Gratitude

Coincidentally, Tavish ate his last piece of Halloween candy on Thanksgiving. Today, while we were driving in the car, he asked if we could go to church to get some more Halloween candy (where we had trick-or-treating)...

Me: it's not Halloween time anymore buddy, it's Thanksgiving time.
Tavish: Thanksgiving time?
Me: remember the big dinner you had at Auntie Wana's house yesterday? It's so you can remember what you are thankful for...what are you thankful for?
Tavish: ummm, water (he's holding his cup of water)
trucks
cars
buses
stop signs
popcorn (he's eating popcorn)
towers...they get knocked down and you fix them (we're driving past a tower)
signs (we're driving past a bunch of them)
cupholders (he's putting his popcorn in the cupholder of his carseat)
Christmas trees (we're driving past some)
Me: I'm thankful for the sunshine and the beautiful day
Tavish: (excited) I'm thankful for the beautiful day too! And you like carrots!

there you go...we are thankful!

oh Tavish...

I'm putting Tavish to bed last night, we read books, cuddle, say good night and I turn out the light...
Tavish: my eyeballs are turned on but I can't see!
Me: oh Tavish...

Thanksgiving 2011

The feast...looks good Auntie Wana and Uncle Joe!

Note the empty chair in the front...that's mine...I got to spend the day in the OR removing foreign objects from parts of people's bodies where they didn't belong.

Guess who the turkey is here?
Answer: not the actual turkey.
This is Tavish's "time out" face (per him)...we see it a lot.

Progress

Uncle Tom is back so the reno train is going at full speed...


Where you once had to walk through the house balancing on floor joists over bare dirt, surrounded by half walls, there is now this...




Where there once was a drafty nine-paned window from the 1950's, there is now this...




Where there once was a hole in the middle of the guest room floor where Rafal fell through the rotted wood, there is now this (complete with a new Polish roommate)...




Where there once was a cement slab and the exterior of the house, there is now this (with granite countertops to boost!)...




But my favorite new feature of the house is this...can you guess what it is???
Look close...
Heated floors in the main bathroom! I hate cold feet!

Trick-or-Treat

Halloween was a lot more fun this year because Tavish is starting to get it...this was the first year he had a definite opinion about his costume. I had wanted him to be a dinosaur or a dragon, but he caught me looking at costumes online one day and saw this robot costume and that was it...he wanted to be this robot. Every time I asked him for the next six weeks what he wanted to be for Halloween he would say a robot, specifically the one he saw on Auntie Sarah's TV (we don't have a desktop computer so he thought hers was a TV). Of course the last week or so before Halloween when I asked him what he wanted to be he would say random things like applesauce.




Here we are trunk-or-treating at church...it snowed that day so it turned into chair-or-treating in the gym. They set up chairs in a big circle in the gym and each family set up their trick-or-treating station and all the kids went around the circle collecting their goods. Tavish got really excited seeing all the different costumes and when I tried to take him around trick-or-treating he would get distracted by the candy and want to stop at each place and eat the candy right then and there. The only picture I could get of him was with his BFF Brett.




After the trunk-or-treating we headed over to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum for their "Air and Scare" celebration which would have been fun if it wasn't 7pm by then and Tavish was hopped up on candy and always ends up running around screaming because it's such a big place. Here he is discovering, much to his mother's disappointment, that the OFF button on his costume doesn't actually work...




The big day...every robot needs a "swinky" in one hand...we trick-or-treated around our apartment complex then headed over to Auntie Wana's...she and Sadie trick-or-treated with us, then we hit up Brett and Shelby's and Grandpa Santa...back home to bed, and mom and dad are enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Sick

Or, the First Cold of the Season

I was hoping it wouldn't hit this early but the babysitter's son got sick, so she got sick, so Tavish got sick. It started on Saturday with the cute little raspy voice that became a not so cute little cold...

Monday morning he woke up and said "my mouf hurts, I need a bandaid"... I had to convince him I couldn't put the bandaid inside his mouth but after it came off he said "it feels better now". Then after his nap he woke up and his voice was almost gone (with didn't last quite long enough!) and he said surprised "hey, where'd my voice go?"

Now we are just in the whiny, grumpy phase.
I hope it ends soon...

Pumpkins!!!

The countdown to Halloween is on! Almost every day there is some sort of drama related to the lack of treats in Tavish's Halloween pumpkin. I guess we should have waited a little longer to prep him for Halloween because a few weeks is eternity when you are two. But this weekend was pumpkin carving! First we had to go pick some out...

Bart really should have said "boy are these pumpkins expensive!" Next year will be the $6 pumpkins at Trader Joe's.


Tavish was very engaged as you can see...both boys were being a little ADD, it ended up with me almost yelling "pick a damn pumpkin!"...almost.


We carved them Sunday night, Rafal got really into it, Tavish just wanted to play with the little carving tools...he spent approximately two minutes "helping" me carve his pumpkin. But look how proud he is...


Can you guess who carved which pumpkin?
For some reason, the candle in Rafal's "masked bandit" isn't very bright.
This was the first time I had ever used a template and I like how the haunted house turned out. I'll probably use one again because I definitely have not inherited my dad's mad pumpkin carving skills.