Fall is here

Fall is here in Utah!  The leaves have been absolutely beautiful lately and unfortunately are already starting to fade.  I don't remember the fall colors being so vibrant as they have been this year.  Either I'm not remembering well (a good possibility) or the warm previous 12 months along with brisk evenings have created such beautiful colors.  I have tried taking many pictures of the colors but none do justice.  The below picture, I pulled over on the way up to Nana's house.  It's just a mixture of all the colors, some greens left, yellow, orange, red.  Just this morning, I noticed how much the colors have faded, but that means that winter is on the way!

My girl is walking ALL THE TIME!  She rarely ever crawls anymore and when she does, she almost stops and stands up like "oh yeah, I can walk!".  She still crashes but she is much more stable and getting really fast.  Her new favorite game is to chase Reed.  They have been interacting more than ever with each other and nothing warms my heart more.  Just this morning Reed turned to Nora and said "I love you!" to her.  Anyway, Reed engages with her more in play and she loves him so much and gets so excited when he wants to play with her.  Here she is cruising:

 The kids have been playing together, Reed forcing me to go away.  I can hear through closed door the laughter and I love it.  Gives me a few minutes to put away laundry or organize something but I can still hear them. Reed will gently tackle Nora then they both just laugh their heads off.  Another game they started playing is chase.  He will run around the house and Nora will try to follow him and when they see each other there is a lot of screaming and laughing.  Nora just seems so happy now that she can walk.  She is very smart too.  She knows where the cabinets are that she can open (the ones that aren't locked) and she will head straight to them to play with measuring cups or tupperware. She pretends to talk, I think some words aren't far behind.  She now has two bottom teeth and loves to feed herself and drink from her cup.

Reed is way into a few new things too.  Every single morning he wants to "ask each other stories".  So he will tell me a story with starts with "Once upon a time..." and is usually followed by a story about how he climbed a mountain then fell off, or was on top of a train and fell off, or climbed a tree and fell off.  Then he wants me to "ask" him a story.  I made one up about a boy that roamed the mountains collecting berries then brought them home to his mom to make pie and they ate it with ice cream.  He remembered this one from a few weeks ago and asks me to tell him that one every time if I haven't remembered to tell it.  Every time I finish he asks if he can have some pie and ice cream too. 

He is so articulate now and remembers things from quite some time ago.  Though he uses incorrect words sometimes, he knows the meaning.  For anything in the past (even months ago) he will say "yesterday".  Anything in the future is "tomorrow".  He is really into knowing what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow.  I wore a new sweatshirt the other day, he stopped me and said "mama! I like your new sweatshirt.  I like the way the colors fade.".  How cute that he noticed that it was new then went on to articulate what it was that he liked about it. 

He's pretty excited about Halloween coming up.  I got the kids costumes from Target last year after the holiday because they were 90% off.  Reed will be spongebob squarepants and Nora will be a zebra and ladybug (based on the weather).  He keeps talking about picking out a pumpkin at the farm when Gramma and Papa come to visit next week.  He is very excited about that. 

Reed wanted to visit Papa and ride his tractor so we took a trip up.  He rode around for hours with Papa chopping wood and bringing it back to the house.  He loved every second.

 Reed also has started to really like London.  He calls him his friend.  A few months ago, I yelled at London for being up in our business during dinner, telling him to go lay down.  Reed was really upset, started crying saying "don't yell at my friend London".  He felt genuine sadness for his friend getting in trouble.  Reed is such a sensitive and sweet boy.  He asked me to take a picture of him and his friend London.  Poor old dog.

Well, it's Nora's first birthday next weekend!  Crazy how fast that year went!  Fogg's parents are headed into town to celebrate with us so I'm sure there will be lots of pictures of the time!

Cheers~