Play hard. Sleep harder.

When you're 11 months old, playing is serious business!  Both of the kids rooms are kid proof, so we keep their doors open so they can go in and out when they want.  Dan noticed Evie had been away for a little while and was very quiet.  That usually means they're doing something they shouldn't.  In this case, it means she wore herself out...




Ah, this picture explains it...




The ol' thumb in the mouth trick.  Evie can instantly put herself to sleep by sucking on her thumb.  She doesn't suck on it any other time.  But when you tell her it's time to go "night night", she'll drink her bottle and as soon as she's done, the thumb goes in and she's out!  I'm transitioning her from bottle to sippy cup at nap time, so hopefully she keeps this up.  Wish us luck!

Full moon

Have you ever tried to take a picture of the moon?  I'm guessing probably not.  Up until this point, I hadn't either.  Well let me tell you, it's not easy!

Something unique to living in the country is that the night sky is pitch dark.  I mean, can't see your hand in front of your face, dark.  I remember when we still lived in St. Louis, I went out with some friends one night and I parked at someones house.  It was about midnight when we got back and I couldn't get over how dark it was.  My friend thought I was crazy, but it had been so long since I had lived in the country, I forgot how dark it gets.  In the city you always have light around from street lights, neighbors, towers, cars, pollution, etc.

We had an absolutely perfect full moon and Samuel was mesmerized by it, so I thought I'd take a picture of it.  What I ended up with was a lot of blurry pictures with this bright white blurry orb in it.  I only had a few that came out semi-decent:

 Here it is with clouds covering it.  This was about the time Samuel spotted it...

Mostly uncovered and lighting up the sky...

Ok, so here's one of the bright, blurry orb pictures, but the clouds and trees are kind of cool...

And drifting away...

I'm sure you're glad you decided to spend the last minute reading this most riveting post.  If nothing else, it proves how much of a photographer I am NOT.  ;)

Chew toys

Evie is a chewer.  She'll chew on anything she can get her mouth on.  Fingers, toys, chairs, clothes, hair - it's all good.  Heck, she even chews on me!  I'm hoping we can break her of this habit in the near future, but in the meantime, here are a few pictures of her finding things to chew on around the house...




Any kind of dangly item at eye level is fair game.  She particularly love drawstrings...


                                



She also really likes wood.  Below I caught her chowing down on our bar stool, but she has also taken a liking to night stands, tables and crib rails...

It's a big world out there!

Evie started pulling up around the middle of October and a whole new world opened up to her.  She and Samuel love to look outside to see what's going on.  Here's Evie just after breakfast...

A little later, still looking outside...

One adorable smile and one slightly disheveled look...

Samuel got a little stir-crazy, so we let him go outside and play with his wagon and trucks by "himself".  We were of course sitting at the breakfast room table watching him the whole time, but it was so cute watching him play when he thought he was alone.  He played absolutely perfectly and didn't do anything that shouldn't have...