Spooooooky

I love Halloween.  The decorations, the pumpkins, the weather.  I have fond memories of carving pumpkins and of my dad and I trick-or-treating, me with my plastic pumpkin for goodies and him with his pewter mug for goodies of the adult liquid variety.   Good times were had by all.

Henry's Halloweens so far have been pretty atypical.  The first year he went trick-or-treating in the residence halls on CNU's campus where we were working and living.  He went dressed as a banana.

The next Halloween we were living in New Jersey and it SNOWED so trick-or-treating got moved and because we didn't have power we ended up trick-or-treating in MomMom and PopPop's neighborhood.  Henry was an octopus.

Last year Halloween was cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy.  He borrowed a Thomas the Tank Engine costume from our sister-in-law Julie's family and never got to take it out trick-or-treating and also no picture.

So here we are in October again and I'm expecting a forecast of locusts, frogs or something to prevent us from having a normal Halloween this year.  I am also waiting on Henry to decide what he really wants to dress up as for Halloween.  So far his list is: Pirate, Doctor or Train Engineer.  (He also mentioned a bat yesterday but I don't think he was serious.)  Eddie and I both think Doctor would be a cute costume.  He has a doctor's kit from his birthday so it would be easy to get a white coat and be done!

I've started collecting Halloween decorations for the house each year after Halloween is over (clearance prices!) and I love it all.  This year Henry helped decorate our spooky Halloween tree and even got a little crafty and made a googly-eye pumpkin.  He is also really enjoying skulls and skeleton bones this year.  (He even picked a big glow-in-the-dark skeleton that he wanted to hang in his room, which we did!)

 Halloween display in our entryway.  All clearance or Dollar Tree finds.

 Henry's Googly Eye Pumpkin.  He loves it.

Pumpkin and Googly Eyes from the Dollar Store.  Super easy and amusing for a 3-year old 

(and 31 year old to be honest!) 

 Bat silhouettes from the Dollar Store.  We have them in our windows but Henry wanted a bat family in our house too.

Henry and Bony Bob (his skeleton that was later hung in his room)

Remember That Time...

...when I thought that the 2.5 hours that Henry was in preschool that I would have time to keep up with this blog, go out on runs, keep the house in order, etc.  Turns out there is a rift in the space time continuum that makes the time between 8:30 and 11:00 each morning elapse at a faster pace than any other time of day.  This is to say that things are incredibly busy and I'm going to have to manage my expectations!

Henry LOVES school.  This makes us very happy.  He is excited to go each morning and is happy when he is done each day.  The program he is in is really great.  One teacher and two aides for eight 3-4 year old children.  Four of the students are hearing-impaired with either cochlear implants or hearing aids.  They speak and do not use sign language.  The four hearing students are from our town and are in the classroom just in the morning.  In the afternoon the hearing impaired students do more specialized activities like speech therapy.

I like the idea that Henry is being exposed to other kids who are "different" than he is.  Last week on our way home from school one day Henry told me that one of the students has blue hearing aids.  This launched us into a conversation about why the student had them (because his ears need help hearing) and Henry, on his own, made the connection to his own pacemaker (because his heart needs help).  Crazy how insightful a three-year old can be!

Other school highlights:
-Gym class three times a week.
-Music class two times a week.
-Each week the students have a different job.  Henry got to put the weather up on the weather chart each day last week.  He thought it was great.  This week he is the door holder....clearly not as exciting.
-Each week there is a theme.  The teacher sent the week breakdowns to us with a list of vocab words they will be using a lot so that we can reinforce at home.  This week they are talking about friends.  Next week is family.

Working on his first ever school project!

Henry has "played school" at home with us quite a few times.  We have to take turns being the teacher or a student.  You can tell what his teacher must usually say to the students ("I need to hear everyone's voices" or "What do you think is going to happen?") because Henry uses these phrases when it is his turn to be the teacher.  It's pretty awesome.

I loved school so it makes me really happy that Henry loves it too.  I know he still has many years to change but for now it's exciting to watch him be excited about learning.

Life goes on outside of school too...

Swim lessons have started up again, which Henry enjoys.  He is now in the class where the parents don't go in the pool!  Big boy!

We're taking another adventure into Potty Training Land.  We've had numerous short trips into this mystical land without much success but Henry's teacher said that he had been doing a good job with the potty at school and we started sending him in "big boy underwear" this week.  So we started the homefront battle too.  Mixed results so far.  I will spare you the details since Henry might read this a few years down the road...haha.

