Fall Festivities

So this fall (wait, was it ever fall? I recall approximately 4 nice/coolish days smack dab in between the hot-as-Hades days and the recently more cold days)really flew by in a rush of pregnancy hormones and Max-induced craziness. But I think we had some good times. Didn't we?

Our 3rd Annual Ludwig Oktoberfest was October 13th. This year Max wore actual toddler lederhosen (thank you, ebay!) I think he rocked them. And, best of all, he seemed to have nothing against wearing them! We had some fun with a dress-rehearsal for our evite photos. Actually, maybe we were onto something here; feed the boy a pretzel and he'll pose all day.

We lucked out with the weather again this year with a beautiful warm day.

We also lucked out that Frank was able to be in the country to help us with hosting duties again. If he can't make it next year, I'm going to be searching rent-a-german.com.

This year we incorporated a "beer tent"; you know the Ludwigs are always going for authenticity. (I still wish we had a German band, but maybe by year 10 or so....)

Maybe by year 10 we will also figure out how much food we need to prepare. As in previous years, we had leftovers of the side dishes, ran out of the keg beer, and thought we were going to run out of brats, necessitating a mid-party brat run by Griffin. In the end, though, we did have leftover brats (Chris is fired from brat-monitoring duty).

This year we also seemed to have more people getting into the spirit of Oktoberfest by dressing in Oktoberfest gear. I did promise a prize to the best-dressed...no surprise that the winners were actually German, but props to PopPop for giving it a shot. Max wasn't eligible, but he would probably have been passed over anyway due to his crocs.

The party started at 3:30 and raged on until 1:30 AM. (I was in bed at 11:30, however). Pregnant women and marathon Oktoberfest parties don't really mix. Or do they?

Anyway, I think a good time was had by all, and we'll have to see how we can up our game for next year. Will the baby be too young for a dirndl?

100% exhausted.

On one of the truly beautiful fall days, the three of us spent the afternoon at the park, playing and "hiking".

 

 

 

Max also worked on his big brother skills by refusing to ride in the stroller. He's more into pushing these days...which leads one to wonder "how is Robin ever going to go anywhere with two kids, one of whom refuses to ride in a stroller yet also refuses to NOT dash out randomly into the street or run off in a store?" Anyhow, he enjoyed himself.

 

I hope we'll have at least a few more days like this together before the baby gets here and I'm chained to the house due to the baby's feeding schedule!

 

So yesterday was Halloween. I'm not sure how it got here so fast. Clearly, Chris and I let the month get away from us; this was the first year since we started dating that we did not go out and buy pumpkins and carve them together. I'm sad we didn't do that, and I'm not sure really why we didn't, but I did manage to whip out the Halloween cookie cutters and introduce Max to "baking".

 

 

 

 

 Now, I knew he would love this because he loves to use the cookie cutters with his Play Doh...but what I didn't anticipate is that he would eat every single cookie from our first batch (but if you ask Chris, I do a terrible job of space management on my cookie sheets, so it really wasn't that many cookies. Ok, it was still too many for a 2 year old to eat in one sitting, but sometimes  you just have to live a little).

We'll have to tackle actually decorating the cookies at a later date. That's a whole world of mess that I'm just not ready to tackle yet!

Another fun activity the Ludwigs (and apparently a million other people around the WORLD) have been enjoying this fall is watching the giraffes at the Greenville Zoo via Earthcam.  Autumn the giraffe was expected to give birth to a calf sometime in mid to late October, and sometime around the beginning of October the cameras were installed and baby-watch began. I found myself checking in multiple times a day to check on Autumn's progress. Usually she was chewing her cud or....chewing her cud. Turns out, the life of a zoo giraffe isn't that exciting. (Which makes me wonder why they only sleep 20 minutes or so a day!) However, before I knew it, Max was asking each morning as he woke up "giraffe?" and even Chris was checking in on Autumn and her mate Walter from time to time. Unfortunately for Chris, Autumn gave birth on October 22nd, while he was in Chicago. Luckily for him, I was on the job and watching as she gave birth and was able to send him updates as he sat at the Chicago Bears game. Here's THE moment for you to enjoy, just like an approximate ONE MILLION PEOPLE around the world enjoyed...but you get to enjoy it with MY commentary, which is definitely worth something extra.

