New Elmo Outfit

Kelly is so in love with Elmo, I had to get her some more Elmo gear. Turns out she has no concept of when her existing Elmo shirt is clean -- she has asked to wear it everyday since last Friday when she wore it last. Sorry, kid, I'm just not that good at laundry. So, we bought a couple other Elmo articles. I threw this on her after we got it to see if it fit and she didn't want to take it off... big surprise.

Language Skills

Kelly reading one of her books. I wasn't there when this picture was taken, but I'm sure she was knowingly saying "dog." She has a very confident inflection whenever she says words like that that she is a pro at. Lately she has been getting fancy and has started saying phrases. A funny one is "Carry you" when she wants to be carried... I figured out that it came from her reaching her arms up to me and me saying "Do you want me to carry you?" Silly girl. Her other new one is "Hold it," which I get whenever I'm trying to give her a share a bite of something I'm eating with her, as in "Okay, you want to hold it?" Tonight she asked to "hold it" when I tried to share my brownie with her. Needless to say, I learned my lesson when she crammed the entire thing in her mouth.

Daily Kelly Fix

Kelly and her "wa-pop." Clearly she enjoys the Hershey's chocolate lollipops (aka Halloween candy dregs) more than we do.

This one just makes me laugh too.

Giving Jake a kiss.

Stroller Roller Skate

Yesterday we went out to the Skate-N-Fun Zone (formerly Skate Ranch, where I had some fun times in the late '80s!) for their "Stroller Roller Skate." We did try to put Kelly on roller skates at first but quickly figured out that was a very bad idea. She did enjoy riding around the rink in her stroller though!

Hanging out on the moonbounce-slide.


Bouncy doorway.


Running after her new friend in the rink! Both of them had already done a few laps with their respective mommies pushing them in their strollers. Kelly seemed like she was trying to play tag with her.


Hanging out in the roller skating rink.


Kelly helped pull us around the rink. As you can see, all of the rest of us were on skates. Kelly's friend Evan (twenty months) was somewhat more steady on his skates than Kelly was, but he still had some trouble. Overall, we had a great time and got some exercise!


My Kel-mo -- she loves this shirt! She seems to understand I've done her laundry because the last two times it was clean, she immediately asked to wear this shirt ("Elmo!").

Baby Doll, etc.

Kelly's favorite little baby doll...

Getting wrapped up!

Petting the baby doll...

Kelly and her baby.

Just hanging out in one of her new toy bins.

Around the House

Playing with her new blocks from Gramma Dot. Thanks, Gramma, these are a big hit!!



Sitting at her new table! We just got it at Ikea yesterday.


Between the bars.


Play-Doh! Kelly got some on Halloween and she LOVES it. I'm a little stressed out because all I really remember about Play-Doh from my childhood was it being dried up and ground into the carpet (which is the last thing our carpet needs!), but we're careful.

Children's Farm

Tonight we went to our local animal shelter to visit their Children's Farm. We had a wonderful time and got to get up close to a lot of really sweet animals. Kelly had never seen most of them in real life before!

Petting the horse. He came running over to us when we got there because he thought we were going to give him his dinner.


Petting the little baby goat, Maggie. She is only eleven months old.


Posing with the baby goat. Kelly liked her because she was so little and easy to pet.


Petting the big goat. When we first got there we didn't realize who was lying under the goat -- a pig! I thought the goats were just making really funny noises. Turns out it was the pig all along. She was all nestled in under the hay for most of the time.



A shot of Tootsie's pretty face. She was really a sweetheart and fun to pet. Kelly enjoyed petting her bristly coat.

Enjoying the Fall Foliage

Kelly and Daddy took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend by going on a couple of photo/nature walks behind our house.

Trick-or-Treating

Last night we celebrated Kelly's second Halloween by gearing up in the giraffe costume and heading out for Kelly's first Trick-or-Treating!

All dressed up and ready to go!


Playing in our front yard. You can see Logan inside. That's his normal post when we're outside and he isn't.


Picking leaves like the little giraffe that she is. Fortunately she was not eating them.

Crossing the street to go over to Kayla's house for some pre-trick or treating pictures.

Our frolicking giraffe.

The giraffe and the elephant.

Crouching giraffe. Kelly, the budding geologist, is checking out the rocks in our neighbor's yard.

The girls surveying their habitat.

Grabbing a ghost in Kayla's yard. Thanks to a Halloween book that we have, Kelly can even make a ghost sound: "WhoooOOOOoooo."

The baby animals.

After the photo session we went over to a friend's house in a more trick-or-treat-friendly neighborhood.

The first two houses we went to gave out KitKats, the one candy that Kelly actually recognizes. Needless to say, she was quite interested and I had to get her to put the candy back in the pumpkin so that we could proceed.


We had a lot of fun, but I'm looking forward to next year when I hopefully will be carrying her a little bit less!