Halloween

Once again, I have failed miserably to update this blog and Jonas is growing so fast and doing so much. I will never remember unless I write it down. Halloween has come and gone; too bad, I am a fan of the costumes! Jonas wanted to be Russell from Up, and we spent a lot of time making his costume. Julie & Nicole helped me make all of the merit badges out of puffy paint one Friday evening. Lots of the badges were the ones he actually had, but there were plenty we made up as well. Nicole is the undisputed puffy painting master-- Julie and I started throwing out challenges for her as the evening progressed; "I bet you can't write with it!" (she did... "Team Edward" of course), "Oh yeah, well make the Mona Lisa!" (she did... but with less detail than the original). It was good times. Brandon made his little bolo and pin, as well as helping on other elements of the costume, and I made the stuff that was left, basically just sewing patches, and a book bag. He was so cute! My dad dressed up like a very good Mr. Fredrickson and carried balloons. I think people recognized him more than Joe-- but it was super cute nonetheless. We ended up going to Green Street's fall festival, then going trick or treating in the neighborhood with the Charles'. There was some church that was doing a black light puppet show, which I thought was pretty neato. Jonas certainly seemed to like it. Afterward, we went to Allie & Seth's house to visit for a few minutes and see cute little Jensen's guitar costume. Jonas did pretty well on his candy consumption. He ate a couple of pieces, then he got a pack of nerds and ate them one at a time... which took him about 45 min.

Also in the news, dad finally caved on the no swing set thing and purchased a giant swing for Jonas and a regular swing for the rest of us to replace the rope swing. it's pretty much amazing. Jonas spent at least an hour swinging in it when he spent the night last week.

Now, for the "things Jonas says" segment. Last week he and I were eating dinner-- or rather, I was eating and he was picking and talking. I told him we might need to stop giving him an after school snack. Not missing a thing, he said "Yes, you will starve me so that I will eat my dinner." He agreed that it would probably be a good idea. We'll see how he feels once we implement this change, though.

Last week, he went to the zoo with Grandma Lisa. Brandon was questioning him about what he thought he would see at the zoo. "I will see a lion at the zoo, and he will shut his mouth like this [snaps mouth shut]!" Brandon: "what? why will he do that?" Jonas: "Bedause, that is what the lions do. Daniel sees them and they shut their mouths, snap!" Brandon then realizes he must have learned about Daniel and the lions den at school. Everything is clear now =)

I think the biggest change I have seen in Joe in the past month since last blogging is his reasoning. Like in the example above, I didn't tell him why he shouldn't eat a snack after school, he just put it together himself. It should be interesting adjusting to this newer, smarter Jonas.