Pumpkins!

cute fall picture, originally uploaded by chase+kate.

It's as Fall-ish as it gets in LA right now, and we're taking advantage of it with open windows and lots of hoodies.

What we've been up to:

Yesterday we went to Ventura to pick a pumpkin or two at this cool farm
and had a pretty great time. I had my first wanting-to-beat-up-another-little-kid-for-being-mean-to-Wren moment, and I feel like a joined a big parenting club. The club that's mad at other parents for having mean kids. Lazlo's response was much more, "She's fine. Look! He's not even pushing her that hard!" Whereas I was ready to crawl into the damn hay tunnel and teach that kid to pick on someone approximately 10x his size.

Last weekend we went to the Eagle Rock Music Festival and saw BOW. The show was great and I wish we could have stuck around a little longer, but bedtime was looming. Wren had a fantastic time dancing with all her friends. David dubbed Eisley, Wren, Finn, and Atticus (formerly known as Jackson) the 25 lbs and under mosh-pit and they were really raging. It was a great evening full of friends that made us basically cry all the way home (about 5 blocks) that we have to leave this place.

Lazlo's Psalms class is going really well. In the past he's used boring class times to do our bills and banking and what not, and this quarter he's complained that class is too interesting for him to get anything done. I guess we're getting our money's worth.

It's hard having him back in class again, after enjoying the summer off, but this is the last class, and it's only one day a week, so compared to when Wren was a baby- this is awesome.

I'm registering for my classes soon. They start in January, and I'm looking forward to getting back into the crazy world of librarianship. I'll be taking Collection Development (with a concentration on keeping crazy people from trying to ban your books) and Technical Services. I have no idea what Technical Services will entail, but it sure sounds like a top secret black-ops section of the military. "Next semester- TECHNICAL SERVICES, with Blackwater founder Erik Prince..."

Ha- I bet this blog will be a very unexpected result for people searching that sentence.

Moving on- what's Wren up to? Well I'm glad you asked. Right now she's at the hardware store with Rupato and Lazlo, looking for a humane mouse trap. One cute little mouse has so far made every so-called man in this house scream like the little girls they apparently are. Lazlo actually did a pirouette this morning when little Hunca Munca sprang at him from behind a box of DVDs. Mr. Rupato really really wants to get a cat, but Lazlo has pretty much said that he would use said cat to beat in the giant TV screen in our living room, so great is his hatred for both cats and cable TV. So a humane trap it is, and also hopefully some Diet Coke, because we're out.

The mouse invasion has coincided with a jump in the use of expletives at our house, and Wren has not been left behind. I'd be surprised if Pasadena Day Nursery doesn't say something at our upcoming parent conference. "Um....so your two year old sure says 'shit' a lot... Please drop your check in the tuition box on your way out." Don't worry, grandparents. Her non-R rated vocabulary is also expanding by leaps and bounds. Don't kids say the darndest thing?

In the past few weeks, Wren has asked if we like her new dance "moobs," (moves) has named her Pooh bear "gentle bear," and has begun to "kwa-pa-kwape" (cooperate) when we ask for her help. Continuing cute mispronunciations are : hewicopper-copper, scoop-driber, and of course, strange cheese (string cheese).

Jane has made her first non-cry, non-snort noises, and they are about as cute as you'd imagine. She's a bit of a piglet, and has outgrown all of her 0-3 month clothes, and is working on outgrowing her 3-6 month stuff now. It's that loooooong torso that does it. The last 3 nights she's slept from about 10:30 to 5:30 or 6. Praise God. The overall volume of snorting has diminished, and I no longer feel the desire to put her in the doghouse with Ramona overnight. I'm keeping it in mind though, as a backup. Maybe the fleas would teach her not to snort so loud.

Poor little lady. She's never not had a cold. It's going to be a glorious day for our family when Jane can breathe through her nose.

Lazlo is applying for jobs in Austin, and he's eminently qualified for them so he'll probably be getting some interviews in the next few months. We probably spend a combined total of several hours every day on the Austin MLS, looking for a place to rent when we get to town. I know if we hadn't left Austin we'd think house prices were ridiculous, but after LA (our current mouse infested bungalow was on the market last year for 500k (and Dave swears he sees drug deals outside "like, every other day, for real")) pretty much everything else looks totally reasonable. If anybody has any leads, let us know.