Winner, Winner! Chicken Dinner!

Our apartment complex had a little Halloween party on Saturday, so we dressed Lincoln up in his newly finished robot costume and headed over. He thought he looked pretty awesome.

 

 

They had a cupcake decorating table, pumpkin painting, and lots of snacks.

                           

Lincoln and his friend Wesley were not too keen on getting their picture taken… they were too busy drinking cider and painting their pumpkins.

                                                                                  

At the very end of the party they did a costume parade and contest for the kids and dogs present. We were able to get Lincoln to wear his costume for it (he actually did a pretty good job wearing it overall… he was pretty excited to be a robot) and he came in 1st place! He was the proud recipient of a $10 gift card to McDonald’s and $50 off our rent… not too shabby for a cardboard box and dryer vent!

The Never Ending Quilt

I am so happy that I finally get to write this post! I started making a quilt for Lincoln in early June and I have finally finished it! Making this quilt was really, really difficult. I have been actively working on it for the grand majority of the last five months, but there were so many steps to complete and so many things to think about that it just took a really long time to finish. It is far from perfect, but I am pleased with it.

Ways I made this quilt harder then it needed to be:

1) I decided to do a pattern based on half-square triangles (what was I thinking? Oh, I know, “I don’t know what I’m getting myself into.”)

2) I made those half-square triangles relatively small (another, “I don’t know what I’m doing” moment.)

3) I didn’t buy enough of the backing fabric. When I went back to buy more Hancock’s fabric was out of that (solid, very basic, should be pretty standard) color. I had to drive to Jo-Ann’s to get it and the color doesn’t match exactly. It’s very annoying.

4) I decided to do one zig-zag on the back and that made me feel like I needed to line it up with the zig-zags on the front because I originally planned to quilt it in zig-zags…

5) I decided to free-motion quilt it when the zig-zags didn’t line up correctly. I had to pick out all the zig-zag quilting I had already done before I could start free-motion quilting it.

6) Free-motion quilting a twin sized quilt is a huge undertaking for an absolute beginner. It took hours and hours and hours. And it killed my arms. We didn’t eat on the dining room table for weeks and I listened to three audio books.

7) I cut the binding fabric short ways, so I had to sew a bunch of extra seems.

If I ever make another quilt (and I suspect I will, even though I’m feeling a little burned out right now) hopefully I’ll have a lot fewer “I don’t know what I’m doing” moments.

Lincoln loves his new quilt, so that’s what makes me really happy!

Funny Boy

Here are some random pictures I’ve taken of Lincoln over the past several weeks. He is changing so quickly now and it is so fun to watch.

We’ve been having some battles over nap time in the last few weeks. He doesn’t think he needs to take a nap anymore, so he just plays in his room when he’s supposed to be sleeping. One day he totally destroyed his room. There were toys everywhere and he had even gone through his closet. One of the treasures he found in his closet was his old infant bathtub. He sat in it in the living room for a while, calling it a boat. The next day he thought it would be awesome to take a bath in it. He quickly discovered, however, that I was right and he is too big for it, so it didn’t last too long.

Another way Lincoln avoids naps is to tell me he has to pee or poo, usually poo. Here he is making the most of his extra minutes in the bathroom.

I recently bought Lincoln some Do-A-Dot markers and he is in love. There are a lot of printable Do-A-Dot worksheets for pre-schoolers online and he will sit at the table for a good long time dotting away.

Lincoln loves to help. I was cleaning up some this morning and Lincoln jumped right in to help. He cleaned the mirrors in his bathroom and vacuumed the living room, all while singing, “Clean up! Clean up!” I love my little assistant!

Apple Picking

We were a little worried we’d really be missing Ithaca when this time of year rolled around. Fall is our favorite season and it is especially nice in upstate New York, but we’ve discovered there is plenty of fall fun to be had in the greater Washington area as well (and we get the added benefit of beautiful weather while partaking of the fall festivities here). This weekend we drove out to a farm in Maryland to pick apples and enjoy the sunshine. Lincoln had been looking forward to apple picking all week, so he was especially excited for this outing.

                                            

                                                                                  

Of course we picked a ton of apples, we always do, but we’ve got big plans for them, so all is well. The farm we visited also had a large pile of hay for kids to play on. This sounds like a simple idea, but the kids (including Lincoln) love it! There were kids building forts out of hay, throwing it at each other, or just jumping off of it. It was a huge hit. Lincoln’s favorite activity was picking up hay and delivering it to the fort builders. He was upset when we got tired of watching him play in the hay and wanted to move on, but his tears dried quickly once we took him to see some baby goats and a baby cow.

                                                                                

The farm had a lot of other activities that we didn’t do (we think it’s a little early for pumpkins), so we look forward to a return visit before the end of the season!