I have become the nightmare you once thought me to be.

November!

Pretty much ever since Luke was born I have called him Pukey-Lukey, which is odd considering I didn't like the name Lucas because it rhymed with mucus. Anyhoo, it wasn't that he was a very pukey baby it was just funny to me. Well, it seems Luke took it to heart and is rivaled only by Juliet (as a baby) in his dedication to making our apartment a grosser place. There are even days (as shown below) when I will ban him from wearing clothes because he has soiled a few too many outfits. He doesn't seem to mind it and we're just hoping he grows out of it before he starts solid foods.

I thought I would be clever and take the girls to get pumpkins AFTER Halloween thinking they would be cheaper then. Unfortunately, I took the girls to an orchard where pumpkins are the same price all year round. We spent the next afternoon painting our new pumpkins. This year Juliet actually got to paint her own pumpkin, as opposed to last year when Adri painted hers on the balcony and Juliet was locked inside to prevent her from eating the paint. No paint was ingested this year and the pumpkins look . . . like a two-year-old and a four-year-old had a great time painting them.

Luke did not get to paint a pumpkin. He was sad either because of this, or that I left him in the jumper too long, or perhaps because he had barfed on all the other bibs in the house and was forced to wear this pink one.



Adri has been offered ballet lessons for Christmas this year and is very excited. She practices her moves every day and often likes to pretend I'm her ballet teacher. I don't really know how to do any of the moves but since most of them have French names I can at least tell her what they mean.



Aside from dancing Adri is also learning to read. I started her out with 'a' and 'the' and she took a real interest in it. We've been to the library to get some level 1 reading books and she's doing really well. Kids never fail to surprise me when they learn to read at this age. I swear I don't remember learning how to read until I was 6!



Gramma and Grampa Holderness came to visit this month. Gramma Holderness has a memory like a steal trap and remembers every great-grandchild's name, age, birthday and possibly the color of their eyes. Adri is fascinated by Gramma Holderness because she has a prosthetic leg. Gramma is very good natured about the whole thing and will happily explain the story to any curious grandchild (that she got sick and her leg wouldn't get better so they had to cut it off or she would have died). Juliet understood the jist of the story and would say to Gramma things like, "You didn't die!" or "You have one big leg and one little leg!"

Adri was even more interested and was even invited to help Gramma put her leg on one day which is much cooler than, say, helping Mom empty the dishwasher.

Grampa Holderness and Luke got to spend some quality time together as well.

For me the holiday season means that lots of greeting cards are going to get sold. I worked many hours to ensure that the shoppers of Walmart would find as many Thanksgiving and Christmas cards as their hearts could desire. Most of my work was done during the evenings after Jason got home from work so there have been weeks when we haven't seen much of each other. I did use one of my nights off to go to a movie with some friends though. We saw New Moon on it's opening night and were joined there by a sea of raging hormones. Anytime anyone in the movie did anything, EVERYONE screamed like their vampire/werewolf dreams had just come to life. Truely, it was an evening to remember. My friends and I spent the rest of the night in a restaurant making fun of everyone (including ourselves) who had been in the theater that night. It's nice to have a girl's night out every once in a while.

Another dance night in the Winn house

This year Thanksgiving was a Winn event and all of Jason's siblings and their families came to Delaware. We took family pictures and enjoyed a few evenings of merriment before everyone was shipped off back to where ever they came from. Jason and I made the trek to and from Delaware several times that week since discovering that our kids just can't sleep unless they have their own rooms. Other than that we had a great visit with some people that we don't get to see nearly as often as we would like.

Jarom, Lixi and Skiffington

McKenzie, Nate and baby Kenna



Kristi and Jolie

The kiddie table


Rob made a scavenger hunt for Adri before he left for Utah

Our new family picture - four out of five looking at the camera isn't bad

I used to think I didn't take as many pictures of our third child as I did of our first child. After looking through all the pictures for this month I'm starting to think things are evening out.

More thumb sucking . . .



Lookin' so good for church


Happy jump, jump, jumping

Mostly we hang the jumper in the pantry, although it kind of looks like we threw our kid in a pile of garbage.


Juliet and her entourage of animals. This is actually the way she falls asleep every night.

The last day of the month we went to support our friend/clown Merrily. She was working a few evenings at a restaurant and I told her we'd come take pictures and get our faces painted.

Juliet looked over the selection and chose a yellow My Little Pony.

Adri found some of Merrily's new paint for rainbows and got this number on her left side. Then she asked for the ugliest unicorn you've ever seen. Merrily was very accommodating and painted with all the colors Adri asked for. She didn't even mention how it actually looked like some kind of dragon.

I asked for a snowflake. Jason didn't want anything painted on his face so I smushed my face against his so some of the glitter would rub off. Then he sat and watched the girls play while Luke ate his hat.

He didn't know Luke was eating his hat until just before we left and his hat was saturated with drool. At least he didn't puke on it.




And some quotes to finish off the month:

(Juliet jumps up to scare me)
Annie: Where did you come from? Juliet: A pumpkin!

Jason: Adri, you're awesome!
Adri: As awsome as Mom??


Juliet: I need the baby to be shot.
(we were pretending to give shots at the doctor's office)

Annie: How do you know Mom's a girl?
Adri: Because she has hair.
(apparently too many of the men Adri knows are bald)



Finally, my personal favorite of this month:

Adri: Mom, I love you even though you're grumpy sometimes.