Halloween party

We just got back from a Costume Dinner Dance at our church, and it was a blast! The boys were adorable and danced like crazy. And most importantly, some mystery attendee brought Ace Pear Cider, which I haven't had in years. It just made my night.

In preparation for the evening's festivities I spent most of this afternoon being uncharacteristically crafty, which was fun. Some of you may recall this curtain that Jess and I made back in the Alexandria days:


Well, today I transformed it into a pair of scrubs for Will to wear with his doctor jacket (a Christmas present last year from the Sedgewicks). Behold (and pay no attention to the apparent stain in the crotch--it's just water):




Impressive, no? But that's not all. Check out that ID tag! Go ahead--click on the picture, take a good look at the ID. I made it. It rocks. OK, OK, enough about me. Here's Will strutting his stuff at the kids' parade at the party.



And here are Matt and Ryan, bringing up the rear. Matt is a vampire, and Ryan is a tired, tired little boy wearing the lion costume that Will refused to wear two years ago. Ryan loves people and had a great time at the party, but the poor little guy was pretty low in energy from the start of the evening. I think he was also overheating in that lion costume. Toward the beginning of the party he stopped dancing, sat down on a step, and just looked sad. After a while I took the lion coat off of him and he gave me a big smile, stood up, and resumed dancing. That's Ryan--instead of crying or getting cranky he just sat down. He also spent a fair portion of the party sitting on Matt's lap, drinking ginger ale out of a beer bottle, which was pretty funny. I meant to take a picture, but forgot.



And I got to be a pretty, pretty princess. Will took this picture!

They're getting so big!

When we moved into this house Will wasn't tall enough to see out this window without a stool. Now look at them! Ryan is fully mobile and walking better than Will did at 16 months, even though Ryan didn't start until 15 months and Will started at 12. Ryan is a speedy little thing, probably a Darwinian response to having an abusive older brother. Now when we leave the house I just call, "Ryan, let's go!" and he comes trotting along, ready and anxious to walk out the door. Also, sometimes when I suggest to Ryan that it is time to change his diaper he walks into Will's room and lies down on the changing mat. And, uh, when I go to put on his socks in the morning he extends his foot helpfully and chats pleasantly about socks and shoes. It sort of stuns me. I expect that this eagerness to please will dwindle as he approaches age two, but I find it delightful for now. Also, and we believe he picked this up at daycare, when you ask him what a chicken says he makes chicken wings with his arms and dances around. Same for duck, but he adds "quack, quack!"

Will has never been eager to please, bless him. But today he crafted coffee-filter diapers for a can of mandarin oranges and carried it around yelling, "I LOVE you baby oranges, I love you so much!" And that was funny.