Samuel said "here's some candy for you, big scary clown." Oh, he makes me laugh.

I had planned to make Becca a little spider costume to go with the Spiderman theme, but just did not get around to it. It's cliche but true about the 2nd child not getting as many pictures taken, etc. For Samuel's 1st Halloween, I made him a tiny Superman costume before he was even BORN. It's definitely more to juggle a newborn and a 4 year old. Maybe what I should do is go to Target now and buy Becca a costume for next year. Then, I am super prepared, and I bet all of the costumes are on sale now, so no more shelling out $40. Win-win!