Books

Noah has always loved being read to and we have books pretty much all over the house. Often, little phrases from different books make it into our conversations, which can be very amusing. Yesterday, I was taking a walk with Noah when he said, "Let's go to my special thinking place." (A frog goes to a special thinking place in "The Extraordinary Egg".) We proceeded to the designated area, and Noah perched on a rock. After a while, I asked him what he was thinking about and he responded, "I'm thinking about being a reliable and responsible boy." (In the Thomas books, Sir Topham is always telling the trains the importance of being reliable and responsible.) Funny!

Thanksgiving

This year we spent Thanksgiving at home, just the four of us. It is always special to celebrate the big holidays with our extended family - however, it was also quite nice to just be the immediate family. We have so very much to be thankful for - our two wonderful boys, our entire extended family, our health, Phil's job, our home, our friends....the list goes on. This year, we had a special reason to feel particularly thankful - little 1-year-old cousin Oskar in Atlanta was hospitalized in very critical condition last weekend with a serious case of pneumonia. Miraculously, he made it home for Thanksgiving! We are so grateful and thankful for his amazing recovery.
Our day was spent playing, cooking and eating. Phil and the boys entertained themselves in the basement for much of the morning while I set about preparing our great Thanksgiving feast. A neighbor had gotten his hands on some free range, organic turkeys that had been pecking around until just a couple of days before Thanksgiving - I think this was the freshest turkey we have ever eaten! To go along with the turkey, we had: wild mushroom and spinach stuffing; citrus glazed carrots; roasted fennel & onion puree mashed into potatoes (delicious!); brussel sprouts with raisins and bacon; orange zested cranberry sauce; and of course a delicious gravy. Needless to say, it took quite some time to prepare this all, but the whole process was really relaxing and enjoyable for me.
In the afternoon while the turkey roasted, Kai napped, Phil watched some football, and Noah and I went out for a bit of fresh air. We've had the second warmest November in recorded history and have been spoiled with sunny days where hats and gloves have been left to collect dust in a drawer. Noah decided that this special day called for a longer walk - unfortunately, we were both completely under-dressed (no hats or gloves) and by the time we made it home, we were frozen to the core. Poor Noah was whimpering, "I think I can" for the last few blocks. At least we built up very hearty appetites for dinner!
When it was time to eat, Phil opened a fabulous bottle of Pinot - what a treat! We went around the table saying what we were thankful for. At preschool the past few weeks, Noah's class has been talking a lot about being thankful. Noah had decided that he was thankful for eggs and stuck with that for the last week or so. However, when it was time for his turn around the table, he decided that he was actually thankful for cauliflower! Interesting..... Even though I was the chef and probably should not be complimenting my own meal, I must say that everything turned out just perfectly. I put a little of everything on each of the boys plates and both Kai and Noah devoured it all which made this chef very happy. Kai was not too keen on the brussel sprouts but Noah loved them - he must have inherited Phil's gene for that!
After a bit of digestion, we finished off our meal with a slice of apple pie, purchased at a local orchard. The boys went off to bed while Phil and I enjoyed a peaceful and relaxing evening. What a perfect Thanksgiving day!

Savannah

As usual we had a wonderful visit in Savannah with mormor and morfar (at times affectionately called "morm" and "morf" by Noah). Other than a couple of gray and moist days we had fantastic weather - the boys and I just loved being able to spend so much time outdoors in our short sleeves. Noah and Kai quickly made themselves at home, basking in grandparental attention and exploring the various indoor and outdoor environments. We took walks, played in the sand, took a trip out to the beach on Tybee Island, visited the Skidaway Island aquarium, made many trips to the playgrounds, and ate lots of good food. Our trip coincided with the Savannah Children's Literature Festival which was a wonderful event held in Forsyth Park. Such beautiful surroundings with those majestic live oak trees, their branches draped with the romantic Spanish moss. We met several local authors and picked up some of their books. There were also some nationally well-known authors at the festival who did readings. Noah particularly enjoyed Mike Thaler's reading of "Teacher from the Black Lagoon". For some reason, Noah just loves the Black Lagoon series (especially "Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon") - he was definitely the youngest audience member at that reading! One of the many great joys of parenthood is seeing your children experience the little and big pleasures in life and I certainly had many such moments on our trip. In addition to that, I also enjoyed: spending time with my lovely parents, getting a much needed hair trim, eating my mom's fabulous food, not cooking or cleaning or running errands, and a beautiful piano concert by a young and extremely talented Chinese musician at the home of one of my parent's friends. The week went by much too fast and before I knew it, I was scrambling around with the laundry basket, getting us packed up for the trip home. Of course, we were all eager to get back to Phil/Daddy!

