This boy

Wednesday, October 23:  It sure is nice to not have to do homework after school on Wednesdays with Brendan anymore! Instead, we just come here and relax and play. Matey came out of his house for awhile this afternoon to visit with us. He's still unsure of people and prefers his cage!

 Brendan loves to watch him and interact with him.

 I love these pictures of Brendan's delight ... beautiful boy that he is.

 We also RE-carved a Great Wolf Lodge howling wolf on a pumpkin that I was GOING to carve a lighthouse on ... but you see, Brendan's pumpkin from last week kind of caved in at his house! So it was no longer any good ... and my heart was sad about this, so ... voila! A taller pumpkin (with much thicker walls--which made carving detail a little bit difficult) with a NEW fancy LED strobe light instead of a real candle. Thank you, Dollar Tree! We used Vaseline around all of the edges of the pumpkin, and I think this one might actually make it the next eight days until Halloween.

 Brendan was super pleased. I was very thankful!

We also read a few stories tonight:  "Pierre the Penguin, A True Story" by Jean Marzollo, illustrated by Laura Regan -- about a penguin who lost his feathers, was COLD because of it, the other penguins rejected him because he looked so odd, and an orthnologist lady who designed a wet suit for him so that he was no longer cold and could then dive and swim in the water with the other penguins! It was a happy story. We also read "Dad and the Dinosaur" by Gennifer Choldenko, illustrated by Dan Santat (both award-winning writer/artists). We liked this story too. I especially liked that the father in this story was very kind and caring about his son's fears and loss--another happy story! I love reading with Brendan. He will sit very close and tell me things he sees in the illustrations--Brendan has a very interesting perception of things and I love to hear the stuff he thinks about. He is also really really improved in his reading these last few months and has really taken off reading everything he gets his hands on. I love you, Brendan. You are a treasure to me.