How about another edition of "what you've missed"?

"Stop!"

My son is incredibly defiant. I was so hoping for a child who would instantly "stop" doing whatever unpleasant/dangerous/awful/annoying thing he was doing the moment he heard me tell him not to do it. However, upon hearing the word "no" or "stop," Silas looks at me, smiles, and returns to whatever it is he is doing. I repeat "no" or "stop" five more times and he smiles at me each time and goes about his business. Eventually, I have to walk over to him and, say, remove his tiny hand from the dog bowl and remove his entire being from the kitchen and put up the baby gate to keep him from returning to the dog bowl.

"Home sweet home"

I'm not sure if you have ever had the pleasure of sharing a one bedroom apartment with a toddler. In case you have not been so lucky, I will inform you that a one year old owns too much crap not to have his own bedroom. My living room much resembles a Toys R Us. There are mega blocks and board books hiding under every available surface, nook and cranny, people. And so the search for a bigger place has begun.

"Jack-o'-m-g-this is hard"

Saturday was pumpkin carving day. Stencils were purchased, newspaper was placed on the coffee table, and the tops were cut out of each of the two pumpkins.

This is where I should explain that my recollection of pumpkin carving is from childhood. So, all I remembered was it being awesome...because I was eight...and someone else was doing all the hard stuff. Pumpkin carving resulted in me, my couch, my floor and my son getting covered in pumpkin guts and my hand cramping up a thousand times while I whined, "why is this so hard?!"

Sunday I issued an apology to my mother. Why? Two weeks prior to pumpkin carving Saturday, my reply to my mother's declaration of her pumpkin carving days being over was, "suck it up, you have a grandson now!" I'm not sure how she hung in there for as many years as she did.

Smiley Pumpkin

Scary Pumpkin