No Time to Say Hello, Goodbye!

It seems I've been dragging behind my life (even more than usual) since the end of last month. I don't have time to keep dishes and clothes clean, let alone update the blog. However, this evening we were watching home videos as a family and I was reminded how quickly life passes by. So, here is a post to mark this time in our crazy lives. It will undoubtedly be long, but hopefully not dull.

Aaron has taken to jumping. He first attempted it on a trip to Temple Square in July. Isaac decided to be a frog and Aaron, naturally, followed suit. I don't think I ever managed to catch the result on tape, but it was quite endearing. He'd fling his arms up and bounce off one foot while walking to "jump" while saying "beht, beht." Here he is practicing the new skill by jumping off the couch.

Another of Aaron's favorite hobbies of late is reading. Now that he is pretty well done nursing, he has taken to thumbing the pages of a book while we rock at night. When we moved Isaac into his bed one night, I found Aaron fast asleep with a book on his face. It's fun to hear him jabber through the pages of a book. Even more so now that his jabbering contains increasingly more recognizable words. His latest favorite is, considering the age, quite unsurprisingly, "no." It's amazing how much inflection and expression can go into such a short little word.

Anyway, here's a clip of him reading. It's a Halloween board book, but if you listen closely you can hear "E-I-E-I-O" throughout the pages.



Isaac's ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. (The photo at left is a "shoot gun" that he assembled one day while I was putting Aaron down for a nap). He has become increasingly interested in "writing" especially the letter "I" (as demonstrated in the photo at right) and is quite the story teller. Here are two from the same day back in September.

During lunch
"Long, long time ago lived a rhinoceros and he got watermelon on him. So, he go-ed home and went potty and take a bath and got his very own towel. Then he brushed his teeth and go-ed to bed with the other rhinoceros. And the rhinoceros name was Aaaa-llen."

While taking a bath
I: "Hey mom! I had a dream about a spider in a spider web."
M: "Oh? Was it a scary spider or a nice spider?"
I: "A scary one. And there was a lion that cut the spider open with his sharp teeth and see what's in the spiders tummy and there was mouses inside."

I honestly have no idea where he gets these things, but if that is what he's really dreaming about I don't blame him for moving into our bed in the middle of the night.

This was the next exchange on the paper where I write these things down. So, as a further example of his clever thinking . . .

D: "Would you rather go on a walk or go to Costco?"
I: "Go on a walk to Costco."
D: "That's a clever way to combine the two, but it's too far to walk. It's one or the other."
I: "Is one a walk?"
D: "Yes."
I: "Is the other Costco?"

And since I really just can't get enough of his creativity these days, here's a little video, too.



We went to the splash pad on Labor Day for one last romp before they closed for the season. One of the clips we watched on the home video this evening was from our first time going last season. Isaac was quite reluctant to get wet and I had Aaron cozied up in the sling. And a year later, they are both lapping it up.
We were satisfactorily blessed by the bounty of the earth this summer. We enjoyed fresh, home grown produce with nearly every meal, and dabbled in the domesticity of laying up food for the winter. We bottled all our pears, cleared off one of our vines for grape juice, and Jordan did some applesauce while I was away for my Grandpa's funeral. If only I could find the motivation to finish the apples instead of letting them continue to breed fruit flies on my counter. . .

We followed in the proud aggravating tradition of having a failed attempt at family pictures before yielding favorable results. Hearing great things about the fall foliage, we drove down to the Nebo loop between Nephi and Payson. We were a couple weeks too late and started at the wrong end of the road to have happy kids once we reached any color. Perhaps we'll try again a couple weeks earlier next year. However, we did get to have lunch with Aunt Jess, throw rocks in the lake, see cows in the road, and have a fabulous lasagna with the Spencers. So, the trip wasn't a total waste of gas.

The day after our long drive, Josh greatly honored us with his presence and photography skills at a botanical garden in Ogden for a successful photo shoot. Here are a few of his shots.


With that, I'm going to call this post done. You may all breathe a collective sigh of relief and I'll make my way to the bed I should have retired to hours ago.