Trick or Treat!

As soon as we walked in the door from seeing Harper Street all decked out for Halloween, Jesse started crying and saying "Halloween...that way" (as he pointed to the door).  He really wanted to go back where all the pumpkins were. 

Thankfully, the fun was not over.  After greeting a number of his friends at our door and handing out some candy, we set out to do some trick-or-treating ourselves.  Our building did trick-or-treat from 4:30-6:30 this evening. Everyone who had candy to give out was supposed to place a ghost on their door so that kids would know to knock.  Jesse had a blast looking for more ghosts and riding the elevator up through all 10 floors.  He kept saying "more doors" and "more ghosts" and "more candy".  I didn't even know he knew what candy was, but he sure was excited about it. 

Here he is getting dressed up in his robot costume.  He really seemed to like walking around the building in it, and only asked to take it off a few times.  He was easily persuaded to keep it on when we told him he had to wear it to keep trick-or-treating.  We taught him to say "trick or treat", but he refused to say it for most people, and when he did say it, it was in a barely audible whisper.  I think he was totally weirded out by the whole thing (in a good way, though, because he seemed very intrigued by it), and had no idea why we were going to strangers' doors and getting things from them.  When it was time to move on to the next door, he would just stand and stare at the previous door, as if he was really thinking and trying to figure out what in the world we were doing.  I don't think he smiled the whole time, but he was not upset at all, just very pensive.

Here he is getting dressed before heading out.  This was the hardest part, and we unfortunately lost both arms in the process.  It would have been asking for too much patience to heat up the glue gun again.

 

As soon as we left our door, Jesse noticed the candy we had left outside, and he went for it, only to land in it.  He was a bit upset, and I thought we had lost any hope of getting him to walk around the building in the big, bulky box, but he recovered very quickly.

 



 First stop: his friend Alyse's house.  They were out trick-or-treating, too, so they left the candy outside.

Here he is at his friend Lilah's apartment.

And here's a video of Jesse talking about Halloween and candy.  His moodiness was not because he wanted out of the stroller, but because he wanted to stay in it, so he could leave and go see more Halloween things.  Funny boy.



Harper Street Halloween

Every year on Halloween, three blocks in Hyde Park are blocked off and the residents go all-out decorating their Victorian-style homes for Halloween.  Jesse was too little to care last year, but this year I knew he would enjoy getting to see all the decorations (especially the pumpkins).  Plus, this event is on my list of things I want to do in Chicago, and since it's possible we won't be here this time next year, I had to make it priority this year.  It's a South Side tradition, and it draws people from all over Chicago and even people as far away as Indiana (or so I've heard).

We showed up a little early, and some homes were still being decorated, but I feel like we got to see plenty.  I could tell by the time we left that things were gearing up.  It's apparently pretty crazy later on, when thousands of kids are trick-or-treating these three narrow blocks.

Since Jesse's robot costume was not conducive to sitting in a stroller, I dug out his monkey costume from last year, and it surprisingly fit pretty well (albeit a tad snug).

James met us there on his way home from school.

 

Pure happiness.  Jesse got to touch a fire hydrant.  He loves these things and never fails to find them.

 

Jesse Bot

For Halloween this year, Jesse is going to be a robot.  Today we had the Tot Lot Halloween party, so Jesse got to do a trial-run with the robot costume (all but the legs).  He liked it about as well as I could have hoped.  It's not a great costume for playing at a party, so he only wore it at the very beginning and for the costume parade.  I think it will be perfect for going trick-or-treating in our building, though.

Here Jesse is taking a break from the costume and eating at the toddler table.

Jesse was very interested in the grapes and kept going to the food table to snatch a handful of grapes.  Then he would bring them back to the table and eat them and start all over again.  I'm pretty sure he ate his fair share and then some.

At this point I'm pretty sure he was thinking, "Mom do we really have to do this again?"  This was right before the costume parade.

All the kids parading through the lobby in their costumes.  There were so many great ones!

As you might notice, Jesse is missing an arm at this point.

This picture does not do the situation justice, but Jesse somehow managed to hoist himself up on this bench, and there was no way he could get down.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but his feet weren't touching the floor and he was completely at my mercy to get him down (as you can tell, I wasn't feeling extremely merciful because I took the opportunity to capture the moment on camera).

These pictures have nothing to do with robots or the party, but Jesse had some fun painting his pumpkin tonight.  I will be ok when this pumpkin is gone, because maybe Jesse will stop climbing onto the table to get it (he loves carrying it around and telling me how heavy it is).

21 Months

Watching Bob the Builder with his leaves

I skipped a month in the monthly updates, so I'm just going to sum up the past 2 months in this post.

- Last month, I started taking Jesse to a Music Together class.  He absolutely loves it, and after our first time he kept talking about "menen tass" (music class).  He woke up the next morning talking about it and would randomly mention it every day that week.  We have a CD of the songs that we try to listen to most days, and Jesse definitely has several favorites that he requests for me to play "again".  He likes to pipe up and "sing" in class when the teacher does his most favorite song, "Ram Sam Sam".

- Jesse loves to be on the go.  If I ask him what he wants to do, he usually tells me that he wants to go to the aquarium (kee-uh), the Idea Factory (dee-faht), or Harold Washington Park (washun park).  Of course, most days we don't venture out to any of these places, but he would be perfectly happy if we did.

- Jesse loves exploring new parks and playgrounds, and to keep things interesting for me, I made it our goal to try all the parks in Hyde Park (we are now lacking 4, I think).

- Goes to bed a little bit later now, between 7 and 7:30, instead of between 6:30 and 7:00.  I wish this made him sleep later in the morning, but he still seems programmed to wake up at 6:00 on the dot most days.  The later bedtime does, however, seem to make his naps longer most of the time.  He usually goes down around noon, and stays asleep for 2-3 hours.

