No tricks, just treats

We're getting ready for Halloween. This means my maiden voyage as a preparer of treats for Mason's preschool class. The stipulations are 13 wrapped, commercially prepared treats. These little bags are what I came up with. I curse this modern, fearful age for robbing me of something I have looked forward to for many years: baking treats for my son to take to school. I guess these days something doesn't count unless you spend money on it. Oh, well. Anyway, each bag includes:

• 6 small Halloween-themed stickers
• 2 plastic rings with different Halloween symbols as the "jewel"
• a Tootsie Pop
• one small candy bar

I got my ideal bag of Tootsie Pops. There was only one grape and one chocolate in the whole bag. The rest was a mixture of raspberry, cherry, orange and mystery. I'll be honest here, I totally saved as many of the cherry ones as I could because they are my personal favorite. I also used Kit Kats and Three Musketeers because I thought those were the least likely to encounter any allergy problems. I spent $8 total (meaning on these items and our candy for trick-or-treaters. I felt okay about that. I plan on cutting up the stickers and putting both the left over plastic rings and the left over stickers in with our Halloween candy (which is, you guessed it, Kit Kats, Three Musketeers, and Snickers. I don't care if the trick or treaters are allergic. Beggars can't be choosers, right?).

Happy Haunting! Oh, and here's the question? Did I go overboard on these? Or did I not go overboard enough? You be the judge.

Craftiness is in the air

Last night, we went at the last minute with my friend Kristi, her sons Logan and Colton, and her mom, to a little Halloween night at a local craft store. I'm not gonna lie, it was not nearly as "big" as we thought it would be. But in the end, the boys had fun and that is what counts. Mason is now five times even more excited to wear his James costume (and apparently, to be somewhat snotty as he corrects the people who say "Look, it's Thomas!") to school and on Halloween proper. Plus, we had ice cream for dinner; that's always a bonus and further proof that I'm mother of the year, as I keep telling you. Oh, well. It was good, free entertainment. Thanks for inviting us to tag along!

I'm a dork, I took a picture of the sign.


Mason and a little bit of Logan at the craft table. They had mummies to draw on, jack o' lanterns to draw faces on (the nice lady glued these together so they made a little basket), and pom-pom spiders to attach legs, eyes, and noses to with a hot glue gun. Mason got (actual)glue on his hand and his (figurative) glue melted, so I finished it up for him and thus don't have pictures of that.

The parade

They gave out balloons, and Mason's had a very, very long ribbon. He loved letting it stretch up and telling me to "look how tall my balloon is, mom". Claire liked watching it, too.


Claire watched the whole thing in her understated way. She was asleep when we went in, and I wasn't going to mess with her ladybug costume when she woke up grumpy. Even without a costume, she won a prize that is a bead picture making kit she won't be able to use until the choking hazard doesn't apply.

Compare and Contrast

Gee, do you think these two are related? For all the differences I could find in pictures just a couple of months ago, I think it's pretty clear that they look alike now.

I can't find the handwritten note the pediatrician gives us that lists Mason's size at age 4 months, but I have the one for his two month visit and the one for his six month visit. If I estimate in between them, at Claire's age now, Mason was 26 inches long and weighed about 15 lbs. So she is about the same length, but approximately three pounds less than he was. I know there are differences in size between girls and boys, so I'll just take that as further proof that she's a string bean.

I think her facial features are still a little more delicate where Mason's were more round. And Mason had the "old man" hair thing going on; his newborn hair never fell out but it didn't really grow either. By the time he hit four or five months, the newborn hair was in a ring around the middle of his noggin. Claire's hair seems to be growing in at the same rate as her head is growing. If I wanted to, I could probably give her a little bit of a ponytail right on top of her head, but I'll wait.

Personality wise, she is a whole lot more snuggly than he was, but she is also far more squirmy. Mason would roll over when I tried to change his diaper, but Claire will kick me as hard as she can. Mason loved tummy time, too, but Claire has only started enjoying recently. Going along with being snuggly, she only tolerates it for a few minutes whereas Mason would spend hours on his tummy. I don't know what this reveals about their personalities. I guess time will tell!

