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Mommy's little helper

A Tribute to Curls

I've known for a while that we needed to cut Zane's hair.  Everyone thinks he's a girl, even when he's wearing a two-piece double breasted suit. The hair hung in his eyes and stuck to his snot and didn't look great on dry days.  But, oh, the glory of those curls!  Putting Zane to bed, his little curly head leaning into my shoulder, soft halo of curls tucked against my neck. Oh, joy!

I promised that I would cut his hair after my mom came to visit and got her turn to nuzzle those glorious soft baby ringlets.  Then I asked Michael to take a few photos so we will never forget our beautiful curly-wurly baby boy.

Sophisticate

I don't know that this post needs a caption.

Fall Evening

One of our favorite family moments is taking an evening walk after dinner in the fall.  Southwest Evansville has the most perfect fall seasons imaginable.

Jed rides his bike around and around.  His specialty is "offroading" and he's done some pretty shockingly gutsy stunts.  We went from "terrified whining" to "insanely unafraid" in the last six months.

 Zoe can ride, but she prefers to run.  And run and run and run.  I think this particular evening she must have run about a mile.

 I push the babe.

 Wheeeeeeeeee!

Smoothie Boys

December Stats

Jed's been eating like a piggy the last few days, so we decided to do some measuring.

Zoe:

40" tall (86th percentile)

33 pounds (55th percentile)

Jed:

48" tall (93rd percentile)

50 pounds (77th percentile)

Zane:

32" tall (60th percentile)

24.5 pounds (40th percentile)

You can compare this with our most recent August statistics. And you will see that Zane has apparently shrunk?  No he is just the exact same size, just 95% toddler muscle now. I did just use my own adult scale, so it is possible it isn't quite as accurate in the lower numbers.

Then we attempted to take a December kids picture, which was... typical?

Put that baby to work!

Zane started walking, for reals, on Thanksgiving.  We didn't waste any time putting him to work around the house, as you can see below.

Refinishing the Kitchen Table

We received a beautiful little dining set from my Aunt Brenda for our wedding seven years ago.  We have used that table almost nonstop since then, and the finish was starting to show all the use. 

You could use a fingernail to scratch off the soft finish.  If you set down a newspaper for too long, you'd get a newspaper print left on the surface that wouldn't come off no matter how much elbow grease applies. It looked pretty bad and  I'm sure everyone who came to visit wondered why I never washed the table.

So this weekend Michael had a free hour or two and decided to refinish the top of the table. He had help:

The table top is now a much lighter shade and so beautiful.  I'll try and get a photo and update this page later so you can see how fantastic it turned out.  Now we all agree he's got to finish the rest of the table!  Maybe after all his big assignments are done for the semester.

Look who's homeschooling!

Zane kept throwing a fit this morning and I couldn't figure out what on earth he wanted.  Then I finally got it -- he wants to be a big kid!  So I set him up with a coloring page and a puzzle and he proceeded to wreak havoc on the other children's activities and look completely satisfied with himself.  It's so much better when everyone else is screaming in outrage. 

Quiet Time Buddies

Zoe and Zane have in the last few weeks discovered that they can play together, and they are mutually thrilled about it.  Lately Zane has been going into Quiet Time with Zoe and they play and play and play together the whole time. I love watching them get to know each other.

Just a few moments previous to this, Zane was laying down and Zoe was gently wrapping him up and cooing at her "baby."  He laid so still and smiled up at her, so happy to have his big sister's attention. In this photo she's holding up a little light globe toy for him to see, trying to make him laugh.  Zane's laugh is so infectious, Jed and Zoe are always trying to get a giggle out of him.

It worked!

Autumn Zoo

Today we went to the zoo with Grandma Jan and it was soooooo fun!  The weather could not have been more of autumn perfection, with sun glowing through the colored trees and just enough of a cool breeze remind us that it is fall.  Hard to argue with 70 degrees in November!

T

Today we met the world's cutest animal: a tiny golden baby monkey.  My world will never be the same, it was THAT cute!  It enchanted a whole class of like 20 kids who were all watching it, cooing and giggling.  When it ran outside, the thirty of them tromped outside the building, too, and stood there for another half hour marveling at its unbelievable cuteness.  Zoe has been talking about it all afternoon, and we have this little photo of her as a golden baby monkey so we never forget the unbearable adorbleness.

Kids riding on a fake giraffe.  They were, unsurprisingly, too afraid to feed the real giraffe, but we enjoyed watching it.  I looked down at one point and I could see the back of Zane's head, where his little gold curls where trembling in the sun.  His whole body was trembling, I realized, and for a moment I thought he was having a seizure or something.  His face was perfectly blank.  But then as soon as he saw us looking down at him, he looked up and started bawling.  He was terrified of the giraffe!  Funny boy.

The pink spoonbills and scarlet ibis came up to say hello to us!  Zane sang back to them in his bird chirp.  You can see my favorite animal at the zoo, the tapir, in the background.  What's not to love about a elephant/pig!

Happy Halloween!

 Monday evening we had Jan and Steve over for a pumpkin enchilada dinner, pumpkin carving, and popcorn with candy corn, a Dowdle family tradition.

The boy pumpkin

The girl pumpkin

Halloween day the kids dressed up to go get a free spiderweb donut at Krispy Kreme.  Then off to Trick Or Treat at Grandpa's work.  Afterward we did a quick bout of shopping with Dad and then hit Grandma Jan's and our friend the Byers' house before heading home for a very special Halloween pizza dinner.  Then three happy, exhausted sugar-coma-d kids were put to bed.

My three trick-or-treaters

The little housefly

Baby Tiger

The Ballerina

Mini spider pizzas for Halloween dinner