October, you seemed so promising...

It started off that way anyway. We started our month off with a family trip to Cape May for the wedding of two wonderful friends from Baltimore, Chrysi and Benny. They had a beautiful beach-side wedding and a wonderful reception with great food (and our wedding photographers!) and we were all set to enjoy the rest of the weekend in Cape May with my parents (who had come with us to watch Zane during the wedding). We had just barely managed to squeak in some fun photos on the beach when we got the call that my grandfather was in the hospital and needed emergency heart surgery. The past two weeks have been filled with ups and downs of dealing with a sick family member and lots of trips to Lancaster to see him in the hospital. He pulled through surgery but since then has had to deal with Pneumonia, some memory loss, and now a feeding tube and things have been especially rough on my parents who are dealing with this so amazingly. We're taking things day by day and remembering that life is precious.

Then, Zane brought home a nice present from school - his first tummy bug which he lovingly shared with first his father and then his mother (but luckily not at the same time so there was always someone well enough to make gatorade and soup trips). We ended up missing out on Zane's first trip to Penn State (although, given that it snowed there for homecoming, it probably wasn't the worst thing in the world to miss it!) and we still haven't been able to do those fun fall things like take Zane to his first pumpkin patch and pose him in front of a huge pile of pumpkins. (although I hear there is a shortage of pumpkins this year due to a rainy growing season, so maybe we're not missing out on too much).

But, it's not all bad. We still have this amazing 7 month old and we've been able to spend a lot of quality time at home with him and he doesn't seem to mind if all we have the energy to do is lay on the floor with him and let him use us as his personal jungle gym. I've never known a baby who loves to play with his toys as much as Zane does. Shape sorters and musical things and things with buttons can keep this kid happy and entertained for hours. If there was an olympic sport for rolling, Zane would be the new champ he is all over the place and it is reminding us that soon, oh so very soon he will definitely be crawling.

So, I guess I shouldn't write October off yet. There are still two weekends to go and one of them is Halloween. We've heard that Halloween in our new 'hood is a blast and that all the neighbors really get into the spirit of things (if you don't believe me, come check out the Griswald-esqe Halloween display next door!).

grammy makes a guest appearance on the blog:


reaching & rolling: