Rings on Her Toes

Kids do the funniest things.  I know that is a cliche but it is really true.  Although kids begin to be influenced by everything from cultural and gender specific norms to music and language as soon as they are born, there are still lots of surprises.  When babies first discover their toes they don't realize that there is any reason that they shouldn't be as versatile as their fingers.  So when my mom let Emma play with her rings, and she realized that they were much too big for her fingers, she wanted her socks to come off so she could put them on her toes.

A much better fit!

And a source of endless fascination.

And excitement.

Hurricane Sandy

This morning we woke up to largely undamaged, if leaf strewn yard.  Buddy certainly seemed to be enjoying the blustery day.

Since things seemed more or less calm and there didn't seem to be any immediate problems on our street we bundled Emma up and took a little walk.

We lost power last night around 6pm last night and this morning we quickly discovered why.

At the end of our street the power pole and power lines were at crazy angles.

Around the corner we could see that a huge tree had fallen from pretty far back on the property out completely across the road taking the lines with it.  This turned out not to actually be the tree that took down our power.  We heard a boom that shook our house a couple hours after the power went out and with the discovery of a broken chunk of porcelain near our gas take we realized that the house shaking boom we'd felt and heard was really this tree ripping the power lines free from one of the anchors on our house.  Fortunately there was another anchor that held and our house seems to be ok.

Despite the fact that there are no cars in our pictures there were lots of cars on our tiny road.  Too many cars for our neighborhood especially right after a storm.  We realized that since they were all getting this far and having to turn around, there must be another downed tree on one of the bigger roads that they were trying to get around.

Giving the downed lines a very wide berth we took a tour of the neighborhood to see if we could even get to the main roads.  Emma was so excited to be outside and wanted to walk so we picked a clear street and set off.

At first she wanted to hold on to our hands, but then she had enough confidence that she was practically running down the street.

The streets nearby seemed to be in pretty good shape with nearly all the trees falling away from houses and mostly into the woods.

However we did discover why there were so many cars on our road.  The main road on one side of our neighborhood was closed to vehicular traffic and the tape was hardly necessary since you could see the huge tree clearly from the intersection.

From the tape the scale of the tree doesn't really do it justice, but our neighbor taking a close-up puts things in perspective.

And the part of the tree that was obstructing the road and caught in the power lines was only the top of an enormous old pine.

Before we got close enough to take this picture we made very sure that lines were dead but it was still fairly scary.

On our way back we found a tiny patch of cellphone service so Todd made some calls and we played in the leaves.

And ran around for a bit.

Overall we are extremely lucky to just have some downed trees in the neighborhood even if they took out the power and it does look like it will be up to ten days before the power comes back.  

Dancing Queen

This weekend we went to another fantastic Clark Family Halloween Party.  Now that we have a kid we often forget to take pictures of ourselves, but take plenty of pictures of Emma.  At the Halloween party most of them were of her dancing.  And we had plenty of time because despite being way past her bed time Emma was a little dancing machine.

Emma loves music and she loves to dance.  At first she used to just bop her head and pump her fist, but as she has gotten more coordinated she bounces her knees and moves her feet.

As added excitement Emma got a chocolate dipped Oreo pop.  Now that makes a happy kid!

Emma's whole costume was Abu from Aladdin when he's an elephant for the parade but she over-heated and took the elephant hood and her tiny fez off.

A big part of the excitement was that she was dancing with the other kids at the party, including Lucas (dressed as a little bear, but he didn't like his hood either).

After all the dancing she was pretty tired so she happily snuggled up with Evan for a little rest.

As mentioned we didn't get a group shot, but here I am as Princess Jasmine and Todd was Aladdin as a street rat complete with a vest that matched Emma's.

At first Lucas was a little shy of Emma, but toward the end of the evening they were having great time running around the living room, more or less playing together.

Cupcakes!

Even before we read Bringing Up Bebe, where we learned that that little French kids start their baking really young, we've tried to engage Emma in whatever we're doing. And that includes helping us cook. Here are Todd and Emma putting cupcake wrappers into place for a batch of Guinness cupcakes.

We (Actually) Carved a Pumpkin!

Last year we bought a pumpkin.  It sat on our front step waiting for us to carve it.  Eventually the squirrels decided that if we weren't going to do anything with it they could snack on it.  After the sad fate of that pumpkin I was hesitant to buy another, but Todd assured me that we would have time to carve it this year and we did!  We went for a simple but fun design and had it ready to show Emma when she got up from her nap.

We were all pretty pleased with the result and Emma was especially excited when we lit the candle inside.