Quick Five Month Update

Likes: being snuggled, singing (especially if you cover her ears so she can hear herself), grabbing her toes, going from laying to sitting to standing, being tickled no matter where on her body you try it, sticking out her very long tongue, kicking her legs, her brother, grabbing on to anything and holding on tight (especially if it's one of her little "lovey" things with the animal head and small soft blanket, or someone's face), being outside, "chatting"

Dislikes: being put down, when her brother plays rough, being in the carseat, when her dad and brother wrestle

Claire is still tiny in size, but she loves lots of action around her. She likes watching the dogs, she loves getting kisses from them, and she often watches Mason with a look of amusement on her face. She will fight falling asleep until the last possible minute, but when it comes right down to it she'll snuggle up close and doze off. She actually likes rolling over now and will do it any chance she gets. She's getting stronger and sitting longer on her own (we're still only talking seconds here), and keeps trying to push the limits of physical activity to get stronger every day.

Officially kissing summer goodbye

We decided to attempt one last go for the summer by going to Lake Powell with my parents this week. It was a little different to watch the temperature go down as we came home, instead of trying to beat the heat, but it was a good change. We're hoping to make this an annual trip.

It was a long drive down. Because I'm not very organized, we didn't get started until late Sunday morning. I still feel bad that we didn't leave until around 11:00 for a six hour drive. I'm also very grateful for our portable DVD player and the stack of movies that kept Mason entertained. He was a huge help by talking to Claire. She slept the rest of the time. Alan and I took a book we have called "The Book of Questions" and pondered some really odd topics, such as: if you were asked to kill a beautiful butterfly by pulling the wings off it, would you do it to get a weeklong all-expenses-paid vacation to a destination of your choice? The followup question asked if you would step on a cockroach for the same deal. Hmm. My question was who came up with that question and who would offer a vacation for such an arbitrary thing.

The next two days, Mason was itching to get out on the water. The weather was mostly fine, at times a little windy, and we got out both afternoons for some boating. Mason and Alan jumped out and went for a swim both days. The second day, Alan did some water skiing and suggested I give it a try. A little introduction is required: I'm a chicken. When I was a kid, it was all my dad could do to get me on the boat; never mind getting me into the water. Alan was very surprised that I took him up on it. Jumping in was a little cold. The lifejacket popped up weird and hit me in the throat. That was the worst part. But I couldn't ever get up; and after Alan had to come out and help me put the skis on, only to be smacked in the face with a ski for his effort, I only made a couple of attempts at it. I've been assured that hardly anyone gets up on their first several tries and so even though Alan made it look effortless (the only reason he didn't attempt to slalom was a miscommunication), I'm not a complete idiot. I'll try again next year.

Our camp got raided by coyotes. The next night, we could hear them and decided (I was tagging along with the boys, obviously) to go looking for them. They were only about 50 yards or so away. One held his ground but our flashlights scared the other three back. Needless to say, we remembered to throw our garbage away that night.

Mason was, of course, a huge fan of the whole thing. My dad brought an army shovel for him so he could dig in the dirt. Mason is not accustomed to camping in paved, groomed campgrounds (for example, the camp host rakes the sand into a feng-shui pattern), so it took a little more work to entertain him. This was accomplished with walks around the loop we were camped on. We were also near the dry dock for the damaged rental boats. He liked to ride his bike down there for my "surprise"; he would then ride his bike under the houseboats that were up on blocks like they were his tunnels. He also had fun drawing letters in the sand.

Claire benefitted greatly from having two grandparents around to cuddle with her all the time. She likes her bouncy chair for small periods of time, but it's nothing compared to singing with grandma or taking a nature walk with grandpa. My mom commented to me last night that she already missed rocking Claire to sleep; I think Claire missed it, too. She loved cuddling close and looking around with wide eyes, whether we were on the boat or in the camp ground. She also doesn't seem convinced that I'm transitioning her to solid foods quickly enough; whenever she sees food, she sticks out a long, long tongue; maybe we should have named her Jean Simmons...

From feeding ducks in the launch area (they love Cheetos and the winning duck raced away with the others trailing behind him closely) to feeding the ravens after we left, we had so much fun. Mason loved all rocks, the sand, the water. He did not love his dad water skiing and cried the whole time that daddy should get back in the boat. We ate well, we played hard, and now we need to recover from our vacation. Thanks for giving us your time and energy, guys! We couldn't have gone and had so much fun without you.