"Birthday, meet Halloween!"

On Saturday we celebrated Lydia's and Henry's birthdays by combining them with a Halloween party with family and friends. Here's a sampling of the families in costume along with the food:The morning after, the kids got to play with some new presents form Great Grandparents Mullen. Lydia received a nice outfit and some gear for her kitchen set. Henry got a lawn mower that pops and has some cool accessories.

Pre-Halloween

Halloween is underway at the Gates Home. Last Saturday we joined our friends, Michael & Annie, and their daughter, Grace, at Akron Zoo's "Boo At The Zoo." Lincoln did the Trick-or-Treating, Lydia and Henry just watched the animals while looking good in their costumes.On Sunday, we carved our pumpkins. Lincoln's always been reluctant to handle the pumpkin guts, and Lydia wasn't thrilled about the sliminess, but Henry dived right in and grabbed the guts and threw them in the bucket. Once Lincoln and Lydia saw that, I had three kids wanting to disembowel Jack-O-Lanterns.

Lydia Turns Two!

Our pretty little girl turned 2 yesterday, and what a fun day it was!Lydia started the day with a birthday balloon and watching some of Bug's Life in Mommy & Daddy's room, and ended the day with some fun birthday presents and a fantastic meal with Grandma Paulette, Grandpa Doug and Great Grandma Gates. Our menu for the evening included Pumpkin Cinnamon Streusel pancakes and homemade Apple Dumplings. Wow!

Walking the Riverfront

Tonight we had a Boys Night Out, just wandering around the Riverfront. It amounted to, as we used to say when I was younger, "drivin' around without a plan."

Autumn at the Beaver Marsh

Yesterday was cold, but I still took the kids on a walk around the neighborhood, and Lincoln was glad we did because the oil pumper at the end of the street was working!!!!Today was much nicer, and after a morning of getting over the end (hopefully) of runny noses, we decided to get out of the house again and take a walk to the beaver marsh.Jenn and I enjoyed a date night last evening as Grandpa Doug and Grandma Paulette put the kids down for bed at their place. We've taken baby steps with Henry, first with Grandma putting him down at our place at the end of August, then I put him to bed at their place last week, and now this. The report was that there was a little bit of light crying, but overall he's done very well. Interstingly, as well, Henry has had no trouble with us getting him up and then going to sleep immediately after arriving back home. We knew we were fortunate with Lincoln and Lydia being very good in this area, but we can no longer lay claim to a genetic reason for this. And have we just been lucky with three kids? I think not. We believe it has to do with a variety of factors, but getting into those details here will bore most and make us sound disconnected from reality to the rest. If you're interested in knowing how we do it, message us.

But like the rest of life, when one area is going well, you can count on another area not... and there have been lots of tantrums, disobedience and assertive wills in our house lately. Chalk it up to stage-of-life, starting pre-school, a pair of two-year-olds, etc. And would you believe that Henry has been the best behaved of the three lately?

So back to our date, we went to Sushi Rock and had a fantastic dinner of eel, shrimp tempura and a shrimp/crab/salmon/tuna roll. Yum. And we got dressed up and walked around the snooty Beachwood Mall. We looked like high rollers! Or at least Jenn did.

Virtual Twins

Lydia and Henry are getting pretty funny together. Today they wanted to sit in the crib and read books with their buddies.

Fever

We've got a sick little girl in the house this Sunday. That means Daddy stayed home with the twins while Mommy and Lincoln went to church. Lydia got about two-thirds of the way through Bug's Life and said, "That's all. Want Toy Story." Funny thing is, she's never seen Toy Story.. So after a while, we all went downstairs so I could start making lunch, and I looked over and saw...Henry stayed busy through the morning, but he didn't get into too much trouble.
The photos are a bit different because I've been trying out the Snapseed app. It's pretty cool, with lots of features, kind of like a customizable Instagram. And it was free, so that was cool, too.

And how about the Cornhusker Shucking the Buckeyes displayed last night?

Finally, on a housekeeping note, I'm no longer going to be tagging the kids' names in posts. Most of the posts are about them anyway, so it was getting to be all cluttered.

Go Browns!

