NC State Fair!

The State Fair here in North Carolina is a BIG DEAL. It's only a week and a half long and it seems like everyone goes to it! It's just enormous--each year we've gone we've found more and more things that we hadn't seen before. And of course, the amount of deep-fried food there is just AMAZING--we feel totally justified going crazy at the state fair since we don't have anything deep-fried most of the time. This year, we were excited because Dane is at the age where he's getting really excited about seeing animals and we knew he would love seeing all the farm animals and all of the excitement that you see at the fair. And he DID--it was so fun to see how serious he was about watching all of the animals we could find.

We went with the Busbys again this year. It was funny to reminisce about how we went with them three years ago, right after we moved here, when they just had Kylie and we could all drive together in the same car. Now there are eight people between us and we'd have to get a much bigger car! We had a lot of fun with them since they have their priorities straight. It's all about eating whatever food you want, and then doing whatever else you have time for.

While we were waiting for the Busbys to get there, Dane was having fun pretending he was in jail. He does this all day long with the gate at the top of our stairs so he was well-versed in what he was supposed to do.

And here are a bunch of pictures of Dane looking at the animals. These are such dumb pictures if you aren't Dane's parents or grandparents, so you can just skip over them if you're not. But we were getting such a kick out of how he just STARED at the animals and studied them so seriously. He could not take his eyes off of them the whole time.

Dane LOVED this pen with all of these little chicks. He started crying every time Tommy tried to walk away. 

Dane and Preston--two manly men hanging out in their stroller together.

Our first deep-fried treat of the day: deep-fried Girl Scout cookies.

Happy guy at the fair!

Fair foods numbers 2 and 3: the Krispy Kreme burger and a red velvet funnel cake! (You would doubt the Krispy Kreme burger, but it's unfortunately actually pretty good, which makes me feel trashy just thinking it. The red velvet funnel cake was AMAZING.)

Dane might be a cowboy for Halloween, so we scored a cowboy hat for him at the fair!

All of us together! Too bad the person taking the picture didn't get the ferris wheel in the background like we were thinking.

It was a perfectly fun day! We love having the Busbys so close and being able to do things with them all the time. And we LOVE the state fair!

he can't stop won't stop!

For the last few weeks, Dane has been OBSESSED with practicing his walking by clinging to our fingers and walking around. Tommy is basically his slave in this exercise, because Tommy is too nice to ever say no to him. (I, on the other hand, only agree to do it for limited amounts of time.) So Dane and Tommy will just walk around our apartment for half-hour intervals, Dane with his arms up high and Tommy bending over to reach his little arms. When he wants to walk, he will crawl over to you, pull your arm towards him, snatch your finger with his vice-like grip, and just start walking. He doesn't bother to see if you're coming--he'll just keep pulling on you until you get up and start following him around.

matchy matchy boys!

Dane is always VERY focused on the hard work he's doing. Walking takes a lot of concentration.

Although he's LOVED walking with our help, he hasn't really taken more than one step on his own--at least, until today! Becca was watching him during the day while I worked, and when she dropped him off at the end of the day today, she mentioned, "He was taking a bunch of steps today!" So I set him down standing up and he just got this big grin on his face and walked right over to me, pretty unsteady but all on his own. He went over to their house this morning not walking and came back taking up to 12 steps at a time! He is SO thrilled about it--every time he walked by himself this evening he'd start grinning and cackling and clapping for himself, looking at us expectantly waiting for us to start clapping and cheering too. And of course we're just as excited as he is. We'll get some pictures of him walking eventually.

Also, when Tommy got home, I brought Dane outside to meet him and had Dane walk over to him to surprise him. We had been just meandering, walking slowly along the sidewalk with Dane looking at the worms and wood chips and other fascinating elements of nature, but when I pointed Tommy out to Dane and he saw him, Dane started marching, walking as fast and as determinedly as he could over to Tommy, saying "Ooooh! Ooohh! Oooooh!" He knows what he wants, and what he wants is his daddy.

And to end, a few adorable pictures of Dane giggling while Tommy takes off his shoes and socks (for some reason the funniest thing to him all the time):

dane's first word

It was really sad for Dane to be away from his Daddy all week while we were in Ithaca. Tommy had been out of town for half of the week before doing interviews in CA, and then a few days after he got back Dane and I left for the week. So I think Dane was REALLY missing his daddy, his number one favorite person in the whole wide world. When we got back home, he wouldn't let me touch him or do anything with him. Good thing it was the weekend, so Tommy was home all weekend, because all he wanted was Tommy. And it was when I tried to take him from Tommy to hold him myself that Dane said his first words: 

"Nononononono!"

I'm serious. He not only said "No!" to me trying to hold him, he pointed his finger at me and shook it! He pointed right at me, with a nasty little look on his face, and said "Nonononono!" He's never said a single word before (other than "uh oh" whenever he drops something, which doesn't really count)* and this is what he comes up with first. 

