Happy Halloween!

Halloween is over! Laura seemed to enjoy Halloween this year. On Thursday, they had a costume party at daycare and she kept her leopard outfit on almost the whole day. She came home with some fun treats, including a coloring/sticker book from Carla - a big hit!

Saturday morning we headed to Minneapolis for a visit with Uncle M & Auntie K. Laura is always a little edgy around her uncle but she did enjoy all the decorations and calmed down enough to play trains with Auntie K. Someday she is really going to love our Halloween visit there!

Today Mike's family came over for lunch and a cousin photo-op. Laura was tired and crabby by the time we were ready to take pictures, so she is a leopard with a pacifier in those photos. Thankfully she took a great nap so she was ready to roll for trick-or-treating. She was excited to go out to the houses, but I had to carry her everywhere!

Laura would knock on the door (and call out "Knock knock knock!") but we have not managed "Trick or Treat" or "Thank you" yet. Luckily she was not completely on stranger danger alert and was still friendly enough that she would say "Bye!" after she got her piece of candy. We hit pretty much all the houses on our street, and when I would ask her if she wanted to go home yet, she'd say no. Unfortunately some joker at the last house looked out and saw I was holding a little kid, and kindly put on a Jason/Friday the 13th mask before opening the door. He thought it was a riot, but I ended up with a sobbing kid. Poor bagooz. Everyone else was nice though. Once we got home, Laura enjoyed a sucker and a pack of M&M's before bedtime, and that was her big fun for the night.

You can check out more pictures of our Halloween weekend on this Smilebox:

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Laura is One Year + 7 Months!

Height: 31 inches

Weight: Flirting with 20 lbs.

Likes: Treats "nummies" of all sorts, stickers, coloring with markers, reading books, watching "The Fresh Beat Band" on Nick Jr., being a backseat driver (yells "GO!" every time we stop at red lights)

Dislikes: Not being with mom, strangers coming to the door (Halloween could be a long night), eating most anything (makes a ppbbbtt noise with her mouth when she doesn't want to eat something), visits to the doctor's office

Any New Tricks? Laura can do a somersault by herself, she can identify lowercase i,o, and e, she dances along to the "Elmo Slide" video on youTube, she can finally say "yeah" instead of just "no"

Laura Having Fun in the Fall

Now that Laura is a little older this fall, we have been able to take her to some fun "big kid" fall activities (although I do find that most kid activities are not really kid-friendly yet for 1.5 year olds).

The first thing we tried was a little fall celebration here in PL at Lakefront Park. Right away we saw balloon animals (nope) and jumpers (nope), but settled on checking out the pony rides if Laura was cool with it. She saw the horses and was excited to ride up until I put her on "Rocket." She quickly got over her fear and seemed to enjoy her little ride. After that we hit the playground until Daddy got fed up with the behavior of certain unsupervised kiddos there, and we had to leave.

We also made a trip out to Emma Krumbee's in Belle Plaine for some B family time with Mike's parents as well as Laura's cousins, aunt and uncle. Laura loved cruising around out there in Lilly & Andrew's wagon. She also rode the little train with her Daddy [insert Laura's "Thomas the Tank Engine" whistle sound here] and suspiciously eyed the goats at the petting zoo. There was a little track with some covered bridges where (bigger) kids could ride some John Deere trikes around. Laura acted as sort of the "billy goat gruff" of the bridge, planting herself in the middle yelling "NO!" at the big kids while they barreled toward her on the trikes. Mom had to intervene, pulling her off the bridge in time. We went on a hayride, too. A good time was had by all!

Last weekend, just the girls went out to a pumpkin patch to meet up with another teacher and her daughter. Laura proved to be sort of hostile/unfriendly, therefore decreasing our potential for future playdates...no smiling, chatting, etc. although the younger baby was clearly enamored with Laura. Also, she insisted on wanting the largest pumpkins that Mom couldn't even pick up. Of course immediately after we left, she resumed smiles and friendly chatting (we were headed to Target, after all).

In general, she's been super fun right now and trying out all sorts of new words. Thankfully, one of them is "Yeah." It is good to have a positive alternative to "No," which she was using even when she meant yes. Also, she is further proving she shares my genes by her love of all writing utensils, but in particular washable Crayola markers. She can scribble with the best of 'em!