This is Halloween

It seems like we've been celebrating Halloween all month long. Two weeks ago we went to the pumpkin patch, last weekend we carved pumpkins with Bailey and the McGinty's, this week we celebrated at work and school, and today Aurora wore her costume for some fun at the Children's Museum.

Yesterday I took a couple of cute photos of Aurora with the cool decorations in her classroom and outside at daycare.

We had a party at work yesterday too. Bailey, Rebekkah and I were supposed to be Rosalie, Esme and Alice from Twilight, but I'm pretty sure we looked like some kind of goofy pirate vampires. Oh well... we tried.

And now for this year's REAL costume - Aurora was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz! Here we are with Jennifer and her cute little Cinderella. Apparently Jennifer and I are dressed as... matching moms with almost matching kids?

What a sweet little girl - I LOVED this year's costume! Next year Aurora should be old enough for trick-or-treating, but I think this is it for us for Halloween 2009. Happy Halloween everybody!!!

Picture Day

Today was school picture day, and for the first time I actually planned a cute little outfit for Aurora to wear. What can I say, last year we were all about wearing jammies to daycare! I have no idea when we'll actually get to see the proofs and order, but when I brought her home she just looked so cute I had to take a couple of pictures to post. You'll notice her teacher put little pigtails in her hair... I'm assuming after the professional photos were taken, but who knows!?

La La La!

LIVESTRONG Challenge Austin

Hey people! How was your weekend? Ours was excellent. Our friends from Boston came into town for the LIVESTRONG Challenge, and we have been having a great time. Aurora had a little friend to play with all weekend - AJ - who is just a charming and goofy boy. And I got to see tons of friends, walk a 5K, carve a pumpkin, and eat some great food. Here are just a few of my favorite pics:

Here's Matt crossing the finish line after riding 90 miles today. I'm not sure what course was tougher... the Texas Hill Country or the Seattle course that Julian rode earlier this summer. Perhaps they could compare notes. Regardless, it was a very fine weekend indeed. I hope yours was as good!

Poor Baby

Today was Aurora's 18-month well baby visit. It started out just fine... we read books and colored while filling out papers about developmental milestones and waiting for the doctor. She weighed in at 22 lbs 8 oz (25th percentile), and her length was 31 1/4 inches (50th percentile). Perfect!

Then she got two shots and had to have blood drawn again. Drawing blood from a toddler is just not fun. They did a good job and it went pretty fast, but she kept crying "all done! all done! hold you! hold you!" over and over, while I squeezed tight and kissed her saying "I am holding you, and we're almost done."

I knew she was upset during the drive to daycare, and that she cried when I dropped her off - but I didn't expect to get a call an hour later telling me that she hadn't stopped crying. I asked them to bare with her and just try giving her lunch and a nap - and if she wasn't back to normal after that, I'd go get her. She was indeed better after the nap, but it was a tough day for the Rooster (and the Mama!).

18 Months

Happy half-birthday Aurora! Today our baby girl turned 18-months old, and to commemorate I forced her to stand up while I measured her height.

Who knew it would be like baby torture!? I set up the height chart during her nap, and as soon as I heard a peep out of her I ran upstairs to get measuring. Turns out she was still a little groggy and wasn't quite sure what to make of the whole situation. She also has a new found love for stickers, so watching me use stickers and not being able to play with them herself pushed her over the edge. I considered taking a re-shoot, but she's awfully cute even when she's crying...

She measured in at 2'7" or 31 inches tall, over 3" taller than her 12 month measurement. That means she's growing about 1/2 inch per month. Chuck said that at that rate, he'd be 50 feet tall! Sounds like fuzzy math to me, but I like his enthusiasm.

Our other excitement for the day was taking our first trip to the new Bee Caves Central Park. We've seen it being built for quite awhile now, and it turned out even better than we expected. There's a cute toddler play area right next to a pretty awesome big kid play area, a basketball court, and walking trails that lead to a gated dog park and yet another (even better) toddler play scape.

