Friday, November 11, 2011

More catching up to do!

I can't believe it's been almost a month since the last time I posted anything.  We've been busy, and I've been battling colds and general tiredness.  Sorry.

So, a recap to what we've been doing:

A few weeks ago Dash and I went to the Discovery Museum in Acton, which essentially is a small-scale science museum located in an old Victorian house.  It's pretty cool.  Here he is checking out the train: 


Another exhibit he loved was the water/river.  He especially loved using the pump to get the water flowing!


There was a ball exhibit that was a big hit, too, but the pictures I took of that didn't work out as well as I hoped.  But the thing I love about all the pictures of him in the museum was the look of concentration in his face!  You can see the gears turning in his brain as he figures out how everything works.  Maybe we have a budding engineer on our hands!

When we're at home we do a number of activities - painting, coloring, Playdoh, and something he calls "making cookies with milk".  He and I do a bit of baking together, and one day he decided to get out a few measuring cups, a small prep bowl, and a funnel and use them to pour milk from one thing to another.  Which is something that a lot of kids do, I know, but I love that he refers to it as making cookies.  Here he is busy at work!


We've also been to the park about a bazillion times, and there have been countless other playdates and a birthday party thrown into the mix as well.  He's decided who his three "best best friends" are, which is totally cute - Crispin, who he has known since he was about 6 weeks old, Liam from our Monday morning play group, and Kailyn, a neighbor girl that he's met all of twice and is totally smitten with.  He has told me that he wants to invite them all to a Valentine's day party.  I told him we have plenty of time to plan for that later, but we should at least get through Christmas first.

What other fun things happened this month?  Why, Halloween, of course!
Our Halloween was a bit disrupted this year, but it worked in Dashiell's favor.  Two days before the big day we were treated to a freak Nor'easter which dumped about 5" of heavy, wet snow on our still-leafy trees.  It totally devastated all of the towns around us - some of my friends were without power for 5 days.  5 days!  Can you imagine, just from a little snow storm?  We thankfully lucked out and even though our lights flickered a few times, we kept our electricity.  This is a picture of a tree down the street from us:

It stayed in the street like that for DAYS.  Dashiell and I did see the guys from the city cutting it down mid-week, which was cool.  Dash was most impressed by the traffic cones and the "work area ahead" signs they placed in the street.  I kept pointing out the neat cherry picker and the long-handled chain saw, but the signs and cones won out.  To each his own!

The two days ago Dash and I walked down to the little park a few blocks away (the "water tower park", as we often refer to it) and I noticed the damage to this HUGE tree:

How crazy is that?  It used to have three trunks, but one of the trunks pulled right out of the ground.  Wild.  Somehow none of the houses behind the tree were damaged.  Other trees were, but there seems to be no structural damage at all.

Anyway, as I mentioned the storm worked out well for Dashiell.  We ended up going to Stoneham to trick-or-treat with the grandparents on Halloween night, then we went again a week later in Lowell - they postponed T-or-T until Sunday.  So D got to go out twice!  Sweet!  Dashiell was a ghost this year, and got a lot of use out of his costume.  This picture was taken at Stone Zoo the week before Halloween:


He also got to wear his costume at school for their Halloween parade, and he could have worn it for our play group Halloween celebration but decided he didn't want to be hampered by all that fabric.

Alright, one last picture, and then I'm finally done!  The day after our big storm Dashiell wanted to help daddy snow blow the driveway.  It was cold and snowy, so he's fully bundled, but the best part is that he got to wear Rick's ear protection:

He was so good about keeping the ear muff thingies on, even though they were too big.  And they make him look so handsome, too!

Thanks for reading to the end of this very long post!  I'd say I'll try to post more frequently, but we all know how that goes. :)  Have a good weekend!