Little Black Boots

Today I took Hannah out shopping. Its gotten cold and the boys really needed some long-sleeved winter type stuff. Hannah needed some new shoes. She has only one pair, they are white and pink sneakers, and we bought them over the summer in NJ while visiting Grandparents. Hannah, as we all know, doesn't grow very fast. So it wasn't so much that she had out-grown the shoes she had as it was that they were all scuffed up and the velcro didn't fasten anymore due to the fact that she fastens and unfastens them approximately ten thousand times per day.

So we get the boys clothes and then head over to PayLess. The nice man there measures her teeny tiny feet and points me in the right direction to find teeny tiny shoes. I'm looking around and they have some really cute little sneakers in various shades of white and pink and purple with sparklies. Hannah is walking around my legs, seemingly not paying much attention.

And then she sees them.

"BOOTS! MOMMY! BOOOOOOTS!"

"What baby-girl?"

"BoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTS!!!"

And there in fact on the shelf right at her eye level were a small pair of black, shiny, zip-up boots.

Black.Shiny. Zip-up. Boots.

"Do you want to try on the boots, Hannah?"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!" And she plops to the floor on her bottom and tugs at her shoes "Shoes! off!!"

The boots go on and I have to admit they are basically the cutest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. She stands up and prances over to the nearest full-length mirror with the biggest smile on her face.

"Boots, mama! Baby boots!"

She bends down trying to examine the boots reflection as closely as possible. She shrieks and giggles and runs up and down the isle in a boot-induced hysteria.

I let her walk around for a good while in the boots and then tried to coerce her in to trying on some sneakers as well. Its a No-Go. The boots were not coming off. The nice man in the store cut the tags off so we could pay for the boots without causing Hannah to have a complete meltdown. I bought her some sneakers anyways, he said I could bring them back if they didn't fit. Of course, right now she is napping.

With her boots on.

A Day on the Farm

This is a "Corn Pool."

I have never in my life beheld so much corn in one sitting. This large blue tub of corn was one of three such tubs, and it became the highlight of our adventure to the Pumpkin Patch. Move aside, Pumpkins, we've got Corn to play in.

It was a really beautiful fall day, a bit windy, cool but not cold. I had made everyone bring jackets but we ended up leaving them in the car. The first thing the kids did was play in a little Hay Maze, and the first thing Eden did was complain that the walls were not high enough. However, after several minutes in the maze and still unable to find his way out he came to realize that the height of the walls did not matter nearly as much as his own height. And since he was still not tall enough to see the maze's master floor plan he still could not easily find his way through in spite of the wall's short stature. Jude, being ever present in his Jude-ness, tried for about two minutes and then promptly jumped a couple bales of hay, ran out the exit and exclaimed with hands held high "I did it!" Hannah meandered back and forth on the first straight path entry way to the maze and seemed happy enough to have found her way back out the entrance with her Daddy Doll in tow.



You can see Jude here in the bottom corner preparing to jump the wall....





After the Maze we saw a sheep dog and his handler herding some sheep. It was really, really cool. This dog was amazing. The man had some sort of tiny whistle and he made all these random sounds with it and the dog responded instantly to whatever the calls meant. Clearly he knew the definition of each tiny chirp from his master, and those sheep clearly knew the dog meant business and did not want to be anywhere near him. He never barked or growled, but he would lower his body or raise it up and look at the sheep different ways and they would move. We were told the dog was not allowed to bite the sheep. He could bite the cows, but not the sheep. Sorry, Cows.
After the little dog show we went to the above mentioned Corn Pools. The pools had only two rules:

Rule # 1: NO THROWING CORN

Rule # 2: DO NOT BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE CORN

Personally, I love Rule #2. I mean you just know some genius at some point decided to bury their head in the corn and it probaly wasn't as much fun as they imagined it would be. And now its one of only two pool rules.

The boys dove right in, while Hannah sat off to the side grasping tiny handfuls of corn shrieking delightedly and exlaiming "COOOOORRRNNN!!!" The boys dove and dug and "swam" and swished and stomped, while Hannah sat and picked up the corn and dropped the corn and picked up the corn and dropped the corn and dropped the corn....for a good 30 to 40 minutes. Eden handed his glasses to me at some point, afraid they would fall off or get broken in the corn-melee.




Daddy got to play in the corn too.





After a long while a gentleman came up and said we could go on the hayride in about ten minutes. So we started extricating ourselves from the corn, shaking it out of our shoes and pants and shirts and hair, and made our way to the hayride. Hannah was not impressed with the hay and immeditely stated she wanted "Out! NO! COOOORRRNNNN!" but then we were on our way and she was ok. Unfortunately, about 5 minutes in to the ride I realized Eden's glasses were no longer on my head. I dug around in my bag hoping I had absentmindedly placed them there after getting out of the corn, but they were no where to be found. When we got to the pumpkin patch Eden and I walked back to the corn pools and searched, but found nothing. Then Aunt Mary went and looked again even walking part way down the path the hayride had gone. Nothing. We picked out a couple pumpkins and had our picture taken, but Hannah was crying because she wanted to carry the pumpkin herself. And mean old mommy wouldn't let her. Because it weighed more than Hannah did and would crush her. But she still thought I was a terrible Mommy and she cried angrily for a good five minutes about it.



We put the pumpkins in the car and went back to the corn pools one last time. Aunt Mary stayed with the boys and I took Hannah walking around making one last-ditch effort to find the glasses. Nothing but defeat. I give my name and number to a lady who works on the farm, but I am certain they will not be found. At least not in one piece. The boys are still jumping around in the corn, Hannah is playing happily, when I look down and see a tiny...black.....thing....sticking out of the corn. I reach down, pinch it between my two fingers and somehow, amazingly, insanely and miraculously, pull Eden's glasses out. In all honesty, I still can't believe it. They were bent a little from being buried, but I straightened them out and gave them to Eden who was just like "Oh. Cool." and went back to playing.

After that minor miracle, we went and got some soda and then saw all the animals. There were small horses, which Hannah called Cows, a little cow, which Hannah called Cows, and some mommy and baby sheep, which Hannah called cows. Jude was most fascinated by the mommy sheep and the baby sheep she was feeding. "Look, Mommy! They're drinking its milk!!" Then we saw some goats, and Hannah told them "Be Quiet!" and "Behave!" Then we saw some ducks. Hannah put her tiny fingers on the ducks' cage and they bit her, which she found to be hilarious so she did it over and over. They didn't hurt her, I think they thought she was trying to feed them, but I tried it and you could definitely feel a pinch from their beaks. She didn't seem to care in the slightest though, she just laughed and quack quack quacked at them and stuck her fingers in anyways. On our way out we saw chickens and more chickens and then lots and lots of chickens. And then some pigeons. I would have taken pictures but my camera battery died.

So it was a lovely day. But my heart just felt that little tug of sadness anyways that Dean wasn't here to share it with us. I know he will be home soon, but its just not soon enough. I could hear him laughing at Hannah, and the things he might say or do with the boys in the corn pool. He would have had a blast.

Next year he will.