The whole City of Bee Caves just keeps growing and getting better. When we moved out here just 3-1/2 years ago, there really wasn't much of anything west of our house. Now we have the Hill Country Galleria and a growing area across from the mall where new stores and restaurants are opening all the time. Now the park... I'd say we picked a pretty great place to live!

Pumpkin Patch Pictures!

This morning we headed up to Sweet Berry Farm in Marble Falls for some fun fall festivities. It was a beautiful morning for running around the pumpkin patch, taking a hay ride, and picking flowers with friends...

New Camera!

I bought my Canon PowerShot SD400 back in 2005 for about $300, just before heading on a vacation in China. I remember one of our goals in China was to find an affordable 1 gig memory card. We could hardly believe 1 gig cards even existed, and they were at least $80! We did eventually find a booth selling them (the lady kept calling them "one jigga") and I haggled them down to about $20 for that card - which would've been a great deal, if it had truly ended up being a 1 gig card. Turns out it was really only half that, but oh well...

Regardless, the camera has been great. It still takes good pics, but lately the flash has been weak and low light shots take longer and are harder to get right. It's also started making a grindy noise when the lens closes, which doesn't effect performance but I figured it was probably time to go ahead and see what else is out there. Turns out the newer version of the same camera is actually a little smaller, comes in different colors, and has some pretty great upgrades. It also just happened to be on sale! Oh, and 4 gig cards are now only $15.

So, for less $$ than my SD400 cost me 4-years ago, I upgraded to the SD780, got a new case and a 4 gig card. Here we have our first photo from the new camera, and a picture of the new camera in its cute case taken by the old camera.

Not a huge difference... we'll probably keep the old camera as back-up.

I'm glad to have the new camera just in time for the pumpkin patch this weekend, the LIVESTRONG Challenge next weekend, and of course Thanksgiving at the Wadey household will be here before you know it!

Arthur

Today I picked Aurora up early and took her to work for an advanced viewing of an episode of the hit PBS show, Arthur, featuring Lance Armstrong. In this episode, the lunch lady is diagnosed with cancer, and it's all about the different ways the kids cope and talk about cancer with their friends and family. Of course, one of the kids ends up emailing Lance, and he comes out to ride his bike and talk with her.

Aurora's attention span didn't last quite as long as I'd hoped, but hey - any excuse to spend the afternoon with my girl.

I spent some time during the car ride home talking to her about who Lance is, and telling her that her daddy's a cancer survivor too. I fully realize she's way too young to understand any of it, but I figured it was the thing to do!

New Shoes!

Today we took Aurora out shopping and found the cutest pair of shoes I think I have ever seen. Aurora knew she wanted them right away. She even insisted on paying for them herself. She reached to get up on the check-out counter, grabbed my credit card out of my wallet, swiped it, and signed for it! She even put the credit card back into my wallet afterwards. I'm not even kidding - the sales woman thought it was one of the cutest things she's ever seen.

Aurora also tried to leave her old shoes on the display rack, where her new shoes had been. So yes, she wore her new shoes out of the store and spent the rest of the day breaking them in.

We also bought a new shirt - and the outfit will in fact be worn in this year's school pictures, which will be taken in just a few short weeks. For the first time, we're actually planning an outfit, instead of dressing her in pajamas! And she's old enough now to get class pictures as well, so yes - she will wear the shoes that day, and probably many days until then.

Pineapple Flowers

Remember that whole thing about stretching my birthday as long as possible? Well, thanks to our friends the McGinty's in Boston, my birthday extended all the way into October this year! They knew that we were on vacation and that I was sick for a little while after we returned - so they waited until yesterday to send me an edible arrangement at work.

It was the perfect day to receive it. Not only is my appetite back in full force, but I was actually sitting at the front desk all day, so I saw the bouquet coming and was wondering who it was for - already slightly jealous and prepared to sign for it and give it to somebody else. It was such a surprise that it was actually for me!!!

The pineapple flowers were delicious. It was fun to share with my coworkers, and even more fun to share with Aurora when I got home. She loved them. Not only were they yummy, but they were an interesting challenge for her to figure out how to eat! Hehe.

