Time Flies

Things continue to move along at a pretty quick pace in the Morefield household (hence the infrequent updates to this journal!).

In October we took the boys up to Ohio to visit Grandma and the cousins and had a great time. Back at home, Jason enjoyed his first try at Halloween trick-or-treating, dressed as a puppy. Mommy took him around the neighborhood in a stroller and a number of other parents reported he had a huge grin on his face as he clutched his plastic pumpkin full of goodies. As the rules were still a bit new to him, Jason only delivered the “Trick or Treat” greeting at about half the doors he visited…at the rest he simply held his pumpkin out and said, “Please!” At this writing, Jason’s still finishing the last of his Smarties, “Holly-Pops” and Skittles, so it was a pretty respectable haul. Meanwhile Scotty, dressed as a pumpkin, stayed behind to help Daddy pass out goodies to the other kids. For a while it was fun, but after an hour of the doorbell constantly ringing and odd-looking characters crowding our porch yelling for treats, Scott’s nerves were a bit frazzled.

After about three weeks of tears, cheers, screams and pouting, Jason appears to be pretty much potty trained. He’s now able to take care of the whole affair on his own, except for getting his pants back on, so we’re pretty proud of him.

We had a bit of a mishap a few weeks ago when Jason sent Scott to the ER. Jason knows he’s not allowed to push Scott away from his toys, so he’s adopted the tactic of “blocking” the toys like a basketball player blocking a shot. Whenever Scott crawls near, Jason stands and puts himself between Scott and the toys, bobbing and weaving to match all of Scott’s moves. One day he ended up putting his knee in Scott’s eye, cutting his eyelid. Scott got away without a stitch but will probably have a scar (luckily not noticeable unless he closes his eye). Probably only the first injury of many to come in the lives of two rowdy brothers, but the first one’s always tough for the parents.

Otherwise, Scott’s doing very well and in most things physical is ahead of where Jason was at the same age. He’s cruising the furniture, making his first tentative stabs at standing unaided and climbing the stairs to the second floor. As of today he has eight teeth.

Another big milestone came a week or so ago when we moved Scott’s crib out of our room into Jason’s. I was convinced it would be a disaster and no one in the house would sleep again, but to my surprise the boys have done very well. Usually they spend 15 or 20 minutes amusing each other with talk, songs or giggly antics and then they’re down for the count. I think it’s gone a long way to bond them as brothers.

At this point we’re looking forward to Christmas and with Jason old enough to appreciate the experience we hope to start up some fun family traditions. All in all it’s been a great year for us. As Jason likes to say when we gather around the dinner table, “Daddy, Scott, Mommy, Jason…FAMILY!”