Pumpkin Carving!

For Halloween this year we decided to carve a big pumpkin and then paint little ones. For some reason I went insane and bought two big pumpkins (they were 20% off) but then decided I really didn’t want to carve two pumpkins. So we gave one to Jeff and Lori and opted to only carve one. Eli really wasn’t that interested in the affair much. The highlight for Eli was designing the pumpkin face with Daddy while Mommy opened up the pumpkin. Jon drew circles on paper and then Eli drew pumpkin faces in them to show us the surprised face he wanted the pumpkin to have. Eli was really good, which surprised us! He drew eyes and mouths and they were really interesting, so we actually did go with one of Eli’s own designs for the face of our pumpkin this year.

Once I had the “patient” opened up Eli peeked in to see what was inside the pumpkin, but quickly told me, “Ugh, it smells Mommy,” and wanted nothing more to do with it. I tried to get him to help scoop out the insides and get messy, but there was no way he was touching that “gicky stuff.” He even asked me, “why do you want to touch that, Mommy?”

Once the pumpkin was carved Eli wasn’t too excited about having the candle inside of it. He liked it without the candle and kept swiping the candle when it wasn’t lit and carrying it off. So our cute pumpkin has only been lit a few times, once we’ve managed to relocate the candle. Oh well! Mommy and Daddy had fun carving our pumpkin!

I want the pumpkin to have this face!

Picking out which of Eli's drawings is the winning face!

Mommy performing the "facelift"

Ta-da! Just like Eli's surprised face!

  All lit up and still looking surprised. Whoever carved this one did an excellent job.

Pumpkin rider!

Our little rocker.

Elijah has developed quite the affinity for the guitar from Daddy's Guitar Hero game for the Wii. Eli loves the song "Slow Ride" from the game, but has also gotten in to making up his own songs, which are usually hilarious. One day he and Lexi and Tori were having a "rock out" with the guitar, my old recorder, and some drums. I had to post a clip of him on the guitar - he's got all the cliche guitar player moves down . . .

Theories by Elijah

• While driving past some fields in Byron, I asked Eli what kind of plants he thought were growing. He paused for a second and then said, "Meat plants!" I explained that meat came from animals, so if you ate bacon it was from a pig, and if you ate chicken it was from a uh chicken (smooth, I know).  Eli was laughing at me as I explained this and said, "Mommy, that is so silly!" The I explained that if you ate steak or a cheeseburger it was from a cow. Well, he just looked at me like I didn't have a brain in my head and said in a I-can't-believe-my-Mother-is-this-dumb-voice, "Mommy, cows give us milk!"
• On the way home yesterday Elijah, out of the blue, said, "Mommy, Matea doesn't even know that Matea is her name!" I told him that he was right, but that if we kept saying her name to her she would figure it out, just like Elijah figured out that when Mommy and Daddy said Elijah that we were talking about him. Eli seemed with me so far, and then told me, "Mommy, when you were born you didn't even know your name was Mommy! You came out of Grandma's tummy and she had to tell you your name was Mommy!" Something like that, Eli, something like that. :)

Accessories!

Our little Matea has long enough and thick enough hair for her first accessories! I'm so excited. And she looks sooooo adorable with her little hair bows. :)

Can you believe what Mom put on my head?!

Well, now that you mention it I do look pretty cute.

She rolled over!

After weeks of HATING tummy time and basically eating the ground and not holding her head up at all, Matea finally figured it out somehow. And then during tummy time yesterday she proceeded to roll from her tummy to her back several times!

I think the back to tummy roll won't be far behind. She can already get herself on her side; she just needs to kick her leg a little more and she'll be there!

Yeah, I'm rolling. I've got this figured out now.