a weekend of welcoming

After a summer of diligent chicken-tending: feeding, watering, spreading hay, Farmer Ada found the first egg waiting for her when she came home from school last Thursday.  You can't imagine the delight inspired by that tiny brown egg.  Now we've gotten 4 (almost one per day), and we hope that whichever of our three silly chickens has mastered this important skill will soon teach the other 2 to keep pace! We are looking forward to a winter full of delicious scrambles.

Miles had visitors from Wisconsin and Seattle this weekend for his baptism. Miles must have somehow understood that Father Pat was someone to be trusted, because he took to him right away. Although Miles is nothing but smiles for us, he doesn't often put on a show for a stranger. During the first night of Father Pat's visit, Miles sat across the table and smiled and laughed, even offered up his toast! Perhaps he felt honored that a holy person traveled such a distance for him.

moveable alphabet

Adelaide's writing and drawing ability has sky-rocketed this past week.  Last week it was just a series of scribbles, but now she draws recognizable pictures (little people - or pumpkins - with arms, legs, faces).

More impressive, she's been using the etch-a-sketch (thank you Uncle Danny!) to practice writing words. In this photo, she's written "mom" (when she writes "m" she says: "three down, one across" which explains why they look more like cross-hatching then letters) and "ada" without any help!

 Last week Miles started at Cedar Montessori, in the "infant" room. His transition hasn't been too bad -- they say that he really likes music and he likes to snuggle. We've noticed that he takes advantage of his smallness to squeeze into little spaces -- like next to the musical instruments in our (converted) fireplace.