HALLOWEEN!

Bella took flight for Halloween as a blue butterfly this year. Initially, she wanted to be Spiderman. Then she changed that to Spidermangirl, and Izzy and Bud made her a great costume for that role. Then she added butterfly to the mix, so she was to be Spidermangirlbutterfly. But in the end, only the butterfly part stuck, try as we might to get her to wear the whole ensemble.

So Bella's parents collaborated on a large pair of butterfly wings and draped blue tulle all over them and then tied them on. She took a test flight (above), and then the day before Halloween got all dressed up the way she wanted to (below). She was a very excited blue butterfly!














Her first stop as a blue butterfly was her great grandmother, Mee-ma's, house on Long Island, followed by a trip to the local country club and a Halloween carnival alongside her cousin, Grace. Bella got her face painted to look even more like a butterfly.













Then she and her cousins danced with the group, went on a slow-moving hayride, ate cupcakes and ran around like butterflies and Yo Gabba Gabba creatures.


















On Halloween day, Bella took her parents out to Brooklyn to meet up with Grady, Simone, and Baby Navah and her parents, Julie & Michael. The whole group walked the streets, stopping periodically for Bella to go into a store or onto a stoop to say "trick or treat." The first place she did this - her first trick or treating success - was at a bakery and coffee shop where she got a small cookie. She came back outside, excited, and sat in her stroller to eat it.




























Each time she stopped to trick or treat for candy, she came back to eat that piece, and when she was done - a block later - she'd want back out of her stroller to go ask for another piece of candy from some store or brownstone. There were a ton of kids and parents out with lots of great costumes. At the end of the afternoon, we all ran across Benjamin and his parents, Erin & Matt. Benjamin was dressed as a train conductor and Matt had crafted a wagon/locomotive for him to use in trick or treating.













Then it was back home to trick or treat briefly in our apartment building, and then off to bed with visions of lollipops, chocolates and cookies dancing in Bella's head!

APPLE PICKIN'!

The weekend before Halloween, Bella and her parents and Nunya and Nana traveled to western Pennsylvania to spend some time with Bella's Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Tony and her cousins, Wyatt and Travis. As part of that excursion, Bella FINALLY got to go apple picking. She had been hot to trot about apple picking for weeks some reason, so she was thrilled to get a chance to finally get a basket and go get apples.

The adventure began with a slow-moving - though thrilling - tractor ride from the parking area to the part of the orchard where the apples were ripest. There's a photo here of all three cousins and Nunya & Nana on the wagon-pulled contraption. Once in the orchard proper, Bella started grabbing apples off the ground and from low branches on the trees. It was a beautiful day for it. Then she saw her older cousin, Wyatt, climbing a ladder to pick apples in the tops of the trees. So Bella had to do that, too, and did so with no injury or parental heart attacks.

Once the apple picking wound down, Bella and Wyatt had a blast for a few minutes sticking paper grocery bags over their heads and running around. The photo does not convey the true hilariousness of their bag antics. Wyatt was talking in a robot voice, and Bella was running around somehow able to "see" where the trees were and avoid them.








































Back at the orchard building, we paid for 33 pounds of the most delicious apples we'd ever had and then enjoyed apple cider donuts. Highly recommend those.

EAT YOUR HEART OUT MARTHA STEWART!

A few weeks ago, we had Nunya and Nana over for dinner. We asked Bella to help set the table - actually, we just asked her to get spoons for everyone since she can reach those pretty easily in the front of the silverware drawer in our kitchen. What followed was essentially a clearing out of said drawer by Bella so that - as you can see - everyone had plenty of options when it came time to eat their food, including chopsticks!