Davey was excited about David’s birthday.  I am pretty sure he was much more excited about Daddy’s birthday than Daddy was.  43!

He enjoyed opening presents with David.

We got David a small cake at a local Denver bakery.  Wow was it a good cake.  They had actual ingredients in the bakery.  Bins of flour and all that.  The cake had a bit of a rough time on the drive home.  Luckily it just slid a little off its base and there was a small bump to the top.

I tried to crop out the bumped corner of the cake:

Davey wanted to decorate the cake with strawberries.

Little King of the Icing proclaimed the cake to be delicious:

We had a fun morning celebration.

Yesterday afternoon we went on a brief trick or treating excursion.  Davey opted for his Spiderman costume this time.  He enjoyed it except he found the mask to be a real pain.

He finally figured out to just shove that mask to his forehead and now he was ready for a little trick or treating.

And then – a lollipop.

Spiderman in action!

By the end of this day of birthday and Halloween celebrating, Davey was worn out.  He’d gone to bed too late the night before, and he was pooped.  He was out before 8 though and had a great night’s sleep.  He’s ready to go one more time.  I think we are going to go to a local nice shopping area to do a last bit of trick or treating. It’s been 4 days of celebration.  And now – Wednesday is his birthday!

Happy Halloween!

Last night we went to the Denver Zoo for “Boo at the Zoo”.   We had to buy our tickets weeks ago, and I am so glad we did.  It was a great time.  Davey loved it.  It was fun seeing the zoo at night.  The trees were decorated with lights.  It has warmed up here again, so it was just in the low 60s.

We saw sleeping lions.  There were sleeping seals sleeping 5 to a rock.  The African wild dogs were roaming in their packs.  (So cool to see every time.)  We saw the giraffes eating their dinner.  (There are two babies right now too!)

There were lots of trick or treating stations set up.

We made slime at one station.  Hmm…I haven’t seen that slime since last night.  It may be coming for us at this point.

David was having way too much fun with the lights and the camera.

There was a station where the kids could be “zookeepers”.  Davey loved this.  He put on his zookeeper cap, and he was ready to feed the “animals”.

He fed the snake.  I was not too thrilled feeding even a stuffed snake.  We fed him a mouse.

We fed grass to the hippo, and meat to the lion and the wolf.

Next we saw Stormtroopers, Princess Leia and is that Luke or the Harrison Ford guy – I mean Han Solo?

Davey could not quit looking at the Stormtrooper guy!

We watched a Fire Eater.  She could not possibly have any working taste buds.

Who knew that next would come one of the highlights of the evening:  The King Sooper station (grocery store here – same as Kroger).  They had…bread.  Davey hadn’t asked for any of his candy, cookies,  or other snacks all evening.  But when he saw that fresh loaf of bread, he immediately wanted Bread!  He ate two slices.

We were getting towards the end, but Davey was ready to stop for a moment at this coloring station.

And finally, I am not sure what he is doing here, but I just thought it was cute.  It was getting chilly at this point, and we’d abandoned the cape for a jacket.

Boo at the Zoo!

Today is David’s birthday celebration day.  There’s already been presents and cake.  Now trying to get Davey to relax a little.  It’s been busy.  So he’s watching a little Saturday morning Dino Dan.

Davey loves planning a party.  Tomorrow (or actually today as I am writing this after midnight) is David’s birthday.

“Streamers! Balloons!” is what Davey requested.  He wanted us to decorate for Daddy’s birthday.  So we did.

We went to get David some birthday presents today.  I told Davey that they were surprises for Daddy, and so he had to try not to tell him.

When we saw David after he got back from class, Davey was about to explode.  First he wanted to show him the decorations.  Then after awhile, David asked what we’d been doing while he was at class.  Davey started to tell him all the stores we went to.  I said, “Shhhh!” more to David to try to get him to not ask Davey questions!   Davey stopped, and then he started kind of mumbling to himself.  He was so excited but was trying very hard to keep our surprises going.  He did great, but it took some effort.

I wrapped David’s presents after Davey went to bed, so as to not further torture him with the not telling.  He will be so happy to celebrate tomorrow.  “Can I share the birthday with Daddy?”

