October 2: Annalie’s been doing a lot of drawing on her easel chalkboard lately. I thought this one, of a pear on a branch, was particularly good.

October 3: Class in in session. (Homeschooling can be kind of awesome. In our dress code, pajamas and bedhead are perfectly acceptable attire.)

I looked out the window of Elliora’s room and saw four deer across the street in our neighbor’s yard. (One of the deer is just to the left of frame, behind a bush, so I didn’t bother trying to get it in the shot.)

October 4: I couldn’t get Elliora to lie on the couch for our monthly photo session; she kept rolling away. I tried to sneak some photos in one day when Katy happened to be in her bedroom while we were in there playing, but I couldn’t get Elliora to look at me for a single photo. Oh well. This is very representative of 10 months.

We got a new chair from our neighbors who were getting rid of it after it didn’t sell at their garage sale. Elliora loves it and has already figured out how to push it up against the couch and use it to climb up.

October 5: Troy had to come home on a lunch break. I grabbed the opportunity to take a photo of him and the girls. (He normally wears civilian clothes on his commute and changes into his uniform at work, so we don’t see him in uniform very often.)

Elliora, just reading in her chair.

October 6: My friend Carrie, who is married to a Swede and used to live in Sweden, mentioned that October 4th is National Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden, which inspired me to try making some tasty Swedish cinnamon buns, also called Kanelbullar. I knew that Swedish pearl sugar I bought just because it was pretty would come in handy someday.

I went painting pottery with both girls, and all things considered, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon. I managed to keep Elliora entertained and paint at the same time but it was exhausting.

I painted this sign (“NO WHINING. Kthx.“) for my friend Katie as an unbirthday gift for her to hang in her high-school English classroom.

October 7: Elliora decided that her toy basket looked like a comfortable place to sit.

October 8: We were invited over to our neighbors’ for pizza and the last swim of the summer in their pool. I was sitting in their living room when I glanced out the window and saw they had “Live long and prosper” painted along the inside of the fascia on their front porch, so you’d see it as you walk out the door. I’ve been over there a half-dozen times and never noticed it before.

Elliora on the left at 10 months; Annalie on the right at 17 months, in 2005.

October 10: Elliora has discovered a love of being underneath tables. We’ve discovered how many gross things and choking hazards normally live underneath our tables.

October 11: Elliora has also discovered the basket by our fireplace where we keep firewood and old newspapers. She takes her job of spreading every last sheet of newspaper around the room at least once a day very seriously.

Speaking of Trekkies, Elliora looks adorable in her ThinkGeek Starfleet Academy Cadet onesie, don’t you agree?

October 12: It’s really hard to make mashed-potato casserole look pretty.

October 13: I love it when geeky friends come bearing geeky gifts. Well, technically Laura painted the bowl on the left for me because I painted a dottery bowl for her with a BBT quote (which I never got a photo of, I just realized). And Sonja mailed the bowl (with quotes from the song Friends Forever in the Scrubs episode “My Musical”) to me, she didn’t give it to me in person. But the point stands.

October 14: These apple-pie cookies (via smitten kitchen) were extremely delicious. I kind of want to go make another complicated, time-consuming batch right this very second.

October 15: Elliora getting a taste of fall. (Har har.)

October 17: Rainbow sparkly fingernails! The polish (Rainbow Connection, natch) is from the OPI Muppet collection. It made me happy every time I glanced at my hands. Too bad it chipped and peeled so easily. But I’ve been told I should try a base coat next time and that might help.

October 18: Elliora is a climbing fool.

October 19: We went on a leaf walk for science, collecting red and gold leaves and talking about why trees change color in the fall. Annalie copied a list of words for handwriting practice and just to help her learn the words. I threw a couple of pictures in there and told her to write the words for the pictures. The picture for #6 was a tree, and I had to laugh when I saw how Annalie had spelled it. When I pointed her mistake out to her, Annalie thought it was pretty funny too. She said, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I know how to spell ‘tree!’”

Look at me, blogging about something the same day it happened. It’s almost like I have a 10-month old now instead of a newborn.

Oh, right. I do have a 10-month-old! As of today, in fact. I do believe she’s going to be walking before she’s another month older.

Anyway. Today we had a fun visit with Carrie and her kids! We were originally planning to meet at a park between our two towns, but it rained last night and we weren’t enthused about the idea of trying to keep two babies entertained at a wet, muddy park. So we scrapped that plan and decided to just meet at Carrie’s house.

Annalie and Erik didn’t care much. When we got there, they immediately headed to the playroom in the basement and must’ve had fun because we didn’t see them again until we told them it was time to go get lunch.

We could walk to the Amish market from Carrie’s house, so that’s what we did. It was a pretty nice day, despite the drizzle we ended up walking through on the way home. The big kids ran ahead of us and got some of their wiggles out, while we pushed the babies in the strollers and enjoyed the mild weather and the fall colors that are just starting to show.

