Pumpkin Patch

What is fall without a visit to the pumpkin patch? We visited the coolest pumpkin patch a couple of weekends ago with Peyton's pal Amelia. It was actually more like a farm, complete with goats, cows, a corn maze, hayrides, and lots and lots of pumpkins.

Peyton was thrilled to be able to feed the goats "Baaaa!"

We also enjoyed the hayride. Anything with trucks and tractors is really cool!

There was a little maze of hay that was just Peyton's size

And a corn maze with lots of different paths to run through! Here he is with his best gal pal, Amelia

He really enjoyed running with Mrs. Lauren.

What a cute picture of Mrs. Lauren and Mr. Chad!

And we got to pick out our very own pumpkin. We ended up cutting ours fresh from the vine!

Old MacDonald

Peyton loves to sing songs. He's learning how to chime in every now and then. Here is our version of Old MacDonald. I must warn you that it gets a little repetitive. And you have to listen to me sing - sorry.

Poison Control

Well, its another first. My mom had to call poison control for Peyton. She was babysitting while Patrick and I were tending to other important family matters. He was supposed to be taking a nap, and the pack and play was close to a chest of drawers. He opened the drawers, started pulling out the contents and throwing them all over the place. He was intrigued by a little jar of vaseline, one that I had put there with his thermometer for safe keeping. He dug his fingers in deep and spread it all over the place. In his hair, all over his clothes, all over his bed, all over everything he could get his little hands on. We figured he ate some too. How much? We're not sure. My mom went to check on him midway through his nap and found him fast asleep in what appeared to be a very wet bed but turned out to be very greasy. She freaked out, woke him up to make sure he was ok, and called poison control. Not to worry. It may serve as a laxative but otherwise he should be fine. 4 hair washings later, he's still a little greasy, but otherwise seems to be perfectly capable of getting into more mischief soon.

I think it will be awhile before Lollie gets over this one. She was more traumatized than anyone.

4 Generations of Harrells

The Harrell family lost a loved one this weekend. Big Daddy was 81 and lived a great life. When we were home in August, we snapped this picture of all 4 generations of Harrells - Don, Brian, Patrick and Peyton.

There is no doubt that Big Daddy will live on in his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Peyton will know how to hang sheetrock by the time he's 10, tile the floor by 12, and build his own house by the time he's 15. He's already showing a fascination with airplanes. He points to the sky and yells out "plane!" every time he sees one. Maybe he'll be a pilot too someday.

We'll miss you, Big Daddy!

More Peyton Videos

I thought I'd share a few cute videos of Peyton. We've been working on words lately. I realize that you may not understand "Peyton" speak, but I, as his mother, can understand every word.

Here he is identifying Nellie:



The other day I put some strips of masking tape down on the carpet to make a track. All I asked Peyton to do was to grab his trains, and he started "Choo-chooing" away without me even having to show him the track. He's a smart little guy!




Here's a little bit of Peyton's singing talents. If we start the song for him, he likes to jump in with a few words he knows.
At the end, he tells the camera "hi". He definitely knows what this means. We were eating out the other night and the waiter came over to take some dishes away, and Peyton said, "Hi!". The waiter was preoccupied and didn't respond, so Peyton repeated himself. Again. And again. And again. I finally pointed out to the waiter in the nicest way possible that he was ignoring my son. He said hello back and Peyton smiled from ear to ear.



And last but not least, we're amazed at the power of the television and the show "Word World". Peyton gets completely mesmerized by it. Amelia came over the other night to play and apparently she is also mesmerized by it. The kids had eaten dinner and Patrick and I wanted to sit down and eat our dinner, so I put on an episode of Word World so that we could actually eat. Amelia was sitting on the couch and Peyton was sitting in the red chair. The next thing we knew, both of them were sitting in the red chair together. And neither of them was even blinking.

Peyton's FIrst Bloody Nose

We have celebrated many firsts with Peyton - his first tooth, his first steps, his first words, and many more. We tried to delay his first bloody nose as long as possible, because we didn't think it would give us that warm fuzzy feeling inside that the rest of the firsts have. And this weekend we got to experience first hand that very thing, and it wasn't much fun, just as we had predicted.

Peyton really is such a boy - he loves trucks, cars, sticks, and the outdoors. He loves to explore and climb on everything. Its really a wonder that its taken this long to see blood. But he also likes shoes (he gets that from me, I guess). Yesterday we had just been sitting on the steps putting his shoes on. Its also where Patrick and I keep our shoes when we take them off inside. Peyton and I were getting ready to go to the grocery store and I walked back into the kitchen to get him a snack and a sippy cup to take along. Peyton remained at the foot of the steps and was playing with the other shoes. The only thing I can think is that he slipped trying to climb a stair or two to get to another pair of shoes. I heard the thump, ran to pick him up as he started to scream and held him tight. As I pulled him away to take a look, I saw the blood. Yikes. It wasn't pretty. He must have smashed his nose and bit his lip because both were bleeding Poor little guy. But he's pretty resilient and it didn't take him long to forget the entire event. The only reminder is a little swollen lip, thank goodness.

I'm behind

As we continue to fly through the summer, we're staying busy as usual. Once again, I'm behind on my blog posts. No surprise there. I will try to do some more catching up this weekend. But in the meantime, I should let everyone know that I have successfully managed to prevent Peyton from throwing our dinner all over the floor again and that he now has a set of markers that only color on specific paper and nothing else. I've never raised a toddler before and no one ever told me that there was such a thing as special markers, but Aunt Deanna has set me straight. Lesson learned. In other milestones, Peyton has officially reached the 30lb mark (and he's not even 2 yet) and is expanding his vocabulary beyond "Truck!" but that does still remain his favorite word.

Here are a few videos that I thought you might enjoy.

In this first video, we have decided that our kid must be a genius. The books say kids learn their colors sometime after age 2. However, our kid clearly knows his colors. Well, ok, he knows the color blue.




In this next video, we decided to let Peyton play in the hose one hot Sunday afternoon. It looked like fun, and he sure enjoyed himself. He has taken up swimming in a small pool we set up occasionally in the backyard too, but all of my pictures of that were lost in the unfortunate death of our hard drive. (But thankfully those were the only ones I lost) So seeing him play in the hose will have to do for now.




This is also a fun video of him dancing. Check out his dance moves. His daddy taught him!