October was a busy and exciting month (I think I write that every month! With the kids and work and just day-to-day life, we are certainly never bored!).

After we returned home from Katie and Pete’s wedding, Jonah had surgery to have tubes put in his ears to help alleviate a problem with fluid, balance problems, and speech delays. The surgery was quick and Jonah was doing great even just a few hours afterwards. The most amazing part was that by the next day, his balance and language were drastically improved. He began repeating everything that we would say and since then his language abilities have absolutely exploded. It is so great to hear our little man talking and expressing himself (even when he is yelling: “NO PICTURES! Don’t want that!”). Unfortunately, after the surgery, he stopped sleeping through the night because he heard every train, plane, car. It was a long three weeks of him getting up multiple times a night and yelling: “train, momma! Train!” “car ride, momma!” “up please, momma, help!” Thankfully, he is back to sleeping through the night. Every day he has new phrases and sentences. He still says a lot that we can not quite figure out (HE knows what he means). But he says many things very clearly.

Here is a list of some of his favorite things to say right now:
“read Train book in bed.”
“All aboard”
“fixing the tracks”
“play train tracks”
“oh, no, Farley, no barking!”
“MONSTERS! Oh no!”
“NO Pictures!”
“Don’t want that.”
“No like that”
“go away now”
(hmmmm… are you sensing a pattern of NO ?)
“pee pee in the potty”
“want run neenee (his word for naked)”
“Elmo see”
“hola!”
“rapido, Ella, rapido”
“pumpkin…yuck!”
“want eggs and grits”
“all the people we love, AMEN”
“la la la, Elmo’s world”
“play UNO”
“I like that.”
“night-night. Go to bed.”
“blanket in bed”

Jonah finished up his tumbling class. He really enjoyed doing forward rolls, hanging from the bars, and doing stretches on his yellow square. We will probably sign up again for another session later this winter. He loves to move his body and dance and stretch. Jonah and I had a great (but soggy) day at the State Fair. Jonah loved seeing the animals and we loved eating kettle corn! Yum! He was thrilled to see wooden Sesame Street characters.
Ella is doing great at school. I got to volunteer in her classroom for the first time and I even got to have lunch with her in the cafeteria. Andrew enjoyed a lunch in the cafeteria this week. She is reading and writing sentences and drawing. Her Spanish is improving (she is in an immersion class two afternoons a week). She continues to improve her physical skills as well. She loves riding her scooter or her bike (with training wheels) around the neighborhood and down the greenway path. Her ballet and tap classes are going extremely well. She also enjoyed doing some gymnastics at her friend’s birthday party.

We had our 4th annual neighborhood S’mores Party. Joe and Julie and their new dog, Gus, came to hang out while we got the fire going. The S’mores Party was great, but rambunctious! On the weekend before my birthday, we went out to a lovely dinner with Rich, Julie, Matt, and Catherine to Herons Restaurant. It was amazing! On my actual birthday, Joe met us at The Cheesecake Factory for dessert—yum.

We had a great Halloween. Ella still HATES cleaning out the pumpkin pulp (maybe this stems from what we did to her on her first Halloween, check out: http://groups.msn.com/EllaWarren/halloween.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=233). Jonah was interested in stirring the pulp, but did not want to actually touch it with his bare hand. Jonah kept saying “pumpkin, yuck!” whenever Ella made a face.

Ella was Cinderella and Jonah was Elmo. We went around the entire loop collecting candy. Jonah loved it, even though he was not really sure what was going on. At the first few houses, Jonah would take a piece of candy out of HIS bucket and place it in the candy bowl at the house! SO sweet. He got the hang of it and enjoyed being out at night with all the other kids. Ella was a “pro” at trick-or-treating. We let Jonah have a lollypop for the first time. He LOVED it. He kept saying: “I like that! I like that!”

Now we are gearing up for the holidays—I am sure the next month will be busy! ?

Take care,
Sarah, Andrew, Ella, and Jonah