A new endeavor

This past week we celebrated Granny's birthday with lunch and cake. 

She accidentally got trick candles that re-light themselves on her cake! Julia thought this was the most amazing thing. 

A few days later, we celebrated Joe's 16th birthday. Only one trick candle for him. While I don't usually like giving money as a gift, Dave and I gave him money to help buy a new pair of skis for the downhill racing season coming up. 

Halloween activities abound here. We went to "scarecrow row," a downtown festival. My favorite scarecrows were the nerdy one (with packing tape suspenders!!)  

and the one with a baby pumpkin strapped to her front in a sling. (Ghost Olaf is sanding next to the scarecrows)

Olaf's favorite one was at the computer store, made entirely of computer parts.

Joe taught Julia how to open the screen of an ipod in church

She was very pleased with the knowledge. 

I finally replaced my favorite sweat pants with a new pair! the old ones saw me through my pregnancy with an incredible ability to expand, but were finally getting holes in the crotch. Waste not, want not, so I turned them into toddler sweats and baby sweats. My new sewing accomplishment with these was to use grommets for the waist string holes.  

This summer I garage sale-d a lovely knit sweater, but I hated the buttons (below) so I finally got around to replacing them with buttons I liked.  

mother of pearl. ick. anyone want 6 of them?

and I made some folded paper stars in anticipation of Christmas 

We needed to bring the worm bin inside for the winter, so we dumped most of the worms and black gold compost out onto the outdoor compost pile. The chickens had a feast! You can see that the white one is looking much better now that the feathers are growing back in. We'll add more food scraps to the worm bin throughout the winter and they will have worm babies and fill the bin up again. 

Julia got to wear her wings again at Jungle Gym, which was having a Halloween party on Thursday. 

I've brought several new moms to Jungle Gym to try it out and have earned free sessions for doing so! So far, everyone who tries it has loved it. 

Julia is still in love with the ball pit

but has also discovered the joys of a rocking boat. 

She also discovered rubber balls covered in suction cups. She had a great time sticking them to the mirrored wall. 

That night was the Halloween party at the library too! Julia cuddled up to Olaf for the stories. It only lasted a minute or two, but I thought it was adorable. 

At home, Julia's new best toy is the mop bucket. She loves filling it up with various objects and pushing it around the house or yard.  

Check it out, a potty! We're giving it a try. A week or so ago, Julia informed me "tee-tee" and then peed on the floor, and I saw that as a sign that maybe she'd be ready to give it a try. She likes to sit on it, and she likes to carry it around the house and disassemble it and we've had a few successes, but they are mostly because I see that she is acting like she's about to pee or poo and run her over to the potty. When she succeeds, we make a big deal out of praising her and she gets a couple m and m candies. If she's wearing a diaper, she'll pee without indication, so while we are home, she's generally without one and I am trying to train myself to ask her if she needs to go potty often. Out and about, she's in a diaper and I don't worry about it. Our best successes seem to be first thing in the morning. When she's tired in the evening she is much less interested in sitting on the potty. 19 months seems maybe a little young, and I'm trying not to get my hopes too high, but Mom says that she got us girls potty trained around that age, and that the boys in the family took a little later. She's against the concept of 4 and 5 year olds still in pull-ups, so I hope we succeed before we reach that stage! We have family friends, The RB's who told us about their daughter who just HATED to wear diapers. They finally just told her one day that if she wasn't going to wear diapers she had to use the potty, and she was potty trained from that day on. I both love the story and hate them for it!