Happy Birthday Millie!

I can't believe how quickly the last year has gone, it feels like we just celebrated Millie's first birthday and here we are celebrating birthday number 2. I couldn't be more proud of the little girl Millie is turning into. She is sweet, kind, smart and loving.

We celebrated on Sunday with a party and today we started with a morning serenade (from me...), eggs with spicy cheese, had lunch out with Scott and LoLo and will have dinner with Lainie and Grandpa. We saved a couple of presents to open today too :).

We were so happy to celebrate Millie's birthday with my family and with a few friends. We've been blessed to reconnect with my friend April and her family. Her daughter, Malia, is exactly 10 months between Millie and Merrill and I think (hope) that they all will become fast friends. My siblings also have some friends with children around Millie's age that we were able to introduce her to. She had such a great time with everyone!

Of course there was cake ... Millie did her best to blow out the candle. She had the right idea, but not quite enough wind in her lungs :). And, for the record, Millie requested the un-frosted cake (though I was plenty happy that she did...) to eat.

This scene at the end of the night after all of our friends had gone home just makes me smile. The quiet after the storm ... and proof that there is still a kid in all of us.

Millie's doll houses and car were fast favorites, though she has really enjoyed all of her new toys a lot over the past few days (Lego's, toy food, another kitchen, a fancy purse and crown ... not to mention the art desk she just opened! ) She received lots of really great gifts!

I don't even want to think about how fast the next year will pass ...

Boo at the Zoo

We had a pre-Halloween celebration on Saturday as we went to the St. Louis zoo with our friend April and her daughter Malia. The girls had fun participating in the costume parade, seeing some "animals" (dressed up people) as well as the real animals. It was such a treat on a beautiful fall day!

I don't know this little kangaroo, I just thought he was really adorable!

The kiddos were all worn out by the end of the day!

Pumpkins

As hoped, we had our pumpkin carving party on Sunday with the whole family at our house. We had a lot of fun cleaning out the pumpkins (Millie doesn't appear to have any sensory issues around slimy things, though Lauren might...), carving them and then having a great meal after all the hard work was done. Brandon was nice enough to help Millie out with her pumpkin since the rest of us had our own to do. Millie and I were the only ones who didn't use a stencil -- bet you can't guess which ones are ours! ;). Merrill, Lainie and Grandpa supervised the whole process, though Merrill fell asleep on the job. It was great to have a sunny, warm day after a week of cold, rainy weather. We're hoping for similar weather this Sunday when we celebrate Millie's second birthday!

This picture amuses me -- my sister and I in exactly the same position, concentrating very hard on our pumpkins!

Millie really enjoyed cleaning out the pumpkins and went around the whole afternoon offering to do more cleaning of everyone's pumpkin :).



Merrill checking everything out


More concentration

The gallery

And the final products...

No Accident

Well, Merrill is officially rolling now. She's going from back to front, so not the same way that she rolled the first time, but she's pretty much a pro at it now. She rolled once on Sunday when we had family over, but she was outside and on a slight incline so she had a little help from gravity. Yesterday though, she rolled inside on the flat floor :). After she did it once, she pretty much hasn't stopped. Good thing she doesn't mind being on her tummy (most of the time... she gets a little crabby in the video. Gotta learn to go back the other way now!)!

Magic By Millie

After dinner entertainment at Lainey and Grandpa's a couple of Sundays ago ....

the audio: Where's my hands go? Where's my other hand? Both greeted by lots of cheers when the respective hands were revealed :D.

From the Mouth of Babes

One night before bed when we were reading 'The Cat and the Hat' we came to the part where Thing One and Thing Two shake hands with Sally and her brother. Millie excitedly said "I shake hands!" and proceeded to wave her hands in the air like we do when we sing 'clap, clap, your hands'. This made me chuckle. Then I showed her how to shake hands in greeting.

Me: Hi, nice to meet you. My name is Shannon, what's your name?

Millie: pause. Millicent! (said with a sheepish grin)

It was the first time I'd heard her refer to herself as Millicent. Now she does it whenever she shakes hands with someone. I guess we don't have to worry about her first day of school when the teacher does roll call and calls out Millicent (they probably don't really do that anymore anyway...) instead of Millie!

Millie has also recently learned Scott and my's first names. She says both with amazing clarity given the difficult sounds they start with. She thinks it's pretty funny to wind up and say Sssssssscotttt

One last anecdote, Millie has started testing us the way we question her. She points to things (and often people...) and says "you know what/who that is?" in her grown-up voice (I can't really explain how she changes her voice). Usually it's something she knows the answer to and she is just being a little adult :). Except in the case of people, she likes to pick out complete strangers!

Perfect Fall Weekend

After two dreary, rainy days, we had the perfect fall weekend here in St. Louis and we took full advantage of the beautiful weather. Saturday morning we got up early to go to the Autism Speaks walk in Forest Park. As you can see from the picture above, it was a beautiful day. Before the walk we wandered around the exhibits and activities sponsored by the walk. Millie enjoyed people watching, the blow-up slide and the beautiful Clydesdale. Merrill enjoyed a nice long nap snuggled up with me.


Millie and Scott checking out the slide ...

Millie was VERY excited to go down the slide!






The Clydesdale's name was Scott!

Merrill sleeping through it all :).

Lots of people turned out for the walk.

After the walk we headed home for lunch and naps, then LoLo came back over to go to the Fall Festival in downtown Kirkwood. We walked to downtown and enjoyed playing on the playground near the Farmer's Market, perusing the market goods, and walking through a small art fair. We topped the day off with a great pot of white chicken chili that had been simmering on the stove all day. Fabulous!

We started out early again on Sunday morning and headed over to Illinois to Eckert's Farm for some apple and pumpkin picking. The tractor ride out to the orchards was a bit chilly, but overall, it was perfect apple picking weather. Millie really enjoyed picking and taste testing all the apples and once again, Merrill enjoyed a nap in the crisp clean air. It was really nice because the Fuji apple trees were really small so Millie could easily touch the apples and help to pick them. She thought that was pretty great. We picked out some great pumpkins (from the lot, not the patch -- that would have required another tractor ride...) and have plans to have a pumpkin carving party with LoLo and Jason and hopefully Brandon too sometime in the next week or two. Until then the pumpkins are safely hiding in the garage. (In both Connecticut and Michigan we had pumpkin eating squirrels, we're not taking any chances this time around!)








After apple picking we had a nice lunch of soup, salads and sandwiches at St. Louis Bread Co. Merrill finally had a chance to get in on the fun!


September and October have been filled with a lot of great weekends and I hope to get a chance to go back and post on all the previous ones. We certainly manage to stay busy here -- the weeks fly by and the weekends go even faster. It's hard to believe that Merrill turned 3 months old this week! We head to the Dr. tomorrow morning for shots so we'll get to see how much she has grown. She is definitely growing sweeter every day! It's even harder to believe that Millie will be turning 2 (or 2 minutes if you ask her...) in just a couple of weeks.

Hope your weekend was filled with fall fun too!