Pumpkin Patch, 2012

We decided this year to make a trip back to Dussel Farm to pick out some pumpkins and other fall-time decorative things. One can't beat their prices, but beyond that, their atmosphere is really cool. And speaking of cool, things have really cooled off in northeast Ohio in the last 18 hours. But it wasn't as cold as it was 2 years ago when we went with Lydia, at just 1 week of age.
Joining us this year were Grandma Paulette and Auntie Em w/ Ella. It helps to have four extra eyes watching our kids. Ella just rode in the Ergo, so she wasn't too hard to keep track of.
I've mentioned a bit in recent posts about Henry's speech development. It's been on the front of our minds because we thought we'd see more progress by four months, but that must have been an unrealistic expectation on our part. Interestingly enough, it seems to be on the front of some other minds, as well. The Kentucky family described in their recent blog post the stage at which their daughter is forming words, and the Minnesota family also described their situation, and we all seem to be at relatively similar points. Henry is still even a bit behind the two referenced here, and that's not surprising given that he's six months younger than they are. Chalk it up to one more area of their short lives that was impacted beyond initial comprehension because of their circumstances. These three each have had their own unique hand dealt to them, but it's awfully neat to see them go through similar stages.

To get specific in just how Henry is trying to communicate, he says some words that are pretty recognizable (snack, dog, yeah), but others... we just wonder how he matches up what it is that he hears from us with that which he hears from himself. For instance, he actually stays "step stool" pretty well. But until this morning, it sounded much like his version of "my turn." Don't ask why, that's not the point.

Last evening, as I was trying to help him say "my" by watching how I moved my mouth and by giving him big, happy facial expressions when he got close to saying it right, he became very frustrated. He started crying, and reverting to how he'd previously said it... "Di doon." And then you could see it on his face, he was trying to squeeze out the right pronunciation, but it was clear to me that he was acutely aware of his physical inability to do so.

"Mmmmmmyyyyy!!!" he'd say very loudly, and then get frustrated with his inability to say "turn" after correctly saying "my." It was all very sad. And in the midst of his frustration and crying, he was seeking neither hugs or an escape. He simply stood in front of me trying and crying. So sad... not only in the moment, but for all of the times in his early life that he had no positive re-enforcement, no one to give him a smile or a "YES!" when he said a correct sound.

Lincoln was showered with love and positive re-enforcement at critical times of speech development, as was/is Lydia. Yet Henry was not. The more I think of it, the more upsetting it becomes for me. And there are more like him, but that's too overwhelming to think about now. Instead, we take each opportunity to take little steps and make little bits of progress, building one little lesson upon another.

2012, 2010

On a completely different subject, I was darn near flabbergasted at the stunning display Mitt Romney put on in front of 67 million people. What a commanding performance. I'm torn between getting very emotionally invested in this election and not getting too emotionally invested, knowing that "this world is not my home." But I sure have to live in it for a while, and my kids have to grow up in it, so I'd like it to reflect the values that I'm teaching them at home. Given the media coverage of Election 2012, I could be forgiven for leaning toward a pessimistic attitude, but (a) remembering that the media has already made their choice, and (b) watching Romney wipe the floor with the President in front of a huge TV audience, I'm a bit more hopeful. We'll see in a month.

And Ohio State football is much more enjoyable this year than last. Go Buckeyes!

A Beautiful Fall Day

Wednesday was one of those really nice fall days, so while Jenn ran a few errands, I played and worked with the kids outside. We love the play set... not just the kids... we all love the play set. After we played on the set for a while, the kids seemed content to meander around the yard for a bit, so I decided to cut down our big mass of decorative grasses underneath our kitchen window. I had an idea that Lincoln would want to help me with it, but it was surprising to see that Lydia also wanted to help. And she was actually a help. She drug fist fulls of grass away from where I was working to a pile closer to the gate. After getting bored, she went to the sandbox. Henry wasn't much help, but he enjoyed watching from the deck.
Lincoln is still enjoying preschool. Today he made butter by "shaking up milk."
Henry is actually starting to put some sounds together. Talking is still a long way off, but he's shown strides in the past week or so that have been very encouraging.The plan for the weekend is to head off to a pumpkin patch with Auntie Em & Ella and Grandma Paulette. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.