Happy Halloween Part II

Esme had an awesome day!  I picked her up from daycare and she was excited to be able to carry home her plastic pumpkin full of goodies.  She even dug in and found some Smarties and wanted it as soon as we got in the car.  We've never really given her candy and barely any sweets  and she's never been really interested till now.  So I figured I'd let her try it out and she ended up eating two little rolls of it!  I made sure she got some good dinner in and then we got her dressed in her cow outfit for the evening.  We went to just four of our neighbors houses and that was enough.  Everyone was excited to see her and she was in awe of all that was going on around her.  Plus she was excited about all her new candy.  After that she was content hanging out at home with us and opening the door everytime we had trick-or-treaters.  We let her stay up past her bedtime to be a part of all the festivities too.  By the time we put her down, about an hour after her normal bedtime, she was wiped out and didn't make a peep!  We're just glad we made it through the day without any major candy meltdowns and we'll make sure to hide her plastic pumpkin and all the candy remnants tomorrow :)

 

My pumpkin pre-cutting

Allen carving out Boba Fett from Star Wars

Practicing giving candy to Addy the garden gnome

 

Her cute little cow tail

My little cow

Checking out her loot on our front steps

Delivery goody bags to her neighbor friends

Happy Halloween Surprise!

Mommy and her TWO skeletons for Halloween!  Yep, that's baby #2 on the way.  Due date May 1st.  I'm now 14 weeks and been dying to tell people but when I found this shirt I knew we'd have to wait till now cause it's too cute.  I'm wearing this shirt to work today and Esme will wear her skeleton suit to school.  Tonight she'll dress up in her cow costume for the little trick-or-treating we're going to do.  I'll post more after the evenings festivities!

Esme's First Pumpkin

Esme got a visit from Allen's parents last weekend and she was so happy to have all the attention.  They spent lots of time together making faces at each other, playing games, dancing, coloring, etc.  She even stayed home from school to spend extra time with them.  By the end of the visit it was apparent that she thought the entire world revolved around her and so we were glad to be able to send her back to daycare to get her back into shape ;)  And she wore Allen's parents out so it was good timing!

Due to rainy weather (surprise, surprise) we decided to skip the pumpkin patch this year and just got some pumpkins at the store.  Esme had a Mr. Potato Head Pumpkin Kit that was perfect for her.  We just poked the holes in the pumpkin and she could put in all the body parts and that was about as long as her attention span for that activity was anyways.  At daycare they got to carve real pumpkins and as the bigger kids pulled out the eyes and mouth parts (after the teachers cut them out) Esme said, "Uh-oh, broken!"  Allen and I are still working on our pumpkins since our only time to do it is after Esme goes to bed. 

Esme's been talking up a storm lately and picking up on all kinds of phrases.  Last week she came into the family room, pushed a button on her music cube, came up to me and wrapped both her hands around my arm and tried to pull me up, and then she said, "Let's dance!"  I was shocked.  Then a few days after that we were driving on the freeway and I said, "We made it!" after crossing 4 lanes of traffic to get to the carpool lane (I always narrate our drives for her since she's still sitting backwards in her carseat).  Then she turns her palms up and says to me, "What happened?"  All I could think was, who is this kid!  She's turning into such a big girl! 

Putting the lasso on her cowboy pumpkin

The finished product

Esme Update

Esme took about a week to get adjusted back to the west coast time zone after our last trip.  The first morning after we got back she woke up at 4:30am which is 7:30am in North Carolina.  Yikes!  It was a little bit of a shocker for us but luckily it's staying darker in the mornings now so we would leave her in her crib for an hour or so and sometimes she'd fall back asleep or she'd just talk to herself for awhile.  Each day she woke up later and later until she got back to her normal waking time of about 7am.  Now that we can handle!

The tantrums have entered our lives in the past few weeks and Esme goes to town with them sometimes.  It's a little stressful when we're trying to get ready for school and work in the morning but with a lot of patience and redirection we've been getting by.  She still lets me pick out her clothes but she's all over her shoes.  She's got a bin in the garage of her shoes and she's very particular in which ones she wears each day.  This girl REALLY loves her shoes.  If we're in a store and she sees kids shoes then she takes hers off and wants to try on those ones. 

She's still pottying a lot at daycare and at home it's hit or miss.  Sometimes she wants to sit on the potty and other times she doesn't.  And whether or not she produces anything varies too.  I finally put away the small potty seats that were on the bathroom floors cause she really just likes to use the ring on the big potty.  Now we need to get a stool so she can climb up there on her own. 

Esme continues to be an awesome eater.  We make it a point to eat dinner together every night which is a little tight since I get home around 5:30pm and we start her bedtime routine at 6:30pm.  As long as we're prepared then we can whip something up pretty quickly and she's good about eating the same things we're eating.  We're also letting her drink out of a small cup without a lid when she's in her highchair and she likes that. 

I've recently cleaned out her closet and drawers to replace all her summer clothes with winter clothes.  She's also grown out of anything sized for 12 months and now she's into 18 month clothing.  She still really loves sucking her thumb for comfort when she's upset or tired.  Another thing that comforts her are her "bee-la's."  That's blanket in Esme language.  When she wakes up in the morning she collects all her bee-la's in her crib so they're piled so high in her arms that it's hard to see her face and then she wants to be picked up.  It makes for a little difficult trip down the stairs to the kitchen.  Then once we wiggle them out of her hands we can sit her down for milk and whatever else she wants.

Grounded For Awhile

We made it back from North Carolina and we're happy to say that we have no more airplane travelling adventures for the next 9 months.  While Esme acts just like any other 19 month old stuck in a plane for 4 hours at a time, it's still exhausting on all of us.  We were very glad that we splurged for her own seat on the way home so she could wiggle and squirm all she wanted from the seat to the floor.  It's not so fun when she's doing that in our laps.   

                    
                          Learning to "fly" on the swings                                                                Esme didn't get the memo about the pants ;)
                   
                     Circle time with cousin Capri                                                                                     Just taking a break
                                                                      
                   Makena showing off her moves before ballet                                                  Esme wearing cousin Makena's shiny shoes
                    
                         Eating breakfast with cousin Capri                                                                  Esme testing out the doctor kit on Koa
                    
                        Wearing Aunty B's sunglasses                                                                 Getting a nature lesson from Aunty B
                                            
                         Walking to the horse stables                                                                         Esme trying to climb in the horse stalls  

Hanging Out With The Girls

We made it to North Carolina in one piece and it was sooooooooooo much better than our last flight to the east coast.  Of course Esme was healthy this time and that made all the difference.  She only slept about 2/3 of the overnight flight and the rest of the time she just wiggled around in our laps but was happy.  The flight was longer too since we flew straight from Seattle to Charlotte, NC and I think that helped.  We spent an early morning in the Charlotte airport and then flew to Wilmington which we've decided is the cutest airport we've ever seen.  It looked like you were flying right into someone's plantation home with rocking chairs and all.  We were greeted with lots of humidity but Esme's adjusted just fine.

Since we've been here we've just been having fun hanging out with cousins Makena and Capri, and Aunty Bee and Uncle Josh.  It's been nice to not have to worry about having things to do and being go-go-go.  Esme's even been having fun playing with their boxer dog, Koa, too.  It took her a day or so to get used to him but now she has no problem.  The outside swing/playset provides a lot of entertainment but Esme has yet to go down the twisty tube slide again, after the first time which scared her pretty good.  Pictures to come later :)