Halloween 2011

It's official: Miriam is a walker. She's been getting the hang of it for the past couple weeks, but it's only been a few days that we've noticed that she actually prefers it to crawling. Our carpet is kind of short and scratchy, so I think she doesn't like how crawling scrapes her knees. Now that she can walk, she will only bear crawl if she does it at all.

Another official anouncement: Emily is potty trained. She's been using the potty a suo piacimento for the past couple weeks with only a couple accidents. I'd have to say that this has been a faith building experience on par with Moses parting the Red Sea. Emily was having so much trouble getting it. We've tried, patiently, to teach her for months but she just didn't seem to even get the point. She used to love to sit on the potty but she would never go. And, when she did have to go, she would never sit on the potty. Arg! Once, she even wet her pants while standing on top of her potty. That one still bewilders us. :) But, about two weeks ago everything just clicked. Hallelujah!

The girls have started to become very good friends (as long as Emily's not trying to sit on Miriam, which happens at least eight times a day). They love laughing at each other. Emily likes to pretend that Miriam is an alligator. Miriam always wants to see what her sister is doing and likes to follow her around the apartment. Here's a great video of the two of them together. 

We had a great Halloween. Rachel dressed up like Peter Pan. Miriam was Tinkerbell. Jeremy and Emily were pirates. We were a hit at our branch's Halloween activity--especially among the children in Jeremy's primary class. This is the first year that Emily got to go trunk-or-treating and actually understood what was going on. Last year she kept trying to pull the candy out of her own basket and put it into everyone else's.

Jeremy carved a Mickey Mouse Jack-o-lantern this year. He carved it a few days before Halloween, which turned out to be a major blunder in the sultry climate of east Texas. The pumpkin rotted out so fast we couldn't even take it to our Halloween party. We did manage to take a picture of it, although we almost didn't make it because we had to recharge our camera battery for a night after we realized that it was decomposing.