Wordless Wednesday: Annual Apple Picking

Can you believe this was his first time apple picking?!

It's beginning to look a lot like fall

A Month of Firsts

No, I have not completely given up on this blogging thing. The end of summer and beginning of the school year has felt absolutely crazy. And a few important milestones have passed in that time.

Kaelyn started First grade if you can believe it. The thing she was most excited for - eating in the lunch room.  She has been super helpful in packing her lunches most evenings and she's even taken hot lunch a few days. Of course mom is super grateful for the help and the fact that her school has a pretty good lunch program. It's nice to have an occasional break from thinking about and packing lunch but still knowing she's getting a pretty nutritious meal. They even served quinoa salad one day!

Lining up. That's her teacher, Mrs. Noyes, behind her.

She seems to be having a lot of fun so far and she's not nearly as tired and cranky at the end of the day as I feared she'd be. She's made a few new friends in her class and gets to go to her "specials" with two of her best friends from last year.

Another exciting first this month - Brennan made his first visit to the ER. We knew it was coming. It was just a matter of when. He picked a great time too. We were FaceTiming with Auntie Jenny for her birthday a couple weeks ago when he decided to get all crazy and jump around on the couch. Sure enough, about 15 minutes before the start of the Notre Dame game, crack! He fell off the couch and the back of his head smashed into the coffee table. When we saw the blood and Matt saw the cut we made a pretty quick decision to take him the Emergency Room, which conveniently is only about 3 minutes away.

I'll spare you the gory pictures of the wound and just show you cute pictures of him happy and playing

He stopped crying as soon as he saw the kids waiting area when we got there. They were so quick though he didn't have time to play with anything. He was actually in a pretty good mood while we waited to see the doctor and then the nurse again and then waited for the numbing medicine to kick in before getting stitches. I was pretty happy that they had a t.v. in the room so I could watch the game while we waited. Or so I thought. Brennan insisted that he wanted to watch golf. So I flipped through all the channels to show him that golf was not in fact on at 8 o'clock at night. No worries, he settled on NASCAR instead. The boy loves fast cars. Luckily at the first commercial break I was able to talk him into turning the ND game on.

He refused to take the ER bracelet off his ankle until 2 days after we got the stitches removed

He was very brave and didn't cry at all during the first three stitches (or shoe laces as the doctor called them). I held him and he snuggled his head against my chest. Then, at the end of the fourth and final stitch she caught a piece of his hair and he broke down crying. He was pretty much inconsolable until we got out to the car. Probably mostly because he was exhausted by the time we got out of there.

He also refused to have his hair combed the entire week the stitches were in

Last, but not least, we have a preschooler in the house!  Brennan had his first day of preschool at Emerson last Thursday.

He did really well with the transition. I don't know if it helps that he's seen his older sister go to school, or that he already knows one of the teachers pretty well (the mom of one of Kaelyn's friends - he actually ran up to her and jumped in her lap to give her a hug when he saw her) or that he has a friend he already knows in his class. There were no tears at all when I had to leave after morning circle time. Of course, had I not had so much to get done during my 2 1/2 kid-free hours that may not have been true. I was so busy I hate to say that I barely noticed he was gone. But, on a not so busy day in the future I thinking it will be oddly quiet without him around. Luckily he's only going 2 days a week. I think I can handle that.

Even though there were no tears I thought it was awfully cute and almost heartbreaking when I was helping him get out of the car and he looked up at me and asked, "will you walk with me to the door?" Can you even imagine watching this little boy walk into school all by himself?

And I guess it's a good sign that he didn't even acknowledge me when I got there for pick up. He just kept running around and playing with his friends. I think he's going to have so much fun this year I'm actually a little jealous and sad that I won't get to experience every minute of it with him.