Ryden at 18 months

Ryden officially turned 1 1/2 last Monday.  He is growing up so fast.

He loves cars and his blanket. 





















We're still breastfeeding, but he's going to be gone all week so maybe not anymore :(.

Harper is A-MAZ-ING.




















He says hi and bye.  That's it.  Sometimes things sound like dog, ball, book, but only because he's pointing while he's saying it.  LEARN SOME WORDS!

He could play with blocks all day.
















Bedtime is SO easy, but he still wakes up one or two times a night to nurse.

He's a little obsessed with plungers (gross I know).

He would be outside all the time if he could.

Pretty much, he's the coolest 18 month kid I know :)

Leaf Hunt

Last weekend we went on a leaf hunt.

I had this brilliant idea because the leaves are such pretty colors right now.  I'm pretty sure that when I was little, I would draw red, orange, and yellow leaves for fall, but I really thought they just dried up, turned brown and fell off the tree.  Getting Harper to really see all those colors seemed like a good idea.

So I made a list of the things we needed to look for on our leaf hunt.

We headed out on a walk toward the park.

We found lots of leaves.

And other fall nature things.

Then we played at the park.

When we got home, Harper took all of the leaves we found and made a picture.

We will definitely do this again.  As they get older we will definitely identify the types of trees that our leaves come from and learn why leaves turn color and I'm sure that I'll think of more things they will need to learn.  These poor kids with a Biology teacher for a mom.

Weekends

I love weekends!  I like my job, most days, but weekends I get to spend with my kids.  Sometimes they frustrate me, sometimes I have a short temper and snap at them, but I love them all the time.

Last weekend, we went to Touch-A-Truck at a local church.  I thought the kids would totally be into it.  However, I forgot that Harper is ridiculously shy in new situations.  There was a bounce house there though that she HAD to do, wouldn't do anything else until she jumped.  We did get to move past that and this is the point where Ryden discovered the little cars while Harper got some cotton candy.


We really need to get some toy cars.

















The kids did art too!  I found this idea on Pinterest but I failed to think through the fact that my kids are not perfectionists (yet) and wouldn't want to just put their handprints on the tree.  They still turned out pretty cute.

She wanted to be in the picture.  Goofball.

We also went to the pumpkin patch and did not get any pumpkins.  Grandma and Grandpa have supplied us with pumpkins this year.  But we had lots of fun.  Thanks to Audrey for taking pictures ... I wish I had a nice camera.

 Grandma and Grandpa have also supplied us with copious amounts of squash which I have been baking into all sorts of things.  I've made a couple batches of 'pumpkin' bread and this weekend made some pumpkin gingersnap cookies.  

I made some delicious glazed muffins too.  I'm addicted to Pinterest . . .