If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

LD reading his current favorite book: 

Fall Awesomeness

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, we decided to make use of our membership to Morton Arboretum and enjoy some walking among the fall leaves at their peak. Of course, when we woke up that morning it was cold and rainy. Did that stop us? Oh, hell no. But we decided that our walk would now be a drive. We swung through Starbucks for coffee and breakfast. Tellingly, as soon as we pulled in, Liam started asking for a "punkin cone, punkin cone." I get the feeling that wasn't the first time he'd been through the Starbucks drive through. Also: that kid ate an entire pumpkin scone. 

 

We were turning the day around. We got to the arboretum and drove around the entire thing. By the time we were finished, so was the rain. We decided to get out and walk after all. We headed straight for the children's garden, which we had entirely to ourselves. Thanks, rain! We stopped at the water globe thingy, a giant marble sphere floating on a thin stream of water that kids can spin: 

 

Then we headed onto the trail. Liam is probably a little too small for most of the climbing equipment there, but since there was no one else there, he had the run of them: 

 

Then, LD got to choose and paint a pumpkin to take home: 

That was a HUGE hit. Then LD invented what was pretty much the best game ever: jumping really high (with a little help from Damian): 

I was there, too: 

Later that day, we went to the pumpkin patch to get the real pumpkin. Liam still seemed stuck on the little ones, so he talked us into this one. He also seemed very interested in every perfect pumpkin without a stem. We finally found what seemed to be the only pumpkin in the place that still had a stem. (It also happened to be beautiful as you can see in the Halloween post.) 

And, of course, we both forgot our cameras. D managed to get a good shot with his phone, though:

Halloweeeeeeeen!

Halloween was so much fun this year. We had a little trouble talking LD into putting on his costume, though. It was a total no go for his school party the Friday before Halloween, but I used my super special mom powers** to get him into it for a trial run on Sunday.

**I bribed him with candy corn.

Also on Sunday, we carved his pumpkin. He said that he wanted a scary pumpkin, not a happy pumpkin, so D drew up a couple of designs and Liam chose the one he wanted. Then it was time to get our hands dirty.

Don't be fooled. He's actually scooping the seeds out of the bowl and putting them back into the pumpkin.

Sunday trial run, eating his hard-won candy corn:

Scary pumpkin, not a happy pumpkin:

By Monday, Halloween, he was totally on to my game and even the promise of candy couldn't get him into his costume. So I pulled out the big guns: I told him he could ride his bike if he put on his costume.

In the costume, but still not sure about this whole thing:

Then he got on the bike, hit the first house, and the whole thing fell into place for him.

He walked up to doors on his own, knocked, said "Trick or Treat," "thank you," and "Happy Halloween" at every house before running back to his bike to pedal to the next. We thought we would hit maybe 2 or 3 houses if we were lucky (and never thought he would actually say anything to strangers), but he completely surprised us.

Also surprising: he doesn't want to eat the candy he got. He only wants candy corn.

Video Week Bonus Day!!

Oh man, you are in for a treat. Here is Liam singing his fool heart out.

VW 7: OMGTRUCKBOOK!!!!! (Take 2)

What I learned today: read the fine print. Flickr only allows videos up to 90 seconds long. This one is a little longer ... but worth it. So here, in it's totality, is the video from yesterday.

Liam got this book a little over a week before I took this video. Can you tell how often we read it? (Although, as you can see, he really does most of the reading.)

VW 6: Wall to Wall Videos

In this video, Liam is using a reflected beam of sunshine as a balance beam:



Here are a couple from our trip to Uncle Graham's over Memorial Day, including one of him playing his new favorite game (the one that replaced the towel-over-the-head game): jumping off of EVERYTHING.





And, last, Liam learned a new word at dinner the other night: Suckafool.

VW5: The Best Game Ever

You might not see the humor in putting a towel over your head and spinning in a circle. It's hours of fun, though. Don't believe me? Observe:

VW 4: DJ Liam

To get you through your Thursday, DJ Liam will spin some tunes in this fourth installment of Video Week:

VW 3: Mac and Cheese is Exhausting

I can't tell you how much this makes me laugh. Poor kid.

VW 2: Happy Know It

Welcome to day 2 of video week.

At LD's day care, they sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" a lot. It's been one of his favorites for months. They have a bunch of verses for different feelings and actions to go with it: happy = he points to his smile, sad = boo-hoo, mad = a stern "NOT OK", sick = a sneeze, sleepy = a yawn, surprised = a Home Alone face (or Edvard Munch) and a high-pitched "oh my!"

The other day, we were coloring and I drew a smiley face and Liam yelled "happy know it!" when I'd finished.

This is another older video from February that caught happy and sick.

Video Week: A Reward for Your Loyalty!

We recognize that five months between posts is completely, totally, without question unacceptable. So, to make amends, we here at Team Dockery present you, loyal reader, with ***drumroll***
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VIDEO WEEK!

Oh, yes. A new video, or series of videos, each and every day this week. And a promise to try to do better.

To start us off, here are a couple of videos of our crazy kid wearing Damian's ski goggles when we were snowbound after the blizzard (it's hard to even remember that there was a blizzard on a day that hit 98 degrees).

Uh-Oh, Indeed.

Dancin' Machine