Halloween

The only piece of advice the sellers gave us when we bought this house was to expect a lot of trick or treaters!  We apparently didn't take them seriously enough, since we ran out of candy towards the end.  Aside from that though, the night was a huge hit.  We didn't go out, but dressed the girls up to hand out candy.  I wasn't sure what Emily would think about all the kids coming to the house, but both girls loved it!  Once Emily got the idea, she did all of the candy-handing on her own, only running away from the door to find me if there was a particularly scary costume (leaving the poor kid standing on the doorstep).  In between visitors, my shy child leaned out the front door, yelling "Happy Halloween!  Come over here and get some candy!  Do you want any chocolate?"  She didn't even complain about not eating the candy, and was happy with the one little piece we managed to save her at the end.  Adara crawled/walked/danced around, grabbing candy out of the bowl and throwing it in delight, and even putting a few pieces in bags too.

 

(Pardon the formatting, blogger doesn't seem to want to center these photos!) 

Steps & Laughter

Emily & Adara have laughed more together this week than ever before.  :)   Adara will crawl into Emily's hiding place behind the couch, and they will just giggle at each other (until something happens and Adara cries).  Adara is starting to stand up on her own and take a few steps... which delights her to no end.  She laughs and claps, and falls over, and does it again.  It's totally different from when Emily learned to walk.  Emily cruised on furniture for ages, and didn't really take steps until she was ready to walk.  I don't remember her falling down a lot.  Adara just gets such a kick out of trying that she falls constantly.  Emily loves "helping" her.

Joy in the process

Success

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  Lots of people have said, "I can't believe Adara is a year old!"  To me, life before her seems so far away that I can believe it!  Looking back through her "month" photos I find that even the young baby times seem very distant.  (That's probably a good reminder about how fast this all goes, as Adara has been challenging lately!  I'm crossing my fingers that it's a phase - or those 1 year molars coming in -  but she has been ornery.)  In better news, she took two tiny steps today!  She was standing in the kitchen, delighted with herself for being upright, laughing & clapping and just concentrating so hard on trying to move.