What's a Boy To Do?

What does a kid do when Mom is busy taking pictures of a middle school soccer game?  

He stomps on the bleachers:

He climbs up the giant hill to the parking lot:

He balances on the pavement:

He runs back down the hill:

He stops to think about his next move: 

He plays with the chain link fence:

And then climbs back up the hill: 

NOW can we go home, Mom??

Fall Afternoon

As it's nearing Halloween, I told Connor that we could carve pumpkins after we went to the grocery store on Sunday.  Perhaps Mommy should have checked the state of the pumpkins, because they had all started rotting, even before being carved!  I'm not sure why - maybe it was the unseasonably warm weather we've had, or the large amounts of rain, but in any case, there was only one pumpkin suitable to carve.

It seems that every year Connor gets super excited to carve a pumpkin, but Mom ends up doing all the dirty work.

After pumpkin carving, Connor decided to help out with raking the leaves.

We hope to do some more fall activities this weekend.  Hopefully the weather cooperates!

Her Smile

At five months, Maeve has discovered her smile.

Sometimes it's for the dog...

or her big brother....

or for Papa...

or for herself, blowing raspberries.

And she has recently found that two fingers is a great substitute for those icky pacifiers she hates:

She has grown to be a very happy baby.  Mom was a bit worried when she was first born because she was very cranky all the time (unless, of course, she was eating).  But she's "grown up" and really come to love being a baby and all the love and attention she gets.  

Now... if we could just work on sleeping....

One Whole Hand

Connor turned the big 0-5 on October 4th!  He was very excited to turn five right up until a couple days before when he started declaring that he didn't want to turn five.  I told him that five was cool because he was one whole hand old!  When people asked how old he was, all he had to do was hold up his hand!  That seemed to work, and he's been celebrating five ever since.

In case you are all wondering why you weren't invited to a party, don't fret - Connor didn't want a big birthday party.  I think he gets very overwhelmed at birthday parties, especially those for him, and asked for just grandparents, Auntie, and Paige to come down.  He also asked for a "Pigmy" cake from the "Pocket God" app on my phone.  Since my last few attempts at creating such cakes hasn't been great, I decided to just print out a photo and bring it to the Stop & Shop bakery.  Easy peasy!  We weren't allowed to sing "Happy Birthday" because he really hates it, so there was no singing.  So if we're ever at your child's birthday party, don't take offense if he doesn't sing!

Connor has never really shown interest in actually opening presents before.  He always liked what was inside the wrapping paper, but never had the urge to rip the paper off like most kids do.  This year, it was different.  We brought out his presents from Grammy and Grampy and he couldn't wait to open them!  Hopefully he'll still be this excited about opening gifts at Christmas!

At his "party", Connor got a GIANT dart gun from Mimi and Papa.  It can shoot up to twenty darts in just a few seconds.  Needless to say Mom deemed this an outside toy.  And for good reason:
                  (disclaimer:  no babies were hurt in the making of this blog post)

Connor was very excited to eat his cake.  But he needed to blow out his candle first.  Apparently when he said he didn't want a candle, he meant it.  So the "wind" may have blown out the candle.

The cake was a big hit, but very messy.  That was some bright frosting!