Goodbye Summer

Our lives have been fairly sedentary these last weeks as we've settled into Autumn which is just how I like it.

Payton has been doing well on the CDH front with only one trip the medi clinic this month.  It would appear she is devoping asthma. While they won't officially diagnose her till she's 6, I've had asthma since I was a teenager and I recognize the wheezing.  The doc did confirm her lungs sounded tight and she was on 'watch' in the event it got bad enough to take her to the ER for treatment.  We didn't have to :).  She's still recuporating from that cold and her fiesty spirit fights on in the form of screaming "no, no, no" whenever I try wiping her nose.

Yes, that means Payton's vocabulary is expanding. She's just so much fun right now and she does a great job with her animal sounds (dog goes ruf, truck goes broom, horse goes neah etc).  She's also saying nose and I think 'mama' but thats still debatable.

On the sibling front, I will say now I am very apologetic to Payton for making her a younger sibling.  Livy is doing the worlds worst adjustment of being a big sister and has resorted to punching and biting her little sister whenever she 'gets in the way' just a little too often.  Fortunately its only been 2 times that Payton's gotten in the way too many times.  Still, poor Payton has been sporting bite marks on her back for the last week.

Aside from the carnavore streak, Livy is doing well and continues to make me smile.  Lately she's gotten into wanting to draw her name and has been practicing her letters. She's also learning to count past 20.  She does really well until 29 where she needs a bit of help remembering 30 but starts up again only to need reminding at 40 etc.  She gets the concept that she needs to start counting from 1 again (ie 31, 32) and it was adorable for a while when she would do 20-11, 20-12, 20-13....  I almost let her continue on because it was so cute (she would need reminding around 20-17).  Then I realized that it may lead to problems and my amusement wasn't worth the potential torment of fixing that concept.

I've made the autumn transistion from being on a bike all summer to running again. Its been nice this fall.  Its been so dry the creeks have dried up and while its sad that the salmon aren't running (thus we'll likely get hardly any eagles this winter) I can run on some of my favourite trails with the dogs without fear of them sporting dead salmon coats.  There is NOTHING more foul than a dog who's rolled in salmon. 

Dwayne continues to squeak out every last moment on his bike though he's taken to the trails running as well.  The leaves are still mostly green on the trees but I think that balance will change in the next few days and soon enough the rain/snow and ice will make us wish we had taken advantage of it more.

This last weekend we started getting our Halloween decor out.  Its early, yes but we have so much stuff it makes sense to take advantage of it and enjoy it longer.  Livy is hilarious and she's very happy to play with much of the stuff though there are a few items that freak her right out...the severed foot being one of them.  He's happily hanging out in a file cabinet until we can find a good home for him (maybe Auntie Monique's). 

I'll be sure to get some pictures of our Halloween decor especially since Dwayne has taken an active interest in it.  Suffice to say he's spent more in the last 3 days than I have over 3 years so our yard is quickly filling up. Should be interesting trying to find storage for this stuff.

On another note, we're still awaiting our pictures from our Tiny Light photo shoot and I've been assured that they are in the mail so hopefully I'll get them soon and I can share our favourites.