Round two

So we thought we were done trick or treating but when all the kids started coming to the door at 6, Chris wanted to go out again. (Plus it was dark and he kept saying "trick or treating in the dark" so how could we resist?). Looks like Brian will have a lot of candy to bring to work tomorrow! Oh and we'll let CJ have some too...

Trick or Treat!

Here is our little trick-or-treater as he set out to gather candy for the very first time! You may remember that on the morning of last Halloween, little Chris was returning from his overnight stay in the hospital for an allergic reaction. This Halloween (ear infection and all) Buds was ready to go. Of course, we never got the memo that the neighborhood trick-or-treating is from 6 to 8. No wonder we were the only ones walking around in costume! No matter--we were only planning on going to a few houses anyway and then we ended up in the cul-de-sac behind us where Chris played with the Klussman kiddos while we talked to Jeff and Kay...

When we returned from our outing, Christopher was allowed to choose a treat to enjoy and he chose M&Ms. I am proud to say that he didn't quite know how to eat them and several kept falling out of his mouth and onto his costume! He did enjoy them however and he will get another treat after dinner.

Happy Halloween everybody!!!

ABC Song

Christopher is quite the singer these days. Among his favorites at the moment are "Hot Cross Buns" and the "Grocery Store Song" from Kindermusik. He also likes to sing the ABC song. The other day, I took his to story hour at the library and they sang the ABC song there. Chris sang right along! It was so cute. Tonight, after brushing his teeth, he was looking at a little sign I put up on the mirror that says "Happy Halloween." Any time he sees block letters or words, he starts singing the ABC song and that's what he did tonight when he saw the sign. Check it out! You would never know that he is miserable from an ear infection and cough! (Since blogger is being a pain with uploading my videos, here is the link to YouTube...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9zZVMdUUBk

Party time at Kindermusik

Today was the annual Halloween party in Christopher's Kindermusik class. Our little man broke out his Thomas costume and actually wore it for the first half of class! We sang and danced to all Halloween-themed songs today. Here he is playing some rhythm sticks to "The Addams Family" theme song...

There were many cute costumes this year including another Thomas as well as a princess, a dinosaur and a sprinkle doughnut (that one was awesome!). Chris got his dance on too! He did pretty well considering he was wearing a big Thomas apron that kept getting in his way.

Hide and Seek

Last night, we were in the back yard enjoying the unseasonable weather. Chris, as usual, wanted to play hide and seek. If you are familiar with our yard, you know that it is built out a bit and there is a 5 foot rock wall to hold back the dirt. This is an ideal place to hide for a little boy of about 3 feet. Here is how the game went...

CJ: Hide from Dada! Mommy hide too!
Mommy: Okay Chris, let's hide and Daddy will count to ten.
Daddy: 1, 2, 3.... 9, 10. Ready or not here I come!
CJ: (Being pretty quiet but smiling at me as we hide.)
Daddy: Now where is Christopher. Is he behind the tree?
CJ: No!
Daddy: Where could he be?
CJ: By rocks! By rocks! (and laughing)

He is soooooo obvious!

5th Annual Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza!

It happened again... pumpkins big and small, goofy and scary invaded the home of the Eakins on this Saturday before the Saturday before Halloween! After spending the morning at the pumpkin patch, what could be better than carving and decorating some pumpkins for little Christopher? And of course what could be better than playing with the super cool toys of a 3 1/2 year-old boy? You can see how much fun Chris had by the look on his face...

By the way, in that picture above with all the pumpkins, I carved the one furthest to the left and Chris decorated the one right next to it. (Daddy chose to abstain from carving this year. He didn't want to make anyone look bad, what with his artistic abilities and all!) The night was fun and we all had a great time as the Eakins threw yet another fabulous soiree! We also got into the Halloween spirit and dressed up (all of us). You will see a preview of Christopher's Halloween costume as well as those of his parents below...

In case you couldn't tell, Chris is dressed up like Thomas, Mommy just wanted to have purple hair, and Daddy is, well you guessed it--Hulk Hogan. Before we left for the party, he got way into character! Also, notice how Chris and Kasey are just staring in awe (or... something...) at this "Real American."