“Sure,” I said.

So we picked up the cake this evening.  Presents are wrapped.  Some streamers and balloons have been hung.   Davey is ready!

We also went to Boo at the Zoo tonight, and we all had a great time.  I will put some pictures from that up tomorrow.

I am also knitting some.  I want to post a photo of the hat I finished.  So pretty.  I started some socks for David.  I knitted on them tonight because we watched a movie with subtitles, and trying to do the colorwork on my second Toe to Toe sock would not have worked out to well.  So I went for easy 2 row repeating pattern!

Happy Birthday David!

This morning Halloween officially began for Davey.  He and David took off at about 8:30 this morning to go on one last search for a “masked bandito” costume.  Their search was not fruitful.  In the meantime, I was ironing away preparing Davey’s magician costume.  (Me ironing is not a frequent occurrence, but I soon got the hang of it again.)

So we got him all dressed and ready to go to Library Story hour/Halloween Celebration – Parade.

It was serious business getting him all dressed here.  I just can’t get over how sweet he looks in that little white button- up shirt.

Now we started having fun:  Little Davey and Mommy of the Zig-Zag Part.

Final touches:

All the Photoshop in the world can’t take the blurriness out of this photo, but he was so happy and excited here that I had to include it.

Off to the library we went.

There were so many kids there this morning.  Davey was having such a fun time checking out all the costumed kids.

Story hour was great fun and the parade was a success.

The photographer for the day was David.  I forgot to take a picture of him with Davey.  Will have to remedy that tomorrow.

Our jack-o-lantern has been out on our balcony.  We quickly learned that the dry air of Colorado does not make for a perky jack-o-lantern.  It quickly began shriveling.  At this point, the face just looks like a toothless being of some type.

But we are leaving him up, because yesterday I saw a squirrel perched on the balcony top rail.  He had a piece of pumpkin in his little hands and was happily eating.  He’s so fun to watch.   He was back today for another snack, and David took some pictures of him.

Davey named him Ricky.

So now I guess we will just wait for Ricky to bring his friends.  He may be trying to keep his special snack place a secret though.  We don’t have to worry about the pumpkin rotting though I don’t think.  It may instead turn into a raisin – or whatever a dried pumpkin would be.

I have not started my second sock yet.  I’ve been pretty busy, so I have not had the time really to focus on sock 2.  I hope to get started on it this weekend.  In the meantime, David and Davey gave me a skein of cashmere last Christmas.  I love it.  I have really just like occasionally picking it up and holding it.  I finally decided though that it was time to knit it.  So I chose a hat pattern.  I think in a world of unlimited funds, I might just only knit with cashmere.  Nice stuff.   So here’s my hat.  The pattern is on ravelry – Slouched Tuva Hat.

So pretty.  So soft. Of course I didn’t knit a swatch.  That’s my swatch above.   That’s as far as I got on this hat, because I realized that it was going to be too small.  I had a feeling, but I thought I’d give it a whirl.  So I frogged it, but it was not that painful because I get another chance to knit it.  It’s Jojoland Cashmere, and I thought it was a worsted weight, but it seems closer to dk.  I’m thinking of making it into this:  198 Yards of Heaven.  I’ve decided I really like shawlettes.  I wore my Perseverance Shawl today, and it’s a perfect size to wrap around my neck.  It’s been cold the last couple of days – so it was fun to wear something I knitted.  I am kind of a lace newbie though, so we will see how the cashmere shawlette goes.

Davey has decided he wants to be a “masked bandito” for Halloween.  I took him to Walmart today, and he wanted me to ask the “workers” where a masked bandito costume could be fun.  No luck unfortunately.  He has several Halloween events coming up over the next 4 days.   I am thinking he might mix it up between being a magician and Spiderman.  We’ll see.  As you might have guessed, there will be pictures!

