Of Princesses, Gentlemen, Dogs and Other Cute Little Creatures

October seems to have just flown by. This post is packed with pictures of the wonderful moments this months has been filled with. Here my two little munchkins. Oh, how I love seeing them being nice to each other, hugging, snuggling, and giving love. This must be how Heavenly Father feels when we are serving and showing love one to another in this world. It's the best feeling of warmth and happiness ever! 

Emerson building towers and knocking them down, one of favorite toys lately:

He also loves playing with Ophelia's "Sister Baby", a doll. Emerson holds her, rocks her, hugs and gives kisses to her, super cute! He also loves playing with Ophelia's little people house and the little Dora figurine...I think maybe it's time we got him some boy "little people" things :) I guess that's what happens when you have a big sister to live with!

Yet another haircut time for Emerson! I swear we have to cut his hair every two months..it grows so fast! We did the lollipop trick at home this time, but it didn't work as well as it does at a salon...Maybe it was the buzzer that made him uneasy, but after a few buzzes, Emerson started getting jittery, trying to move his head, taking the sucker out of his mouth. It ended up full of hair. Yuck! I licked it to clean it and gagged having all the hair in my mouth it was awful!

PJ was being a perfectionist and kept trying to fix little spots on his head. Well, we ended up with a screaming, sticky, itchy, hairy toddler. We put him straight in the tub and gave him a bath... I think Emerson is going to run for his life next time he happens to see a buzzer close to his head. Maybe we'll go back to the barber shop again next time...

New hairdo! Aaaawwww!

And here's the big sister, who stayed by Emerson's side the whole time the parents were trying to cut his hair (not kill him, as it may have seemed to the neighbors):

Here is Ophelia decked out in stickers. Kind of a waste of stickers, but it sure kept her quietly occupied for at least an hour in her room! This would be a great road trip activity.

The three cousins got their own kiddie table this time for dinner. They had a blast! Chomping away, giggling, and kicking each other under the table. Enjoy, kids! This will be a first of many-many-many-many kids tables for you!

Each Friday Ophelia gets to go to a "Girlies Playgroup" with her friends Carlie, Lily, and Heidi. We rotate each week whose house the girls go to. They have so much fun together. Ophelia looks forward to this more than to go to school each week. At Heidi's home there are a lot of pets. Ophelia got to hold a guinea pig the last time. She loves animals:

I snapped a few pictures the last time we went to Oatmeal. I LOVE this picture of Grandma and Ophelia:

Emerson exploring the outdoors, throwing rocks:

The other week Emerson got a few fire ant bites from playing in our backyard. He was pretty upset when it first happened and he still remembers about it. Once in a while he'll point to his ankle and say: "Ant. Bite." Pretty traumatic! I guess if you live in Texas you gotta learn early in life that the outdoors are WILD in Texas! For instance, Ophelia and Grandma had to sweep for snakes before she could climb on top of these rocks. A few weeks ago, Grandpa killed a huge rattle snake right next to the house...yikes!

Snuggling with Grandpa:

For the first time since our move here, we went to a pumpkin patch, Sweet Berry Farms. In the spring, early summer, one can go there to pick strawberries and other berries, for which we'll definitely be back! The drive was about an hour, but it was totally worth it, the kids had a blast! Here they are on a giant trampoline pillow thingy:

Emerson couldn't really steady himself to stand up on the thing, so he got a little upset:

We fed some goats. One of them had it's head stuck in the fence, trying to reach for people with food! One of the workers had to come and figure out a graceful way to pull the head back in again, it took a few minutes, but the goat was saved. Quite an experience for the kids to see the whole thing though!

Pumpkins! Emerson loves pumpkins for some reason. He wants to hug them and this time he was also rolling them and trying to lift them up:

Emerson looks so cute and plump and petite next to the pumpkins, and here is Ophelia, BOOM:

My friend Aubrey took these two with a nice camera of hers. Turned out adorable:

And here is the day that Ophelia was so excited about, when she gets to dress up as anything she wanted and go trick or treating. This year she first picked ]Curious George, then Olivia, the pig, and finally, her final answer was Belle. What a huge ordeal it is to find the right costume that's comfortable (not itchy), then, of course, Belle needed accessories, a rose (that was basically only wanted by Ophelia for the first five minutes, then she was done with it), and the shoes...that we never found, so had to resort to her normal sandals. Oh, and the lip gloss was essential too! Of course, how could I have forgotten!

Emerson was freaked out the first time I tried putting on Ophelia's old doggie costume. The second time went better and he smiled at his reflection in the mirror when he saw that he was a dog.

This is at the Ward Trunk or Treat. And Emerson's first crush, Avi. She is just a month younger than him, she is in the same nursery class, and Emerson just adores her. At the activity, he saw Avi dance, and danced next to her for a few moments, and there has not been a day since then when he wouldn't mention "Avi. Dance!" to me at some point during the day. He really thinks about her every day and remembers her dancing! So sweet :)

Hugging Avi:

I don't think that Avi shares Emerson's affection...yet. She is playing hard to get :)
Here is Ophelia dancing away:

Costume contest: Ophelia is at a hard age right now when she get easily upset if she doesn't win, or isn't the first. It surely is part of a child's egocentric world, but sometimes it just breaks my heart to see her try hard and not win. But that's my problem. I know that it's a valuable lesson for her to learn. There were tons of really cute costumes there this year!

Emerson's first ever trick-o-treating. When the first piece of candy was dropped in his bucket, he set it down and took the candy out to look and see what was put into his bucket. Then after he caught onto what was going on, he just went from trunk to trunk saying "please! please!"

