Helpful gardeners

Rory and Bayla have been big helpers in the garden lately and planting our walnut trees.

Caterpillar!

Classic picture of Rory and Bayla. Checking out a caterpillar. Maybe a monarch caterpillar?

Dirt boy

One of the things that makes my heart swell with pride and love for this boy is his interest in gardening. Helping us dig up potatoes recently, he plopped down in the dirt on his bum, kicked his shoes off and started digging his toes into the cool earth. Now if we could just get him to want to eat more of what came from the garden!

Buddies

After his recent haircut Rory went to visit his friend nearby. These boys ran around and giggled like crazy. It was adorable.

Haircut 100

Before

And after

The Big 3...

Rory turned 3 this month. We still can't believe it. He is getting so big and he amazes us every day with the things he remembers, thinks and figures out how to do all by himself. He had a wonderful birthday celebration on his actual birthday. We tried to keep it small but just inviting a few of his friends and neighbors, and Grannie and Grandpa...of course, we still ended up with over 20 people and 8 kids in the house, but we had a blast. Our neighbor Edie made him a baseball cake, which was what he requested and much less complicated than the "red pickup truck with a car on a trailer in the back" cake which he had previously been requesting throughout the summer. Whew!! He has loved every single one of his gifts, and has played with them all mulitple times in the past couple weeks. He's even excited about the clothes and gets excited each time he gets to put on a new pair of big guy underwear or a new shirt. Here's a video of cake time. I have 2 favorite parts of this movie...1) that he sings the whole song to himself and 2) Bev's quick duck around the birthday boy to blow out the extra candles before he leaned his whole head into them and caught his shaggy hair on fire. For our family in Massachusetts, we are going to have another cake for him sometime this weekend so everybody can enjoy the singing live and celebrate. No need for gifts, but he's excited to share more cake with everyone. :) Other exciting news that we've been hesitant to say out loud, but our big guy is mostly pottly trained. He's been wearing big guy underwear every day since July 2nd, and he's doing a great job. I think he's only had 3 accidents since that day. We still have him in a diaper at night and sometimes for naps, but I'm not entirely convinced he needs them at naps. He does fine if we just make sure he goes before he lays down. We're so proud of him. Mostly I think he was ready for it, but we did make sure to start really putting effort into getting him to wear underwear on a week when we were all home on vacation to give him more than just a weekend to adjust before having to tackle the potty at school, but as it turns out, he didn't really need that time. He was ready and he did great with it right away. That worked out great for everyone and he really was excited about it. Here are some shots of the making of the birthday muffins. We stole the idea from one of our friends that a birthday brunch is actually better than an evening birthday party for a 3 year old because naptime is typically 1-3pm, so best that all the kids be fresh and happy in the morning, then give them cake at noon and then the sugar crash happens right at nap time. (Thanks Alex) So, for birthday brunch we though some muffins would be a nice addition as a pre-cake snack. Grannie and Mama B made sure Rory did a good job of making his birthday muffins. He loves to help bake and they came out great!!