Enjoying a beautiful fall

Fall has been just perfect. Luke and I have had time to watch every leaf fall. We have our daily

playground rotation on nice days. Luke will do the slide about three times and then he will take off on a "hike." The playgrounds that we go to are all connected to the Ice Age Trail. So every day Luke hikes about 3/4 mile through the crunching leaves. Sometimes he will even let me hold his hand. I love watching our shadows move together.

I also wanted to discuss some things I learned about motherhood. These items will not be depicted in the photographs. 1) Don't wear short running shorts when you go down the slide with your child. All you will feel is burning flesh on the slide, a wedgie, and comments from local dads about my bad clothing choice as they hear the squeak of my skin. 2) Don't be afraid to wear goggles and a swim cap if necessary. Luke gouged my eye with his thumb as he was reading a book and doing the sign language for hat. I totally did not expect it. The high velocity jab made my eye hurt the rest of the day. 3) Luke also has a tendency to pull out chucks of my hair when he is being carried somewhere he does not want to go. Not only does this hurt, but then my hair can be found in his sticker books, toy bins, and under the refrigerator magnets. A swim cap would be very helpful.

Also, I wanted to thank Leah for the cute bear outfit and Grandma and Grandpa for the stuffed animal bear. Notice Dave, bear, and Luke.

Emergency

Well, we made our first trip to the emergency room on Oct 6th. Luke was with Alyssa at Lapham Peak State Park. He was in an area that just had some brush cut when he tripped and fell down. When he got up he had a large cut... or more fitting... a large gash under his eye. The brush that had been cut poked his face because it was like 4 -5 inch sticks, that stuck out of the ground.

Urgent care doesn't deal with facial wounds that might need stitches so we went to the ER. The bleeding had stopped long before but at the ER Luke had his face "glued" together instead of getting stitches.

We are VERY thankful that his eye wasn't hurt. We know his face will heal. Today his face looks even more puffy and swollen than when these pictures were taken. Both Alyssa and I feel sorry for Luke, but he is in good spirits. He is still running around and laughing just like nothing happened.