So y'all remember when, a few months ago, we had to rush Squiddle to the emergency room because he'd managed to get into our pill case and one of Wonderful Husband's medications was missing?

Guess what I found half-hidden under the refrigerator yesterday.

Still, as my mother put it, at least it was a good wake-up call for us.

In other news, the dining table is covered with things to be transported to my parents' in a little bit. Pies and cornbread and quiche and cranberries and whipped cream, oh my!

Squiddle's current favorite movie is My Neighbor Totoro. We have the Japanese DVD. I can't watch the subtitles, because they're so painfully obviously from a dub script and do not always match what the characters are actually saying. ^_^;;

Squiddle also wins the "fails to grasp the concept" award for today. It rained yesterday, somewhere around an inch total. (Hooray!) This morning, he wanted to go out in the yard with me. I told him that doing so would make his socks soggy, so to go get his shoes and I'd help him put them on. While he was doing that, I checked our skychairs and dumped the accumulated water out of them. I turned around. And there Squiddle was, carrying his shoes, walking across the wet grass in his socks....

Whee! Going through all our CDs, half of which have been boxed up since Squiddle reached the "stand and pull things off shelves" stage. Culling out things we no longer love, or have duplicates of. Wonderful Husband and I have found a surprising number of "is this one yours? no? it's not mine either. who IS this artist and why do we even HAVE this CD?" albums. Slightly disconcerting.

After the cull, the CDs are all going back on the shelves, and we're determined to buy a door to go on the shelves before Jazzy reaches that same stage of stand-and-pull.

During this process, we are also reclaiming the office! We bought Squiddle a toybox at CostCo the other night (he had the choice of Paw Patrol or Frozen and picked Paw Patrol) and are culling and transferring his toys into that. Some are getting pulled out and set aside for Jazzy when he's a bit older. The box itself is going to be located in the corner of the living room where formerly the boxes of CDs were. Thus making a massive jump in available office floorspace.

Well, enough break time. Back to work!

Most of the normal places we get Halloween pumpkins were out by the time we went to purchase them, but in the end we prevailed and got two. Wonderful Husband did a blocky face and I, after asking Squiddle what kind of pumpkin face he wanted ("scary") did one with pointy teeth. We also made up a couple tomato cage ghosts, which were fun and will probably be dragged out again next year.

All that, and we got a grand total of 29 trick-or-treaters. Which is less than half of last year's number! So we have leftover candy, and I have no willpower. *sigh* But after the first couple groups of kids came to our door, Squiddle announced that he also wanted to do trick-or-treating, which he was clearly equating with "dress up in costume and be given candy by my parents" rather than "dress up in costume and go door-to-door." ^_^ So Wonderful Husband helped him into his Toothless costume, and he got to have two small Tootsie Rolls over the course of the evening.

Squiddle and I got our flu shots today. Hooray! Me on the arm, him on the thigh. He was none too happy about it, but stopped crying within ten seconds of it being done.

I've been chugging along on the current quilting project as time allows. I'm a little over 10/25ths done with the center squares. I'd be further along but last night I hit one of those "if I was making this now, I'd know so much better" moments. Namely, I had fused some hearts on and then topstitched them down. Great. Brilliant. Except the fusible web I used gives my machine fits trying to quilt through what is essentially a layer of glue. So eventually I sighed, ripped out the three hearts' worth of quilting I'd argued, wrangled, and forced my way through, and will be redoing the square this evening, quilting around the hearts instead of on top of them.

He loves miso soup but I can't get him to try chicken soup. He won't eat blackberries or raspberries, but loves pomengranate seeds (and strawberries and blueberries). Likes cheddar, the sharper the better, but good luck getting him to try a BabyBel cheese....

And somehow (I think Wonderful Husband started it), we refer to his changing table as the "alchemy table." Which Squiddle shortens to "alc table."

Yesterday we went to a (slightly belated) birthday party for Connor, who is two days younger than Squiddle. His mom is one of those people who is highly into scrapbooking and throws amazing kids' parties. This year's was Thomas the Tank Engine themed. It makes me kind of envious, but... Squiddle is three. And we are quiet people. A small dinner-at-Nana-and-Grandpa's party seems about right to me. As it was, a dozen or so kids plus their parents plus sundry relatives was enough to make me happily retreat to a quiet bedroom when Jazzy needed nursies. And this wasn't even my party!

There was one moment, though, that sticks in my mind. There was a pinata. (Thomas, of course.) And though he was not the smallest of the children there, Squiddle was clearly the only one who did not quite get the "bash the pinata with the baseball bat" thing. This is due to deliberate choice on our part. While his peers were being taught to be the next Nolan Ryan at age one (and I am NOT kidding on some of my fellow parents' ambitions in that direction), we decided (a) Squiddle didn't need that pressure, and (b) we didn't want to teach him to hit things, and (c) he could wait to learn to play T-ball/softball/baseball until he was old enough to understand things like rules of the game, that a bat is not a weapon, and that you don't swing it at anything but the ball.

So on one hand I'm sad that what we've chosen to teach and not teach him means he just kind of confusedly bopped the pinata a few times.

On the other hand, I am not at all repentant about raising a gentle child.

Squiddle has matured so much just over the last couple months. When my mother first got her kitten, he was all "Whey (Rei), wheh ah yu?" and now his enunciation is so much clearer. It helps that he's a little parrot. And during the four days he was with my parents while I was in the hospital having Jazzy, he finally mastered the number seven. Today he did not only his two and four piece puzzles, but the six and eight piece ones as well! Plus, rather than having already been toilet trained and regressing, it seems that watching Wonderful Husband and I change his brother's diapers is inspiring Squiddle toward not wanting to be in them himself - he is now regularly reporting the need for diaper changes.

With Jazzy wearing Squiddle's infant clothes, it's like, "Was Squiddle ever really that small?" and despite photographic evidence, it's hard to believe he was. I don't know if it's true for all parents, but for me, at least, my older child just keeps getting more delightful as he ages. I look forward to the same happening with the younger, though at the same time there's also a bit of sadness, because I will never again have a little baby to cuddle.

(Then I whack this bit of sadness with a mallet, reminding myself that it's (a) probably postpartum depression speaking, (b) there was a point where we thought we were never going to be able to have any children, so (c) shut up and be thankful.)

Got rear-ended on the freeway earlier today. Squiddle and I are fine, the insurance concluded the accident was not my fault, waived the deductible, and I'm already booked in to get my rear bumper repaired. Interestingly, though it was only a bump, the insurance still has to replace Squiddle's car seat.

...And Squiddle has apparently been rooking strawberries out off the kitchen counter and snaffling them down.

'Scuse me while I get a damp washcloth and deal with his hands and face.

Making up nursery rhymes to try to get the Squiddle to go to sleep. Thought I'd post this one.

Night has fallen,
it's time to sleep.
Close your eyes
and count some sheep.

They hop the fence
one by one
and when your eyes close
the sheep are done.