Only 21 years until Halloween!

Olivia was running around screaming at ear-piercing levels the other day.  When I asked her to stop, she turned around and said, “HEY!  Don’t judge with my decisions!”

And sometimes I wonder:  Am I fully equipped to raise this person?

Hey!  We were bored recently, so interminably, painfully, outrageously bored, with absolutely nothing to do because the weather went from summer heat headlong into winter freeze in the space of one day.  From 80 & sunny to 40 & snowing, just like that.  I glanced listlessly about the house, fighting the urge to curl up on the couch with Olivia in front of a movie.  I opened a drawer with stacks of construction paper inside and spied the orange and black colors resting on top of the pile.  A chain!  Let’s make a Halloween chain à la Mrs. Belt’s kindergarten class of 1991!  (Oh man, I just had to count on my fingers to figure out in which year I turned five.)

It really wasn’t the fanciest idea of all time, but she was super excited and cut about 50% of the rings out by herself, which is actually a lot of cutting for one little three year old hand.  Especially since she cuts a millimeter at a time.  Then we realized that there was nary a glue stick  in the house, which meant TRIP TO WALMART! which is always an exciting event for Olivia (less so for myself, unfortunately).  And, with her $2 glue stick in hand, she glued each of the rings together into a nice, long chain.  Finally, we hung it in the bedroom to count down the days until Halloween.  Each morning, she scrambles out of bed and the very first thing she says is, “I have to take off another link on my chain!”  and each day, she totally screws up her units of time and says something like, “Hooray!  Another year closer to Halloween!”

This is the only picture I could get of it:

 

And now: Olivia’s first on purpose self-portrait:

This is a very important skill to master in this Facebook dominated world, right?  Right? 

I am so proud.

I cut Olivia’s hair a few days ago.  Her hair was so bad.  It ended in a point in the middle of her back, so I basically found the top of where it started to move inward toward the point and cut a straight line along it.  A nice big triangle of hair, essentially.  I cut about 3 inches, which still feels really dramatic.  It’s a whole lot shorter, but it looks at least a million times better.

Here are some phone pictures of stuff because I’m too lazy to charge my real camera:

In her tutu which she inherited from her Aunt Emily yesterday.

Michelle, Cara, Aislinn, and I ran 12 miles on Saturday.  We decided to run the actual path that we’ll be running in a couple weeks during the half marathon.  Including those terrible first miles with the extreme downhill slope.  Running downhill may sound like a dream, and it is, at first!  But by mile 4, your toes have slammed into the front of your shoes enough to make them bleed and all those muscles that aren’t accustomed to working so hard want to kill you, and your hips and knee joints are sore and aching.  And you still have 9 miles to go!

It was still dark when we started.  The snow on the autumn trees was so gorgeous and the clouds were right at our level; we could see them swirling around the trees as we ran.

The run ended up being amazing.  I felt great the entire time and I think adding a single mile on race day won’t be an issue.

I am pretty sore today, though.

 

P.S.  I made this today.  Don’t even act like you’re not impressed.

The basket on the table was Olivia’s request.  Nobody tell me that baskets don’t really have rectangular handles.