Happy Halloween!

Near the end of October, Nick started his new job at Hill, Glowacki, Jaeger and Hughes (his headshot coming soon) and has so far LOVED every minute of it. He likes it so much he's willing to stay until almost 6 on a Friday! ;o) His firm does a lot of estate planning and trust work, especially related to special needs and medicaid. I like that the firm's location down in the Willy St/Atwood area will give us a chance to meet up for lunch at restaurants I've always wanted to try. I'm still amazed how everything worked out. A doubter I no more shall be!

Nick's new job has meant that Iris has gone back to daycare. The first few days were rough, but we've had over a week of me leaving without any tears from Iris. It helps that Felix has been eating his breakfast with her in the 1-year-old room, as opposed to in the main drop-off room. At home, she has developed an unfortunate game where she will smile and shriek at you to get a response. She's getting a handle on her body parts, but if you ask her where any facial feature but her tongue is, she points to her ears. She is learning animal sounds. According to her, a cow says "bao". Or maybe she's just trying to say "cow". We're getting to that stage where she is saying words, but we haven't learned to translate them yet. She is also a graham cracker fiend. Nick jokes that there's a reason "crack" is part of the word... She definitely seems addicted. She knows where they are kept in the pantry, and if the door is closed, she will whine and frantically do her version of the signs for more and please (wiping both hands across her belly). Deny her a cracker, and it's tantrum-time!

Felix has been his usual challenging-and-confounding self. He'll do something well for a few days straight, and then suddenly go back to square one. It's been frustrating. "Stop" and "quiet down" are meaningless to him. He doesn't believe anything we tell him (I expected this more from a teenage girl, not a four-year-old boy...), but believes everything his buddies at daycare tell him. At least he's developed quite a liking for "The Magic School Bus", so he's getting some educational information. There are also times when he's super sweet and thoughtful, so we know he has it in him! He spent the weekend recently with Nana and Grandpa, and came home full of stories, which, if you know Felix, can go on for an awfully long time. :o)

Both kids started swimming lessons last week. This is Felix's third session and Iris's first. She seemed to like it a lot, but I think the chilly water got to her by the end of the half hour.

The kids had a fun Halloween. We still aren't doing very much for it (just carved a few pumpkins), but Felix has got it down pat. Felix was Iron Patriot from Iron Man 3 (his choice) and Iris was a flower. I realized too late that I didn't have a bucket for Iris, so I got the idea to be a gardener to her flower and carry a clean watering can. Iris was very unsure about the whole dress-up-and-go-to-neighbor's-houses-on-a-rainy-night thing. It rained all morning except a period that allowed the kids to trick-or-treat at daycare, then rained all afternoon into the evening. We got a grand total of 13 trick-or-treaters at our house. We don't typically get a lot, but this was way below average.

Felix: 4 yrs & Iris: 14 mos