Pope Pages

Ok, ok. It's official. I'm the worst blogger ever. Sooooo much has happened since August that it would be really impossible to capture everything, so I'll just try to capture the highlights.

Adeline is turning into a full fledged kid right before our eyes. She can now put her hair into pig tales, but she prefers a "pony trail, mommy". She can put on her slip-on shoes all by herself, and gets them on the correct feet about half the time. Her most favorite toy at the moment is the play kitchen Dennis picked up at a consignment sale. She is always wanting to "play kitchen, mommy?". Once we go to her "kitchen" set up on our front porch she become all business asking politely if I would like some coffee or a sandwich. It's very difficult to not giggle in her very earnest and expressive face.

A couple weekends ago we were in Cozad and Addie and her cousin Katherine played tea party for a good 30 minutes. I just loved it. Another recent trend is that she's become a bit of a hoarder in her bad. At night she likes to gather up about 25 toys, books and stuffed animals and put them into bed with her. I try to sneak some out, but she usually catches on with a point and a "hey!".

But hands down my most favorite development is that she now spontaneously tells me she loves me. My heart completely melts every time. She is in a very affectionate phase. She has taken up hugging strangers legs. This is cute, but it could be a little unnerving for the strangers she suddenly attaches herself to. Thankfully, everyone she's done this to (a guy at church, various parents in line at the museum) have been very sweet about it.

I need to remember these incredibly sweet moments when she's driving Dennis and I nuts, which she did when we visited Granny and Grandad mid-October. She was all - "no! mine! no way! go away!" - I was tempted to leave her there. But later that evening we attended a retirement dinner for Dennis' boss and there was a two year old just a couple months older than Addie. I secretly rejoiced when she shoved Addie and said "no!". Of course her parents swooped in and apologized. I just smiled and said "that's OK", but what I really meant was "that's a huge relief!". It put me back into reality that my kid isn't "bad", she's just two.

Halloween was last night and Addie had a total blast. It is really the first Halloween she understood what was happening. We took her to a couple different Halloween things - one at the Lincoln Children's Museum and then last night at the South Point Mall. I was a little depressed about going to the mall to trick or treat - where's the community connection? what about being surrounded by all the commercialism? Plus, I loath malls - but in the end I realized that it was extremely practical for us living in the country (no hauling Addie in and out of a car seat), plus Addie didn't even know we were at a Mall. This is a lovely outdoor mall full of flowers, so it was more like a really nice neighborhood with a lot of heavy glass doors and piped in music - OK - it was nothing like a neighborhood, but it wasn't totally mall-ish either. Addie loved seeing all the other little kids in their costumes. Addie, naturally, had the best costume (thanks, Granny!). Here's a picture -

Now, I need to get used to the idea of it being November!