A great time was had by all and we are looking forward to next year's party already!

KC Pumpkin Patch

The Woglom family headed out this morning to the KC Pumpkin Patch, just 15 minutes south of us in Gardner, Kansas. We had a great time and, as you can see, Christopher had the best time of all. Above, he is riding on a hayride on his way out to pick the best pumpkin ever. We were teaching him how to be selective because if it were up to him, Chris would take the first pumpkin he saw! Here he is browsing and then taking his sweet pumpkin home...

We also got to ride on several different types of trains. When we first got to the patch, there was a little tractor pulling this barrel train. Buds got to go on it all by himself! I was crossing my fingers that he wouldn't try to exit the car while it was in motion. Then we all got to ride on the Yellow Brick Railroad, which took us through the Land of Oz...

There were lots of fun activities for the kids to do, including lots of big slides as well as digging in the sand and corn!

And finally, Chris was trying to figure out how to operate the bulldozer to dig deep in the sand. As you can see from the look on his face, he is a little confused about how he's going to do it!

Daily CJ

Christopher believes that if he closes his eyes, he is hiding from us!

Daily CJ

Here is your daily smile for today. He was getting clean for school.

Beautiful day

It was gorgeous outside today! After playing this morning with Maddie at the park, we spent much of the afternoon running around the backyard. Here are some more pics of our little active boy...

Oh, and Christopher called Grandma Jan today to wish her a happy birthday. Chris was so inspired that he also sang happy birthday in the backyard to her and baked her a "rock cake" in the big rocks outside. Here he is making sure the cake is well done!

Kodak Gallery

For those who didn't get the email, here is the link to the gallery of our pics from San Diego...
http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp?sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=eMail-_-Share-_-Photos-_-Sharer

San Diego

"Purple plane! Purple plane!" If I had a dime for every time Christopher said "purple plane," we would be rich! We spent the past week in sunny... I mean cloudy/foggy/misty San Diego (wait, didn't we choose the American city that is always 75 degrees and sunny to get some, well, sun?). Despite the weather, the Kansas Wogloms had a nice time in San Diego. The sun made an appearance while we were at the world famous San Diego Zoo so that was very pleasant. Christopher loved all the animals he got to see and especially loved the pandas (probably because a lady at that exhibit gave him a panda stamp!) and the elephants. He also enjoyed turning the handle on the machine that makes the souvenir pennies! Here we are "hiding from Dada" while sitting on a statue of a lion...

We stayed at a hotel that was right on Mission Bay and when you walked out the door, the sand was literally 6 feet away. Nothing like having a giant sandbox at your doorstep, especially when you are a 2 year-old boy with a shovel and pail! Even though he didn't get to go in the water, Chris enjoyed his sand time and proceeded to get sand in his eyes, ears, diaper, socks, mouth (molars!) and beyond.

While we were in town, we also visited the San Diego Model Railroad Museum which had fantastic set-ups including a Halloween rail yard in the dark with lots of flashing lights and gates. It was very impressive. We ate some good food while we were there (see my other blog) and Mommy got to surf in La Jolla! That was awesome and even more awesome was when Chris got to see me catch a couple waves. After that he kept saying, "Mommy surfs! Mommy go surf!" And every time he saw water (even the wave-less bay water) he would say, "Mommy go surf in that water." Love it! While we were on our trip, Chris had some stomach issues (I'll leave it at that) and as a result, Mommy and Daddy now know that children's television programming starts at 5AM Pacific Time. Yay PBS! I am currently making a kodak gallery of our pictures and will hopefully post the link to it when it is ready.

Waiting for Kasey

Here are Daddy and Chris hiding under the blanket in the living room. CJ is forever waiting for his Kasey to come find him...

Flexing

Christopher is seen here telling us how cucumbers make him very strong. He likes to flex (just like Daddy) to show us his muscles, although this is not his best work. Enjoy!

