The Walk Home

Since our return home from our North American tour life has returned to a normal state. Aside from another bout with the dreaded Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease things have been good.


With some help we were able the affront to horticulture that was our front shrubs.


We harvested many more vegetables form our garden.


We made lots of fresh tomato sauce which, despite the look on his face, Elliott has enjoyed quite a lot.


Martin has assisted me on the "Garbage-Q" which is how he now refers to the barbecue.


We babysat Evelyn for a weekend.


We picked up a lot more vegetables from our farm share.


And, the cousins enjoyed eating huge amounts of ice cream.

Recently the boys have not wanted to sit in their stroller for their walk home from daycare. They would much rather walk by themselves, or as they would angrily yell it, "I do myself!"

This has turned a normally enjoyable 10-minute walk into a 45 minute odyssey complete with picking flowers, trying to walk into our neighbors' yards, not wanting to hold my hand while crossing the street, and sometimes wanting to be carried the rest of the way.


It all begins with stalling as we try to leave daycare. They recently set up a book fair at our day care which means they continually try to take books from the shelves and read them in the entryway before leaving.


Then, as we walk along a busy street, they try to pick flowers, plants, and large sticks up to carry with them on the way home.


They try to sit down on tree stumps to take a break.


And, on occasion, Elliott just lies down on his belly on the sidewalk and refuses to follow me home.

This week marks the one year anniversary of our move to Illinois. It's hard to believe it's been that long since we said goodbye to New York.

It will be nice to not have to spend all of this fall looking for and moving into a new house. Maybe we'll even get more than a ten day lead up to Christmas to mentally prepare the boys (and ourselves) for the festivities at hand.

Hooray for the holidays!