Step by Step Trick or Treat with Grace

We go out in the front yard. There's Big Kids across the street. Grace runs towards them. I catch her to prevent her from running out into the street.
We go to our first house. Grace picks out a piece of candy and puts it in her bag. She picks another. She picks a third and offers it to me. I decline. She puts it back in the bowl. She picks a fourth candy. She decides the first candy is no good and puts it back. She shows me the second candy. We finally decide to move on to the next house. We walk halfway and I pick her up.
House #2. She insists on climbing the stairs. A similar candy selection is performed. This time, she decides the correct course of action is to offer to take the entire bowl of candy.
House #3. Actually, fairly quiet. Grace decides to just go with it. I think the large number of pumpkins intimidated her. Either that, our she just wanted to ring the doorbell again.
House #4. We start to walk up and she decides she doesn't want to go. We get several twizzlers anyways.

Next year, she might actually say something. It's okay, though - the candy is really for us more than for her.

Happy Halloween!

This was the first holiday that Grace could really participate in and I think she had fun. She certainly didn't understand why we kept putting her in a fancy dress. And I don't think she understood why all the people keep coming to our house and taking stuff from her bowl of "toys".

If you can't tell from the pictures Grace was Alice from Alice in Wonderland.

The Halloween celebration started on Friday night with a party at Grace's day care. The day care put a nice party together with all sorts of activities which were mostly for bigger kids. We hung out with the toddlers over at the dance party. Unfortunately, I think Grace was a little confused about why we were there and all of the people. She eventually warmed up and danced a little.

Tuesday we carved our pumpkin, well Mommy carved the pumpkin. Grace lost interest pretty quick and Daddy supervised. I worked hard on this pumpkin so feel free to leave a comment about how awesome it is.

Finally, today, Halloween. Daddy was pretty excited to take Grace out Trick-or-Treating for the first time so I made sure and left work good and early. Good thing, there was an accident on the highway so it took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get home. That's ok, Daddy had supper already. After supper Grace and Daddy got ready.

But before they left Grace had to check out how awesome Mommy's pumpkin was.

After Daddy and Grace returned Grace was happy to help Mommy hand out candy by picking thru the bowl and taking all of the candy out. Then putting some back in. She also enjoyed taking the small round candies and throwing them out the door when I opened it. She insisted on being next to that candy bowl picking thru it until we put her to bed. I know she didn't know that she could eat what was in the bowl. I don't think I will ever truly understand her fascination with the bowl of candy.

One more of my pumpkin...

Oh you were thinking this pumpkin huh?

Monkeys, Goats & Emus - Oh My!

With the last breath of summer and a need to procrastinate from house work, packing, and work work I suggested to Daddy that after lunch we take a ride to Southwick's Zoo. We had been talking all summer about taking Grace to the zoo but, it was a busy summer so we never made it. So off we went. Daddy was very excited.

It's not a huge zoo but it's very cute and there wasn't really a crowd so we could let Grace led the way. There are a lot of Monkeys and Monkey like creatures and most of your standard zoo type animals. The neat thing is that there are picnic tables right aside most of the enclosures so you can enjoy a snack and taunt... I mean watch the animals. :-)

I don't know that I can say for sure that Grace liked the animals. She really studied them, I think she especially liked any where that she could stand and watch the animals by herself. If Grace could really talk and say what her favorite part of the zoo was I suspect it is the slide in the playground. She was definitely annoyed that the small merry go round wasn't running. I had to carry her crying away.

Southwick's had two really neat areas where you could interact with the animals. First we walked around the Deer Forest which was basically a big enclosure with deer that you can walk around in and feed the deer. As you can imagine the deer are not afraid of people. Grace and I sat on a bench while I tried to get the deer to come close. I had one eating out of my hand. The fun ended when another deer found out supply of corn in Grace's stroller and ate it.

Then we took Grace into the petting zoo, which was really just an area with a bunch of goats that we about as tall as Grace. At first she didn't really know what to make of them especially when they surrounded her. I tried to get us some food to feed them from one of those gum ball machines but the goats are too smart. They know where the food comes from and were eating it before I could get it out. They crowded all around me and one nibbled my shorts so I freaked out and just put the food on the ground. We probably let Grace run around for 10 minutes and she touched a few goats.

Petting this goat took a bit of a wind-up. Grace had her hand out walked towards the goat with her had out. Then we she got to the goat she just barely touched it with one finger.

Mommy's favorite goat.

We were sitting having a snack and Grace wanted to play with my camera so I showed her the pictures I had taken. When I came to this picture she said, "bird".

We certainly had a fun day and can't wait to take Grace back next summer.

At the zoo

Monkey.

Monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey. Monkey monkey monkey monkey. Monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey. Monkey. MONKEY.

Monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey. Monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey. Monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey monkey.

Maybe I should let Mommy tell the story.

(PS: Monkey?)

First Cupcake

Well, this wasn't the first cupcake she's tried, but it was certainly the first cupcake she ate.

There seemed to be a little bit of disappointment when Grace showed little interest in her Birthday cakes. It seemed like she just hadn't gotten that taste for sweet stuff yet. That problem seems have been solved, I suspect from getting juice at daycare. Grace seems to very much now enjoy both ice cream and cup cakes. I believe these picture are of what everybody was looking for at the birthday party.

For the sake of completion, here is a picture of Grace's first time really eating and enjoying ice cream. Specifically, we were having ice custard at Rosie's Orchard with Grandpa and Nolan. I know the picture doesn't look like she was enjoying it but she was. I wish I had a picture of Nolan. He had rainbow sprinkles every where even in the treads of his shoe. I wouldn't be surprised if Amy and Ned are still finding them. :-)