Photos and miscellany

Eleanor, immediately post-braid removal. Wow. They lasted a couple weeks looking fairly decent, but a well-intentioned babysitter tried to start removing them at bedtime (with a brush, ouch!) one evening, so I decided to finish the job.

The obligatory Halloween photo. Eleanor's princess costume from last year still fits, and she actually deigned to wear the tiara for about 3 minutes. Miles LOVED being a dragon (well, actually, we were uncertain whether he was a dragon or a dinosaur, but he decided to call it a dragon; thanks, Beth!)

Best buddy Joshua ALSO chose to be a dragon! So we had two dragons (looking very scary), and a princess who won't wear her tiara, as well as Joshua's baby brother Wesley (not pictured), who actually kept his robot costume on for a while. It was awfully chilly this year, so the boys definitely were more comfortable than Nora, I think. We went over to a neighbor's house for some cider and snacks, then trick-or-treated briefly up and down the block. (Then we came home and I dumped most of their candy back into our bucket of candy to give away. I'm chalking up that behavior to my desire to be thinner and not to my cheapness, but it might be debatable.)


Eleanor at gymnastics with Daddy. She's really impressively strong for her size. Miles also takes gymnastics, by the way, but parents aren't allowed to observe except for the first and last weeks of class, so that's why I don't have photos of him in class. He tells me that he's impressive, though.

Achievement of the week: Eleanor can do a flip on the bar all by herself! (aka "skin the cat" I think) Anyway, she grabs the bar, pokes her toes up and through her arms, flips over, and lands on her feet. She did this about 20 times in a row, and I was impressed, at least. The only problem lies when she spaces her hands too close together, and then her bum won't fit through, and she gets frustrated, lets go of the bar, and lands on her head. We're thankful for padded gym floors.

Achievement of the week #2: phonics has finally clicked for Miles! Here he is reading aloud to Eleanor (a book he's never read before, thank you very much; he's been "reading" memorized books to her for ages). We bought him some simple readers a month or two ago, and he is now picking them up to read to himself during rest time. I walked in after nap and he had made it through a couple new ones, unbeknownst to me. He is proud to read them aloud to Mommy and Daddy, too.

Lest you be overly impressed, these are the short-vowel-sound books, so aside from a few memory words like "the", they're pretty easy to sound out. We haven't gotten to silent-e or vowel combinations yet.

Oh, and yes, those are unintentionally matching pajamas. Eleanor is wearing Miles' last year PJs - her current favorites - and we bought him the same pair in a larger size because they were HIS favorite (and OK, they were on clearance). So maybe she looks like a boy here; so sue me.