Happy Halloween!

This picture pretty much says it all.  Tess feels somewhat disgruntled at being made to wear a bumblebee costume for no apparent reason.  Candy has not yet entered her sphere of consciousness.  Anna, on the other hand, is overjoyed at her first trick or treating experience AND is happy to have her costume on correctly after her self-dressing mishap at preschool yesterday.

Life has been busy lately so we haven't been doing as much making/crafting/creating as we'd like, but we had a little fun making spooky foods for our old PEPS group's Halloween Party last weekend.

mushroom skulls

carrot fingers

olive eyeballs

Happy Halloween!

The Stool Stool

There was a time when it would've seemed strange to me to see a toddler scoot across the floor, poop underneath the kitchen table, and ask for a cookie.

That time has long passed.

In fact, this scene unfolds pretty much every night around 5:30pm.  Just as we get that first bite of steaming food into our mouths, the resounding cry bursts forth from the littlest member of the clan demanding her potty chair: "Potty!  Poo-poo!  Potty!  Poo-poo!"

From all this dinner-time defecation sprung the idea for our next baby gear invention: the high-chair commode.  Basically an elevated potty chair with straps and a tray.  Or a high chair with a removable trap-door.  You get the idea.  We would call it "The Stool Stool."  Why not take advantage of the gastrocolic reflex to do a little double duty feeding and toileting combo?  Another weapon in the fight against the poop-ocalypse.  We have yet to work out the issue of offensive odors during mealtime (Jeff proposed a fan with charcoal filter), but perhaps in The Stool Stool version 2.0.