I know most of you readers tune in here for Henry but there are two other people in our little family.

Eddie has been keeping busy between work and reffing soccer and I've been keeping busy with the part-time work I do from home and the volunteer work I do for the concert band I play in.

But it's not all work.  Last weekend we got to go to Clemson for a football game. We stopped at JMU for the night on the way down and we got to see part of the marching band rehearsal. I got to go out to dinner with some good college friends.  The next morning we drove the rest of the way to Clemson where we met up with friends, got to see Kevin (brother) and Julie (sister-in-law) who are at UGA for grad school, and had dinner at one of Eddie's old hangouts.

During Homecoming students create HUGE displays out of chicken wire and tissue paper squares.  Amazing stuff.

 Deanna worked for/with us when we were at CNU and now she's in grad school at Clemson.

Eddie and I in the spot where we got engaged.

We stayed at the home of some friends and got to catch up with them, which was really nice.  On Saturday we headed to campus for the football game.  Games at Clemson are serious business.....orange everywhere you look, tailgating setups with flatscreen TVs, etc.  It's quite an experience.

Sliding down the hill in the stadium....I may or may not have tried it too.

We headed back north on Sunday with a pitstop outside of Charlotte to see one of my college friends and her family.  We met up with them at a really cool "touch a truck" event that had all sorts of vehicles (NASCAR, Fire Truck, Bulldozer, etc.) that the kids could climb on and in.  Henry loved it and enjoyed hanging out with "Nowen" (how he says "Owen"), my friend's son who is  four months older,  for a short bit before getting back in the car.

 Not sure why there was a camel there but I LOVED HIM!

I can't wait for them to hang out again in November at JMU!

It was a really great weekend and worth the time in the car.

Well, I think that's about all the update for this one....here's to hoping the next one isn't three weeks from now!

We're Back!

It has been a long hiatus for us here on the Leave It To Seavers Blog.  Things have been insanely busy and, unfortunately, the blog was a victim of that.  A lot has happened since the last post but we're going to start fresh starting with Henry's start of Preschool!  My 2.5 hours a day, 5 days a week of Henry being at school will hopefully allow me to keep up with this blog again.  (As much for you readers as for our family to look back on years from now.)

So thanks for your patience and check back for (hopefully) more regular updates!

Alphabet Adventure: Letter K!

Letter K week was not super exciting...seems to be a theme here lately.  (Ugh...I swear, I'll get more inspired soon!) But we did do some fun activities and Henry really got into some of the K books we checked out from the library.

We made cards for some of our friends with K names.  We also made one to send to Coach K!

I brought out the paints to have him paint some kites for his Letter K craft but it turned into a free-for-all so....

We glued kite pieces and fluffy clouds (cotton balls) together to make his K craft instead.

 

We have continued getting the Sound Box books (Moncure) each week and Henry really enjoys them.  I like having those books as a consistent form of presenting the letter of the week.  For K week Henry also really liked "Curious George Flies A Kite"....so much so that we're still reading it this week.  He also liked "Counting Kisses."

Snow and The Season

I realized I've been mostly recapping our Alphabet Adventure here and have neglected the main purpose of the blog...to keep you all updated as to what we're up to.  While the alphabet is part of it, it's certainly not all of it!

Last week we had our SECOND snow of the year!  Henry loved being able to play out in the snow and asked to go out as soon as he saw the snow starting to collect.  I told him we had to wait until there was a little bit more before we could play.  He kept crawling up on the couch to look out the window to see if there was enough yet to go out.  Thankfully it was falling at a fairly steady rate so it didn't take long.

We got bundled up and headed out.  Henry ran around the yard with his tongue out, trying to catch snowflakes.  He even remembered how Daddy showed him how to make snow angels a few weeks before during our first snow.  We had a blast just running around and having fun.  I, of course, harassed him with a camera.  I'm glad I did because he looks so stinkin' cute in these.

Later that night when Eddie came home, the two of them went out for more fun.  They built a snowman, which Henry adored.  (The snowman tipped over the next day and was the last bit of snow to melt.  Everytime we went out he would say, "Oh no, Snowman!")

We've also started getting into the holiday spirit.  Eddie and I put the tree up while Henry was napping one afternoon.  When he came down after his nap he was very excited to see the tree.  He said that it was "beautiful and bright" and enjoyed helping put some of the ornaments up.  Most of our ornaments are fragile so the tree is a little top-heavy with decorations!

