Happy Halloween!

On Saturday, we drove out to a U-pick pumpkin patch outside of town, found ourselves a great pumpkin and returned home to carve it. As we were pulling in to the driveway, Jeremiah was still saying "Bye Bye Pumpkin Patch".

Daddy has been on a "twip" for a few days so we'll be happy to have him home for Trick or Treating.

Here are a few shots of the "find", carving, and proud owner of a great jack-0-lantern.

Some highlights

Since I haven't been keeping up with the blog so well lately, I'm going to hit some highlights in both word and images.



*Jeremiah has been sitting in a booster seat at the table for about a month now. I guess that means it is time to get the highchair out of our dining room, already!


*He and I had a great time playing ball in the basement for nearly a half hour on Sunday. He's getting really good at kicking the ball and catching it when it is rolled to him on the ground.




* These jammies from Great-Grandma Z. are awesome...and he can say "froggie".



* He can also say many other words. When I picked him up tonight the sitter informed that he talked all day, although she only understood about half of it. He's surprising us each day with the words he says and things he knows that we didn't even realize he knew, like who Sponge Bob Square Pants is.



*He's developed an intriguing affinity for magazines and catalogs! His favoriate "reading" lately has been a Fisher Price catalog that arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. It features "Manny's Tools", Elmo, and Mickey Mouse, which he informs us of each day. Here he is reading the Illinois Alumni Magazine, intently on a Sunday afternoon.



* A few weeks ago I was brave enough to try to do a basic craft project with him. We collected rocks to paint orange and draw faces on to be pumpkins. He liked collecting the rocks and washing them, but the second picture is of him making 1 of only two strokes with the paintbrush. I finished the first coat of paint myself and the rocks are sitting unfinished in the garage. (I have 9 days until Halloween - it may not happen.)

An explosion!

For months, people have been telling me to relax about Jeremiah's speech development. They predicted that one day it would just click....and it did! We've had a verbal explosion at our house. It happened about 2 weeks ago but I have been remiss on updating his blog. In about a three day period, he went from about 5 words to so many I can't even count.

A few of his favorite words are book, donut, truck, Ally, stop, and go. There are so many more but these are just a few that come to mind. Oh, and he says Illini, Illinois, orange and blue. Last Sunday, he was saying some very muffled word in front of book. After shoving a book in my face, he illustrated that he was saying "Illinois Book". Wow!

On the Illinois subject, he's also learned how to do ILL-INI! We took him to another game this past weekend and he did prety well, although he gets a little antsy. The people around us are very nice and complimentary of him.

All his talking has prompted learning to count and say his ABCs. We counts to 3 or 4 on his own and then he will repeat the numbers after we say them.

Grandma T. came to visit this week and brought him a new lamp, which he loves! It's a Mickey lamp that used to belong to Aunt Ann and turning it on is now part of his nightly routine. She also brought him new crayons that he has been busy using.