Emily asked for a play date with Elena, so we made quick plans for a sunny day at the pumpkin patch for the girls to play together. We couldn’t have asked for a prettier day. The weather was sunny, cool, and not breezy. We shared the pumpkin patch with three bus loads of kids so we took a low key tour of the farm and corn maze and didn’t get any pumpkins. It was a lot of fun for the girls and the mamas.

We needed to move some leaves in our yard, so Emily and I spend a couple of hours outside accomplishing the task while Robby had baby duty. Emily had some toy rakes to help me with, but she liked to use Mommy’s rake. Lucky for me, she didn’t enjoy wrangling the awkward adult rake for long and went to play with other things. More leaves have fallen so I will put her to work again soon.

Emily, Julia, and I went out to play in our yard. Emily was much more distracted by the swing than wanting to play in the leaves. I’m going to rake the leaves into a pile and then maybe she will like the idea of jumping in the pile. I gave her a broom while I raked up leaves in our yard. She enjoyed pushing around the leaves like Mommy. The only problem is that the day got too cold and Emily didn’t want to wear her gloves so we had to go back inside.

Emily surprised Robby yesterday by taking off her blue jeans by herself. We believe that she wanted her diaper changed and was just starting the process for us. She doesn’t like to lay on the changing table anymore. I think we might be getting close to moving into the bathroom.

We are trying to get Emily out and about as she adjusts to Julia, and we adjust to having two kids. We took her to our church’s annual hayride at an elder’s farm last Saturday. We didn’t want to stay too long with Julia and the cool evening. While we were there we were able to eat dinner, play hide and seek with Daddy, see three horses and one chicken, sit in a tractor, and show off our new sister. Emily’s favorite was the tractor!

(21 months) We celebrated Fall with a trip to the Corn Maze with Emily. We had a beautiful, sunny, and cool Saturday and took advantage of the day to play a little. We took Grandma and Grandpa with us for the day. The maze is broken into two sections and they told us that kids have an easier time on the longer section because the paths are straighter. Daddy took the lead and read the map so that we wouldn’t get lost. Emily took up the second position and liked to follow Daddy. Sometimes Emily decided that we should go a different way and Daddy would just find us the path with Emily’s detour. By the time we finished Emily had walked almost 3 miles by herself. We were amazed that she walked that far. Emily’s favorite part of the maze was the overlook and the stairs to get up to it. She cried when we had to leave that area.

Here is Emily picking up her pumpkin and walking very carefully with it. She didn’t really understand what she was picking and picking up, so Mommy made sure that she picked one that she could handle. She was proud when she got it.