Gotta Have Faith and Daniel: October 2013

Happy Fall!

It's time for our monthly update on life in the Grove household. And I'm excited that I managed to write this post before Halloween. We've been keeping busy as usual with lots of fun adventures. This week has been one of the longest weeks of Jess's life. Randy has been out of town almost every day and night. He's at a teacher conference in Ocean City this weekend so Faith and mommy are flying solo. Hats off to all of you single parents out there. I really don't know how you do it day in and day out. I love some quality time with my girl, but I think we are both very ready for daddy to be home! Faith literally walked around the house for an hour this morning shouting "Dadadadadadadadadada!" over and over and over.

So what's new? There's actually not a whole lot to report from our last post. We've been to a few more football games (both Penn State and the local high school team here in MD). Faith loves going to the Friday night high school games. She makes friends with everyone around us and usually barely spends any time sitting with us. She waves to everyone (some people we know and some we don't) and moves from lap to lap. And her favorite part is dancing along with the marching band drum line.

She's starting to talk more and more every day. Right now she is very focused on animals and animal sounds. She can moo, oink and neigh with the best of them. She's still using sign language a lot, but the words are also starting to come, which is so exciting. I'm sure I'll live to regret that statement one day when she literally won't stop talking, but for now I love it!

She absolutely LOVES going to school and seeing her friends. Every morning she runs out the door and of course she has to carry her lunch box by herself. I'm taking bets that her first sentence is going to be "Do it myself!" And I'm so glad that not once has she shed a tear when I drop her off. Daddy on the other hand has quite the time literally dragging her out of there when he picks her up. She never wants to leave. I experienced that myself this week while he was out of town and let's just say I resorted to bribery. Ha! The best part of school is that she has 4 new friends all right around her age that live really close to us. We are actually headed to one of their houses this afternoon for a play date.

One of the highlights of every October is visiting the pumpkin farm. We went to Cox Farms earlier this month with Connor, Kira, Aunt Andi, Uncle Michael and even Grandma Kehler. We went on a hay ride, had kettle corn and root beer floats, went down lots of slides, and petted cows and goats. It was a great day, but hopefully next year summer weather won't stick around into October. We of course picked a day that is was literally 90 degrees. There is something wrong with picking pumpkins in 90 degree weather and getting a sun burn.

A few other tidbits and then we'll leave you with the usual ridiculous amount of photos. Faith is obsessed with ketchup, mustard, salt and pepper. Now that she's discovered them, she wants to put them on EVERYTHING she eats. We've gotten really good at pretending to sprinkle - at least with the s&p. She's still a cleaning machine - constantly "wiping" the floors with a towel. She has TONS of stuffed animals. Seriously - we could stock a small orphanage with the stuffed animals this kid has. And she never really gave them much attention or played with them. Then all of sudden last week she started dragging around a baby doll everywhere she goes. We call her baby Faith. And now she's dragging around a pooh and piglet. She can barely lay down in her crib because she throws so many stuffed animals in there when she goes to sleep. I have to secretly take some of them out and hide them once she falls asleep. And finally as you'll see in the photos below, she is obsessed with sunglasses. We keep them by the front door and almost every time she leaves the house (even if it's dark outside) she has to put them on. It's hilarious!

We're gearing up for Halloween around here. I have to get my act together this week and finish making her costume. Music class falls on Halloween so that will give her a chance to wear her costume not just trick or treating. We'll have lots of photos to share with you in a couple of weeks.

Happy weekend everyone!

Much Loves,

The Groves