The market itself was quite interesting. There were a bunch of different stalls, selling all kinds of delicious things to eat—cheese, baked goods, produce, preserves and baking supplies like flour and nuts, candy, soft pretzels—as well as a restaurant, a meat counter, and a furniture showcasing a variety of beautiful wood tables, chairs, dressers, beds, and bookcases.

It seemed a little incongruous to me see all these men and women in plain dress (the women in long, modest dresses with their hair parted in the middle and pulled back under crisp white caps; the men in plain pants and button-down shirts with suspenders, most of them with beards and a fringe of hair cut straight across their foreheads), which is usually adopted by those who forsake the modern world and its conveniences, blithely using electronic scales and credit-card readers and cash registers. Carrie said it’s even funnier to see them outside on a break, using their cell phones.

We stopped at the deli counter and bought fried chicken, potato salad, and cucumber salad. We also bought half of a chocolate cake for dessert, then took it all back to Carrie’s house to eat. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that it was all completely, utterly delicious. I’m already plotting when I can go back and get more of that fried chicken.

After lunch Annalie and Erik went to the little neighborhood park to play, and Carrie and I hung out in the living room with Elliora and Elsa. It was probably a lot more fun for them that we were in a house full of toys instead of at the park, where Elliora probably wouldn’t have been able to crawl on the wet ground and Elsa would have been continually frustrated at not being able to keep up with the big kids. They are a bit too young to play together yet, but they got along pretty well, considering.

Elliora seemed to look at the living room full of toys she’d never played with and think, Right. I have a lot of work to do before we leave here! Then she set out to play with as many of them as she could.

Well, with as many as she could before Elsa grabbed them out of her hands, that is. I don’t blame Elsa one bit, though. Who was this young upstart coming into HER house and playing with HER toys!? At least Elliora took it good-naturedly. She just moved on to the next toy. By the time we left she was grabbing toys right back out of Elsa’s hands.

Then Elliora did something that kind of startled me: she imitated Elsa. Elsa had put a pillow on the floor and laid down with her head on it. When she got up, Elliora crawled over to the pillow and looked at it, looked over at Elsa, looked back at the pillow, and then laid down in the same position Elsa had just been in, with her head on the pillow. She sat up and grinned at me and Elsa, then laid back down and patted the pillow, just like she pats my chest when she’s snuggling with me, clearly quite pleased with herself. She’s growing up at the speed of light, that one. She’s got a big sister to keep up with!

We left not long after lunch, since it was naptime for the littles, waving good-bye and promising not to wait so long between visits next time. Thanks again for having us over and taking us to the Amish market, Carrie!

Today it’s raining and chilly here. But up till today, this week had been fairly warm with summer-like temps and sunshine. To Annalie, that means one thing: swimming.

She was pretty upset with me when I told her that we weren’t going to get the kiddie pool out just yet. I tried explaining that since it’s only April, there’s no guarantee the weather will stay warm. And besides, we’re going to Omaha in a few days and no one will be here to use the pool. It makes more sense to wait till we get back to clean it out and set it up.

Annalie got all that, but she didn’t care. She wanted to swim. I placated her with running through the sprinkler after a particularly sweaty walk home from the park on Wednesday and told her, No matter how much you beg, we are not taking the pool out till after we get home from Omaha.

That didn’t stop her from pleading with me yesterday to set up the pool, however. She WANTED TO SWIM. I told her that wasn’t happening, and asked what else she wanted to do.

“I only want to swim! That’s what I most want to do.”

“Well, what’s the second thing you want to do most of all? Maybe we can do that.”

Annalie crossed her arms and lowered her eyebrows. “Fly a kite.”

I’m pretty sure she said that to be difficult, because this has come up before, and she knows there are too many trees and power lines in our neighborhood to fly a kite. But instead of reminding her of that fact, I said, “We could probably make a little kite, it just wouldn’t be able to go up high. You’d have to run to make your own wind. Wanna do that?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah! Let’s do that!”

I did a quick online search and found exactly the kind of kite I wanted to make. Annalie chose a piece of paper (the directions call for printer/copier paper; we used IKEA craft paper which worked perfectly) and decorated it with her markers while I found clear packing tape, a straw, yarn, scissors, and a plastic bag.

In five minutes we’d followed the instructions on how to fold and tape the paper into a kite shape and tape a straw across the top for stability. I cut an eight-foot long spiral out of a plastic grocery bag and Annalie taped it to the bottom for a tail. I punched a hole in the fin and tied the yarn on. Annalie wound the other end of the yarn around a piece of cardboard she’d cut off a box in the basement, and voila! She had a kite.

And she was happy.

Want to make a kite? Video and step-by-step illustrated instructions:
20 kids * 20 kites * 20 minutes.