Little Goblins

Here was the joke that AJ and David told this year during trick-or-treat:

AJ: What comes out at night and goes flap, flap, chomp, ouch!
David: A bat with a cavity!

By about the 15th house, they got their delivery down smoothly.  AJ has a stutter and was tripping over his words out of his excitement and then often cut David off before he could deliver the punch line.  At one of the earlier houses, it went something like this:

AJ: What-what-what-what comes-comes-comes out at-at-at-at night and-and-and-and goes flap-flap-boo!-boo!--ouch?  David will answer, David? (Too excited, doesn't wait for David, just blurts out the answer.) A bat with a cavity!....
(5 seconds pass)
Homeowner looks at David, seems confused and says well, go ahead and take some candy...
David: A bat!
Homeowner: Well, that was quite an effort there.  Nicely done. 

I love how people are so generous and humor the kids around here on Halloween.  I answered the door tonight for several trick-or-treaters, and you really are rooting for the kids to pull off their jokes.  My mom answered the door at our house for us while we took the kids around, and she reported her favorite joke was "Why does the coach go to the bank? Answer: To get his quarter back."  Get it?  Quarter back...quarterback?  Ba-doom-doom-chick.

Happy Halloween from our Little Goblins to yours! 

Miss Two

Well, Little Miss Two made her first appearance today, and she was excited that it was her birthday.  "It's MY birthday!" she said several times and started singing "happy birthday to Julia!" We had a nice, low-key day with a breakfast out with Grandma Julie followed by an outing to the zoo and ending with dinner at a local Mexican restaurant with Pops and Susan followed by cake.  One of the sweetest moments of the day was when we called Grandma Francie and Papa on Skype after Davey fell asleep and had Julia open her birthday present, a baby doll, while they watched.  She was very excited about the doll and said some sweet "tank you"s and "I love you, Papa! I love you, Grandma!" Skype can sometimes be chaotic when we try to get three kids to talk at once while crowded into the same chair around the computer, so I liked the moment with just her in the chair.  It was actually possible to hear the conversation on both ends and there was much less interrupting.

Julia at two is so much fun. She is very sweet and loving but also quite fiesty with her brothers and can certainly hold her own.  In the past three months or so the independence of the twos has been creeping up as she starts to assert her own opinion and often says "I do it myself!" Sometimes when someone suggests doing something ("Let's play dolls" or "Let's get out the play-dough"), she responds by saying "no, no, no" very dismissively while shaking her head and then says loudly "I don't WANT to do play-dough."  It's like she's thinking she can't believe someone would suggest something so ridiculous.  In addition to wants, she has also started to assert needs, like tonight when she said "I want the dolly..." followed by "I NEED the dolly" when it didn't come out of its package fast enough.

Julia is also a bit of a tomboy.  She loves to play with all of her brothers toys, especially Thomas trains and legos, and her current three favorite books are the Trucks, Trains and Boats books from the Barton series.   However, she has some girlie girl in her, because her favorite colors are pink and purple and she seeks out the pink plate, pink bowl and pink cup at every mealtime.

The photos below are of Julia while we sang Happy Birthday to her.  She started off liking the signing and then toward the end decided not so much.