spooooooky!

so i left work early today, armed with t-shirts i drew ghosts on.   we've been preparing her for the past week or so - teaching her how to say "happy halloween: and "trick or treat".  when alex asked penny what she wanted to dress up as a few weeks ago, she said "pumpkin", and hasn't given another answer since.  she decided we should be ghosts (once gourds, but quickly back to ghosts), hence the t-shirts.  penny's tried on her pumpkin a couple of times, but she was super psyched to get out into the neighborhood and mingle with the other costumed kids!
we've been watching decorations go up slowly since the beginning of october, including a giant pumpkin down the block from us, which was our first stop.  immediately following that was penny's first trick or treat experience - she did great!  she had a great time looking at all of the other kids' costumes, trick or treating, and walking through the neighborhood.  we took a break, sat on the stoop for a little while, and then watched the parade - it comes right down our block.

as far as penny is concerned, halloween was about collecting as many candies as possible - when we got home, she dumped them all on the floor, and we had a fun time finding matching candies and sorting them by color.  the chinese restaurant gave penny a fortune cookie, so we let her eat that, and then put her in her pirate pajamas for bed!  all in all, a very successful first halloween!

Happy Halloween!

science!

for alex's birthday, we had planned on going apple picking - we did lots of research figuring out which would be the best pick-your-own orchard, and even found a couple with dwarf apple trees so that penny could pick apples herself.  then, all the weather reports started getting pretty grim.  we started thinking that maybe we should make some alternate plans.  when we woke up in the morning, there was a pretty steady cold drizzle.  i got penny and myself bundled up while alex went to pick up our car.  while we were waiting for him, we watched the rain turn into snow - it was actually kind of incredible, but made us very glad we had decided to do something indoors.
we spent the day at the hall of science!  as it turns out, penny is still too young for most of the museum, but she had a great time in the preschool fun area, and spent the whole time she was playing with fake produce, trains and in the play kitchen wearing a turtle costume.  it turns out to have been a pretty great miserable day.

Agnes and Penny Like Apples

harvest festival

today was the park slope harvest festival!  penny is getting more and more excited for halloween, and she loves seeing pumpkins, ghosts ("spoooooky....") and witches ("eh he he he").  we waited in line for a while psyching ourselves up for penny's first pony ride!  she did great!  alex reports that she had a huge smile on her face the whole time, and she gave it pats on the mane when it paused in its walk.  we then fed a goat, a donkey, some chickens, some rabbits and an alpaca.  then we listened to some live music, then wandered through the farmer's market.
when we got home, alex and i had big plans for what we were going to do during penny's nap, but we all ended up falling asleep for about two and a half hours, and when penny woke up we brought her in bed with us for another half an hour of cuddle time.  time much better spent than cleaning or cooking, i say.  the rest of the day was low key - we did some grocery shopping, ate some dinner, took a bath and put penny to sleep.

I Think It's Fall

Penny Gets A Special Train Ticket

Flower Girl

boo at the zoo!

this weekend, penny, my parents and i all went to the bronx zoo!  every weekend in october, the zoo is filled with jack o'lanterns, trick or treating, s'mores & costumes.  we had a great time, even though we managed to take a route that didn't take us past nearly as many animals as one might expect.
penny's newest thing is pointing and asking "what's that!?" whenever she sees something she doesn't recognize. she got lots of chances to ask that at the zoo - it was great.  when i asked her at the beginning of the trip which animal she was excited about, she said "owls", which, incidentally, is what she was most excited about at the prospect park zoo, and we found one in a dark room.  she loved seeing the snakes, frogs & turtles (especially because some of the exhibits had jack o'lanterns in them), and now when she takes a bath she'll swim around for a while and pretend to be a turtle she saw at the zoo ("giant!  huge!").
unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, i was having such a good time, i didn't get to take very many photos - but the ones that i did take are pretty cute, no?

Choo-Choo 2

Choo-Choo Train