October involved lots of yard work, the fall festival at school, and of course Halloween and trick-or-treating!

Aurora's vocbulary continues to expand, and it seems like she adds at least 1 new spoken word each week! We must admit that a lot of it must come from daycare - she learns so much in school. For example, where did she learn how to recognize a chinchilla? Not from us! Aurora also loves to watch Baby Einstein DVD's asking us to play one almost every evening. It is now part of our "after dinner before bedtime" routine. She'll go into the living room and select one from the set and hand it to us to play. It is truly an interactive experience for her, as she calls out the names of things she knows, tries to say new words, and even imitates some of the sign language. Aurora knows the names of some things in Chinese, most things in English, and a few in both languages. For example, if you say flower, socks, shoes, hat, fish, cat or apple in either language, she can point it out to you in a book. We are hoping to expand her knowledge of Chinese by using more of it at home. She also knows one word in Swahili ("twiga"). Aurora loves to call out the sounds of various animals too.

Since niether Jon nor Kathy has had much experience with very young children, we often wonder just how Aurora is doing compared to her peers. We are constantly amazed at what she already knows and what she can figure out each day. Physically, Aurora is quite the daredevil. She loves to be upsidedown and can often be found walking backwards or on her tippee toes around the house. She is a climber. For example, Kathy left Aurora in the kitchen alone for a few minutes one evening. When Kathy came back, Aurora had climbed from her Learning Tower onto the kitchen coutner and was going through stuff on one of the shelves. Aurora can now climb onto Jon and Kathy's bed by herself and enjoys jumping on it or doing the "Nestea plunge" - giving Kathy more white hairs!


October 12, 2009: Everyone's a little sleepy and marginally sick this weekend. Luckily, there were plenty of opportunities for morning and afternoon naps! In the morning, Jon and Aurora snoozed on the couch and in the afternoon, they snuggled together in her room.



October 15, 2009: Aurora tried on her Halloween costume for the first time. She loved it!



Ocotober 23, 2009: Aurora's daycare hosted a fall festival for the families that evening. At first, Aurora could not wait to put on her Haloween contume, but then she quickly got overheated in it and took it off. Here she and Jon are doing an art project together. We now know why she occasionally comes home with her hair matted to her head - she loves to use glue!


Aurora then showed us how she likes to use the slide in the indoor play area.

Video: Sliding down!

She also loves to play with the pretend kitchen and dishes these days.
Video: Washing dishes.

Next came the opportunity to decorate a cupcake. This is only Aurora's second encounter with cupcakes, and she was not sure what to make it of it.

Video: Sprinkles.


October 25, 2009: A perfect fall day! Just right for raking up leaves! Aurora likes to help us, even if it is only one leaf at a time.


Aurora discovers a "drum" in the yard.


Raking up the leaves is only half the job. We have to put them into the bags too!

Video: Bagging things up.


October 31, 2009: Halloween turned out to be unseasonable warm. We spent part of the afternoon outside before heading over to the O'Malley's for some trick-or-treating.

Video: Upstairs by myself.

Here we are out trick-or-treating. The temperatures were still quite warm and there were mistly clouds that floated across an almost full moon. What a perfect Halloween night!


We headed back to the O'Malleys before most of the other kids. After all, what's Aurora going to do with a bunch of candy she can't eat (when she doesn't even know what candy is)? It turns out she plays with them, moving them from one basket to another, dumping them out on her head, etc. Once the other kids returned, Aurora played in the "kitchen" with several of them.