Candy Wrappers

That Sanjay is sneaky and he's a sweet freak... the combination at Halloween can be surprising.

Last year, Daddy caught him in a corner opening candy and stuffing them in his mouth. I think he thought since his back was to the kitchen he wouldn't be seen, but nonetheless he was caught and punished. Less than a week later, if I remember correctly, I was cleaning Priya's room and found a pile of wrappers in her closet. I re-assembled them for this picture:



A month later, I was vacuuming the living room and found this behind the humidifier:



This little boy gets away with so much more than his sister. Then again, he does push the limits whereas she tends to play it safe. In any case, I'm wondering where I'll find his droppings of evidence this year. :)

Anxiously looking forward to the next few weeks of housecleaning.

Persons In Costumes

Sanjay, while recently trying to convince Priya that what she saw wasn't real, said to her "No, they're just persons in costumes". I've been saving it up to use on this Halloween blog post.

Here we are tonight on the way out the door for some friendly trick-or-treating:



Sanjay is Anakin Skywalker, Priya is a black cat, and I am the State Recorder Player Champion.



Unfortunately, all the spookiness of Halloween has gotten into Priya's head. While Sanjay sleeps peacefully in his own bed, Priya has called me back into her room enough times that I'm fed up with her at this point. Bartee is now in there spewing a nice little bedtime story to take her mind off the persistent thought that someone is going to jump out from behind her and scream. The last thing she needs is another late night... the lack of sleep is probably contributing to the nightmares. I suspect one of us will end up sleeping with her again tonight.

LEGO Creations

Inspired by the website a LEGO a day, the kids have decided to participate in making their LEGOs come to life. They will create the scene and give me a caption, then I'll post it here to share. This first one is from Sanjay:



"If you take a person on a building, he might fall off."

Jerseylicious

What do you think... blonde or brunette? :)






Jersey Shore yourself and then share it with me. :)

Trip to Miller Farms

Miller Farms is quite a hike from our place, but we enjoy it so much that we try to make an annual trip for their Fall Festival. We lucked out with great weather and again this year came home with 3 wagons full of fresh produce and, this time, a child that doesn't belong to me. She's sleeping happily in Priya's room though, so we'll keep her at least until tomorrow. Now I just gotta figure out how Amma cooked that green pumpkin last year, so we can enjoy it again.

Here are some pictures from the adventure...









Here is the crowd in 2007:





And, today's bunch:





(I find it interesting that Priya had trouble keeping her eyes open on the hayride both 3 years ago and today.)

Ghosts and Goblins

It's that time of year again; the first of the holidays that provide ample opportunity for pigging out. We start with Halloween candy, then move on to all-things-pumpkin culminating with a HUGE meal surrounded by close friends and family, slowly slide into cookies of every conceivable shape, size and recipe, while finally ringing in the new year with a plentiful amount of libations.

But, I digress... the holiday at hand is Halloween where naturally the children's play evokes phrases like "And I was chewing the eyeball furiously". We spent the afternoon outside sprucing our house up with all kinds of orange. Unbeknownst to Bartee, Sanjay woke up at the crack of dawn to get started on it. We added some new things to the display which we picked up on clearance last year so it was exciting for all of us to dig through the boxes to see what was waiting.

Priya's Rosetta Stone

Yesterday she carved this into a blob of play-doh. It reads, "Alyssa is one of my best friends". The "i" is missing because of lack of space, so she says.



This afternoon at the park, she purposely, within earshot of said friend, said to me, "She is not my friend anymore". I don't know what happened, if anything. She wouldn't tell me and I didn't see anything that would provoke these feelings.

She's so fickle with her emotions... it drives me crazy. I suppose it is the tween stuff that everyone with older kids keeps talking about. I think we are entering it head-on and I need an "oh sh*t" handle to hold onto to keep my patience in check. Bartee does much better at handling her emotional highs and lows and sassy attitude than I do. I have a few things to learn from him and I'd better get started.