apples and autumn

i love the autumn time in michigan.

i really think it is one of the things i am going to miss most.

i feel like we kind of get the best of both worlds here.

we have the nice wooded areas to really appreciate the changing of the leaves, but we also have the wonderful sprawling farm towns where the barns are nestled in the tall corn.

i know for sure one of the things i'll miss the most is our cider mill.

i know there are other cider mills in the world. i pray we will end up in a place that has one nearby. but this one will always hold a special place in my heart. this is our fourth year going here. i mean, we've been coming to get apples and pumpkins and donuts at our cider mill since tennyson was just a chunky little thing.

tennyson is quite a bit older now and has more hair and less fat, and we still can't get enough of this place.

this year he helped us pull the wagon as we walked around the apple orchard. he climbed the giant dirt hill with the rest of the big kids and went down what has to be the most dangerous slide i've ever seen. he went off into the inflatable playground on his own while we ate our own lunch. and he wandered along picking apples from the bottoms of the tree (which were in much better shape than the rotted ones from the ground that maggie kept trying to throw in our bag).

so now we have about a million pounds of apples sitting in our kitchen.

i have a batch of applesauce in the slow cooker, and about a hundred different apple recipes waiting to be tried.

tennyson and maggie are in heaven because i've been letting them eat an apple whenever and wherever they want and i don't get mad at them if they only take three bites and then leave to go back to play.

and the windows are open and the cool breeze has been coming in all day and the leaves are starting to change colors and halloween is just around the corner.

autumn in michigan sure is awesome.

potty post

can we just take a minute and celebrate the fact that both (yes, both) my kids just peed in the potty for the first time ever tonight?

and ignore the fact that immediately afterward, they did this?

i'm about ready to throw all our bath toys away.

they never stay in the bath.

but since they both peed in the potty, i guess the toys can stay another day.

nothing can ruin my good mood tonight.

preschool can be rough

remember that scene in arrested development where george michael comes home from school to the tune of charlie brown music and then this happens?

tennyson looked very similar after school today.

i guess he played hard.

preschool can be rough.

(and ps... if you haven't watched arrested development... shame on you.)

tennyson the preschooler

today we sent this kid off to school for the first time.

can you believe it?

(and can you believe how perfectly his "alphabet cadet" shirt describes him?)

i've really been looking forward to this day.

i've told mike a few times that i feel like i should be more sad than i am. like maybe i don't have normal mommy emotions. the thing is, i know how much he needs preschool and i have high hopes for him this year.

i think we are going to see a lot of progress.

but still, five mornings a week is a big deal.

and i may have felt my mommy emotions come out a little bit as i was walking him down the hall of his school. i mean, this kid goes to an elementary school! with decorated classroom doors and posters everywhere saying "welcome!"

he's all grown up.

he's taking the bus and everything.

i was really weary of the bus, to be honest. i decided that since i was going with him to school today, that we could try it out and i would make my final decision then.

and he's going to take the bus every day. 

we really lucked out with bus routes. he's the last one to be picked up and the first one to be dropped off, which means he only spends about ten minutes on the bus. the bus picks him up at our door and his teacher is there waiting at the curb when he gets to school.

it's a pretty sweet deal.

and he pretty much felt like a king on that bus.

tennyson's classroom is awesome.

there are only nine kids in there with him.

he gets to spend the day playing with all sorts of toys.

legos, books, puzzles, letters, you name it.

plus he's got a pretty sweet snack hook up (although today he wanted nothing to do with it because... toys.)

a couple days a week he'll have a speech therapist and and occupational therapist that will come into his classroom and work one on one with him. it's going to be so good for him.

(mom's favorite part? five days a week, someone else gets to deal with his potty training all morning!)

at the end of the day, tennyson didn't want to leave.

who can blame him, really?

it wasn't until i pointed out that we needed to go find our maggie that he was ready to get on that bus again.

the whole way home he kept asking "gaggie? where are you? dada? where are you?"

and my mommy emotions struck once more when tennyson was walking home from the bus stop.

how in the world do i have a kid who is old enough to have to walk home from the bus stop?

when we found our dada and our gaggie, we went for a celebratory lunch at mcdonald's.

for the first time ever, tennyson played in the play place. as if he didn't already love mcdonald's enough already, now he knows that there are slides inside.

and just like that, tennyson is a preschooler.

if anyone finds a way to invent a pause button for time, i'd be seriously interested in investing.