It's Autumn Again

We are already two and a half months deep into first grade! Which means...Halloween costume conspiracies are thick and heated. A few months ago the twins were definitely going to be Star Wars characters. But now they are obsessed with Harry Potter. Teddy's biggest obsession to date has been garbage trucks, so we were thinking of making him into a garbage truck. Though just today he climbed into an oatmeal box and called himself a train, so I think we'll go with making Teddy a train costume from old cardboard. He also loves water fountains, which might be more straightforward.
We only have a little over a week, but I think we'll pull something together.

Just as a recap of Halloweens past, here are some of our former Halloween costume links for you to enjoy:

That time I made the boys into ceiling fans
When they were astronauts
The epic dinosaur costumes

Here are some other fall-ish things we've been up to around here.

Cubs baseball

Our fall baseball team this year is the Cubs! It's perfect because the real Chicago Cubs are in the playoffs right now. In fact, they are currently in the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets (who I am still mad at for beating the Nationals), and last weekend our Little Cubs played the Little Mets, which was cute.

Teddy preps the field

Good game, Cubs and Mets!

Snack time: the highlight of the experience

Outside time

We've had marvelous fall weather and have been able to spend quite a bit of time outside, doing predictably fall activities like collecting leaves and acorns, and the less common feeding of Sun Chips to fish, and casting spells on everyone with our Harry Potter wands that we made from chopsticks and hot glue.

My grand plan was to have the boys paint acorns and put them in a glass vase and use them to decorate the mantle. We didn't quite get to the painting phase, but we did have a spirited acorn-collecting competition and I put the best ones in a vase on the mantle. I'm sure it is just a matter of hours before they are blasted off the mantle and scattered all over the living room, but for now they feel festive to me.

We've been to our favorite local spot to enjoy nature, Popcorn Ponds. It's just down our street. We collected leaves, saw a giant toad, turtles, and spiders, threw countless seedpods into the water, and fed chips to an exuberant school of fish.

Tree ate Ted's shoe

Biking

Cal and Clark have been biking. We'd always felt deficient as parents when we watched them try to pedal bikes of any sort. We just don't have the space to store bikes and we don't live in a place that is conducive to learning to ride a bike. But my sister is a bike gal, having worked at a bike shop for quite awhile, and she helped us find good quality second hand bikes, and my in-laws generously are letting us store them in their garage a few miles away. The boys are already riding them! Instead of training wheels they rode around on bikes that were too small for them for a few days and then tackled the big ones. No sweat. Bikers. Bam. Just like that.

More outside fun...

This is probably the first selfie I've pulled off with all of our faces in it.

Pumpkin-getting

Our fall would not be complete without a visit to Hartland Orchards, our favorite farm ever, to get pumpkins and eat caramel apples and kettle corn. We went last weekend.

Out of the whole pumpkin field, Teddy found the one little
green one, and that's what he wanted more than anything else.

We got some normal ones too.

Watching the caramel apples being made...

Just add nuts

We got to bring Aunt Bean this year!

Teddy was not into the whole caramel apple idea.

Cal gets Clark's feet in his face when he tries to catch him going down the
slide.

Teddy went down as many times as we let him and all by himself.

A good day for us all

Drink-making

On Brian's birthday I made caramel apple martinis as well as butter beer, which, I trust all of you know, is from Harry Potter. I found various recipes on Pinterest and sort of combined them. Both drinks were extremely sweet, but amazing. I made a version of the martini not so sweet by using half regular vodka and half caramel vodka.

Here's the butter beer.

Butter beer: I didn't exactly measure it, but I put a bunch of ice cream in the blender with a bunch of cream soda, a couple squirts of butterscotch topping, and some ice. Put it in a cold glass from the freezer to make it seem especially Hogsmeade-ish. 

Tip: Make sure you don't fill the blender too full and be sure to give the mixture air as it mixes so the cream soda doesn't explode the lid off. I have good reason to believe it will. To give it some over-21-kick add a couple ounces of butterscotch schnapps.

The boys drank all the butter beer they could get their hands on.

Caramel Apple Martini: 2 oz. apple cider, 2 oz. caramel vodka,

1 oz butterscotch schnapps, shake with ice, pour glass rimmed 

with caramel sauce, garnish with apple slice.

Pretty!

Fall Snack Experimenting

Today I made apple pie granola bars. I have a recipe that I've used for straight-up granola bars with brown sugar, honey, cinnamon, and vanilla. But, being inspired by fall flavors and such, this time I decreased the sugar and honey and added applesauce, caramel dip, all-spice, nutmeg, and finely chopped and peeled apples. They turned out well, though I doubt anyone would call them apple pie flavored unless they knew the ingredients. They also didn't harden as well as I hoped, but they will be a staple of the lunch boxes this week.

