With thoughts and prayers

Tomorrow is one month that my dear friend's father is in heaven. I can only pray for comfort for her and send my thoughts and love.

Apple Recipes Anyone? Autumn's Arrived

Autumn is upon us. First hand sources have told us southern and central Vermont had past it’s peak foliage last weekend. The change around us seems to be close to its peak now. As I mentioned in the previous post, it’s all about the apples and pears… and here are those pictures…

The apple picking picts… Fall ‘06

















As you can see Fall is in full effect! So far we’ve had apple crisp and baked apples. Apple pie and an apple chutney will be following shortly. Feel free to leave an apple recipe ‘cause we still have loads of apples!!!

Oh and I just loved this one too (enough to stop the car on the way home).

Summer Fun '06 (pics)

Its been about 4 months since I’ve posted “recent” pictures of lil’daddy. I have a lot of catching up to do as family and friends have been asking for them. Hopefully this won’t turn out to be picture overload.

[goes and looks at a calendar] Yep, it’s been 20 weeks since we’ve shown a current picture of the little guy… …so 16 photos shouldn’t be so unreasonable. At this point, I guess this is a summary look at our summer as well. There were trips to Arthur Avenue (Bronx Little Italy) and the Bronx Zoo. We spent a lot of time at the various pools in the area! We made fresh pastas, pizzas, pies, cakes and cookies. We were at amusement parks. We were very busy! It seems only a couple of weeks ago I was sad to see the summer go. Now we’re gearing up for the Fall. The changing leaves are beautiful. These days it all about the apples and pears… but that’s for another picture post!

Without further adieu… Summer ‘06

Just like John's house

Big Daddy, John and I have a bit of a prayer routine that we celebrate each night as part of his bedtime routine. You've seen me blog about this before... We sing a Celtic Alleluia as part of this, then John's variation of the Alleluia (big emphasis on the "iaaaaa" ending in his version!).

Yesterday, at Church, we rose for the Gospel Acclaimation. John didn't sing; rather, he looked at Big Daddy and proudly proclaimed "This is just like John's house!" Alleluiaaaaaa indeed!

One month and counting...

I posted over a month ago that we were weaning John from his single remaining daily bottle.

He hasn't had a bottle since that post. Tonight he asked for one, as he has been doing about three nights a week. I'm honestly shocked that he still remembers his bottle enough to ask for it. Seems the few ounces of warmed Carnation Instant Breakfast in a sippy isn't quite a good enough substitution for that bottle action. Imagine, chocolate milk not being good enough!

Recent e-mail to Counting Blessings

I recently sent this email to Counting Blessings regarding how lil'daddy and I's day was going. She said I should put it up on the blog and looking back at it..., it is a classic. So before it gets buried in my Inbox and while I have a couple minutes free, here goes...

"I told you how I straightened and cleaned the kitchen this morning…

10 minutes before his nap, John managed to dump an arm full of cars in the kitchen, spread out his letter and animal magnets across the floor, hide his kitchen utensils somewhere, distribute his Bob the Builder tools around the room and empty out his cup of OJ in the pots’n’pans cabinet. By the way, you know the little dowels that hold the shelves up in his kitchen set… He’s discovered them… and likes to put them “I done-noo-ware”. I think we need to glue him- err- the dowels in place.

Maybe we SHOULD get him a cell phone; one with one of those GPS trackers. This way when he decides to disassemble everything, we have a timeline and location for all his where-abouts! I hope he takes his nap. He’s in his crib but just finished an encore performance of ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’. "

...we have glued the dowels in place and we are not getting him a cell phone!:)

He has gotten into the habit of singing himself to sleep. Frequently it's "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "America, The Beautiful" or the "Bob The Builder Themesong". Tonight he's reciting the cow, chicken and duck parts for 'Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type'. This was after he announced to mommy and daddy (after we told him to close eyes) that he was a cow. "click clack moo click clack moo... click clack quack..." "close eyes lil'daddy" "clickity clack quack... The cow keeps waking up!"

Gotta love that lil'daddy!