Walking and Talking

On Sunday we had a sitter come watch Aurora while we went to a movie and had dinner with friends. The first thing Stephenie did when she came over was take Aurora on a walk around the neighborhood. She said the weather was finally cooling down and she wanted to take advantage of the beautiful afternoon. I'd been thinking that I need to be more active, but it's been so hot that I didn't even consider neighborhood walks. Truthfully, it's still a little bit too warm, but Stephenie inspired me and I've decided to take Aurora on a walk every afternoon when we get home.

Monday we took a very short walk, and it was not easy. After being sick last week and not going to the gym in months, just one little hill and my legs were burning! Yesterday I walked a little further, and today I had a lot more energy and actually kind of pushed myself - went up some steep hills and even jogged at points! Those of you who've been to our house know that we live in a beautiful neighborhood for walking, but it's a little bumpy, as we don't have sidewalks and our streets are paved with gravel. Our jogging stroller has a flat tire, but I think we'll need to repair it if we're going to go deeper into the neighborhood than today's walk took us.

It's really the perfect afternoon activity for both of us. I spend most of my days sitting too much, and she spends her days running around! On our drive home we excitedly talk about grabbing a snack and getting in the stroller, then during our walk we have lovely conversations about everything we see - birdies, trees, cars, the colors of houses, etc. When the walk is over Aurora never wants to get out of the stroller. I take her out, and she objects and climbs back in! Silly girl...

Kiss me, I'm a FISH!

Today Aurora moved into the fish room at daycare.

In August several of her friends moved up and she's really missed them. When I drive her home from school, I'll ask her if she had fun playing with her little friends, and she'll say "Yeah... Adi, Emmy (Emily), NeeNee (Sydney)." It's sad because I know she hasn't been able to play with them in over a month! And every time a smaller kiddo moves into the bunny room, it becomes more obvious that she's ready to move up.

Chuck's excited to have her move up because she's actually graduated out of the baby area and into a real classroom. He said he's always looked forward to that, because the kids in the classrooms always seemed so big. It's true, Aurora's almost 18-months old!!! And she already has a little clique of friends. I wanted to take a picture of her with her friends, but they were outside playing when I went to pick her up today, so we just went into the classroom to get our stuff and I took a few pictures. You can see that in the fish room she has a great view...

We also grabbed a snack. Yes, she's eating goldfish. Very fitting for her first day in the fish room!

This Week

What a week it's been. Aurora and I both woke up sick Monday morning and had to stay home from work and school. Aurora recovered quickly and went back to school on Tuesday, while I worked from home. It was good that I could stay home and focus, as I had one very cool project to complete: setting up our account and listing 11 one-of-a-kind signed LIVESTRONG golf bags on eBay. Yes, I'm now the official eBay seller of the Lance Armstrong Foundation! I also tweet as @livestronghq, and I must say that those are two very fun parts of my job.

Unfortunately, Aurora and I were both too sick to make it to Jack's Sweet Life Celebration on Monday afternoon, and I've been thinking about it all week. While we were in Florida, I got a text from my friend Kristen, letting me know that they'd had a terrible family tragedy. Kristen and Dan lost their sweet happy healthy son this weekend, completely unexpectedly. Jack had just turned 2, and I can only imagine the pain they are enduring and will continue to feel for the rest of their lives. He was just a cute, smart, energetic toddler - so much like our little Aurora.

I met Kristen when I was 8-months pregnant and Jack was 6-months old. When you're pregnant, people tend to give strange advice and often say things that are flat out unhelpful, like, "Better get a lot of sleep now because you won't be sleeping once she's born!" or "You have no idea what you're in for." Kristen was so excited for me, and simply told me that parenthood was the best thing ever. Both on her blog and in person she was constantly talking about how lucky she was, how much she loves and is thankful for her husband and sweet children.

Kristen has been such a positive influence in my life, and I certainly have not taken a moment with Aurora for granted since hearing this sad news.