Dilemmas, dilemmas...

Momma agonized all week about what to do this weekend. Original plans included Emily going with momma to Michigan/Northwestern. But early on, it looked like the weather wouldn't cooperate. The alternate plan was that Emily had been invited to her friend Hannah's house for a Halloween party. Then the agony came from whether momma could still go to the game and daddy could take Emily to her party, or whether momma should stay home and go w/ Emily. As momma and Emily discussed it, Emily actually said she wanted Daddy to take her (in the same sentence she asked if she could watch football at Hannah's house.) So OK, decision is made.

Except for when it actually came time for daddy to take Emily. She didn't do so well getting dropped off. She usually needs some time to warm up, but earlier in the year she had gone to her friend Lily's birthday party, and after 10 minutes, I was able to leave. I figured the same would be this party. The party started at 11:30 so I called Daddy at 11:45 and 12:00 and 12:15, thinking he should've returned home from the drop-off by then. After I finally reached Daddy, he said the drop-off didn't go so well. 25 minutes of Emily hanging on his leg before he gave her the ultimatum and she decided she'd stay by herslef. Soooooo, I spent the next 3 hours in pouring rain/wind/snow/sleet/yuck worrying about daddy and Emily.

When I got home, I found them all alive, napped, refreshed, happy to tell me about the day... some were ups, and some were downs, but we all made it through the day ok. Emily got to bring home a picture of her friends. From left Mckenna (Strawberry Shortcake), Lily (princess), Carly(butterfly), Hannah (Cinderella) and Emily (a friendly bumble bee who only "pretend stings".) Apparently this was one of the "downs". We asked what she was doing, and she said simply "I didn't want my picture taken." But after looking at the picture, and talking w/ Daddy, I think it was a cross between the other mommas were there and she didn't really like the bee costume. SOO, I suppose we'll see if she wants to go trick-or-treating as Cinderella and save the bee costume for Zachary.These girls are a very nice group! Mckenna, Hannah and Emily have been in daycare together since their worlds began. And Hannah has a baby brother (Nathan) who is one month older than Zachary. AND in the process of this party, we found out that Hannah and Nathan live in Freeland, so they could be in school together for a long long time. Hopefully we'll have more pictures of the party soon.... maybe one of Emily looking like she's having a good time.

We never did get to the pumpkin patch this year. Momma, Busia and Emily snuck away one day just to get some pumpkins. Emily got to pick one out for her and Zachary... she chose this white one for herself (momma thought it was kind of creepy looking.)
And then came the carving.... Busia got Emily one of those carving kits so we could cut out Cinderella... except the carver broke before anything was even cut out! Daddy improvised and did a great job!The Cinderella pumpkin looks much better in real life.
After daddy's try, Emily wanted to do another, so momma made Cinderella's castle... (whatever happened to the ole' fashioned jack-o-lantern face??)OK, so the castle looks much better in real life too.
One more picture... of Zachary and Emily reading their books. It's been much more difficult to get Zachary interested in books... maybe because it's just been more work for momma and daddy to obligate the time to reading just w/ him, maybe it's that his attention span is SHORT. Either way, he's starting to enjoy just sitting and reading... His other news.... he climbed/fell out of his crib the other day. He'd shown no signs of trying, but apparently all it took was one try! He was pretty proud of himself, and at first I put him right back in the crib so I could see how he did it. Sure enough, he hiked his leg right up to the rail and was going to try again! So, the crib has been moved down to the lowest level and we're all good again.

This week marks the start of the holiday season for the Irish household. Two thanksgivings as well as Halloween to be celebrated... check back soon and I'll try to keep up!