Sometimes you just gotta have more than one stuffie to find that comfort you really need!!!
Halloween has got my baby spooked 
She’s in a fearful stage right now… I sure hope she grows out of it soon… but the good thing is that often she will say “mommy, we need to pray to Jesus” ahhh… warms a mommy’s heart!!
Last month (Oct 27th to be precise) I FINALLY had a chance to get together with my friend Krista and her son Matthew. We went up to Wilsonville and had lunch at Red Robin, soooo great! We need to make that like a monthly ritual! After lunch I wanted to check out a park I had driven by earlier because I had gotten to the restaurant too early.
The park was actually pretty cool! It had this HUGE volcano slide type thing… (I wish I would have taken a far away photo of the whole thing, but maybe another day) where the sides of the mound were red and made of spongy material (the red mountain made me thing lava/volcano, hence the terminology, so this park shall now be called Volcano Park — I think it’s actually something like Memorial Park but.. yeah.. boring!) anyway.. then down the front of it is a huge slide! 
It’s pretty slow as far as slides go, but it was great fun taking the kids up and down it!!
Vienna did well climbing up sliding down. 
Baby Matthew even made it up all the way by himself!! (I was right behind him in case he slipped, but his use of the “bear crawl” was outstanding!!) 
It was fun! Krista and I took turns helping the kids and minding Ziva (who was none to pleased to be stuck alone in her stroller alone!) 
I LOVED the train action… Ready… Set…
…SLIDE!!!
It may have been a short time at the park (we had to get home to meet Miss Carmen) but a good time was had by all!!!
the end…. 
I’m not such a big fan of Halloween right now… we’re still struggling with “I’m scared” from all the Halloween cartoons and commercials Vienna has been exposed to… man I wish I could just shoot my t.v. and wasn’t so addicted! But I digress.
We had a very fun Halloween. In the morning we three girls got dressed up and went up to the high school to visit Auntie Joany (My brother’s lovely wife). I had thought that we would have a short visit with Joany and then head to my mom’s house (like two blocks away) and be basically done with Halloween. Well, Joany wasn’t in her office when we arrived, she was in the gym giving blood. Before we even left Joany’s office to head to the gym, Vienna was given two trick or treat candies!!! As we walked the halls to the gym Vienna soaked up all the “aw’s” and “how cute’s” coming from all the “big kids”, she was loving the attention in her little princess costume. It was about this time I regretted not bringing the stroller in for Ziva… wow, she’s gotten heavy!! Vienna was sure to show off her “makeups” she was sooo excited and proud that she was allowed to wear makeup with her costume. I even broke out my makeup from junior high staff days and let her wear sparkles all over her face (even a touch of mascara!) she was in heaven!!
Ziva was toasty warm in her lion costume, by the time we got to the gym I had to open it up to cool her down!! In the gym is where Vienna made out like a bandit!! The technicians gave her treats, Auntie Joany gave her some peanut butter crackers, she got to have a juice and some trail mix in the cantina, she got Oreo’s from some of the kids as she was leaving, oh yeah, she loved it!! She even danced a little at the mid court line!
Back in Auntie Joany’s office she found that Auntie Joany was giving treat bags to kids that came in… she had set aside an extra full one for Vienna!!
Sam decided that we’d got my parents house that night and risk the trick or treaters (Many scared her last year). Our thought was, she’s dressed up, maybe she’ll realize they are dressed up too. She did VERY well! We did have one boy come to the door dressed with a scary grim reaper mask, but he saw Vienna take serveral steps back and put her hand to her eyes, and he quickly pulled his mask up to the top of his head (nice kid!) By far it was the alien costumes that scared her the most, but she did figure out that it was just kids under the costumes 
So that was good. It was fun as far as Halloweens go. Ziva slept in my dad’s arms through all the door ringing and shouts of “Trick or Treat.”
Ziva was quite compliant with her costume and quite sleepy!
Are you a prince? Do you need a kiss?
I took my first nap in my big girl bed (notice daddin forgot to put up a barrier, she did find herself on the floor later, but did go right back to sleep)
Yes, I realize Ziva has no socks, I did fix that before we left!!
Now I have to start thinking through costumes for next year!! Oh what shall we do!?!?
Last Sunday was beautiful and Sam’s been working so hard that he just wanted to get out and about that day. We talked about going tot he park after Vienna’s nap, and decided on running out to get a pumpkin and carving it over at Mimi & Poppies house (we go there many Sunday evenings). We went when they were only open for another 30 minutes, but we still found a pumpkin and got to look about a bit before heading over to my parents for pork chops.
we took a look at a few pumpkins and quickly settled on a nice big one!!
Vienna insisted on helping Sam carry it to the counter (it was a LONG walk for a little one! and Sam’s back only just held out! ha ha ha)
Our pumpkin cost $6.50, doesn’t that seem a bit crazy to you!?!?!? I remember them being like 50cents growing up! has inflation gone up that much!?!? Anyway… we gladly paid it, cause it’s family time . We put our pumpkin in the van and walked about the farm a little bit.
