Moving Forward: Happy Halloween

October has come and gone in a flurry of beautiful, warm days filled with much time spent outdoors playing and digging in the dirt. At the end of September, one last attempt was given with a new contractor to get us a back yard full of green, soft grass. With the dirt loosened and mainly mat free after his work, I started two new garden spaces on either side of our Sugar Maple and sandbox. The new grass is still young but the yard looks beautiful and, the week before October ended, I finished the two new gardens in the back and the one that I had started last May in the front. Even in the fall, they add a much needed texture and life to both sides of our yard. Plus, I had so much fun designing, mixing dirt, and planting.

The following pictures were taken on the 28th just before hurricane Sandy moved in.

The front garden which has some ornamental grasses, cone flowers, an azalea, and two lilacs, all of whichwill eventually hide the electric box most of the year. There's also a pear tree and lots of perennial flowers and bulbs.

My new gardens in the back on the south and north sides of the Sugar Maple and sandbox, respectively. The kids love the paths and it keeps them from trampling the rest of the garden in their excitement to see dirt.

The green leaves just above the purple violets are a lilac bush that will grow to 4-6' tall and round. I'm curious to see the progression since it came to me, by mail, so very small.

Besides having time and energy for a major gardening push, two other miracles occurred at the beginning of October. I joined Blacksburg Crossfit and spent a weekend in DC with my old college friend Marya and no kids. The DC trip with a blessing as I've been needing a break for some time. I was successfully able to fully remove myself from worry over the kids as soon as I hit the road and Nahum did not need to call once for help or advice. We had a couple sitters to help him and give him a break over the 2.5 days I was gone. He did awesome both on his own and with the sitters. (I hadn't trained the newer one very well so Nahum helped both Adrianna and myself in giving her a second house tour, advice with the kids, and showing her where the diapers are.) Elijah was a little upset for the following week that I had had to gall to "abandon" him for a couple days but, besides that, the trip was a huge success both in my reconnecting with Marya and just getting a break. I got to stay up late and sleep in, someone (Marya) made me breakfast and coffee in the morning and did my dishes, and we went for a beautiful, lazy bike ride from Marya's condo through Rock Creek Park.

Crossfit!!! I'm in love. Other than my joining and going regularly twice a week, nothing else miraculous has occurred but, if anyone is familiar with my life before, for October that is enough. I have not has the mental or emotional energy or time to exercise regularly since I got pregnant with Elijah. Getting through each day and week was enough of a roller-coaster slog as I could handle so to be able to regularly enjoy tough exercise again is beautiful.

Oh my, that's a lot about me (yet another sign life has improved greatly over the last two months). I better move on to the kids since that is what everyone really wants to hear about.

They continue to be wonderful and trying all at the same time. Elijah has, hopefully, reached a peak frustration with his lack of language. He can say many, many words but is so busy that he cannot apply them in the midst of any activity. Last weekend we saw a breakthrough when he came to me and asked for water, "wa, wa?" It had never happened before and has happened a couple times since. Other than that, he turns into a limp or very strong, wriggling eel when we ask him to help us dress him, go potty, pick up some mess he just made, etc. All of which he and we know he is perfectly capable of doing since he's done them many times before. Oh, he will also run away shaking his head and yell-singing, "Noooooooo," with a gleam in his eyes.

Shayna has also been working on expanding my ability for patience with her simple, "No, I don't want to," etc when asked to pick up her toys, put away her dishes, put her clothes where they belong, get dressed, etc. I tried the toys-go-in-a-trash-bag-in-the-basement technique to which she replied, "yes, do that," and was totally un-phased as I did. With that not working well and time outs no longer working much, I moved on to longer periods of time either in the guest room or her room ("Go to your room until Aba is home, lunch/dinner is ready, your cloth are on," etc). That seems to be much more effective as it removes her stubborn statements or yells from my presence and she usually gets bored enough that she behaves much better for the rest of the day. Elijah is allowed to come in to play with her, which is another blessing because now I'm free to do something uninterrupted for a few minutes. (She knows she'll be in even more trouble if she's mean to him and how boring it is without him so is usually nice.)

Shayna does continue to be a wonderful big sister for the most part. She has those normal impulses during play like "I wonder what will happen if I fling him around by his shirt" at which he usually runs into something hard, starts crying, and I hear her say, "it's okay, Elijah, it's okay." When I come to investigate, she quickly states, "I gave him a hug and kiss," plus she freely admits what happened (most of the time) so I don't punish too much since she was truthful. We talk and she resists those impulses for the rest of play. (She does do things out of anger or frustration sometimes too, which do result in punishment.)

Halloween week was a lot of fun this year as Shayna could anticipate it and Elijah learned to say candy, "Nandy? Nandy?" Shayna was excited to go as Cinderella (it is a costume she usually can only wear around the house). Elijah was not so happy about the duck suit until I told him he was a duck and showed him in the mirror. At which he smiled and said, "duck, duck." (He loves ducks as much as Shayna.) On Friday the 26th we went to VT's sorority/fraternity row trick-or-treating extravaganza (that's where almost all the Halloween pictures are from), on Saturday we went to First & Main (a group of stores that had an awesome juggling act booked and lots of other fun activities including trick-or-treating at the few businesses left there), and on Wednesday we went to the Baptist Church's trunk-or-treat (too cold for pictures) and did our first door-to-door trick-or-treating at a very small cluster of houses where we knew people. Elijah learned right away to look for the bowl of candy and was very picky about which piece he took, dum-dums being his favorite. (I've never seen a toddler mull over a random bowl of candy like that. He did it every time and when people tried to hand him candy instead of present the bowl he continued to search for the bowl totally ignoring the person trying to hand him candy.) It was also a great time to practice saying, "thank you" clearly and directly whenever someone gave them something. A couple of the lingering effects are whenever Elijah wants a door open, instead of just knocking like he used to, he knocks and says, "Nandy? Nandy?" (someone's bedroom, the front door, garage door, etc) and Shayna is now earning her candy back with her first ever chore chart. She is supposed to help me put the dishes away (she does all the plastic/low-belonging stuff), put her clean, folded clothes away, pickup her toys/dirty clothes, and not talk back. If she does all that each day by 6:45 each evening and has less-than three strikes for back-talk, she gets two or three pieces of candy (size dependent). If she doesn't, then she gets to watch Elijah eat the one piece he gets. So far, it's been great for all of us.

Our annual visit to Sinkland Farm and its pumpkin patch with tractor ride was on October 13.