 





If you want to see the full birth, but minus my titillating commentary, you can go to earthcam and check out the archives. (And yes, the baby did lay there looking dead for a little while, but all ends well and Kiko is now healthy and on display at the zoo.)

This Monday Max and I decided it was high time that we met Kiko so we rounded up Mimi and Pop Pop and headed to the Zoo. It was a beautiful (but chilly) day and, as a bonus, all of the Halloween decorations that the Zoo puts out for its annual "Boo in the Zoo" were still up...and rest assured that Max touched every last one of them.

So we finally meandered our way through the Zoo to Kiko and his family. There were definitely more people hanging out in front of the exhibit than normal, but I was glad to see that we would be able to get a front row spot for viewing. Too bad Max was too interested in getting over to the playground to let me enjoy some extended Kiko viewing time. He is definitely a cute little (as in 5'8" little) guy though and I now want a baby giraffe as a pet.

 

And for the culmination of October, yesterday was Halloween. Max sort of knew about Halloween in the vaguest terms because I would always point out the Halloween decorations at various houses on our walks around the neighborhood. But I know for a fact he had no idea there was candy involved. I couldn't really decide if I even wanted to take him trick-or-treating in any capacity. Dress him up in a cute costume for pictures? Yes. Haul him around from house to house....eh, not really.

 

So Julie suggested that we take the boys to a couple of grocery stores that host trick-or-treating for the kids and I thought that sounded like a nice and low-key alternative to actual trick-or-treating outside in the evening. So after a failed attempt at getting Max to nap (never a good start), I forced him into this adorable chicken suit (complements of the house of Rogers):

 



and we were on our way. Five minutes later, the lack of nap had caught up to him.

After rousing him, we set off for our first run at grocery store trick-or-treating. Now, Max is a nightmare EVERY time I take him to the grocery store. I don't know why I thought this would be any different. At our first stop he managed to keep his composure...somewhat.

I did have to explain to him several times that he wasn't free to take ANYTHING he wanted. (He particularly wanted a bunch of asparagus for some reason).

Store #2 was less enjoyable...he was in full meltdown mode within minutes of walking in the door.

But then I gave him a cookie and we were able to make it through withouth further incident.See, it's true; cookies DO make everything better.

So after the grocery store visits, I thought we might as well trek over to Mimi and Pop Pop's for several reasons:
#1. I wanted to take some pictures of Max standing at an actual door appearing like he was trick-or-treating.
#2. I knew they had two big bags of chocolate candy and I wanted to eat some.
#3. It was too much of a struggle to get that chicken into that costume to take it off so soon.
#4. I didn't want to be at home in case some early trick-or-treaters came by the house...since I had purchased no candy to give out.
#5. Bailey needed to go somewhere to in her costume; it's not every day she gets to dress as a hot dog.

So by the time we left there, I was kind of ready to close the books on Halloween 2012, but Chris came home early with the intent to take Max trick-or-treating and, as mentioned above, we had no candy to give out, so we decided it would be best to vacate the premises. We convinced the Rogers to come down to our side of the neighborhood and Round 2 of trick-or-treat adventures began.

Max was really starting to enjoy this candy-collection, and under Nathanael's tutelage, he was even learning the "rules of Halloween" such as: only go to the houses with lights on, ring the doorbell as many times as necessary to get someone to answer (ok, Max definitely took the lead on that one), and always say "thank you" after taking candy (this one had mixed results). Poor little Sam, on the other hand, just wasn't having it. His football player costume wasn't the warmest (and it was COLD out by this point) and he was terrified of any Halloween decorations that were remotely, well, Halloweenish. He didn't last long, but Natey and Max were troopers and definitely got the most bang for their buck (or BUCKets, I should say...buckets full of candy).

All in all, a successful trick-or-treating outing. And I realized why seemingly everyone in town buses their kids in to our neighborhood -- these folks give out good candy!!!! We were somehow able to get Max to bed last night after eating only a minimal amount of candy from his bucket...but the first thing he said this morning when I went to get him from his crib was "Candy?" and I've had to use various distractionary measures all day to keep him from begging for more. Next up: finding a hiding place for the candy so that he (hopefully) forgets about its existence and I can therefore dole it out as I see fit (and eat it myself when I see fit).

And thus ends October....but lots of excitement yet to come for the remainder of the year. Stay tuned!