Halloween

I realize it's almost Thanksgiving, so I'm sorry that I'm just getting around to our Halloween post. We had a great October and lots of fun celebrating Halloween, especially with the nice weather. Autumn's personality has really come out over the past month, and it's been so much fun to see her eyes light up with all the new things she's learning and becoming aware of. We've also entered the fun world of potty training. It's not something we're really pushing - just trying to introduce her to it. She's done well so far though and has gone both #1 and #2 in the big girl potty a few times. Don't worry - we left those pictures out.

At the moment her biggest obsessions are Mickey Mouse and the Buckeyes (including Brutus). If she's around a TV, she's usually asking for one of them! Oh, and for some reason we thought it would be funny to teach her to say a few words with a British accent. It's hilarious listening to her say "hello". She sounds so smart when she talks like that! I'm sure we'll be paying for therapy down the road, but it's very entertaining!

Here are some pics from October...


We took Autumn on her first hayride at a small farm near our house. They drove us out to a pumpkin patch and Autumn picked out her very own pumpkin.


Very proud of her pumpkin


She was much more into carving pumpkins this year which was lots of fun!





As you can see, Autumn was a bumble bee for Halloween. Due to a little mishap earlier that day her official name became "Autumn - the banged up bumble bee".




That is one full belly!


And just when we thought the Halloween boo boo was healing, she went and got her first black eye! It's been a rough month for accidents!

August and September update

Our computer has been out of commission since May and we are so glad to have it back up and running. Now we can get caught up on the blog since we missed the whole month of August!

Autumn is still doing new things all the time and we're having lots of fun. She now has an entire mouth full of teeth, so we're happy that she won't have that to deal with for a long time. She really was a champ with teething, but her last two I-teeth seem to bother her the most.

She is up to about 30 words now. She's doing really well with learning animals and loves anything she can find in the sky...birds, planes, clouds, the moon, the sun, etc. She gets so excited when she finds something that she dances in place and points and says "oh, oh, wow, wow!". She's also starting to get the hang of counting from 1-3 and saying a few letters, and just today finally drank a full 8 oz of milk out of a sippy cup. That's a feat we started 6 months ago so it was a big day for us!



Autumn got spoiled with trips to the zoo with each of her grandparents. She had a blast and was all about her Grandpas holding her (maybe she realized they have a much better view compared to Mommy and her Grandmas).






A very hot day in August - we had lots of fun running through the sprinkler.




All set for another season of OSU football!


Autumn and Brady at a farm in Michigan. It was so much fun. They got to see all kinds of animals, take a wagon ride together, and hang out in a trailer full of pumpkins!


We went to see the painting of Autumn at a focus show at BGSU a few weeks ago. This is the painting that Andraya (Nick's half sister) did of her, and it was selected for display at the show. It's based off of a picture Andraya took when Autumn was 5 days old, so she named the painting "5 Days". So cool! She's very talented!


September 27th - Autumn's very first haircut! She was a great sport and it looks very cute. We were sort of sad about cutting it at first but we're glad we got rid of her mullet :)

July update

Month #16 - July was a blast! For the 4th we stayed in Columbus and got to take Autumn to the zoo for the first time. Her favorite animal was definitely the monkeys - she perfected her monkey sound that day. We also took her to the pool, which was the first time Nick and I were able to do that together, so it was lots of fun. She also saw her first set of fireworks! We were curious to see whether she would freak out, but she loved them!

Autumn got to hang out with all of her cousins quite a bit in July which was awesome. One night we had all four kids - Autumn, Maddie, Jacob and Brady. It was so great to have them all together and they played so well!

Autumn pretty much thinks she's ready to run now, so we have to slow her down a lot. It's hilarious to watch her because she leads with her big belly and her little arms can't keep up! In the last month she's definitely learned how to test the limits and become more independent and demanding. Her new favorite words other than "hi" are now "mine" and "no".



Maddie and Brady eating dinner together...they were both done after about 3 bites. What you can't see is Autumn in the high chair next to them shoveling in the food. It took her a good 15-20 minutes to eat. No wonder all three of them weigh about the same!


Brady and Autumn watching their daddies switch out the car seats.


She still loves that blue pillow!

A few pics from the park...this first one is her "hiding her face" to play peek-a-boo. She thinks she does a pretty good job at it and it's too funny to correct her.

Swimming on the 4th. She has a small obsession with shoes and sunglasses.

Autumn's first trip to the zoo!

All tuckered out after a long day at the zoo :)

June update

June flew by just as fast as every month does, but it was a lot of fun. These first pictures are actually from Memorial weekend up at Nick's parents lakehouse. Autumn did a lot better in the water this year and had a lot of fun playing with her cousin Brady in the sand. In June we celebrated Jacob's baptism and Father's Day, and spent a weekend at Indian Bear Lodge with the whole Latta family.

As for what's new with Autumn...she now has all four molars and her i-teeth are on their way in, so there's no rest for the teething! She's officially walking and loving it. It's amazing how fast she got in such a short period of time. Here come all the bumps and bruises! She also has added a few more animal sounds and words to her vocabulary, and can pretty much count to three...when she feels like it.

Grandpa swinging Maddie and Autumn after Jacob's baptism

We celebrated Father's Day by taking Nick out to dinner and then had some homemade ice cream.

Autumn is now a walking maniac!

May update

It's been a big month already...Autumn took her first official steps for us on May 5th!! Aunt Shannon actually got her to take some on April 25th. Why do kids always wait until you're not around to do all this stuff?! Since then though she hasn't been in much of a hurry to walk. She's still perfectly happy crawling around, although we would love to see her walking and running. we know - it will happen soon enough. It's also been a big month for teeth. She has both molars in on her left side and the right ones are on their way. Until now teething didn't really phase her, but these have been a different story! Hopefully by our next update we'll have a daughter we can't keep up with and she'll have a few more teeth!

Macy and Autumn are becoming pretty good friends these days.

Chilling out with Daddy...

Autumn laying on her new favorite pillow from Kathy (our sitter)

Autumn had her first lemon a few weeks ago! Here are the before and after pictures.

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter! We had a great time celebrating Easter this year. We celebrated with Nick's family the weekend before. The kids loved their baskets and we got to go to the park that day too. Autumn learned how to go down the little slide and as usual had a great time swinging.

Easter weekend my family came down and we got to take the kids to an Easter egg hunt on Saturday. It was the first one for all of them and both of the girls caught on pretty quickly. Jacob was snuggled in his carrier with Grandma since it was a little chilly! Sunday we went to church and celebrated afterwards.











Autumn in her Easter dress...