Happy Halloween!

This year we decided to dress Hylie up as a Cabbage Patch Kid.  I did quite a few searches on how to make a wig and found there was very little help out there, but after reading one semi-helpful post on the interwebs, I decided to just give it a try.  It turned out to be such an easy task!  I wound the yarn around a shoe box, cut it down the middle so I had a bunch of yarn laying horizontally one way, then laid the yarn along a beanie, sewed a seam down the center and then sewed some bangs across the front!  Once I had the yarn wound around the box, the wig took me literally less than five minutes to do!  I wish that was the case for getting Hylie to actually WEAR it!  Ha ha!  Luckily, I made the wig at the beginning of October because it took some time to get Hylie warmed up to the idea of having this mop on her head.  The first time I showed it to her, she cried.  I put it on my head to show her what it was for, she screamed and pulled it off of me.  Off to a great start, right?  After a few days of absolutely NO success, I thought to put the wig on one of her dolls.  After she saw me hugging the doll, she started snuggling with it too, and then after a few days, she let us put the wig on her!  The funniest part is she really gets excited to wear it if you tell her how pretty she is in it!  Ha ha!  Do we have a girl on our hands or what?

We're looking forward to taking Hylie on her first Trick-or-Treating adventure!

Chicago Boat Tour

Geoff planned a wonderful outing for us in Downtown Chicago.  We got to go on a river boat tour!  The overcast weather was perfect, we didn't have to squint when looking up at the tall buildings and the rain held out until after our boat tour was done.  We learned a little bit about Chicago's history and architecture and enjoyed our fun get-away.  Thanks, Geoff, for planning such a great date!

The Sears Tower

This tall black building was one of Geoff's favorites--the Leo Bunett Building

Along Navy Pier

Sportin' the Spoon

So Hylie has been getting better and better with using her hands to get into anything she can.  Recently, she has been figuring out how to put her spoon into her mouth and gets REALLY excited if it actually still has food on it!  Last night at dinner, whenever food would be successfully delivered to her mouth via a utensil instead of her fist, she would get super excited and clap with us.  Here's a short clip of the action:



To help hone her skills, I decided to let her try a spoon with oatmeal this morning.  Of course, a sticky mess accompanied this adventure, but I was pretty impressed with how much food actually made it to her mouth.

Don't let her fool ya, she still got a lot of grub by fistin' it in!

In other Hylie news, she still loves walking around with her toy walkers and holding on to Mom and Dad--but the minute you let go, those knees bend and she is back to crawling.  It's okay, she's easier to chase when she's on all fours.

Her movement isn't limited to the ground either, unfortunately.  Diaper changes have gotten pretty eventful with hands going where they shouldn't go and her body twisting when things shouldn't be twisted.  Every once in a while we're thankfully able to distract her with a good read while we finish the needed business down below.