Today I went to Ophelia's first school party, the fall festival. It was cute to see all her classroom friends and her classroom. The room moms did a great job with the activity, planning the games and activities for the kids. Here are all of the kids:

Digging in the rice treasure box, finding treasures:

Decorating cookies and, yes, eating some frosting :)

Painting a Halloween jar:

I took the kids to the City Hall today for some more trick-or-treating. Ophelia didn't want to wear Belle costume again, so we put on her Rapunzel dress from last year. I had to talk her into it, actually, because she said earlier in the day that she didn't want to be a princess, but I had to explain that there's no way we are going to get another costume this year, on the 31st of October! I changed it up for Emerson too, and he was a little Gentleman:

There were lots of fun things to check out at the City Hall, like a tractor:

Silly photo booth:

Touring a police car:

Babushka, this one is for you. Look what happened to your little Grandson:

It's been a fun month! Christmas is coming into the shopping scene already...too soon!

Enjoying!

Among the seemingly endless to-do lists, I had to stop for a moment and realize how much I'm enjoying this stage of my life right now. Both of the kids are so much fun to play with: Emerson with his adorable always-smiley face and calm nature and Ophelia with her endless supply of energy and hilarious stuff that comes out of her mouth. I love being able to sleep in till 7 or 7:30 (if I'm lucky) and being woken up with Ophelia's soft steps up to my bedside. I love not needing to rush anywhere in the mornings and just snuggle in bed, play on the rug and, enjoy breakfast together. I love to be at home with the kids and not needing to work and I love the kids not needing to go to school yet. I love watching them explore the world, make connections, and little discoveries, like that a raisin is a dried-up grape. I love the excitement in the house when PJ comes home from work. I love making delicious meals that my whole family enjoys. I love looking into my babies' faces and examining every little beautiful feature, trying to store it in my memory forever. I love my sweet little girl telling me lately: "Mama, you know what?.... I love you!" I love the quiet evenings with PJ after the kids go to sleep and I have been loving a couple of dates we've been able to go on in the past couple of weeks.

Of course this is a blog about the good times (mostly), but our little family is far from perfect. We have our moments... We struggle with parenthood on a daily basis - discovering more things we need to work on. I've been exhausted this whole week because everyone but me has had a cold. I forget whose dirty tissue I'm holding in my hand when there's another runny nose to wipe again... But everyone is starting to get better, and Emerson is sleeping through the night again, so I am happy :)

A couple of weeks ago, I gave Emerson a haircut...and the next day we decided to shave his head :) It's a good thing I went to school to be a dietitian, and not a barber. Here are the boys with their shaven heads:

The good news is that now his hair will grow even and lush :)

We love it when our cousin visits. Winston is crawling everywhere and has energy to match Ophelia's, so they love playing together. Emerson mostly just sits and observes his cousin and sister. He'll make a good supervisor in a couple of years :)

My attempts at getting a picture of matching shirt cousins:

PJ and I had so much fun painting the kids rooms. Well, I painted and then we did the borders together. We love how it turned out! Ophelia loves it too! We're still a long ways away from decorating our home, but this is huge progress and makes us feel more "at home".

It was nice of Grandma and Grandpa to have Ophelia over at their house for several days, so that we could actually accomplish this.

PJ drew and cut out the stencil for Emerson's room. I think it turned out awesome!

Here are my little детки в клетке (kids in a cage).

Ophelia feeding Emerson (and herself), while I cook dinner:

PJ and I went to a 50's style mystery dinner with some friends from the church. We had fun dressing up:

Big thanks to Mom and Judy for the clothes and ideas!

I am a minimalist as far as the decorations for holidays are concerned and if I do decorate, I like it to be a family project, so Ophelia and I painted some pumpkins for our entryway.

Our church "trunk or treat" kicked off the dressing up part of the holidays. Ophelia loved being a Rapunzel with that looong braid, until it got stepped on a couple of times at the party, then she did not want to wear the braid any more. Emerson was our little missionary. This past conference the age minimum requirement for the elders was lowered to 18 years, so we decided it was about time to get Emerson all excited to go on a mission :)

Ophelia had just as much fun handing out the candy as she had receiving it:

Texas with its fall weather is all over the place as usual. We had days with highs in the 80s and days with highs in the 50s. That night the temperatures were dropping quickly, thus Emerson has a little red button nose:

Me and the kids went to a fall festival in Round Rock on the 31st with some friends from church. We went on a hay ride (a first one for Emerson) and played lots of games, got lots of candy and even ate some cookies with juice.

The cat in the hat made an appearance at the festival:

More pictures of brother and sister playing. Here Ophelia was reading the "Five little monkeys" book for Emerson:

Good times:

And Emerson hit two milestones in the past two weeks: he learned how to sit up by himself and then a week later, he learned how to pull himself up to a standing position and stand by himself! So exciting and at the same time sad, because I have been enjoying the stage of development when you put him in one spot and he stays there until you come and get him... But he is a healthy growing boy and you can see the pride in his eyes to be able to stand up all on his own:

No new pictures of my garden, but as an update it has been a struggle and a learning experience... My tomato cages are upside down and I have been overwatering everything, so half of my garden is nothing but dirt... The ants are loving my garden though! Battling with them over my tomatoes. It does look like we'll have a good tomato crop this fall! We ate ONE strawberry two weeks ago. I paid $2.50 for that strawberry plant, so it was an expensive strawberry...but all organic though :) More pictures soon!