I don’t like to go a day without posting on my blog, even though today was a busy day.  I had class from 8-1:30.  When I got home, David left for his class.  When he got home, we ate dinner.   Then bathtime, storytime and sleep time for Davey.  Ever since we moved Davey to his big bed, we stay with him until he falls asleep.  This results in our falling asleep sometimes.  It happens to David more frequently.  Last night he slept for a couple of hours with Davey, so tonight he insisted he did not want to go to sleep.  He may have been falling asleep before he was done saying this. He was out before Davey was.  Then everytime I’d try to wake him, he’d be back asleep before he was done waking up.  He’s up now though.  I hear the sounds of hacking, slashing, and fighting coming from the living room.  It’s not him personally – he’s trying out a new game.

Davey was a potty training champ today.  I ran out of presents this afternoon, so I was scrounging for change.  He likes to put it in his piggy bank.  However, he’s going without reward as well now.  He’s doing great.

He helped me make cookies this afternoon.  He’s getting good at scooping them out and putting them on the cookie sheet. ‘

He was also a magician for most of the afternoon.  He loves his costume (sent by his Nanny and Pa).  We had to do some careful maneuvering with that cape when he was on the potty chair as he did not want to take it off!

I am grading grading grading tonight.  I have papers to grade in all four classes, so I better get back to it.

Now there’s a fun blog title!

Yesterday we went to explore Evergreen.  It was a fun mountain town.

Davey enjoyed the wooden sidewalk.  Although his feet are not even touching the ground in this picture.  But what a long-legged booger!

He was very interested in this guy:

A picture with Daddy.

Another picture of Davey just because I liked it so much.  (I can tell already that this is going to be a rather picture heavy post.)

David and Davey had fun trying on hats.  David in particular I think.

We enjoyed watching the ducks.  I think Davey enjoyed watching those little kids in the background just as much.  They were older and so of course very fascinating.  The boys kept trying to chase the ducks.  Davey found this hilarious.

I love it when he crouches down like that.  I guess I am also amazed by his ability to hold this position for so long.

We took a different route going home which resulted  in us going by another Jefferson Open Space Park called Lair O’ the Bear.  It was beautiful there.  The fall colors are amazing.  I took about a skillion pictures, and David wants to go back today to fish. 

I observed a stealthy creature easing through the woods.

Davey gathered leaves.  Actually they were small boats that he wanted to put into the stream.

He also fished.

Here we’d just been watching a Chocolate Lab fetching a stick in the stream.  Over and over.  His name was Jazzy and he was only 10 months old.  I guess he sensed that he and Davey had their youth in common, so he kept running up to Davey.  Davey laughed and loved it.  Then came the two 100+ pound Newfoundlands.  Davey could have ridden them like ponies!  He enjoyed the dogs.

Davey did his happy run with Daddy as they ran down the trail.

Davey liked getting up near the water.  David is right behind him with a very firm grip on his hood!

Finally we had to say goodbye to Lair O’ the Bear.

but – I think we are headed back to today.  David and maybe Davey will fish, and I want to take the puppies.  They will think they are in heaven out there!

We’ve been working on the pottytraining for awhile.  Our move to Colorado kind of delayed things, but we’ve really begun to focus again in the last couple of weeks.  If you have aversions to discussions of “poop” and “tinkle”, feel free to skip down to a photo of my latest sock – if you’d like to see it.   I have to blog about this though because it’s all part of recording Davey’s life. Besides, I know he is looking forward to reading this when he is 16.

Davey’s got the whole poop thing down.  He rarely has an accident.  It’s the tinkling that we are having trouble with.  We are using pull ups some and training pants as well.  He starts playing and he forgets.  So – thanks to a suggestion from a friend – we tried a new approach yesterday.

We went to Dollar Tree and stocked up on a bunch of little toys.  I wrapped them all in little assorted boxes and bags.  We found all sorts of little fun things that we thought he’d enjoy playing with.   Here’s a not so good picture of our basket of surprises.  An indication of the success of this endeavor can be seen from all the tape as we have re-used these packages several times already.

