"Poh-kin" Time

Since S is in 2 pre-schools (our neighborhood's Christian pre-school, and our public school district's special-ed pre-school) we got to take 2 field trips to pumpkin (or as R says, "poh-kin") patches this week. They were both SO much fun for different reasons...

The first, Impossible Acres, was highlighted by the half hour the kids got to spend with very docile farm animals--sheep, ponies, goats, chickens, and lots of babies--bunnies, a calf, piglets, pygmy goats, ducklings, and chicks.

The second, Cool Patch Pumpkins, was great because S had been there last year with her class and couldn't wait to go back. And Paul was able to go with us, which was even better. It was about 92 degrees that day, and this bright hot blue sky needs no enhancement.

P on the hayride

For sure the highlight of this patch is the enormous corn bath. Sort of like a giant sandbox filled with corn kernals. The kids all loved rolling, crawling and jumping in the corn. If you've seen this next picture on Paul's facebook/flickr page, you'll notice he photoshopped in some black wings and a sword...guess he couldn't resist her mid-air angel pose.

R's jumping style was more of a side-tuck

S getting tickles from her fabulous teacher

PANDA!!

S is going to be a panda for Halloween. She loves pandas. We saw the hat at a San Francisco Giants game (where player Pablo Sandoval is known as The Panda.) They were charging 20 bucks for the panda hat. I came home and bought one new on ebay for 99 cents, plus $3 shipping from China. HA! Anyway, add black pants, white shirt and black shrug sweater= perfect panda. S was SO excited when I brought it out, jumping up and down, saying "panda shirt! panda pants!" She wanted to put it on right then, and wore it for the next few hours, even though it was 97 degrees outside.

One more encouraging note--she has speech twice a week, for an hour, and her speech therapist has really been working with her on the concept of "where." Lo and behold, the other day I asked S "where is your sippy cup?" And for the first time ever, she actually got down from her chair and went and looked in the living room and in her bedroom for the cup. She's never done that before. I think she's figuring it out-yea!!

PJs, Tomatos & Ohio

Dear Aden and Jonathan, Thank you very much for all the super cute hand-me-down clothes. Mommy and Daddy love these pajamas; don't I look like a little man?

I think they also gave me your guys' special skills in finding yummy food like cereal to snack on, and inspired me to follow your example of eliminating all distractions to eating (like packaging.)
(Now where's that milk?!) Thanks again, boys! Love, R

Here's a picture of 2 of Paul's tomato plants, taken about 3 weeks ago; he's enjoying the tomatos now! Two of the plants got so big they tipped over the containers so he had to temporarily anchor them with a rope to a nearby palm tree :)

The kiddos enjoyed the pool at my parent's house when we visited Ohio last month, although S looks a little suspicious here :)

My brother's puppy Bailey found one of R's pacifiers...

Wanna Hear A Dirty Joke?

Hey there, wanna hear a dirty joke?

A boy...
...fell in a mud puddle.

And then he fell down again...and again and again :)

Wanna hear another dirty joke?

I let the kids go outside after several days of rain and they were ecstatic. S has always loved animals and their "sounds," so there wasn't anything unusual about her running around saying "tweet, tweet" like a bird...until she ran up to me cuddling an actual bird. Unfortunately, this bird wasn't doing much tweeting.

Rest in peace, Tweet Tweet. (And I'm going to try not to think about S snuggling that nasty thing.)