Making Halloween

(We're going to start out with pictures, but there are three new videos a little further down. If you're on a slow connection you may consider scrolling down so you can start downloading the videos now and then come back to read while they do their thing.)

Several weeks ago Halloween stuff started appearing in stores. Sydney got a kick out of looking at it in stores. She particularly liked pumpkins.

One weekend Anne started pulling out our Halloween stuff and decorating the house (inside and out). Sydney watched and helped. She and Mommy were "making Halloween". Even now it is either "Halloween" stuff or, if she's interacting with it, "making Halloween".

A little bit north of Spokane there is a place called Green Bluff. It is an area with a bunch of different farms in it. These farms grow different crops and are open from spring through autumn selling what they grow. A week ago we went out on Saturday to pick some apples and pick up a pumpkin or two.



We only got about ten apples, but our friends were getting a bunch for pie baking. Sydney was more than happy to help them pick apples, too. And afterward she was more than happy to help Mommy carry our apples back.



As you can probably tell from that last picture, it was a gorgeous autumn day.

Next we went to go look for some pumpkins. Sydney found one she really liked.



It wasn't for sale, though. I wanted to tell her how, every Halloween, the Great Pumpkin chooses a pumpkin patch to rise in and then travels the world to give all the good boys and girls presents. Maybe next year after we get Santa Clause established this year.

We went over to the pumpkin patch and picked out some pumpkins. This gave Sydney the opportunity to really see some pumpkins up close and personal like she can't in the big boxes out in front of grocery stores.



And, no, we didn't get the one. It was actually a little off on one side and had a scratch through to the meat, too.

This past weekend we raked some leaves out in the front yard. Sydney helped, of course.



Then she jumped in the leaf pile. You're supposed to as a kid, right?



She has a thing for leaves. I'm not sure what or why, but she really likes them. Even before this. Well before this. And she didn't understand that we were raking the leaves in order to put them in a bag and throw them away. She got quite upset when I started doing that.

Last week on Tuesday or Wednesday Sydney started to get sick. It started off early in the day as a runny nose and progressed from there throughout the day. She ate a good lunch, but wasn't hungry for dinner. An hour before her usual bedtime she was so miserable that she was basically begging Anne to let her go to bed.

Anne took her upstairs and started the bedtime process with her. As soon as she put her on our bed Sydney threw up. This is really the first time Sydney has thrown up. She's had the baby-type throw ups when she was younger and as is usual for an infant. But being a big girl this was her first big one. Blah.

Anne handled the clean up process and stripped the bed. She and Sydney both took a quick shower to clean up and then Sydney went to bed. She slept through the night. When I got home from work I got to handle most of the sheet, blanket and comforter washing.

The next morning Sydney was fine. She was happy and playful and other than a slightly chapped nose from all the tissue wiping, you could barely tell she had been sick the day before. She was exceptionally chatty that morning, too.

It took until the weekend before we got around to washing our electric blanket. Because of the wires and such involved it takes some care to clean it. It's mostly a hand wash and air dry process. With each of us alone with Sydney during the day it was difficult for us to do it during the week.

When we got it cleaned up we arranged our dining room chairs to drape it over. It looked like a tent. And Sydney really liked it. (What kid doesn't like playing tent? I know I did!)



And I didn't get my hug!

This morning while we were getting dressed Sydney decided she wanted to cuddle up with Big Bear. So she crawled away from me and snuggled right up. She even stayed there while I went to get the camera.



The pillow there next to her is one of the pillows Anne made for her. She loves them and hasn't had any problems sleeping with them.

And I would also like to point out that in that picture you can see Sydney in a natural pose. The smile is natural. However, if you ask her to smile you're more likely to get something that looks like this:



And later in the day when Mommy got home from work we were showing her the Big Bear pictures on the screen on the camera. Sydney figured we should take another picture of her and told me such. So she grabbed her pillow and plopped down on the floor with it. I asked her if she really wanted me to take a picture of her right there in the messy bedroom with her toys thrown all around the floor.

Sydney saw the wisdom of my comment and picked up her pillow. She moved over to the side of the bed, set it down and posed right in front of Mommy's mess.



Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have shared that last picture here. I would have left it in the photo album for those who go there to see more pictures to find. But it actually has a purpose this time.

This evening Sydney's Halloween costume arrived. We weren't having any luck finding one that we liked in her size. We wanted a plush, fuzzy one because it should be cold, as usual, on Halloween. We ended up ordering one online. (And if we wouldn't have balked at the price when we did see one that we liked several weeks ago in the store we wouldn't have ended up paying twice as much - with shipping - to order one when we couldn't find anything in her size two weeks later.)

Anyway the costume arrived tonight. Apparently Sydney really likes it and she put it on. She ran around in it for a while before telling Mommy she was done and to take it off.

Anne did take pictures of it tonight. They are posted over in my PictureTrail photo album. But if you don't want to see them before Halloween, do not scroll down lower than the last picture posted above. There are two photos of her in costume below that.

And, yes, I will be posting costume photos on the blog after Halloween.

Sydney Stories

Winter is quickly approaching here. It's been on the chilly side for a couple weeks now. But we do have two days this week where we're supposed to have decent weather. Sandwiched in between more rainy days.

Anyway, here as some fun Sydney stories for your amusement.

Sydney likes to pretend to cook. She grabs things out of the pantry and pretends to pour them into various bowls and cups. She has a set of plastic measuring cups Mommy gave her to play with. She also has a plastic flour sifter. Along with various decorative bowls and some baskets around the house at an easily reached level, she has plenty of things to pretend to cook with.

Sunday Anne made some soup for lunch. While she was making that Sydney wanted to be picked up to see. So Anne picked her up. Sydney then proceeded to run around pretending to make soup, too. One of the things she used was a Ziploc bag from the pantry. We keep various small packets in it, mainly from fast food places: Arby's sauce, Taco Bell taco sauce, red pepper packets from Pizza Hut and the like. So Sydney "poured" those into her soup.

On Saturday while we were out shopping and running errands we got Sydney a cute new winter hat. It's pink with a poof on top, two ears flaps and tassels with poofs that hang down from the ear flaps.

Sydney's New Hat (As of this posting, YouTube hasn't finished processing this video. They give a URL that will apparently be the page of the video, but I can't pull it up to embed it since there is no video to embed. Hopefully they'll finish processing it soon and get it up so you can watch it. If it's not there by Monday evening I'll delete it and try again.)

Sydney has a habit of putting her new hat on backward. (The cut out area between the flaps is narrower, making it frame her face in a smaller area.) Sometime after lunch on Sunday Anne and I were discussing something and Sydney came up behind Anne. She had her hat on.

I looked at Sydney and said, "you have your hat on backward, silly."

Anne chuckled and grabbed the poof on top of the hat. She yanked it up so she could turn it around the right way. When she pulled the hat off Sydney's head a bunch of the small packets Sydney had been cooking with fell out and rained down on her. Anne and I started laughing so hard we couldn't stop for a couple minutes.

(That story can never be as good when told as it was to see it. I'm sorry. There is just no way to do it proper justice.)

Sydney has a cute new outfit (a few weeks old now) that is purple, has Minnie Mouse on it, and has a hood.



The first time I put it on her I pulled the hood up on her head. She didn't like that and pulled it off. I made her go in our bedroom and look at it in our mirror. While she was admiring her outfit I pulled the hood up again. She completely changed. She apparently thought the hood was the greatest thing ever.

She stood there for several minutes looking in the mirror and pulling it up and pulling it down. When she got tired of that she pulled me into the guest bedroom. She made me pick her up so she could see herself in the small little decorative mirror up on the wall in there.

And here's a another video of Sydney.



Also, surprise, surprise, Sydney has outgrown her slippers from last winter. So we had to find new ones this year. Guess what she picked out?



The funny thing is that the slippers apparently bother her feet. The way they are put together there is a seam or something that bothers her foot or toe in at least one of the slippers. So unless she has socks on she won't put them on.

We might be buying her new slippers again.

And, just for posterity, here's one last video of Sydney. This is the very first video I took of Sydney on my cell phone. This was before I had the video card, but it was my phone wallpaper up until I set the hat video for it.