Crafty One

One of Mason's (and my!) favorite things to do is crafts. Painting, gluing, drawing, coloring - we love it all. Here are a few random pieces of recent art work from my kiddo.

Writer

These past few weeks, Mason has been learning so quickly - he's so interested in the alphabet and letter sounds and spelling (?!?!!) and I've been taking full advantage and teaching him more at every possible moment. He now knows the majority of the letter sounds, he can write most of the letters by himself, and he can SPELL and SOUND OUT three letter words with either an A or an I in the middle (and a few others). It just seems crazy to me, for a three-year-old. The sounding out part is what gets me. If I ask him how to spell "pat" he'll say, "puh - P, ah - A, tuh - T". One of my grad school classes this semester is about teaching children to read who are at risk or have a disability and focuses on this systematic approach to phonics. It's helped me teach Mason so much.


I can't wait until he can read to me.

Pumpkin Painting

I showed Mase how to splatter paint and he made this beautiful piece of artwork:


And this one:

Not Cool

The other day, I realized I am now officially roommates with a boy.

Mason left the toilet seat up. When I went to pee in the middle of the night, I fell in.

An Apple a Day

...is always better when it's straight from the orchard. Mmm.

Saturday Wake-up

Well, this is how I was woken up at 7:00 this morning.



Nothing like waking up thinking you're in an earthquake.

The Pumpkin Patch Haul

Pumpkin paintin' to come... :)

Fast Asleep

When we left the park, Mason wanted to go to the book store to play with the trains. Having already been to Target, the pumpkin patch, lunch, two Halloween stores, and the park, I figured he was exhausted, but he wasn't grumpy and he insisted he wasn't tired at all.

So I headed to the book store, which is only about a mile from the park. When we stopped a red light about halfway there, I turned around to check on him since he was being unusually quiet.


I'd say he was a little sleepy.

Our Old Park

After the pumpkin patch, Mason and I had lunch and headed to the park by our old apartment. We used to spend so much time here.





We had a blast. I missed this park.







Gah, I love him.

The Patch

I love the pumpkin patch. In previous years, Mason's been a little more laid back, wandering around and letting me pose him for pictures. This year, though, he grabbed a wagon on his own and went to work picking out pumpkins.


He did let me get a couple quick shots, but nothing like my photography when he wasn't so adventurous.



We ended up with SIX pumpkins and six of those little gourds.



After spending a small fortune on all those pumpkins, plus two apples and a gallon of apple cider, it was off to the corn maze.



Even last year, I pretty much had to carry Mason through the corn. This year, he was off exploring on his own while I trailed behind.


He didn't like the scary stuff, and he did ask me to hold him when he saw the alien on life support (that's a little much, right?) but he went right up to that skeleton to get his treasure - a spider ring! - which, to his dismay, he promptly lost immediately afterward at lunch.






Mason loved seeing this corn popping out! He really was amazed.


And when we found this little house he was the happiest kid ever. He still hasn't stopped talking about the little house that was "just his size". :)


When we finally found the way out, it was time for ice cream on the porch! Mason had rainbow and I took some good advice and tried the pumpkin flavor. Ohmygosh.


And you can't leave the pumpkin patch without sticking your head in one of these things. It takes some real love for your kid to go up to a complete stranger and say, "hey, will you take our picture while I stick my face in this cat head?"



Such a fun time... we can't wait to go back!

No, Cannibalism is Usually Frowned Upon

Me: Hey, Mase, we're going to have lunch with Brittany today. Her belly's going to be really big because she's almost ready to have a baby and he's growing in there!

Mase: [obviously perplexed] Did she eat him??

Four Years of Pumpkin

On my list of Very Important Things To Do this weekend was to visit the pumpkin patch. We've gone every year October since Mason was a baby.

Well, maybe not a baby baby. I couldn't find a picture at the pumpkin patch his first year, so we must not have gone. So here he is with a pumpkin in 2008:


These next ones were 2009. Mason would have been 17 months old. We went with Aimee and Madelynn. It's hard to even remember my kid looking like this:



Here's Mase at the pumpkin patch in 2010:


And here he is this year, 2011:


Wow. Makes me a little sad inside.