Pumpkin patch fun, AND birthday fun!

Lots of pictures this post! We went to a pumpkin patch and corn maze a few weekends ago, and the kids had a lot of fun! Adam was a bit apprehensive at first, but he came around. He was even okay with the corn maze, and I was really not sure he would be! I was happy when he joined in and picked his own pumpkin, too! All in all, a very successful outing:). We carved those pumpkins that we picked out on Tuesday this week, and the boys had lots of fun playing with the pumpkin insides while Brian, Lynsey and I carved the pumpkins! Lynsey did hers very much on her own, with a bit of assistance from Brian here and there. Yesterday, Lynsey had her friends party here at our house! My friend Jaqui (also Lynsey's friend Ari's mom) came and helped me put Jamberry nail stickers on all the girls (as in, she did most of them!). It was a lot of fun! Lynsey was really excited to start knitting with her knitting loom, and has quite a good start on the hat that she is making:). I hope it turns out, I really want her to stay interested in it and want to explore more of knitting and sewing! A lot of the pictures from the party didn't turn out great, the flash on the camera was having issues unfortunately which was frustrating.

Nathan did something very interesting today. We are almost 8 weeks into potty training, and he still doesn't poop on the potty. You can do the math and figure out that means we have rinsed out a lot of shorts in the last few months. Anyway, this afternoon, the kids were all playing downstairs and I was upstairs. Lynsey calls me to the bathroom downstairs because Nathan was apparently in there with his pants down and I'm thinking, this can't be good. I get down there, and the scene was quite something - there was Nathan with his pants around his ankles, and there were 4 or 5 fresh pieces of poop on the floor beside him (please excuse the TMI, critical to the point of the story!). The bucket from the little potty was floating in the toilet, and Nathan looked like he was ready to flush. I wish I had my camera with me, it was a sight to behold! I immediately checked his underwear, and the inside was completely clean! What? He didn't first poop in his shorts and THEN try and get to the potty?? Even that would have been a step forward from where he was in my books! Nope, I could only infer from the evidence that was available that he got to the bathroom, pulled down his pants, and THOUGHT he was pooping on the potty (hence the potty bucket floating in the toilet, ready to be flushed) but really only pooped on the floor and on his pants a little bit. I didn't know how to react! I was so excited that he was aware of the urge to go and TRIED to make it to the potty, but since he didn't quite make it to the potty, should I still give him the promised reward of a candy?? I didn't give it to him, but both Lynsey and I gave him lots of encouragement that he was REALLY close and next time he really should tell one of us and we would help him. We've noticed that he is trying more and more to take this matter into his own hands, going when we don't know about it and only find out when we hear the toilet flush. Are we turning a corner in this whole potty training area?? Let's hope so! It's been a long two months!

Not much else is new. We are going to Vancouver next weekend to meet up with Brian's parents, hopefully that goes well. Other than that, we don't have too many plans before our trip home for Christmas. Just staying busy with school and every day life:).

Canadian Thanksgiving - so much to be thankful for!

Since my last blog post, we decided to go and get Adam a costume at the Disney Store as well. He had been talking so much about the Olaf costume, and while we were fairly certain he only wanted Nathan to put it on again, we decided that if there was even a SMALL chance that he wanted a costume of his own, we needed to jump on it! So, I had a very pleasant trip to the mall with Adam. I love going on outings with just him (if it's to a place he likes to go, of course! Hair cuts and doctor's visits are not necessarily included in this!). He is so quiet and just observes everything around him, and on this trip, he discovered escalators! He actually stepped on the escalator all on his own - braver than I was at a much older age, that's for sure! We went and picked out a Jake and the Neverland Pirates costume, but he has unfortunately not agreed to put it on yet:-/. I'll try again in a while. I want him to think it's fun, like it's fun when Nathan wears his costume, so I'm trying not to force it. He is starting to have opinions on some things now - like which pajamas he wears, and what color toothpaste he wants (we have three colors to choose from), and I was told today that he has independently joined the craft table at preschool 2 days in a row. I know he's making progressions, but as that 5th birthday looms ahead, I can't help but wonder if he is still falling further and further behind where his peers are. According to the charts they show me at preschool he is not falling further behind, but I have a hard time imagining him in a Kindergarten setting less than a year from now! We will keep plugging along and trying to encourage him to communicate and socialize, what more can we do! Worrying certainly doesn't do any good.

Nathan is getting into a bit of an, "I will do it" stage. It's not too bothersome yet, just small things like car seat buckles and putting his boots on, but it could be expanding, who knows! He loves to play in the car and the van, and apparently he needs more supervision because the other day Brian pulled 4 DVDs out of the van DVD player:-/. Oops! Yesterday, there was a quarter precariously perched in the dvd slot and I inadvertently pushed it in while trying to pull it out, ugh. Hopefully we can fix it, but for now it's actually kind of nice to not have movies in the van. I get to use the excuse that it's broken and I can listen to the radio more:). I will not be using a happy face if it's still out of commission on our first big road trip. It will be fixed by then, one way or another!

I guess I should do a potty training update . . . Last week, I was ready to give up. Monday was a particularly bad day. How long can a person rinse out tiny, poopy shorts before they lose their mind!! I really thought I had reached my limit, but we decided that we should keep going for a while longer. He has to catch on to poop sometime! Pee is getting slowly better, he doesn't have a lot of just pee accidents, and is often dry at night (maybe every 3 or 4 nights, and the night that he does pee, it's just a little bit). I have gotten smarter about putting diapers on him when he goes to the gym childcare (was I ever thankful for that on Tuesday, phew!!) and even at naptime - he doesn't pee, but just in case he waits until naptime to poop which he does do sometimes, it has saved me from a very undesirable task! So we're sticking with it, but I'm not a diaper nazi - he wears one when I feel like it makes my life easier!

We had Lynsey's parent/teacher conference today. I usually leave these conferences feeling either a bit deflated/discouraged, or mildly hopeful that things are improving from the last conference. This was the most encouraging conference we have been to with our Lynsey yet! She is solidly where she should be in all the categories of the reading assessment that they do - like, off the charts in the green! Her teacher says she is very strong in math and is self-motivated when she gets to school - while she waits for others to get settled into their desks, she pulls out a workbook and does some work. What?! Apparently she's "that kid" in that she is often telling other kids to get going to their desks so class can start, and lecturing ones that aren't following the rules. Wow! I asked how she was at sitting still, since this was a struggle for the last two years, and he said it was no problem at all. She is great at following rules and the only behavior suggestion he had for her was that she needed to be a bit better with raising her hand in class before blurting out the answers:). Something she needs to work on for sure, but I'm thrilled that she has so much enthusiasm! Now we just have to do our best to nurture this self motivation by not turning school into an undesirable chore - how we would LOVE for her to continue this love for learning and reading!

Some picture explanations - we had an owl in our backyard the other day! I thought that was pretty cool:). He just hung out for about an hour and then left, and we haven't seen him since. Hope he comes back! Lynsey and I got some cool Jamberry nail stickers, had to show them off! Oh of course - we had a Canadian Thanksgiving celebration here on Sunday! Our friends from Calgary and Australia joined us and we had a wonderful dinner! How thankful am I that we now have friends to share these holidays with - feels a lot less lonely, that's for sure!