I guess it's been a really long time since I last blogged.  I wrote a blog a week or so ago, and just never posted it, so I'll add it here next.  

Alyssa had her 9 month appointment yesterday.  She is 17.5lbs and 27inches.  The doctor thinks she is going to be short!  My short little peanut.  She has really started to get around lately and wants SO desperately to start pulling up on furniture, but she is short!  She has 3 teeth now (my next post may say she had 2 - oh the problems of double posting).  

John and I have a weird parenting development in the last few days.  Luke has been kind of naughty lately.  He's most contrary and we can fend that off pretty quickly with reverse pschology:
Luke:  I DON"T WANT those pants
Me: FINE then you don't get ANY pants
Luke: NOOOOO Give me those pants!
It works like charm.  But he's also naughty and sneaky and sometimes mean, so we needed a new tactic.  After he did a really not nice thing to his baby sister,  Daddy and Luke had a MAJOR heart to heart.  It went in a direction I wasn't expecting.  I was expecting a scolding and a long talk about how to be nice, but it just wasn't sinking in.  So Daddy pulled the "scary moose" card and said that we were going to send Luke to live with the scary moose at Target's house unless he started being a nicer boy around this house!  That pretty much terrified him.  He now asks daily if the scary moose is coming.  Tonight at dinner when Preston wasn't listening he warned Preston that they scary moose was going to come get him.  And even one small mention of the scary moose gets Luke's attention and he'll stop whatever he is doing.  
We don't know what the scary moose is.  It's in Luke's imagination.  We know that he has no hand, no tail and lives at Target's house. But apparently he is terrifying.  Parenting is weird.  I kind of feel a little guilty that I'm using his own fears against him.  It feels kind of mean, but his behavior has significantly improved, so I guess it's motivating.

Preston helded me sing "Sweet Baby James" to Luke the other nice - My favorite line is when Preston sings "thinking about women and glasses of beer."  I've never really thought about the song much before, but it's really kind of beautiful in it's humble poetry.  The boys seems to like it, too, so thanks, Grandpa, for putting it on the train-chasing playlist.

Here's the post from the other night:
I guess October flew by with hardly any blog updates.  It was a very busy month, and a challenging one for me – although the rest of the family seemed to have a good time, so I’m thankful for that.  Preston broke his leg, my gala came and went, we had fun on the pumpkin train, at the pumpkin patch, trick or treating, and visiting the zoo! 
Alyssa cut her bottom teeth without a peep, but is having a much harder time getting her top two teeth.  They are taking their good old time, and they seem to especially bother her at night.  She has also become VERY mobile in the last few weeks.  She went from scooting a little bit on her bottom to full on crawling, getting herself to a sitting position, and generally becoming a flight risk.  We have to be diligent about blocking off the stairs.  She’s also picking up on the craziness of her big brothers.  My sweet, calm, easy going girl is trying her very best to keep up with the big brothers.  She can attack them then they are playing on the ground, she always wants whatever Luke is playing with, and she thinks it’s hilarious when Preston gets rough and literally drags her around.   When I pick her up at daycare sometimes she’s sitting quietly in the jumperoo.  As soon as she sees me she gets a GIANT smile on her face and starts jumping up and down as fast as she can!  On trick-or-treat night she was dressed like a peacock, and fell asleep in my arms before we could make it all the way around the neighborhood.  She was SO worn out from all of the festivities!
Luke got himself breakfast this morning.  He’s 2 and a half.  I got him dressed and told him to go downstairs and get a yogurt out of the fridge and that I would be down in a minute to help him get started.  5 minutes later he yells upstairs “MOVE MY CHAIR” which means that he sitting in his chair at the table, but he legs are pointing the wrong way.  I went down to move him and he had he had is yogurt open and ready to go, a spoon, and his water bottle.  I tucked his chair in and went on my merry way.  He’s also making a lot of progress with potty training!  We haven’t tried underpants, yet, but he is doing his thing when he sits on the potty; he goes at home AND at school.   It’s a little more challenging with him than I think it was with Preston.  When Preston was potty training we didn’t have any other children to think about.  This time we have 2 other children to worry about, and reminding Luke to go potty isn’t always my first priority.  He’s doing a great job, though, and I’m very proud of him.  Luke dressed as Nemo for Halloween.  At first he didn’t want to do it, but we forced him to go trick-or-treating.  Once he realized he could get a bunch of candy out of the activity he was completely on board!  
Preston has had a crazy month with his cast.  It’s coming off TODAY, 4 weeks later.  Over the last week he has been able to walk on it, and doesn’t really need his walker anymore.  It will be SO nice to not have to deal with the cast.  I think he has had a total of 4 baths since he broke his leg, one a week.  He’s so stinky, but it’s really a pain to give him a bath with the cast on.  He wanted to be a volcano for Halloween, so I made him a costume that worked with the stroller.  I built the volcano around the stroller, and made him a shirt with lava down the arms.  When Halloween finally came, he didn’t even use the stroller.  He took the wagon.  The costume worked out anyway, and was a hit for his classroom party!  
As I mentioned we did manage to get to a few Halloween festivities – the pumpkin train, the pumpkin patch, and Boo at the Zoo.  We’ve had really nice weather on the weekends, so we’ve been able to enjoy it.  There are a million pictures – you can go look through the albums HERE.
 
All summer we have been working on our backyard – we took down a bunch of trees, got a new shed, planted new grass, and are now working on filling in some of the new open space.   I’m finally feeling good about our back-yard – it’s been a work in progress  since the day we moved in, and John took over this year so we made a dramatic change.

And some photos:
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