There are days, and then there are "DAYS" . . .

. . . and then, there are WEEKS . . .

My week has been one of the latter. :-/ Wow. Last Tuesday morning, the boys & I dropped Chris off at LAX to fly to New Orleans for the annual ETS & SBL conferences. From there, I headed to my friend Sian's house to spend some time with her and her daughter Jemima while her husband was in New Orleans as well! I stayed with them until Saturday morning and great fun was had by all!! We even got to hang out with another mutual friend, Mindy & her kids, whose husband Rob had joined the other two in Louisiana. :-) It was a mini Aberdeen reunion in LA! Great fun. The only thing that would have made it better was for Benjamin not to have gotten sick. :-/ He started running a little bit of a fever Monday afternoon/evening, but I wasn't sure that it was anything serious since it was only minimal. By Tuesday night, however, his fever was up to 102.8 and he was feeling pretty miserable. I was up most of the night with him that night as well as the following two. Poor baby. :-( I finally took him to the doctor on Friday and he was diagnosed with Roseola. So, there you have it. Not a lot of fun, but he's pretty much done with it now. Fever is gone, rash is gone, appetite is back (mostly). Unfortunately, the fussiness & extreme clingyness has continued, but who knows, he's probably cutting another tooth. :-/ Which, by the way, he did 4x in 2 weeks recently(!!!). He now has a total of 6 teeth!

In other Benjamin news, he still isn't crawling and he is getting more & more frustrated with this lack of mobility by the second! He is constantly pulling & climbing all over me, trying to get his feet up underneath him, r-e-a-c-h-i-n-g for things (& falling over quite frequently. . . an enormous bruise on his forehead as testimony to that after he hit it on the unforgiving tile floor in the bathroom) and is simply no longer content at just sitting. Although I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do when he actually starts crawling, he is going to be SO much more content once he does. He turned 9-months-old on the 16th and besides going through a huge "I-only-have-eyes-for-Mommy" stage, he is as precious as ever. Just look at that adorable face!!!

Ethan had so much fun playing with Jemima. He even got to enjoy "preschool" with her on Weds. He loved it! After we got home, he managed to pick up a cold somewhere, so he's pretty stuffy & runny right now. I tell ya, my hat goes off to all you single parents out there. I am especially reminded of how much work parenting is when I have to do it all by myself. And add sickness to the mix . . . oh my goodness . . . I know you do what you have to, but there have been a few times lately in my sleep-deprived, over-extended, no-more-patience state that I have seriously wondered if I was going to make it. But Chris comes home today--HURRAY!!!

We've got another busy week ahead with two Thanksgiving dinners (one on Thurs. & one on Fri.) and Ethan's birthday party on Saturday. His birthday actually falls on Thanksgiving day this year, so I thought we'd just extend all the celebrating through the weekend! Good times ahead!

Nobody teaches them these things . . .

Benjamin is learning to play with cars!! Such a boy . . .

Sour!

Benjamin loves his fresh food feeders. His favorite fruit to eat in them? Grapes! Check out this fun little video clip:

YUM!

"Mama"

I have had some short videos sitting here for weeks now, so I thought I better start sharing! This one is of Benjamin saying "Ma-ma-ma . . ." The video is a little dark, but you get the idea. Ethan said "dada" first, so I was pretty pleased that Benjamin started with "mama". :-) He usually says it when he's upset (as you'll see here), but oh well. I'll take what I can get.

Ethan

Ethan has been so cute lately. Even in the last couple of weeks he has grown so much. He is talking more and more every day and sometimes we can't help but crack up at some of the things he says.

I thought he looked so adorable in this outfit.

Chris' grandma, "Nana", brought over lunch from In 'N Out a couple of weeks ago and Ethan enjoyed part of a milkshake for the first time. I think he liked it. :-)

In the picture below, he had set up camp by the front door so that he could watch the gardener across the street mow. Apparently it was quite fascinating!

Nana gave Ethan a Little Einsteins laptop computer a while back and although he wasn't quite sure what to do with it at first, he is starting to get the hang of it and is having a blast! One particular activity shows him a lower case letter and he is supposed to find the capital letter that goes with it. He doesn't recognize all of the lower case letters yet, but because they verbalize the letter as well, he is usually able to come up with it on his own and push the correct button on his keyboard. Wow. Technologically advanced at (almost) age 3.

And to close, two quick potty stories for you . . .

The other day I thought I smelled something suspicious and asked Ethan if he'd gone poo-poo in his underwear. As I peered in to check, he replied, "There's nofing in there!" ;-)

Earlier this week, after he has successfully done his business on the toilet, he exclaimed, "I'm so proud of you!" Guess he's heard that a few times!! :-)

Bringing Out the Inner Bohemian . . .

I needed some new clothes for this Fall/Winter, so I headed to one of my favorite places to shop, Kohl's. They were having one of their gigantinormous sales and I was armed with my 30% off coupon. Amazingly, I was able to find several things that I loved all in one trip. Ahhhhh . . . sweet success. All I had left to do was accessorize.

However . . . I'm not very good at accessorizing. So, I pleaded with my sister-in-law (who is fabulous at it), to help me out. She graciously accommodated my request and totally "hooked me up". Here is one of the trendy necklaces she helped me pick out. I truly felt like I was going back to my Bohemian roots. :-) Very fun!

Thanks MB!

Harvest Time

Now that it's almost an entire week after-the-fact, here are some pictures from Halloween. Our church had a really great "Harvest Festival" on Saturday that we dressed both boys up for and took them to. It was lots of fun! I bought the costumes about 2 months ago and although Ethan's costume ended up fitting 'just right' (whew!), we almost didn't get Benjamin's 6-12 month one on him! But despite a little "squeezing", I thought the results were delightful. ;-)

One very cool Buzz Lightyear:

And one absolutely adorable lion cub.

It had not been a great day overall, so even though Ethan had been ecstatic to don his Buzz costume on earlier in the week, this time was not quite so enthralling--apparently. So, once dressed, we popped him in the chair with a movie on my iPod while I finished getting Benjamin dressed and ready to go. (If only we can get out the door . . . )

The Harvest Festival at our church, complete with bouncy castle, slide, ball toss, cake walk and other such games, music and candy.

One very cooperative and happy little boy who did very well for staying out past bedtime.

Cutey patootey!!

Between the bouncy castle and Jonah's whale, Ethan was in little boy heaven.

In, out, in, out, in, out . . . over and over and over again. He loved feeling the "inside" of the whale.

Inside, there was a lady telling the story of Jonah and handing out candy. Besides getting to sit inside a whale, you know how Ethan loves a good story, so this was a great combo for him! [Strange enough, he couldn't have cared less about the candy (definitely not MY son! :-/)!]

In the bouncy castle. He was very tentative at first, but got the hang of it rather quickly. Shoes had to come off to go inside, so there was a whole lot of shoes being put on, then taken off, then on, then off, on, off, on . . .

Decorating sugar cookies.

Enjoying sweet success!!

Yum! "Can Mommy have a bite pretty please!?!" Um, "nooooooo!"

Enjoying his cookie while back in the whale yet again.

Benjamin checking out the hale bales.

You're getting very sleeeeeeppppyyyy . . .

Earlier in the week we had met some ladies and their kiddos over at the Marketplace to let the kids run around in their costumes and take pictures. I didn't quite get Benjamin in his costume since I had to wake him up from his morning nap in order to go, but I definitely had one cute Buzz!

Enjoying some pretzels.

And friends!