- He's still a really great eater most of the time.  Dinner is hit or miss, mostly because the things I fix are not as predictable for him, but he usually eats a great breakfast and lunch as well as a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack.  His favorite breakfast right now is oatmeal and raisins and his favorite lunches are cheese quesadilla or homemade macaroni and cheese.  He has also proven himself to be a great vegetable-eater lately, begging for things like cauliflower and carrots and red bell pepper. I hope this sticks, but I'm not getting my hopes up!

Jesse finds all the traffic cones in Chicago

- Current obsessions are pumpkins (more on that later), traffic cones, fire hydrants (which are pronounced fada hada), anything construction-related, and picking leaves, flowers and berries from plants.  He and one of his buddies stripped all the berries from the ivy growing on our playground, and Jesse is quite distraught that I am not willing to help him reach the berries that are too high for him.  If he discovers any berries or leaves to pick on a playground, then he completely forgets about the playground equipment and becomes completely engrossed in the bushes.

- Seems to have a concept of what 1 and 2 mean, but for any group of items greater than 2 he says "1, 2, 4, 6".

- Just a couple days ago he randomly started identifying and naming colors correctly (red, green, yellow, blue and orange). He seemed to have no concept of colors before then, and just labeled everything yellow whenever I asked him what color something was.

- He loves to tell us he loves us, but he says "I yuck you" or "I yuck Mommy/Daddy"...it's so funny.

- Loves to say "not yet" in a very sweet voice whenever we ask him if he's ready for a bath or ready to brush his teeth or other similar things.

- This is a really random tidbit, but something I want to remember.  Jesse has a word he has been using to refer to umbrellas and it has always (for months and months now) sounded like gihweh.  It finally dawned on me a couple weeks ago that he has been calling umbrellas "get wet", probably because I would always tell him that they help you not to get wet.  I think he has the concept a little backwards, but it's pretty cute.

- One of his favorite things to do at home is build towers with his blocks.  He also really loves his number train (each car is a different number and has a corresponding amount of holes where you can stick pegs).

- He prefers to "read" books to us as opposed to us reading them to him.  One of his new favorites this month was The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, which led to his pumpkin obsession.  

- Will tell me what he did at church or Bible study or at a friend's house.  Yesterday I was talking to him about playing at a friend's house and he kept telling me "pull baby wipes".  My curiosity got the best of me, so I asked my friend if there happened to be any baby wipes laying around her place...as it turns out, he and his buddy had emptied the entire box.  At least he was honest, right?

Birthday Celebrations

I just had to post this cute picture of Jesse helping me celebrate my birthday yesterday. First we kicked off the morning with a breakfast get-together at a friend's apartment, then music class, then lunch and nap time (for me and Jesse), and then an afternoon/early evening spent downtown. While James went to a doctor's appointment downtown, Jesse and I grabbed a smoothie and found the nearest park, and then we all had dinner out.  It was a fun day, indeed!

What a Mess!

Jesse was a bit unruly this morning, so what better thing to do than get out the paints, right?  That might sound like a crazy thing to do with an unruly child, but it ended up being just the type of diversion he needed, and he probably wreaked much less havoc on our home than he would have otherwise.  In the second picture he was upset because I was taking his picture.

Starved Rock

This past weekend we took our second family camping trip, this time to Starved Rock State Park, which is a little less than 2 hours west of Chicago.  We all enjoyed it, but I'm nearly certain that Jesse had the most fun of all of us.  He seemed to have some recollection of the tent from last time, and with his current fascination with all things nature (rocks, sticks, bushes, leaves, berries, etc.), the camping experience was heaven for him.

We arrived at the campsite early Friday afternoon, and just like last time, Jesse made a beeline for the woods.  This time he had a much better understanding that he was not allowed to go into the woods and that he needed to stay at the campsite (last time it was quite a chore keeping him at the site).  While James set up our tent, Jesse occupied himself by picking leaves (against park policy, I know, but I'm pretty sure no one will be able to tell that a few leaves are missing) and making piles of rocks, leaves and acorns.

At one point we turned around and Jesse had gotten himself on top of the car like this.  Just kidding.  James put him there and was standing right beside him.

We realized on the second day that we had quite a bit of poison ivy near our campsite, so Jesse was no longer allowed to play in the trees and bushes.  He occupied himself with rock collecting instead.

He also had his first s'more.  He mainly just liked the chocolate.

On Saturday morning we got up and did some hiking along the Illinois River and into some canyons along the river.  This is not the type of scenery I associate with Illinois.  I mostly think of flat cornfields.  This park was beautiful, though, and reminded me a lot of Arkansas.  We will have to return in the winter when the snow creates ice falls in the canyons (or in the spring when there are waterfalls from all the snow melt).  Unfortunately there were no waterfalls in the canyons on this trip, due to the lack of rain we've had.

On Saturday afternoon we just hung out around the campsite.  James got some wood ready to make a fire, and Jesse "helped" by making piles of sticks.

Jesse also did some looking at the trail map to figure out which trails we should hike on Sunday morning.

Of course, a "good book" (that's what Jesse calls every book) is an essential part of every camp-out.  Especially books about squirrels.

The only downside to our camping trip was the cold temperatures at night and in the mornings.  Jesse seemed to stay plenty warm in his fleece sleeper and under several blankets in the pack 'n play, but of course he wanted out of bed between 6 and 7 each morning and once he was out of bed he was miserable because it was so cold (we were not thinking and did not pack heavy coats for any of us).  We would have been happy to stay in our warm sleeping bags a little longer, but Jesse was ready to get out of the tent and start exploring.  To warm up, we turned on the car and listened to some music.  Jesse told me he was driving us to Arkansas.