Pumpkin Time

Sunday morning we made our trip to the pumpkin patch.  After an initial calling of them "apples," Aubree caught on that they're actually called pumpkins.  She enjoyed walking through them all and trying to pick up ones that were WAY to big for her to hold.  They had a wagon that people could use to transport their pumpkins to their cars but Calleigh and Aubree highjacked it and Calleigh pulled Aubree around in it running over a few pumpkins in the process but no harm done.  We got one large pumpkin to carve (and a bunch of little ones for decoration) but as of yet, haven't carved it.  We kind of ran out of time and so here it sits.  It's actually a good thing because if I recall from last year, they go rotten very quickly once carved.

Sabbath was a good day but Sabbath School wasn't that great.  I was teaching this week and when I do, Calleigh insists on standing up there with me.  That would be all well and good but she doesn't just stand there.  She ends up jumping around and walking here and there and generally causing a distraction to my teaching of the lesson. And when she does that, Aubree, of course, must follow suit and do the same thing. So we got tough with her this week and told her she needed to remain seated.  Needless to say, that didn't go over well at all.  She started crying and had to be removed from the room for most of the class.  Very frustrating but I'm hoping she's learned her lesson this time.  When I think about it a little more, Church wasn't that great either!  Ironically, on the day of the second reading of our membership transfer from Braintree, MA, our beloved pastor announced he was leaving to take a position as editor for Ministry Magazine.  We weren't blindsided during the service since Shawn had alerted us to the fact but it was still devastating to hear.  Pastor Morris is the reason we started going to Forest Lake Church (used to go to Florida Hospital Church).  We will still go but he will be very sorely missed.    It will be a long transition so we won't be losing him for a while.

Saturday night we were all geared up to go to the Fall Festival in Winter Springs as we had done the year before.  We were decked out in our warm clothes and ready for a good time.  Unfortunately, when we pulled up to the town center, it was pretty dead and we realized they obviously weren't having it this year.  I had seen signs but they turned out to be just for the art festival.  Major bummer.  I don't know if they had to make budget cuts or what.  Anyway, with that mission aborted, we had to do something so we decided to go to TCBY.  Calleigh declared she did NOT want yogurt (clearly, she didn't understand that it was just like ice cream) so we pretended it was ice cream.  Naturally, she had chocolate with chocolate sprinkles (which, may I say, are the biggest scam ever.  They actually charge you 99 cents for sprinkles.  For pete's sake, we gave them away at Friendly's.).  She had a kiddie size which apparently wasn't big enough for her because she ended up eating about two thirds of Aubree's banana yogurt.  It wasn't what we intended the night to be but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

And the sugar kicks in!

Sunday morning after our First Watch visit, Aunt Shirley popped over for a visit.  She was in town visiting Uncle Dick and Aunt Wanda and wanted to stop by and see Bree (as she calls her) walk.  While she was here, Calleigh told her about all the letters she knew so Aunt Shirley had a good time trying to get her to guess what letter words started with.  She did quite well I must say.  Calleigh was then trying to get Aunt Shirley to dance with her and Aubree.  Calleigh has this thing where she stands in front of the TV (while it's off) and says she's going to do a dance with Snuffy, Bert, Ernie, etc.  She does it in front of the TV because she can see her reflection.  She always calls Aubree ("Aubree, do you want to do a dance with Snuffy?" (short for Snuffaluffagus) she says) over and the two of them jump around and do crazy stuff while craning their necks so they can still see themselves.  Aunt Shirley declined the dance with Snuffy but started doing her own little dance and Calleigh wasn't quite sure what to make of it.  It was good to see her.

Calleigh just wasn't sure about that dance.

After our pumpkin shopping, the cousins came over to watch the game.  It was pretty intense and we thought for sure the Pats would lose but in the end, they pulled it off against the Ravens in overtime.  We were excited to talk to Yully about her new job at AHS.  She's now a project manager which is something she was wanting to do for a while.  So both the Walls now have new jobs and new iPhones we noted.

At the end of the game, both girls and dogs were on me.  Don't the girls looked thrilled?  Calleigh kept telling me to turn the TV off.

Yesterday we ended up at the library for baby story time although today I'm kicking myself because I realized yesterday was the third Monday of the month and we could have gone to Leu Gardens for story time.  Darn.  I realized that when we were on our way to the Science Center this morning.  Calleigh has been talking about going for the last few days so I didn't want to disappoint her.  Actually, she said it in her prayer last night so what choice did I have?  Calleigh has this thing that when she says her prayer before bed, she doesn't say "Thanks for the good day and that we could go to story time today and see Emma" or whatever.  Nope.  Instead, she'll start her prayer and say something like "Thanks for a good day and that we can go to" Pause as she leans into my face and says "Where are we going after this nap (still calls it a nap)?"  I then answer and she'll continue her prayer. "Thank you that we can go to the splash playground."  Apparently she doesn't like to live in the past but looks forward to the future.  Well, last night when she did her prayer, she didn't bother to stop and ask me she just went right into "And thank you that we can go to the Science Center."  So that pretty much solidified our day today.

Whenever we're out in public, Calleigh always takes Aubree's hand.  This was at the story time at the Science Center and she even insisted on holding it then.

That big news on the Aubree front is that she has actually pooped and peed in the toilet.  She's kindof made gestures at using the potty before but she was really adamant on Sabbath afternoon so Duncan stuck her up on there and what do you know, she pooped.  Later that evening, she was on it again and peed.  This was all her own idea.  Since then, she's said a bunch of times, "Potty" as she tries taking off her diaper and climbing up on the toilet but nothing has happened.  She does, however, love to get a piece of toilet paper and clean herself and then drop it into the toilet just like Calleigh.  I have no idea if this is going to amount into anything but I'm just going to go with whatever happens.  Obviously this is WELL ahead of Calleigh's schedule.

In other Aubree news, this is now day three without a before bed nursing session.  I've just quickly transitioned from reading books to getting on the floor to have our prayer and so far, it's been working.  Calleigh nearly ruined it all last night though.  I was putting Aubree in her crib and Calleigh comes barging in saying "Mommy, you forgot to give Aubree boobie!"  To which I quickly shut her up only to have her say louder "MOMMY, WHY DIDN'T YOU GIVE AUBREE BOOBIE?"  I'm trying to talk over her as she's saying all this so Aubree doesn't hear what she's saying but I swear Calleigh said it probably five times.  Ahhhh!  Aubree did take a little longer to get to sleep but she didn't ask for any so that was a good sign.  I would say that brings us down to twice a day now but there are still the occasional nursings during random times of the day.

Since yesterday, Calleigh has started this thing where she makes a "bed" in front of the door with her pillow and blankets.  When I asked her what it was all about she said she had to do it this way because she doesn't have a big girl bed.  Do I feel a little bad about that?  Yes.  Am I going to go out and spend money to rectify it?  No!  She didn't take a nap this afternoon so I knew she was pretty tired tonight.  At about ten past nine, I noticed silence and I went in and snapped this picture of her in her "bed."

Last but not least, Marlee Mae had her biopsy yesterday morning.  They said it went well but afterwards, they did notice vaginal discharge with what looked like blood in it and then they also noticed she was bruising a lot near the incision site.  They ran some tests of her clotting levels which came back high which could be a sign of liver disease.  The vet said that liver disease could be bad or there can be some remedies for it but we just don't know until we get the results.  But we should prepare ourselves that it could be bad.  As I said, I'm not going to think about that until we now something definite.  We picked her up yesterday afternoon and she's still her old self.  She's definitely still begging for food.  That's hasn't changed a bit.