We still have our Christmas Village to set up but the boxes are up and ready for set-up.  Eventually we'll get to that.  For now we're enjoying having the tree up.  Henry even asked me to turn the lights on this afternoon for him.

Last year Henry was too little to really know much about Santa.  He would say "Ho Ho" when he saw Santa but beyond that, not much.  This year we started mentioning him and now Henry can tell us a number of things about him.  For example, Santa is going to come bring him toys and presents.  (He even pointed out some things in a catalog that he thinks Santa will bring.)  Also, Santa gets cookies and strawberries.  (Not sure where the strawberries came from but we may be getting some to put out!) 

We have an elf that will be visiting our house soon to report back to Santa to make sure Henry is being a big boy before Christmas.  (Judging from how I got Henry to eat his dinner the other night by having a toy tiger "tell me" that Henry should eat certain number of bites of different foods I think the elf may be helpful around here!)  It should be a fun few weeks!

Between snow (twice!), a week away for fun and Thanksgiving and just life in general we've had a busy few weeks with our little family!  In all honesty, I've been kind of uninspired about the Alphabet Adventure lately and am hoping that actually being at home for a few weeks in a row will help get me on track.

Anyways...for those of you following along, here are some highlights from the last three weeks of Alphabet Adventure:

Letter H:

Letter H Week was exciting for Henry as H is his favorite of all of the letters.  He has been able to write an H for quite some time now and he loves to spot it everywhere.  (He loves to say "H for Henry!")

During H week we read some fun books, including one of my favorites "Hippos Go Beserk" by Sandra Boynton.  (Her books are all hilarious.) 

I don't have any pictures but we made a "Hug" to send to Uncle Chewy, who is away at college.  We got one of these "hugs" in the mail from a friend when Henry had his robot surgery and I thought it was such a cute idea.  We traced Henry's Hands (another H word!) and cut them out.  Then we "measured his hug" (his armspan) with a colorful ribbon.  We attached the hand cutouts to the ends of the ribbon and we had a Henry-sized hug!

This week Henry got to have some letter and number Spaghetti-Os.  He got a kick out of looking at what he was about to eat.  In this picture he was saying "What letter?!"

For his letter H craft, we made an H out of handprints.  Henry really liked this because I let him make a mess after we got his nice handprints done.

He ended up touching his face after painting his hand red.  He looked a little like a Halloween haunted house extra.

Letter I:

Poor Letter I week was pretty lame.  We were busy getting ready to be away for a week and I just wasn't inspired (incidentally an I word!).  We had plans to make ice cream at home (science class style with the salt and ice) but never got around to it.  We did read some I books, including a Clifford book called The Ice Race.  We made our Letter I craft while at my parents' house so I'm actually in a picture:

Letter J:

J week took place when we were at my parents' house for Thanksgiving so we didn't really do much (not that being home helped out H or I week!).  Henry did get to help make a special Jell-O treat:

We also made a neat J Craft inspired by Henry and Grandad's special book "Pout Pout Fish" that has a page where the title character meets a jellyfish.  We made a Jellyfish J using construction paper for the body and yarn for tentacles.  Henry enjoyed making it and the final product is pretty cute.

Alphabet Adventure: Letter G

Poor Letter G week got interrupted by a hurricane and so it was pretty relaxed and, honestly, pretty lame.  Silly storm kept us from visiting goats at the local farm, the big ghost cutouts at the local park and since we were back and forth between our house and Eddie's grandparents I didn't bother much with putting together G activities for him to explore throughout the week. We didn't even take any pictures of the things we DID do.  (Or so I thought...)

Thankfully with Halloween falling in this week we could take advantage of things like Ghost shaped Peeps for a tasty treat.  I had also gotten a set of little plastic bag ghosts from the Dollar Store that we made while hanging out with family.  (Basically just white plastic bags you stuff with a newspaper ball and hang up with twist ties.)  We made them and hung them around the room where we spent most of our time at Eddie's grandparents' house. 

We spent the last part of G week at my parents' house in NC.  Turns out that my mom did snap some picture of Henry with Grandad that we can put here to show some G fun! They helped Henry use glue (another G word!) to put small pictures of Grandad's face around a letter G we printed out.  It's a fun addition to our craft alphabet. 

Henry and Grandad played the piano together:

And of course they spent time cuddling and reading Pout-Pout Fish, their favorite.

Thanks, Mom, for the pictures!  Here's to hoping H week is a little more constructive and well-documented!