The fall leaves

Although our leaves were not all that spectacular this fall, and took a while to accumulate, we did have some opportunities for some rather large leaf piles that were great for diving.

E & L

Ella loves hugging Liam - and manhandling him most of the time. He is very tolerant and is certainly learning a good lesson in toughness as a result.

Trick-or-Treat

Here is a video of Ella trick-or-treating at one of the best-decorated houses in the neighborhood.

Trick-or-treating and melting down

Here are two memories from the actual day of Halloween - one of Ella happily going door to door (we visited seven houses) and then another of her mini-breakdown at the Halloween party that afternoon. It was hard to say what caused it, but it is captured on film in a funny way, so I had to include it.

Halloween!

Ella loved Halloween this year. She did lots of arts and crafts projects in school and at home in preparation and really got into trick-or-treating. It took some time to finalize her costume, which was going to be a butterfly ON a flower (a combo of two of her top six - butterfly, flower, dragon, baby, cat, crane), but ended up just wearing the flower parts, which was fine - especially since it was a very cold night and she was bundled up in a jacket most of the time! In these pics, you get to see Ella and Liam a day or two before Halloween, trying on costumes, and then Ella with her spider hat that she made at school.

On the move

Liam is crawling everywhere and getting into everything. A smiling menace, he gleefully grabs sister's toys, eats books and loves to play "suckerfish" on the windows. Here are some recent shots...

A boy and his Cheerios

Liam has been trying all sorts of foods lately and really seems to love Cheerios, pancakes and mashed potatoes. It is fun to watch him take 10 minutes to eat 15 Cheerios and deposit 20 more on his lap. He is getting much more adept at his "pincer grip," which, as Will notes, involves immobilizing the three lesser fingers...