We had many walks to Skidaway "Beach":

Noah discovered Spanish Moss (which is, incidentally, neither Spanish nor moss):



(Kai decided that napping in the stroller was more interesting.)

Baking with Mormor:

(Morfar lurks in the background, ready to test for quality control.)

Outing to Tybee Island Beach:

Playing in the gazebo where uncle Erik and aunt Noriko were married just about 7 years ago:

We had lots of playground fun:

Atlanta

Our trip to Atlanta had to be delayed by a few days, so we unfortunately ended up with a very short but very nice visit. I decided that there was no point in letting any of my Atlanta friends know that I was in town, because there just was not enough time to see anyone. We had a wonderful day-and-a-half with Staffan, Denise, Liv and Oskar in some beautiful Atlanta fall weather. It was exciting to finally get to see their new house (Noah now talks about cousin Liv and her modern house) and so much fun for the cousins to spend some rare time together. We even managed to squeeze in a trip to the Atlanta Zoo as well as a visit to the Botanical Garden. On Sunday evening, mormor and morfar showed up in order to chauffeur us down to Savannah the following morning. We'll definitely have to make our next trip to Atlanta longer!

Checking out the new space at Staffan and Denise's

Noah and Liv at the zoo

Noah and Liv feed birds

Riding the train with uncle Staffan

Oskar on the move!

Refueling

Pensive mood

Kai and Liv

Denise reads a story

Air Travel

A few weeks ago, I took the boys on a trip to Atlanta and Savannah to see Staffan & family and Mormor and Morfar. Phil has pretty much run out of vacation days, so we had to leave him behind. As we checked in at the Minneapolis airport, it occurred to me that this would be our first trip by air since Noah went through potty training......could get interesting. Luckily, Phil was able to get a pass to help us out to the gate. I made sure that Noah went to the potty before we headed on to our airplane hoping that he might possibly make the slightly more than 2 hour flight to Atlanta without any bathroom needs (I had been restricting liquids also with this in mind.) Just as the airplane started gathering speed down the runway, Noah yelled out, "I need to poo poo!" I told him we had to stay in our seats until the airplane was up high in the sky and that he would either have to wait, or just go in his pants and we would clean it up later (crossing my fingers that he would opt for the former). Luckily, he managed to make it to cruising altitude! At this point, the next dilemma presented itself - what to do with Kai while I assisted Noah on the potty? I ended up just setting him down in the aisle while I quickly disinfected the toilet seat. Noah stripped and hopped on...I left the door open while I went to gather up Kai who had headed down the aisle. As I was walking back towards the bathroom door, Noah was exclaiming, "Mamma, come look at this - it's a big one. Can I flush it?" I saw a few amused looks! We finished our business and eventually made it back to our seats. Phew!!

Mellow Halloween

With Noah on the mend from the flu or a virus, and Kai battling either that same virus or just a plain cold, we ended up having a pretty low-key Halloween. Our neighborhood had organized a progressive trick or treat event with about 20 houses involved, which we of course had to back out of. Too bad! Noah felt well enough by evening that he suited up in his pumpkin outfit and he and I headed out to a few streets in our neighborhood. He just loved it and ran from house to house yelling "trick or treat" well before he even reached the front doors. Everybody had once again bought way too much candy and decided to dump a lot of it off on Noah....needless to say, he will only be having a few samples as we discretely thin out the supply!