Nine Month Check Up

What a treat it is to get to know this fine fellow!  Every day, a little more of his personality comes out and we thank our lucky stars that he is ours!  To see him giggle and begin to babble is such a treat. 

The stats:

• weighing in at 19 lbs 2 oz. (25th- 50th percentile)
• standing tall at 28 3/4 inches (50th-75th percentile)
• He's got two teeth, smiles a ton, and is frequently heard saying "Dada"
• He's not officially crawling, but gets around via a backwards shimmying sort of thing.

And the girls (or Esme) can't seem to keep their hands off of him.  And he only takes being pulled around and bitten, for so long. 

We can't wait to see what kind of a guy you turn out to be (our prediction -- a mellow fellow, who likes to laugh, takes it all in, and goes with the flow). 

Our Lion & Dragon

Harvest

October was a busy month. Between the Farmer's Markets and our Farm Share, we spent a lot of time celebrating the harvest:

Chocolate Faced Girl post Pain au Chocolate at the Burlington Farmers Market

Kickin' it with old buddy I.Z in Burlington.

Oliver and Hazen reunited

Playground Fun

The foliage has been incredible this fall-- later than anticipated, but gorgeous none-the-less.  At some point during the peak of it all, Hazen's "God parents" e-mailed saying that they needed some red-headed Abbott kid time.  With exercise having sort of flown out the window lately (just not enough hours in the day), John and I took Tom and Kara up on their offer and had a lovely ride in the shadows of Mt. Mansfield.  And the kids had a lovely time with two people who adore them!

 

And for all my complaining about not exercising, I did get up to Camel's Hump with the kids and my dear friend Bo.  Bo was in the are from Boise, ID, helping his dad recover from a bike accident.  Bo is the kind of friend I am so honored to be able to introduce to Cally and Hazen.  He exudes great energy and fun. He has a friendliness and enthusiasm that are infectious and a heart of gold. 


Every Tuesday, from late May to mid October, we pick up our farm share at Arcana Gardens in Jericho.  It's amazing how exited Cally is to eat anything that comes from the farm-- especially if she has picked it herself.  And this includes brussel sprouts!  Every few weeks they have crafts for the kids-- t-shirt dyeing, gord decorating, and harvest hat assembly were all a hoot.  Below Cally is wearing one of her crafts, along with the costume that she wore almost daily this month:

After years of looking at a house wrapped in Tyvec and months of dipping shingles and listening to the drum of John hanging them, we finished the siding project!  I'm so proud of John and the countless hours he put into making our house look so beautiful.  There certainly was no rest for the weary this fall.  When the weather was clear, we didn't have guests at the house, the compressor was usually humming and John was dangling from some portion of the house or another.  Meanwhile, I put in some hard time with the kids so that Dad could "get her done".  

Looking at our newly sided house from the neighbor's fields

Next spring or summer, we'll do something about that porch..... oh, and those horribly inefficient windows.  But for now, whenever I drive up to the house, I feel an overwhelming sense of pride in what we finally were able to accomplish.

Cal and Hazen continue to be so adorable with each other.  It's not uncommon for me to see the following site when I look at the back to check on the kids in the backseat of the car.  They really are adorable and I need to document how lovely they are together, so that someday, when they aren't feeling so "lovey dovey", they'll know that there was a time......

 

Fall

 

 While there are days when I wonder how I'm going to make it through another day of this chaos--- lack of sleep, piles of grading, busy days at school, getting the kids out the door, fed, and happy, etc. etc., there are other days when I see my kids cracking each other and I hear Cal saying, "Hazen is my best friend".  Those moments put everything in perspective.  They make all the craziness fade away and remind me how lucky I am to have these two little gems.

And who wouldn't want this guy to be her best friend?



Speaking of friends, we've had a bunch of them visiting.  Below is our good friend Mic, who came up to meet Hazen for the first time earlier in September.  Mic and I met in Montana while we were both getting our Master's.  He recently decided to go back to school to become a science teacher (his partner is a teacher and he always seemed envious of the teacher's schedule, plus he says that I made it look easy).  He's going to be a fantastic teacher, but I think he's realizing that even though teachers get more vacation time, they definitely take more work home.

Then there was the annual fall visit from Nana and Grandpa:

Another visit from the Dormer's:

 And finally, Bumpa and Grandma rounded out the visitors this past weekend:

 

And between on the visitors, we made it out apple picking:

note the "apple picking tutu"

And then a ride on a bicycle carousel at the Nor'East Fest in Burlington:

 We love the visitors.  They inspire us to keep our house clean and remind us how lucky we are to have what we have-- a lovely family with a lot of people who love us!

High Meadow

We've had a hectic start to the school year........ the transition always seems abrupt, but this year has been especially hard.  It feels a little like going from the "frying pan into the freezer" after having spent 24/7 with the kids this summer.  Fortunately, the kids have taken to their new day care situation amazingly well.  Cally loves Tammy and all the kids.  She tells John to "hurry up" in the morning because she can't wait to get there.  And Hazen is adored by all-- he's sort of like the mayor there!

Unfortunately, on Hazen's third day with Tammy, he got a fever.  It being my first day with the students, I couldn't leave school, so I came to appreciate even more the flexibility that John has with his job.  Because the next day, he also had to stay home.


We had plans to go to Lake Mooselookmeguntuk in Maine again for Labor Day this year.  And we were even able to motivate the Ganz Clan.  We spent much of Friday getting our camping gear organized and packing.  We were optimistic that Hazen's fever was just a fluke.......... Unfortunately, Hazen woke up in the middle of the night spiking a fever of 104.7 degrees.  After consulting with Nurse Ganzenmuller who happened to be in the ER, he advised that we come in.  We called Uncle Scotty to see if he'd come over and stay with Cally while we went to the ER.  He and Cynthia were over in minutes, but upon consulting with our Doctor (and the fever dropped a bit with tylernol), it was decided to go into the doctors office at 7am instead.  At least we know that Scott and Cynthia are very dedicated Godparents.

Even when he's down, he looks pretty cute!

Hazen improved by morning, but he did have an ear infection, so the doctor put him on some antibiotics.  She didn't really have a strong opinion about whether we should go camping in Maine, but thought we should wait until mid-day to leave.  After a night short of sleep and our worries about being so remote, we decided to stay put.  The only problem was that we had offered to let John's sister Lynn stay at our house with her in-laws who were visiting from Ireland.  We didn't want to have to reneg on our offer and were fortunate to not have to because Uncle Scotty offered to let us stay at High Meadow.

High Meadow is a very special place for us.  It's the place we called home for 5 months when our home was being renovated.  It's the place we came home to with our beautiful new daughter.  It's the place where I learned to be a mother.  We've been fortunate to visit for barbeque's, swims, parties, and hikes over the past three years since we lived there.  but we've never had the opprotunity to stay there again.  Scott's offer was incredibly generous.
 

We ended up inviting the Ganz Clan and a few other families to join us for an impromptu "staycation" camp out.  Five families (11 children) played "jump or dive" in the pond, played in a tree house, kicked the soccer ball, boated around the pond, and ate incredibly well before camping out in the cabin and on the property. 

 

 


Being back at High Meadow brought back so many memories of being pregnant with Cally and how clueless I was about how my life was going to change.  I had no idea what an amazing experience being a parent would be.  What I mean is that I knew that I'd like having kids, but I had no idea just how much my life would change for the better.  And it just keeps getting better everyday!  Words escape my ability to explain just why I love being a parent so much, but being at High Meadow again made me feel it in a way that felt so powerful.  Especially when I see how much fun my family has when we are there.