Cutting straight and/or even lines: not in my skill set

Reading

Brian has been reading Harry Potter to the boys and they are beyond obsessed with the books. They are always talking about the books or acting out scenes from the books and their own scenes, loosely based on the books. We have to draw a line and cut them off from Harry Potter talk occasionally. The boys have started real homework! So they're reading even more than usual these days, which is great.

We've read a bunch of fall and Halloween-inspired books as well, but as this post is getting long and tedious already, I'll save my book reviews for the next entry-- which I promise will be soon.

Until then...go play in the leaves or something.

Clark, in full hockey gear, reading to Teddy

That Time We Let the Boys Watch Star Wars

We let the boys watch Star Wars. It took us about a week and a half about a month ago, but we got through the three original movies from the 1970's- early '80's. They loved them, though they will confidently and a little condescendingly tell you that movie four was far inferior to movie five, because it, "moved so quickly, not slow like the first one. It was the greatest one." The boys are constantly talking about the characters and the plot and acting out every scene they can think of. This includes doing Jedi training upside down and breathing like Darth Vader.

Here are the best, randomly overheard quotes from our Star Wars binge:

"I'm not going to play with you anymore if you don't stop pretending to be R2D2."

"I'm Yoda and I can break dance and play the piano.”

"I will light sabe you in 4..3..2..1"

"Fine! YOU cut MY hand off!"

"Here’s a picture of the Emperor when he was a football player." (freezes into a still shot) "He was SO tall."

Brian: "What do you guys want for Christmas?" Cal: "Everything Star Wars that talks and is plastic."

They have spent time "flying" in duffle bags with their hockey helmets on and arrows sticking out the sides. They beep and move slowly like R2D2 when I tell them to do things. Clark created Darth Vader out of a mortar board and batman mask. I can't find my camera or I'd post a picture of it. So great. Every day there are light saber wars on the way to and from school, usually with dangerously long sticks.

And then there was the night Calvin drew the characters on the board:

Yoda

Han Solo, Darth Vader, Princess Leia 

Jobba the Hut

Soldier for the Empire

For some reason my pictures of Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi won't load. It was a fantastic display.

Tonight Cal drew the cover of the DVD case:

Obsession has always been a strong suit of theirs. Ceiling fans, NASA space robots, astronauts, et. al.

I'm going with it and discussing plot with them-- the characters, setting, conflict, and such.

They are getting the newer movies under the Christmas tree next week and there will be a couple little Star Wars Lego sets in their stockings. My favorite is the Star Wars art that I see in my future.

Can I See Your Sock Marks?

Cal and Clark are changing, but still refreshingly weird. They both have their interests and little obsessions. Their personalities are becoming more and more their own. Clark is the rule-follower; Cal is the mischievous one. Clark listens to instructions, but while instructions are being given, Calvin is climbing a fence or skating slowly in a circle or talking to a girl. Occasionally something will get through to him and he'll obey. But they both have endless imagination.

Dressing up is something they still love-- especially Clark. He went to the playground as The Incredible Hulk the other day and yesterday did his reading lesson through the eye holes on his Spiderman costume. Not too long ago he dressed up as a breakfast sandwich before he would eat his breakfast sandwich for breakfast. This morning he floor-squirmed out of his room dressed as a mermaid: a mermaid who plays baseball. He was flapping his one cleat around on his pajama-leg fin and tossing his golden hair (yellow shirt) over his shoulder. He wouldn't cooperate for me take a picture though, because he couldn't find anything acceptable for his clam shell bikini and I think he was a little embarrassed. The mermaid fascination is thanks to a Peter Pan beginning reading book we found at the library. Seriously. Those boys love the mermaid page. Which is weird yet predictable and inspires questions that are uncomfortable for me to answer.

Calvin seems to be developing his own special sophistication. Last night he told Gammy he preferred his juice with Pellegrino water. A few nights ago he asked if I cared to join him for a drink on the balcony. He said he'd drink out of his Superman canteen and I could have "wine or something," and that he'd get me a chair. What a guy. I don't use Pinterest often, but I've been using it while planning their birthday party. Now if he sees a picture on the internet that he likes, he says, "Pin it, Mom," with a very serious, all-business face. He was telling me about Twitter today. He still turns many things into space shuttles, rockets, lunar modules, etc. The other day, much to my surprise, he put toy astronauts into my water canteen for their return to Earth-- and it was a safe return.

But the weirdest thing of all lately, is Cal's marks obsession.

Over the past few months he has become obsessed with anything that leaves a mark on something else. Let me explain: if you move a piece of furniture that has left an indentation on the carpet, he wants to feel it and talk about it. He likes to move the hair rubber band that I keep around my wrist and feel and look at the mark that it has made on my skin. He likes to push things into his skin and see what happens. This began with his own fingernails and has broadened to include pencils and lids, among other things. He pushes hard too, and sometimes the marks on his own arm do not go away quickly. This troubles me a little.