We got to show Daddin’ the goats (Sam’s not been out to the farm there with Vienna yet).
Vienna was a bit upset that we didn’t have anything to “feed the goat with daddin” And silly me didn’t make sure that we had quarters for the feed machines… so we’ll have to do that another time for Sam to be able to be there.
We got to see the cow this time without it trying to eat our clothes!! Vienna just LOVES all the animals!
Poor Ziva, all she got to do was sit in the stroller in the cold She didn’t really seem to mind, but won’t it be fun next year when she can participate too!!!
My dad held Ziva while my mom was our photographer for carving the pumpkin!!
Everyone scooping out the brains!
Daddin’ carves the mouth!
The perfect family pumpkin!! Vienna actually chose the face I drew four faces (Sam nixed one) and Vienna picked out of three of them. I was surprised she chose this one
It was quite an enjoyable family project! (Thanks mom for taking the photo’s!!)
the lighting of the pumpkin fascinated Vienna
We are however, still struggling with concepts such as animate and inanimate, alive, not alive, real, not real
Vienna played “dishes” with her pumpkin (no, those aren’t offerings to a pumpkin god! ha ha ha)
“Lets play dishes pumpkin!”
and before bed, Vienna kissed the pumpkin good night! (it was sooo funny and soooo cute!)
Since Vienna’s having trouble distinguishing real and not real right now, and seems to be afraid of absolutely EVERYTHING, i seriously doubt we’ll be handing out candy this year with Mimi. Too many kids these days have gross/scary costumes. I’m not opposed to Halloween, but I don’t really like it when kids dress up as evil or scary stuff… I just wish we could remove that part from the holiday and just make it more of a harvest festival and a dress up day! but we don’t live in a perfect world, so we do what we can to make things better.
Vienna will get to dress up that day. She’s going to wear her princess dress (Ice skating costume I found at Good Will months ago) and Ziva has her spider hat and kitty cat onsey We doooo love Dress Up in this house!!!
Have a Safe and Happy Fall Everyone!!
I am so glad that it’s all finally over! Here’s hoping that the surgery was successful (which it seems it will be) and we only have to do one VCUG more and she will be “cleared” for this trouble. Here’s how our experience at the hospital went.
Thursday night we read the “scrap book†that the hospital gave us… all about surgery and what happens to us and the people we’d see and such. It was really a great little booklet. We played “surgery†and
Friday we went to the hospital good and early. My mom came with us to help with Ziva so we could focus on She was a little rag doll and she spoke soooo slowly, if I wasn’t her mom I probably would have laughed like crazy, but it still isn’t fun to see your baby in this state either, though Sam and I did get a few laughs out of it.
Taking her back to say good by was horrid. Nothing worse than turning your baby over to someone else and walking away (At least the Lord doesn’t ask us to walk away right away when we turn our kids over to Him, he gives us a nice slow process!! Thanks!) the waiting was horrible. It was only about 35-45 minutes before the doctor came out to get us to tell us everything went well.
An hour passed… a nurse came over the nurses station speaker “can we have a ?!!??! for a two year old?†I have no idea what they asked for, but when they still didn’t come to get us to take us to Poor Sam, I just made him stand there looking on… I probably should have shared more we walked her back to her “room†and had to wait for her to drink, eat and pee before we could leave. They gave her a Popsicle, and it was so funny, yet sad, watching her try to eat it… she loved it! But she had a hard time of it because she was still so groggy.
Soon they let us go home (she pee’d right away!) it took forever for them to come take out her IV!! She did not like having that in!! They gave us a prescription for children’s Tylenol with Codine, but we didn’t fill it right away. We were home be 2pm she doesn’t seem to have any pain at all from the surgery, just a bit of a sore throat, and even that is minimal. She’s not complained at all this afternoon after cold juice this morning. So I think she’s very much mended It is so traumatic on a parent, even when you know that the surgery is a “nothing” surgery. Basically she’s getting a shot near her bladder, that’s it! it’s just she has to be so still that they have to put her to sleep. Sam confessed it was much more traumatic for him than he expected, I actually didn’t feel as traumatized as I expected, so that was good cause he didn’t have to worry so much about me while he was stressing about Vienna!! But we’re back to normal today!
This morning Vienna has already “earned†two candy corn for using the potty chair So, it’s all good! I’m off to give her a bath! We were all too tired to give her a bath last night. She loves her baths thankfully, so it should be enjoyable (If Ziva will stay sleeping!! she’s still wanting to eat every two hours! but hopefully that will start to change as things come back to normal ) Happy day to you all! Thanks for all who prayed for my little Vienna (and for all of us).
Vienna remembered she wanted to see the doggy before we left… she was still a bit groggy from the meds and couldn’t stand very well, but was upset that daddin’ made her hold his hand the whole time! the last photo is of her with her mask, that she is still playing with today as they let her take it home!