It's made Tommy and I wonder if we say no to him too much or something (but, I mean, he's so often getting into things he shouldn't be, and so often doing things that are about to lead to disaster, that it's pretty normal to have to tell him no reasonably often during the day, right?). He's taken to using "Nononono" whenever we start walking in a different direction than where he wants to go, whenever we take away something, and really just all the time. We're so glad to see that he's already figured out how to defy us before he's figured out how to tell us anything else.

And don't worry. I'm not really that offended that Dane says "no" to me holding him. It was actually kind of nice to not change a single diaper all weekend because he only wanted his daddy. 

*I should also mention that he's also said "ball" and "banana" in the last few days (and we THINK he's said them before now, but it's so hard to tell because "ba ba" and "na na" are sounds he's been making for a while). It's so cute to hear him say "ba" and hand me one of his many balls and ask for a banana whenever he sees one. 

ithaca is gorges

Last week, I went to Ithaca, New York, to help babysit my cousins while my uncle is in the hospital and my aunt is with him--five hours away from their home. My grandparents are there to stay with the kids, but five kids ages 3-14 are a lot of work! So everyone in the family has been trying to chip in and help out. So Dane and I flew up there and had a lot of fun helping my grandparents and playing with my cousins. I mostly did the child-wrangling, helping to get the kids off to school and to bed, and playing with little three-year-old Lucia during the day. It was a lot of hard work (six kids! ah!) but in some ways it was kind of a vacation because I didn't really help out with the cooking or cleaning that much because Dane wouldn't let me put him down most of the time. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa, for taking care of that! Tommy and I had actually been talking, a few days before all of this happened, about taking a trip up to visit the Sines to see the area. So although Tommy didn't get to, I was able to see a little bit of the beauty that is upstate New York in the fall.

Grandpa took Lucia, Dane, and I to visit Cornell's campus the first day we were there. Here's Lulu and Dane in front of Wes's building on campus.

After Claira got home from school, we had a nice picnic of graham crackers and water in their front yard.

Look at how helpful they are, helping to feed Dane. 

Poor baby. He threw up later this night. He had some sort of stomach bug and was very sad and snuggly for a few days while we were there. I was sure glad we were bringing some more chaos to the household by having Dane there to throw up all over the kitchen floor!

Lucia saw a squirrel and ran saying, "I pet squirrel! I climb tree! I pet squirrel!" She really thought she was actually climbing the tree to pet the squirrel. What a character. 

Haha, Dane's first bath buddy! I was giving Dane a bath and Lulu insisted on climbing in with him. 

Grandma and Grandpa took us to Wegman's, the absolutely GIANT grocery store there in Ithaca. Grandpa kept saying, "It's not just a grocery store. It's an experience." Lulu and Dane loved it because they gave out free cookies for the little kids.

It was absolutely the most perfect week to be there--it was perfect autumn weather and we did a lot of fun fall activities! Lucia picked out this Dane-sized pumpkin for him and we put it on their front porch with all the other pumpkins. 

Caroline and Claira spent a lot of time raking up the leaves in the backyard to make a big leaf pile for them to jump in.

All four beautiful Sine girls!

We also went to an apple cider mill called Hollenbeck's, out in the country, to buy some delicious apple pies and apple cider. (Let me tell you--I am not an apple juice fan at all, but this apple cider was amazing.) 

Even more playing in the leaves. Notice that Dane is sporting his Ithaca is Gorges t-shirt--a pun on all of the beautiful, huge gorges that run through Ithaca.

Lucia and Claira wanted to put Dane in their baby doll stroller and push him around. He was totally fine with that. He just sat there very calmly while Lulu kept running him off the sidewalk with her pushing.

Somebody was very naughty and is VERY interested in toilets these days. Ahh!

The last day we were there, I took Lucia and Dane to the "Sciencenter," a kids museum just a few minutes from their house. Lucia was wearing her flowery rainboots and her unicorn hoodie, and every single person who saw her just said, "Awwwwww, she is ADORABLE!"

THIS is Dane's defiant face. I told him no sucking on the nasty-looking bridge in the baby play area and he started looking at me very angrily. Oh, he is getting to be a little stinker. I'll post more about that later. 

All in all, it really was a great week. The Sine kids were SO, so nice and helpful--I was so impressed by how great they were all week long. And the best news is that Wes keeps getting better and better. The doctors are predicting a full recovery for him, mentally and physically, which is really a miracle. There are so, so, so many people thinking of him and praying for him and Annie, and I felt so glad that we could do our small part to help this week.

random recent happenings

We haven't uploaded pictures from our small camera apparently since we got back from our trip to Montreal, and I finally just did today. Some of these pictures were so funny I just wanted to share. Dane is just such a funny boy that I just couldn't stop laughing at a few of these pictures.

Some of our friends hosted a "House Party" sponsored by Butterball, the turkey company. Butterball basically sent them a bunch of products and coupons and we got to enjoy the spoils. One of the best things they sent was a turkey hat, which we all wore while watching the Miss America pageant. 

Ha! I know this picture looks really weird, but it totally cracked me up. Tommy was lying on the ground while Dane was crawling all over him and then Dane just rolled over and stayed right here in this position. He apparently thought it was very comfortable and didn't feel any inclination to move away.

We sure love this guy.