His main marks obsession though is sock marks. After hockey and tee-ball all he wants to do is look at the marks the socks have made on his legs, and on Clark's legs. Each sock leaves a different mark and the way that the sock is worn also makes a difference. He mumbles about their differences and why they look different or the same and if one leg's marks is different that the other leg's marks. He delightedly proclaimed he had found Teddy's first sock marks! a few weeks ago. It seems that sock marks are often at the forefront of his mind. It's what he wants to check on when he has a spare moment. He wants to see if Brian or I have them, if Clark has them, etc. When he asks Clark to see his sock marks these days, Clark yells that he won't show him and that he hates showing Cal his sock marks and he runs away. Understandable. Honestly though, I don't mind letting him look at my sock marks because it astounds me how interested he is in them. Also it means I can sit down for a minute.

Hopefully the marks obsession will get toned down a bit before long, but I hope the imaginations never slow down or grow old.

The only picture I could get of my little mermaid

Cal checking Brian's sock marks...

and Clark's sock marks... 

Clark in the Batter's Box

The boys love baseball. This is largely due to the fact that Brian and I love baseball and also that we're teachers, so explaining things to kids is kind of second nature to us. As situations come up, we explain them, usually in detail. And we watch and listen to a lot of the Nats games. They know way more about baseball than I did at their age.

We play baseball with them at the playground, the park, the yard (though I've been pretty slow in this department this spring), we play baseball with them in the living room, we watch them playing baseball together all the time- inside and outside- and we overhear them talking about baseball too. But they don't only talk about hitting the ball and pitching the ball, they talk about intentional walks and old school windups and fastballs and sliders and split-finger change-ups. They wonder about bad calls and ejections and pick-offs and steal signs. Why isn't there a second base coach, only first and third? They practice their bunting and their diving catches and their double-play transfers. They work out. They slam into fences (walls of the house) and rob hitters of home runs. They slide head-first and feet-first into bases. And they do each play at least twice, because there's always the slow-motion replays that need to happen. It's a little out of control.

A couple weeks ago at the pool we ran into some friends from Blastball. Clark went over to the little boy, who was busy watching other kids playing in the water and hadn't seen us. Clark leaned over right to his ear, and announced proudly in his deepest announcer's voice, "It's Claaaaaaaark Crossssssson!" I realize this will only be cute for a little while longer.

Sometimes Clark will be gazing quietly into the distance and then ask me, "Do you know what I'm thinking about?" No, Clark, tell me. "I'm thinking about my diving catch I made in Blastball." (This catch, while impressive, was at least two months ago.)

Well, as of last night we have proof that they not only play and talk about baseball every day, they also dream about it. Brian got Clark up to take him to the bathroom at about 11pm. As he lifted Clark up out of his bed into a standing position on the floor, Clark said, in his announcer's voice, "Clark's in the batter's box!"

He did go potty, so I guess he had a productive at-bat.

I'm wondering how the little ball players will include Baby Peapod in their play as he gets older. I bet he'll develop into one heck of a backstop.

Blastball-ers in a scramble for the ball

Thursday Thesicle

Happiness is taking two baseball-obsessed boys to a ball game. 

The Helmets Have Arrived

The boys are obsessed with sports and astronauts and really anything involving helmets. I wrote this last week about some of the ways they’ve tried to create football and hockey helmets with household odds and ends.

My mother in law knows of their obsession and their love of tackling each other and playing football. It’s all they do at her house. She bought some little football helmets and matching jerseys for the boys for their birthday (in April). After the obliteration of their Halloween costume paper mache helmets, things were getting pretty desperate around here, since they “have a football game” every day. I know that their sports interests tend to follow whatever sport is in season, and since football season is now over and baseball starting up, and Gammy had mentioned being eager to give them the helmets, I suggested giving them the helmets early while they’re still really into football.

So one night last week she came over and presented the boys with the helmets and jerseys. They were immediately smitten, of course, and wanted to sleep in them that night, after wearing them for the last hour before bed and talking incessantly about them. They settled for setting the helmets out with the jerseys for their big game the next morning.

The next day we took the helmets for their outside debut. They were a huge hit. Photo story below. 

That's right. I'm this cool.

I like your helmet...

Gammy is the greatest!

As if they weren't tackling hard enough before...
now in helmets they really go at it.

Clark took this picture himself after they set out their uniforms
 for the morning.

Cal just had to check to see if plastic wrap would make the new helmet
into an acceptable hockey helmet as well. Yes. 

The jerseys are big enough to wear over their winter coats!
They are actually muscles and pads, not coats, they told me.
Also, we couldn't find the football to play football with...

Going to the park! Getting a lot of smiles from other walkers and drivers...

Off to the races...

ROARRR!

Now let's give our helmets swing rides!

And push each other....

...while our helmets safely rest in the mulch.