Well this approach worked like gangbusters.  It worked so well in fact, that Davey must have pottied 1,000 times.  He was really inspired and motivated by the prizes.  I began to think that my initial logic might be wrong.  I had thought that inspiring him with little prizes would be a great motivator, but that it would also save money in the long run on pull-ups and washing training pants.  But after Davey came up with what I call the “teaspoon tinkle”, I began to have my doubts. I went with it though.  I thought that if he was getting on the potty consistently than this was a great thing.  And he did.

So today (after David made another visit to the Dollar Tree last night) we’ve begun Day 2 of Operation Potty Training.  Today we are requiring that there be a little more sizable tinkle to qualify for a prize.  Droplets do not count today.  He’s adapted quite well to that though, and it’s going smoothly so far this morning.

With any luck, we are going to soon have daytime potty training complete!

I don’t really know how to segue from potty training to socks.  I guess I’ll just not try.  I finished sock #1 of Toe to Toe.   I had a little trouble with the heel.  It was a little strange, or probably more likely, I just had not done a heel quite like that before,  and I am not sure I did it correctly.  So I am looking forward to giving it another go on sock #2.

It’s an interesting sock, and it was fun to knit.  It’s also very comfortable.  I love cotton.  It’s not my favorite sock though, but they can’t possibly all be my favorite.  Once again though, I am learning a lot from knitting them.

Ok a final photo:  Davey likes to “stand on his head”.

Happy Saturday!

This afternoon when I got home, there was no sign of David or Davey.  I looked and found them in Davey’s closet.  It’s a pretty big closet, and he loves to play in there.  They were engaged in a puppet show.  David had set up a puppet show wall out of those big cardboard blocks.  Here were the primary characters – Cookie Monster and Duck:

The basic plot was that Cookie Monster was trying to get Duck to talk to him, but all Duck would do is Quack.

Davey was falling over laughing.  He was having the greatest time listening to Daddy put on the puppet show.

The result was hiccups galore!

And here’s our fall photo of Davey.   It’s kind of a tradition too.  We like to get those pictures of him playing in the leaves.  Here he is in his “leaf nest”.

I am working on the nicest hat.  The colors are fairly neutral – in hopes that David might like it.  The yarn is so soft though and wonderful to work with.  Unfortunately, I can not for the life of me remember what it is.  I bought it in Arkadelphia before we moved.   I have sent poor Claire what is probably the most annoying question:  “What is that yarn I bought?”

You know what else I like about this yarn?  Every once in awhile I get a little piece of hay/straw/dried grass?  If there was a bunch of it in there, I’d get annoyed, but it’s just kind of nice to come across.  I feel so naturally knitterly like I kinda know where that nice sheep has been.  Strange huh.

Then yesterday Davey and I explored the world of vanilla beans.   I wanted to make this recipe for petite vanilla scones from the Pioneer Woman.   The recipe called for vanilla beans.  I hadn’t ever actually obtained my vanilla from the actual bean, so I thought this would be fun for Davey and me.

So we went to the store to buy them.  It took awhile to find them, but we did.  Did you know that 2 vanilla beans are darn expensive?  But in the interest of learning something new, we decided to go for it.

Davey found them pretty neat-o!

We had to split the vanilla bean and scrape out the “caviar”.  It is like little teeny tiny black dots.  And it smells so so Vanilla -ey!  We both loved smelling the beans!  We scraped out the caviar and mixed it in with heavy cream.  See – it is a wonderful recipe already!

Davey helped me cut the butter into the flour.  I have to say that’s one of my least favorite things to do when cooking.  I need one of those pastry thingamajigs.

Shortly after that, I lost Davey.  He decided he needed to go rest, come back and visit briefly, go rest, come back and visit briefly, go rest, come back and visit briefly.  He was having a great time doing this as I finished the scones.

Then he wanted no part of a picture with the scones.  That was my only chance to make my bad food shots look a little better.  But these scones turned out great.  I highly recommend them.  I didn’t use vanilla bean for the icing though as the recipe calls for because 2 more vanilla beans would have made for some mighty expensive scones.  Maybe worth it though – especially together with my other addiction: chai tea lattes. (I have decided that I like Tazo better than the Oregon-  for those of you who share a love for chai).

Alright time to get to work on that sock while David and I watch Survivor!