I looked back at this month’s calendar and was shocked to find how infrequently I posted on this blog. Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. When my husband proposed in the spring I immediately knew I would wait well over a year to get married. I looked at the Farmer’s Almanac and choose the least rainy Sunday in October. We’ve been married for eight years now and it’s only rained once on our anniversary.
I spent a few days planning my son’s birthday party and another couple planning play dates, but otherwise it’s been a relatively quiet month for us. My husband and I celebrated our anniversary, we spent an afternoon pumpkin picking, attended football games every other weekend, swam with my son every Saturday and visited my parents every ten days or so, but all in all it’s been a quiet and delectable fall.
My son started to walk around 11 months and spent the last few weeks perfecting his gait. We’ve spent a lot of time outside enjoying the warmer than usual weather. He loves to climb up and down our front steps admiring the changing leaves and searching for acorns and fallen leaves in the yard.
I’ve tried to soak up every moment of my time with him. He’s pointing and clapping and giggling in ways that make my heart sing and melt at the very same time. Witnessing my son’s transformation in the past year makes me believe in both science and God in a way that is utterly magical.
This week he is fascinated by books. When he wakes up in the morning, (often before the sun is up), I take him downstairs in his pajamas, pull him in close and read stories with him. I usually keep a pile of books at our feet, but the other night I put all of the books away, so the next morning I pointed to the book shelf and asked my son to pick one for me to read. The book shelf is on the opposite side of the room, but wouldn’t you know that smart little fella climbed down off the sofa, walked over to the shelf, picked a story and brought it back to me. He repeated this pattern until we read almost every book on the shelf. I am so excited by his love of books and hope that his passion for reading continues.
At this stage he is still chewing on things, so I don’t want to borrow any books from the library. I’ve been trying to break him of that habit, but every once in awhile he nibbles the corner of one of them. Today I took a short trip to TJ Maxx to stock up on stories. While I love reading to him I get bored reading the same stories over and over. I shopped the clearance section of the store and brought home another ten books to add to our collection.
This was only the second time I bought books for him. I received books from just about every guest at my baby shower and received an additional box of books from a friend of the family. My sister-in-law also gave me a bunch, but many of them have real pages and at this stage I feel safer sticking with board books that can’t be tattered.
I haven’t been blogging the day to day details of my life, but I have been enjoying my days.