Halloween 2k9

Happy Belated Halloween Everyone! Dawnell was away for a couple of weeks, and then my parents came in from out of town, but we're looking forward to sharing more bloggable cuteness in the weeks ahead now that we'll have more time to take pictures.

Speaking of cuteness, here is Beckett with his best friend Anna, a.k.a. Hansel and Gretel.

Beckett with Hannah (R) and Anna (L). It's a constant source of confusion for him. Oops, reverse that. See, very confusing.

Here Hansel and Gretel traipse down a path holding hands. This was at the Norwalk Aquarium. Good times were had by all who could go. We visited the Aquarium last year to see their Pumpkins. We blogged about it, I'm not going to post the link, but it was cool, so go look at those pumpkin pics after you are done with these.

Later that evening (day before Halloween) I was able to meet up with Hansel and the gingerbread man Ciaran for a trunk or treat at our church.

Gretel's mom made a gingerbread house. Spectacular idea.

This is actually after they went trick or treating the next night, but it fits in with the dark lighting of the last two, and the other Halloween night pics didn't turn out great, again, because it was dark.

Halloween day we went to some farm in Stamford, CT. Here is lovely fall foliage. Dawnell and Ciaran are in the bottom right corner of one of these pics.




Beckett and Anna, just hanging out on the porch swing.

Cheese!

Fun maze they got to run through

You may think that this is also part of the farm trip, but it is not. This is from the trip to Utah. Not a lot of pics from that trip, but Dawnell did take Beckett to a pumpkin patch.

He also got to go to the Dino museum with Carson. These guys would have been best friends for a couple of years if their parents had had kids during the first year of law school, but now they only get to meet up in Utah when their mothers abandon their fathers to go visit family.

And Ciaran liked to hang out at gramp's house while in Utah.

Coming next, Ciaran's baby blessing!

And bringing back an even fatter one

One thing about Ciaran has finally hit the charts for a regular five month old....drum roll please....his big head. I wasn't really surprised. Have you seen my husband and Beckett? His head is now in the fifth percentile for five month olds. Not bad since he's essentially a 3 month old.

He is creeping closer to the charts with his weight, 12lb 7 oz.



His height is also gaining, but is lagging furthest behind at 22 1/2 inches.


This is pretty normal growth. The brain takes the lion's share, then the body and organs want a nice layer of fat and then finally the poor limbs get the dregs to try and make you taller. He keeps gaining in all areas which is great so one day he'll be right where he should be.

Watch out Utah...

I'm bringing home a fat baby.

And a boy who loves his new green combat boots. Or Boots the Monkey boots. He almost chose the red ones, but at the last minute opted for green. I kept trying to get him to show off his boots but he did this by dancing so it made for rather blurry pictures.

Shaving Fun

It's time to get ready to go to our conference break lunch. Daddy had to shave and a mature Beckett needed to as well.

Smile!

Ciaran is going to have a complex. 3.5 months in and we probably have 2% as many pictures of him as we did of Beckett. Some of that is living half his life in a hospital, some of that is daddy at work all day, some of that is apparently Dawnell not taking the camera with her everywhere she goes, and some of that is Beckett making it a little tougher to concentrate on dude2 for more than five seconds.

But at least until he becomes a teenager he can be a smiling little Ciar dude.







And for those of you looking for a Beckett fix, here he is with best friend Anna at the indoor playground at the Stamford Mall. Yea, they're hanging out on genetically mutated corn. Beckett's the one on the left, not the one in the middle.

Three Month Check-up

Ciaran is doing great. He's still below the charts for his age, but he made a nice gain in the past month. As you can see above he's now 9 pounds 2.5 ounces and he's 20 1/2 inches long.

On the Farm

What better way to honor Labor Day than to visit a farm, the workplace of so many of our ancestors. We visited Muscoot Farm in Somers, NY, and you can take a virtual field trip at Muscootfarm.org, because you aren't going to get a lot of animal pictures here, just a lot of Beckett. Besides, we were only there for a couple of hours, not an entire weekend.

But before you join us on our 2009 Labor Day adventure, take a look back at my favorite posts on this blog, Dawnell's EPIC two part trip report of Labor Day 2007 when we took a 4 month old Beckett on a trip to Lancaster County to learn about the Amish:

Labor Day 2007 Part 1

Labor Day 2007 Part 2





Anyway though, back to Westchester County. We visited Muscoot Farm with Beckett's friend Hannah. Here Beckett appears to be tipping his hat to her in greeting. We'll pretend this is how we greeted them upon arrival...



Certainly the highlight of Beckett's day was feeding the donkey.



Probably because the rest of the animals were a bit wooden. Okay, not really, but without a lot of supervision they didn't let the kids touch the animals. Lots of other cool animals though, including cows, sheep, weird looking chickens, and pygmy goats. Here's Beckett getting his udder on.



Oh, Beckett is 8 hands high. Not every day you get to measure your son's height by "hand."



Beckett looking ridiculously adorable on a tractor





Dawnell likes this picture. She thinks Beckett is adorably leaning on me. My recollection is that he was pushing away from me, but the camera says "adorable lean," so adorable lean it is.



While at the farm Ciaran chilled in the bottom of the stroller, so we didn't get any pictures of him looking adorable at the farm. But he did wear a tie and suspenders outfit to church yesterday. Dawnell did a great applique on a onesie. I think it turned out great:



Pretty adorable face:

Fire Station and General Cuteness

Our friend Ryan is a volunteer fire fighter in Mamaroneck. This Saturday he let us go to the fire station and look at the truck. It was pretty cool.



You can just make out a tiny Beckett behind the wheel of a giant truck.

Meanwhile tiny brother just hung out in his stroller/bedroom.

And here is Beckett at the end of a long day hugging his favorite friend, Diego. He was snuggling him even closer but he rolled over before I could snap the picture.

And here's just a general picture of Ciaran who keeps getting bigger.

Let me see that Dudeski roll!

Beckett and Ciaran acting as though they were born to pose for pictures. First one is the best one because, as Dawnell put it, Beckett seems to radiate. In my admittedly biased opinion he's pretty cute, even if he does have crazy hippie hair. And that tiny Ciaran dude is pretty cute too.





And the highlight of the day is Ciaran rolling from front to back. He may have gotten a little help with hand placement, but I'm still pretty impressed.

More Ciaran Pics

Ciaran came home. Dawnell's parents arrived. We went on a day trip, had a picnic lunch, and ended up at a watch museum. Ciaran doesn't sleep that much, but he's awfully precious when he does (See, e.g., above). To check out more pictures of Ciaran (and Beckett acting crazy as always) check out our latest Picasa web album HERE:

Just a reminder, these are from the past couple weeks, so the scale that shows him at 5 lbs. 7 oz. is way out of date. He's probably around 7 pounds by now.