I know I try to stay anonymous on here, but we can let my first name slip, right? Heard of the blog ohdeedoh? They write about everything for kids and I was in one of their posts today! My friend Sarah was looking for a boyish dollhouse for her son and I told her about one my boys have been drooling over at Costco. Our friend Roni is a contributor at ohdeedoh and thought it was a great find too so she decided to blog about it! Read her post here. Check out the rest of the posts too. Some of the kids bedrooms are insanely beautiful. They would never last a second here.

Yahoo!! Both Halloween costumes are finished with time to spare! Here's Sweet Pickles in his dalmation costume. I still don't have a picture of Dill Pickles in his race car driver costume, but he is wearing it tomorrow for OT. Sweetie has his Halloween party at school tomorrow. He can't wait to be a puppy.

Well that's odd. My Google Followers hasn't appeared on my blog in a while. I finally decided to tackle it today. Some good ole Googling (is that even a verb?) told me that Google Followers doesn't seem to appear when you use the Shelfari widget. I deleted Shelfari and tada! My Followers are back. I dunno. I liked having my Shelfari there, but I like my Followers too. Maybe we can come up with a friendly compromise.

Can I please just get 5 or 6 more hours in the day? Really. A nanny and housekeeper sound good too. I don't need both. Just one or the other. :)

One Halloween costume down, one to go! I wish I had a better picture than the one that is on Daddy Pickle's phone. Maybe I can get Dill to stand still long enough to snap a pic. When his race car driver costume is on he is raring to go!

Feeling your pennies are pinched a little too tight? During the month of October if you create a wish list at Growing Tree Toys, you can Win Your Wish List! All you have to do is create a wish list before October 31st and you can win up to $1000 worth of toys from your wish list. Mine is full of building blocks, dress-up clothes and yes, even a doll house. I don't see any reason why boys can't play with doll houses!! I could put more on my list like the puppet theater and puppets. Oh what fun I could have shopping!

What on earth was I thinking when I waited until 2 weeks before Halloween to start sewing 2 Halloween costumes????

I just got back from a fun shopping trip to Joann's and Michael's with my mom and sister. Dill Pickles wants to be a race car driver for Halloween. I am going to sew his this costume except he wants the middle contrast to be red, not yellow.

Sweet Pickles want to be a dalmatian so I am going to attempt to turn this pattern into a dalmatian. I'm pretty sure I can. I'll just have to jazz up the ears a little. Grammie suggested being thrifty and using the same pattern for both boys instead of buy a separate dog pattern. Why didn't I think of that?
At Michael's I picked up some Mod Podge. I want to try and decorate my house a little more for the holidays, but we need decorations that can stand the abuse of 2 little boys. Shannon at Shannon Makes Stuff had this great tutorial for making a fall harvest decoration. Instead of me running around trying to gather all the pieces, I bought the DIY kit from her ETSY shop.

If this turns out pretty well I'd like to make this one too. She sells this as a DIY kit as well.
Now I'm off to hem and wash fabric while the boys are pretending to take a nap!

Yahoo! I received my book swap partner from Zoe at Playing By The Book. I will be sending a wonderful picture book to and receiving a picture book from Claire in Australia of Ope Shope Hope. How exciting! What book to send, what book to send? I have a bunch of our favorites running through my mind right now. As Dill Pickles likes to say, "This is going to be kinda tricky."

Speaking of Dill Pickles, today was his 4th birthday. Happy Birthday to my favorite big brother! Well, I guess if you'd like to be technical it still isn't his birthday yet because he was born just a few minutes before midnight. :) Sadly, his day was spent on the couch and in bed sick. We had a small party for him yesterday at Grammie's house and then Dill and Sweet Pickles were set to have a sleepover at Grammie's house while Mama and Daddy Pickles went to a wedding. By 8p Grammie was calling Mama Pickles to let her know that Dill was rather sick and at 10p Mama and Daddy Pickles picked up sick little Dill Pickles and Sweet Pickles and brought them home. Dill was ok with being sick on his birthday. I told him we could have cupcakes tomorrow if he was feeling better. Daddy Pickles was sick today too. I hope no one else gets it!

Is is sensory or is it behavior? Isn't that a question we're always asking? I know I am constantly pondering that in my head. Earlier this week I went to conference given by Carolyn Murray-Slutsky and Betty Paris who wrote the book Is It Sensory or Is It Behavior? Let me tell you it certainly made me think. It made me thing about a lot of things. Of course Dill Pickles constantly popped into my head while we were watching short video clips of students. We had to figure out why the child was acting the way they were and what they were trying to tell us. I could only think is this how it's going to be for Dill once he gets into first and second grades? Are his teachers going to understand his sensory needs? Are they just going to think he's a bad kid who can't sit still and pay attention? Sometimes it was all I had to keep from crying. But who knows what the future holds. For now I just have to live in today and only think about one tomorrow at a time.

It has been feeling a lot like fall around here. So much that the other day we actually had to turn our heat on. I was resisting as long as possible, but when it dropped to 61 degrees in the house I had to give in. The boys have been very into leaves and fall. We got new fall books from the library. I'm working on getting them up in Shelfari, but I saw this wonderful idea on I Can Teach My Child. All they did was take duct tape and make a bracelet sticky side out and then take a walk outside. Because the sticky side is out, little ones can stick anything they want to their bracelet. I bet the boys would love collecting leaves on a walk. Be sure to check out the original post.

I love books. I often wonder if it is the teacher in me, or was it my love of books that lead me to be a teacher. Anyways, I picked up a few books to help me out with teaching Dill and Sweet Pickles about our faith. I just love paperbackswap.com and half.com for books. Nothing like free or cheap new and used books. These are my newest books. I already read The Catholic Home a few weeks ago when I got it from the library. I liked it so much I had to buy it.

With 2 weeks of great days at school under the belt for Dill Pickles, I think I can finally post about what was causing his crying at school. We usually call Dill Pickles by a nickname, for the sake of the blog, let's call him DP. He goes by DP almost all the time, except for when he's in trouble. Then it's most certainly the full name Dill Pickles. At school last year, Dill just wrote DP on his morning sign in card. This year his teacher wanted him to try writing Dill instead. She felt it was important to learn how to spell his full name. I agree. There are going to be formal times when he will need to write his full first name. Apparently Dill was not ready to make the switch from writing DP to writing Dill. All he had to do was trace over the letters, but it was too much for him and he just didn't know how to say it, so he cried. And cried. And cried.

One day on the way to school I asked Dill for the 9 millionth time why he was crying and he blurted out, "I don't like school because writing Dill is too hard. I just want to write DP." Wow. I thought about it and you know, Dill is still only 3. Writing his full first name might be too hard for him right now especially since he does have fine motor skill problems. I told him I would talk to his teacher.

Dill has 2 teachers in his classroom, a regular ed pre-school teacher and a special ed pre-school teacher. Since it was the special ed teacher who told me at the beginning of the year that she wanted him to write his full name, I figured I would talk to her. She was with another parent. The regular ed teacher walked up to Dill and handed him his name card with his full first name and a marker. He started sobbing. This confirmed for me that he was just not ready to write his name. The special ed teacher came running over and I explained everything to her. No problem she said. We can switch back to DP. Since that day **KNOCK ON WOOD** we have not had any crying at school. I wish just wish we could have figured it out sooner so Dill didn't have to be stressed for so long. It was only a week, but I'm sure it felt like an eternity to him.

Zoe at Playing by the Book is coordinating a picture book swap. It sounds like a lot of fun, so I signed up. Want to participate? Clicky below.