Playing Outside

Evan and I went outside to play in the beautiful weather this morning. We were supposed to be collecting pretty leaves but we mainly just ran around on the tennis court. Evan also found a long vine on the ground and turned it into a whip, a lasso, a snake and a fishing pole, all in about 10 minutes. Very imaginative child!

Fall Is Here!

The last few days have been very Fall-ish with cooler temps and a strong breeze. We decided to decorate the house a bit to celebrate Fall/Halloween this year, as we knew the boys would love it. First I put up the grapevine wreath that my Mom made for us a few years ago, but I added some new embellishments and most of them had fallen off or been attacked by birds! Then Tom brought home some fun pumpkin lights and a spider web. At last but not least, I hung up the latest piece of art that Evan made at daycare. If the surrealist artist Picasso had decided to make a Jack O' Lantern out of construction paper, this is probably what it would've looked like! Happy Fall everybody!

Pumpkinville

We finally had some beautiful weather last weekend after seemingly endless rain, so we took the boys to Pumpkinville, the local fall festival. Evan really enjoyed it this year and spent a lot of time in the "bouncy-moons" (as he calls them) and the big slides. He even decided he wanted to go down the spider slide by himself towards the end. It was a fun outing.

Birthday Party Season

In addition to his brother's birthday, Evan had two other parties to attend this month. His friend Connor had his 3rd birthday party at a Sports Bounce place at 9 AM last Saturday. They had a lot of different 'bouncy houses' and slides and several playrooms with a variety of equipment for the kids. Evan was very shy and clingy to me for about 5 minutes, but after the first ride down one of the giant slides, he was fine. He had a great time, but when the facility staff rounded up the kids and made them sit down to eat breakfast snacks, he was not happy. He wanted to play some more and couldn't understand why that part of the party was over.
Yesterday I took him to his friend Shaun's 3rd birthday party, which was held at Shaun's house. Evan and his friends loved all of Shaun's cool toys, but there was some bitter rivalry that came out over a riding tractor. We eventually had to take the kids back inside because they couldn't figure out how to take turns and had started calling each other names like "Stinky Bum-Bum" and "Bad Bo-Bo."

Singing to Dylan

Evan's little brother Dylan had his 1st birthday on Sept. 5th. We were a little concerned that Evan would be really jealous of Dylan, as he's had some difficulty in accepting the fact that other people get to have birthdays that have nothing to do with him. But he actually did very well and even sang to Dylan several times throughout the 'birthday weekend.' However, about a week before Dylan's birthday, Evan saw the presents I had for Dylan, sitting unwrapped in the garage, and he took a lot of interest in them. Later that day, out of the blue, Evan said "Mama, Dylie's not sharing his birthday barn with me!" We weren't even home at the time and Dylan still hadn't even seen the birthday barn yet! :)

Here's Evan singing at Dylan's pizza party:

Go Redskins! Go Tom!

Here are the boys showing off their matching Redskins shirts and their Dad's matching Emmy Awards of 2010 and 2011 for his Redskins Documentaries.

Potty Trained!

It took us a very long time to get there (~8 months!), but Evan is successfully potty trained now, at last! He started wearing underwear at daycare last month but still wouldn't cooperate at home. Then at the beginning of September, all of his buddies that were in the 2's Class at his daycare graduated to the 3's, but he was left behind. He stayed in the 2's for two more weeks and was miserable. We kept telling him that if he would start using the potty and telling us and his teachers every time he needed to go, then he could go join his friends. And when he finally understood this, it all just clicked for him. He's been doing great and got to go to the 3's class on Sept. 12th. We're very proud of our Big Boy!