Blizzard / Clifford

I'll start off this post with a photo of Willow with Blizzard the husky. When we took this photo last year, Willow loved the photo so much and asked to look at it on the computer so much, that finally we made a print and laminated it so she could look at it whenever she wanted. When we went to our first game this year, we were telling her that we'd see Blizzard again, and she was just beside herself with excitement. But she got a little confused on his name; she kept calling him Clifford (as in, Clifford the big red dog - she loves those books). Anyway, she was much more excited than this picture shows. Thanks to Ben and Kim for inviting us to their box seat; I am not sure there would be as many opportunities to see Blizzard if you were in general admission. Plus, there wouldn't be any beer.




















I know I'm late posting this, but here is a picture of the three of us at my parents' house before we headed out trick-or-treating. Willow actually got into it and we all had a great time. I forgot how fun trick-or-treating is. I can't wait until Willow's a little older and I can go out with her for an hour or two. This year we just went around the block, probably to a dozen houses or so. Willow would walk up to the door with her little bag open and say "trick or treat" in a tiny voice. Pretty cute.
















A couple weekends ago, we threw a kid-friendly sushi party. It went over quite well. There were five little kids there and a bunch of grown-ups, and everyone had a great time. For some reason I didn't take any pictures but this one, but I thought it was a good one. I wish I had taken one of all the kids.
















Here's a photo of Willow I really like.





















We haven't gotten very far on the tummy issues. Some of the lab work has come back - we know she doesn't have rotovirus or giardia - but we are still waiting on one more test. I'm getting very impatient. Needless to say we've completely fallen off the potty wagon with this. We've also backtracked on the big girl bed, and I don't really know why, other than that she has been more whiny and clingy. She doesn't just want to sleep in our bed; she wants to sleep ON me. *sigh* Don't judge us.

Things aren't all bad though. Generally Willow is happy as can be. Just not when she has a tummyache. She is very talkative at home and I love some of the stuff she comes up with. The other night we were snuggling before bed and she had been quiet for a few minutes. I thought she was just about asleep. Suddenly out of the blue she said "I like snakes". Then quiet for another few seconds. Then, "I like bees, too". So I said "well, maybe you will have a nice dream about snakes and bees". She said, "Yes." Then she fell asleep.

Here's a video. I just like how she says the word "umbrella".





I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving! We are going to visit both families in MN, and I am going to be good about taking photos this time!

Corn Maze

It's been a very busy couple of weeks for us - both at work and home. Here's a quick post with some photos that are already a few weeks old. I will have to try to catch up some more next weekend.

Willow and Maisa had a playdate one cold and windy Saturday. We tried to go to McLain's, but it ended up being so cold, we didn't stay long and ended up at Maisa's house having tea and snacks.















The weekend after that, Josh, Willow and I went to the corn maze. It was more fun this year - Willow actually sort of understood the concept of finding the different items in the maze. And she was very impressed by the big catapult thing this year - last year she didn't even really notice it.
















































Here are ours and the Ryynanen's jack-o-lanterns. They came over with Margot to carve them.
















I mentioned a couple posts ago about Willow's tummyaches. Well, after a couple weeks on the probiotics, we hadn't noticed any change. Then Willow had a 3-day hunger strike and her poop got even yuckier. So I brought her in again. They did an x-ray of her tummy which came back normal. The day after her second doctor's appointment, her poop went back to the way it was (still yucky, but not that yucky) and her appetite came back with a vengeance. Also, her tummyaches have mostly gone away. But, her poop is still not right, so we brought some of it in (that was fun) for testing in the lab. We are still waiting for those results, so we'll see. My mom actually says I had a few months of runny poop when I was Willow's age and then it went away. Can diarrhea actually be genetic?? Hmmm.