The Boots (and Halloween Boos) Are Back

We have had a wonderfully relaxing -- and delightfully cold! -- Sunday. I think the hot summer weather is finally gone. We've been cooking some fall comfort-food favorites, relaxing, and watching football.

Blanden is getting ready for Halloween. He likes to "cross off the day" from a little calendar we made, and we've been looking at pictures from his first two Halloweens in preparation for wearing this year's costume. (He's not sure about the whole dressing-up thing, so we're getting him psyched up early.)

This afternoon Blanden came with me on a quick Target run. I couldn't resist wandering through the Halloween displays, and sure enough, I came across something I couldn't resist. Two years ago, for Blanden's first Halloween, we picked up a Halloween bucket (more for a prop for photos than for holding actual candy for him to eat), and it happened to be an Elmo bucket. Little did we know how much Blanden would come to love Elmo a couple years later. When I saw that they had more Elmo buckets this year, I had to get another -- after all, now we have two little boys celebrating Halloween, so we need two Elmo buckets!

And, sure enough, Blanden saw something he couldn't resist: new snow boots! He spotted them as we were wandering the aisles and I thought we might as well buy them now. His new boots are three sizes bigger than last year's! Ellis has quite the growing collection of hand-me-down shoes to grow into. Blanden could barely wait until we got in the door and took the tags off to put them on and wear them around the house.

On another note, Blanden and Ellis are becoming more and more aware of and interactive with each other. Their latest game is for Blanden to play peek-a-boo with Ellis. Every time Blanden uncoveres his eyes and says, "peek-a-boo," Ellis cracks up laughing. It's really the cutest thing!

Blanden is also very conscientious of giving Blanden toys to play with in his swing or bringing him his bunny (which seems to be a favorite for Ellis) when I put Ellis into the carseat. When Ellis was sick last weekend and we had to put Bunny into the wash, all on his own Blanden gave Ellis his "other one giraffe," so that Ellis still had a special toy to hold onto.

This morning Blanden and I made homemade cutout sugar cookies, an every-holiday tradition for Mommy, and I realized we are using a recipe from Blanden and Ellis's great-great grandmother. Yum! We're ready for fall!