From the mouths of babes + fall

So Paisley has started singing! Little bits. Here and there. This is something that I've been looking forward to ever since she was born over two shortish-longish years ago. Her first song was...wait for it...Baby by Justin Beiber. Ya girl! Such is the life when you are on the Young Life music team and you play the Beibs fifteen times a day in your house so that you can sing his song well enough to lead it in front of a bunch of teenagers who have probably known it by heart since they were 9 years old.

It was just such a special moment for us, my little girl laying on her changing table crooning to me "baby baby nooooo!" My heart.

The second song I ever heard her sing was "Happy birthday," randomly in the kitchen to no one and so, there's that.

Ahh from the mouths of babes.

Anyway. I've been obsessed with taking fall pictures lately. I love it. Every single leaf! Every tree, every giggle of delight from my toddler. I LOVE our new neighborhood in the fall. I LOVE walking through the piles of leaves at the cemetery and reading all the grave stones, some of which are almost one hundred years old. I LOVE that our yard got completely covered with two inches of beautiful, crisp yellow leaves that were raked into the most perfect and hugest of leaf piles. And I also LOVE that our yard is small enough that it only took one lovely Sunday afternoon to get them all raked up and into bags. 

And so I have been taking all. of. the. pictures. Hundreds,  probably! Much to your great relief, I have edited the amount down to a fairly reasonable twelve to be shared in this post. All of these were taken around our yard, local park and neighborhood, excepting the very last one which was taken at my mom's house - my sibs' and my fall stomping grounds of years past.

Happy fall, folks.

Friends are nice

So I logged onto Blogger today to write a blog post about fall and put up all of my crunchy leaves photos, when I noticed that I had started this hiking post and had never finished and so, here we are! We have to keep things in order around here folks, and so fall pictures will be coming next week.

Way back forever ago, all the way back in September! We had my best pal, her husband, and their two little sweetie girls over for an extended weekend. Let me tell you, going from having one toddler in the house to three was quite the entertaining change! The days were filled with hikes and adventures, coffee shops, day trips to Duluth, working out little girl conflicts with great patience, eating snacks, kissing ouchies, and taking pictures of our cute kids. The nights were filled with trying new sleeping arrangements each night, good music, delicious drinks, excellent conversation, and a few games of Settlers of Catan thrown in there for good measure.

Here's a few pictures of a morning trip that we took to Jay Cooke State Park! It was a beautiful weekend weather-wise, so we got lots of that good-for-the-soul outdoor time in.

And now we miss our friends. Come back!

I just love that my best friend has little girls because now our kids will automatically without any choice of their own be best friends and isn't it just great how life works out sometimes?

Trains Planes and Toddlers

Trains have become a large part of our life lately.

There's one that runs through our town that we can hear from our house, there's an old one set up in the park in our neighborhood that you can climb and clamor around on, and there's several toy trains available to chug around in our playroom.

Paisley seems to be having a bit of a love-hate relationship with trains. She loves talking about them and seeing and listening to them and climbing on them during the day, but sometimes feels scared when reflecting upon their loud noises and hoots and mysterious comings and goings when bedtime rolls around.

I totally get it - sometimes I look up scary movies on Wikipedia to read the plot lines during the day (I'm far too wimpy to ever actually watch them) and then regret it later that night while laying awake in the dark.

So then of course I put all the pressure on dear Brian to stay up and keep me company (he of course LOVES it), which is exactly what Paisley does to me when she is worried about trains at night.

For hours!!

Also airplanes. She's also worried about airplanes at night.

You could say that my sleep has been suffering lately. And you could say that Paisley's has been suffering as well, and on that note,  have you ever met a sleep deprived toddler?

They are a loud people.

So we're working on making our peace with trains and planes and their loud noises over here! It's a strange road, this parenthood.