Firsts

First snowfall

Russell's first snowball. He would only make snowballs the whole time we were outside.

Meghan's first snow encounter

Meghan's first snow angel. It's a little hard to see.

Meghan and Russell's first illegal ride in our van. Russell couldn't have been happier.

First marshmallow. She loved it! She will be so happy when she can eat real food. So will I,

Meghan's Quilt

Ben's Mom makes each grandchild a quilt when they are born. Russell's is Saggy Baggy Elephant.
Meghan's is also Saggy Baggy Elephant (which works perfectly since they will be sharing a room for quite a while). Her blanket has girl colors in it and has a unique arrow design.

Meghan's backing is Little Golden Book themed. Her blanket has my favorite illustration from the whole book on it--the circle of elephants around little Saggy Baggy.

Can't get a picture without him trying to get in it.

Russell needed 'me Saggy Baggy bankie' to get pictures done, too. The back of Russell's blanket is Saggy Baggy Elephant themed, and his has my second favorite picture from the book--Saggy Baggy floating in the water.

Sleep Deprived

We running on little sleep here in the Joslin home. It seems Meghan is progressively getting worse and worse so it is turning into her waking up close to every 2 hours at night. It really stinks. And, it makes me pretty crabby. We learned very quickly with Russell that I need to get sleep, so we had a plan so that I'd be able to get some sleep. Everything was going awesomely. Meghan was reliably getting 4-5 hours of sleep at a time with quite a few nights of 7-8 hours thrown in.

Then something happened.

About a month and a half ago, she started waking every 3-4, and slowly she worked herself down to last night waking every 2 stinkin' hours!

I was hoping night time wouldn't come down to this, but we got the swing out to see how she would like it. She hasn't spent a night in it, but if tonight is like last night, she is going in it right away.

Ben has also been working feverishly on the house staying there until sometime between midnight and 2:00 every night. He has taken several days off to aid in getting things done quicker. I've also been able to drop Meghan and Russell off with one of my visiting teachers so I can do stuff like scrap off old carpet pad and pull staples out of the floor.

Russell is the only one who is getting good sleep at night. He gets such good sleep that he wakes up nice and early every morning. If only he could sleep a little longer, so I could sleep a little longer in the morning, too.

I know we are a little behind, but here are Halloween pictures. I made Russell a Thomas the Tank Engine costume. Meghan was a flower.

Our only Halloween day picture. Russell had just had a melt down, Meghan is doing what she does best, and our house is a mess.

Trunk-or-treat

This girl turned 4 months old on Saturday. Her new favorite tricks are playing with her feet, sucking her first two fingers (especially when she is tired, though it doesn't help her sleep), and squirming her way around the floor to get Russell's toys her leaves on the floor. Lots of people have been saying that she looks like her mommy lately :) We broke out this toy for her to play with and she loves it. Russell loves it, too, and plays with any chance he gets. She is always moving.

Sloppy Joe Jack-o-lantern pie

We had this sloppy joe jack-o-lantern pie last night. It was really delicious even though it didn't turn out very orange.

I used a regular can of sloppy joe mix plus I added in three chopped carrots and the rest of a green pepper that we had in the fridge. It really added something to our regular sloppy joe mix. Russell didn't even know he was eating green peppers!

This is probably going to be added into our regular dinner rotation except I don't think I will carve a pumpkin face into it each time. 

Eyeball Spaghetti

Wednesday's dinner was eyeball spaghetti (or halloween spaghetti). It was popular with Russell until it was time to actually eat. Ben liked it, especially with the green olives. I ate mine without eyes in it.

I had to buy black food coloring to color the spaghetti and mine didn't turn out nearly as dark as the picture. I did doctor up the spaghetti sauce like she suggests, and it was really good.

We didn't get around to carving a pumpkin last night. Ben came home from school about 4:45 and had to leave for Patrol leader Council at 5:30, so it was a pretty quick meal. I didn't have much stamina to handle Meghan and Russell while trying to carve a pumpkin. Maybe we'll do two tonight.

Mummy Dogs and a Kitty Lantern

Tuesday we had Mummy dogs for dinner. It was a huge hit with Russell! I decided to make my own dough, which tasted great, but didn't wrap around the dogs nicely. Store bought crescent dough would probably be easier to work with.

 Ben also liked the dogs and the dough wrapped around them. He ate 4. Here is today's jack-o-lantern. A kitty. It was fun to carve.

Halloween Week

This week we are doing halloween dinners each night of the week. Last night we had Zombie Taco Salad.

Chips on the bottom, taco meat and beans next, salsa, lettuce for hair, cheese for skin falling off, sour cream eyes with olive pupils, and a tomato mouth. It was a toss up on whether or not it was a hit. Russell is on and off about whether he wants to eat dinner these days.

We also decided we would carve one pumpkin a night this week since we ended up with  five pumpkins. Last night's pumpkin was a traditional style jack-o-lantern.

Russell was much more into carving the pumpkin this year, though he still didn't want to stick his hand in the pumpkin.