Things Non-Pumpkin

Things besides pumpkin patches are happening around here, though really, if I could spend every day at the Arboretum admiring pumpkin houses and pretending that 90-freaking-9 degree weather is "fall," I would. But sadly, work and school and swim lessons aren't super negotiable, and so the week has pressed on. Here's the highlights so far:

1. I lost Cora. Like legit lost Cora. It was a rainy evening- massively hugely knock-over-trees stormy, so the kids got to watch a show while I made dinner (this is only allowed in the event of rain; otherwise their "show" = "go outside and play"). Cora was playing with the toy kitchen in the playroom and I was helping her bake some delicious Melissa & Doug cookies when I went to go stir my soup (creamy chicken and wild rice) and came back 45 seconds later to an empty playroom. Empty and silent. I went to the kids in the TV room- have you seen Cora? No, no, definitely not. Searched the playroom again, searched the living room, searched the kitchen, kids' room, Cora's room, bathroom, playroom again. OMFG where is the baby? SO MUCH SILENCE AND SO LITTLE BABY. Semi-hysterically yelled to the kids to help me look. Landon finally breaks eye contact with the Wild Kratts and says, she's probably in the shower. I ran over, and there she was, so freaked out by my exclamation of "CORA!!" that she dropped the squirty walrus she'd been chewing on and wobbled her lower lip. So the moral of the story is, always check the shower first, and don't believe your kids when they insist a baby didn't just crawl by RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM while they're watching TV.

2. The adrenaline rush from losing my baby for 5 entire minutes (trust me, that's a REALLY long time) required me to watch funny TV and drink two glasses of wine after the kids went to bed. So JP and I finally watched our first episode of Arrested Development and holy crap is that show funny. The SEC has boats! I understand all sorts of funny cultural references that have been going right over my head! Hilarious.

3. Also hilarious, this tumblr. I'm not entirely sure why, but I lol'd the first time I read it and then I lol'd each of the other 52 times I looked through the pictures and captions. It simply cracks me up. "Why is it so MOIST though. This is a terrible cat." "Maybe it would look better if you powdered it with something." If this makes you giggle at random moments, I think we could be good friends.

4. I'm planning Cora's first birthday party and the distraction of rainbow-themed everything is helping ease this new and novel pain of "my baby is getting bigger and I don't want her to" thing that is, well, new and novel. Big kids are awesome, but dammit so is Cora, and it would be excellent if she could redo this baby year like 6 times and THEN get bigger. In the last year I've become someone who stalks exercise clothes online, goes to yoga and barre in the same day, and I'm lamenting the passage of babyhood- WHO AM I?

5. One thing easing first-birthday-angst is knowing that my kitchen renovation is happening the Monday after the party. We've had some delays with the cabinet quote and then changing a few things about the plans and then redoing the cabinet quote, but we should be set for the demo on November 10(ish) and while I had to give up on having it complete before Cora's party, I do know for sure that I'll be rolling out Christmas sugar cookie dough on a shiny new counter top in my shiny new peninsula between the kitchen and living room. I can't wait!

6. Not really a thing, but I can't have a post without a picture, thus, the many faces of Cora while she watches her big siblings do awesome/dangerous things on the playscape while her daddy and I sit on chairs and pretend it's fall by drinking an Octoberfest beer nearby.

Weeee! Oh this is so fun!



SO FUN!



Wait. What are you doing?



[this]



Ohhhh dear. This looks terribly unsafe.



I'm judging you.



And also maybe jealous.



Yes, definitely super jealous.



Me next!