Freight Train

For a long time, Christopher has really enjoyed Freight Train by Donald Crews. Crews writes fantastic stories that are very simple yet interesting for toddlers. As we all know, Chris LOVES trains of all sorts. Now that Christopher's words are exploding, he "reads" this whole book by himself. The words are very simple so he has memorized the entire story. When I pull the book out of the bin to read, he takes it from me and says "Self please!" Then he reads the whole thing. It's so cute! I'm trying to get it on video but he gets a little camera shy. I'm going to work on it. But we are very proud of our little man!

Milk and Cookies

Our new Kindermusik curriculum is called "Milk and Cookies" and, as you can imagine, many of the songs are about cookies and baking and muffins (and of course, hot cross buns). This morning, Chris was making a healthy breakfast of milk and cookies out of playdough. If you listen closely, he is saying the words to part of the "Cookies" song from our class... "Put it in the oven, time to bake. Mmmm mmm..."

Rolling in the Grass

It was a beautiful day today and Christopher was having fun rolling in the grass and requesting to be tickled!

"Play Choo Choos Mommy"

Trains, trains they are so cool

I even play with them at school.

I really like the sounds they make

And in the car I often take

My engines greeen and red and blue

I think that you should like them too!

--by C.J.

Snack for two

Chris and Kasey enjoyed some peanut butter together. Whatever Chris didn't want, Kasey was sure to take care of!

Yellow Fleece

Grandma Jan sent some snazzy new fleeces to CJ for the winter. Here he is sporting his new yellow fleece. He wants to wear it today but it's 80 degrees!

Impromptu Fort

So we had some time to kill this morning before we went out and Chris and I decided to make a fort. He loves doing these sorts of things--anything where he can hide under a blanket! For example, we have this Yankees blanket (of course!) on our couch and he likes to hide under it with Daddy or Mommy or even Kasey. And he'll wait for someone to find him, literally forever. The other night, he and Daddy were playing downstairs while I was making dinner. After about 20 minutes or so, I came down to let them know the food was ready and they were under the blanket. Brian said they were under there almost the entire time, waiting to surprise me. It especially cracks him up if you come down and say, "Where is Christopher? Kasey have you seen Christopher? Where could he be?" And then he jumps out from under the blanket. Meanwhile, he'd been laughing out loud the entire time. Captain obvious! Here he is under his fort today...

After building our fort, we met Christopher's friend, Aidan, and his mom Amy at Monkey Bizness. It wasn't that crowded today which was great and the boys had a good time playing together. He's doing so many more things, each time we go there now. Climbing, jumping, and his personal favorite, spinning!

Spinach cake

Tonight at dinner, Chris was making a spinach and rice birthday cake for everyone to enjoy. Check it out!

After lunch, we spent some time outside in the sunshine. It was cool this morning (we almost had a frost) but by noon it was gorgeous! Not a cloud in the sky and no breeze at all. Chris had fun running around with Kasey and Kay came over to visit while she took a break during her yard work. Here is the buds having some backyard fun:

Last night we had a lovely dinner with Dan, Mary and Tristan and Christopher had his first experience eating Korean food! Mommy hasn't had Korean food since high school (when I went to eat in Flushing with Chrissie and her mom and we came out weighing 10 pounds more than when we walked in). That didn't happen yesterday but Chris enjoyed a veggie pancake (which had to have been 12 inches in diameter, at least). He didn't finish much of it but liked what he had. He was especially excited to see Tristan and the two boys bonded over crayons after dinner. It was so cute to hear them chatting with one another!

So Proud

Thursday night, we went to Christopher's school for their annual carnival. It was fun but the best part was going in to see his teachers. Daddy finally got to meet them and see his little buds' classroom. We received a cute little red bear with Christopher's picture and a poem and we heard all kinds of wonderful things about our little man (if I may brag a little!). We are very happy with our choice of Kids Day Out for him and look forward to the rest of the year.

FYI--If you are following my "Healthy for Life" blog, you know that I wrote last week that I would be taking a hiatus. Well, so much for that! It's back. Already. Read it if you dare! :)