The first day of November. What does it mean?
- My house is filled with candy wrappers. Empty ones. Mostly in garbage cans, but there’s the odd escapee as well, decorating the carpet. It’s not a source of pride: this week there are four adults in the house + Sean went a little crazy with the on-sale Halloween candy (think 170 treats for the usual 35 trick-or-treaters we get at our house) + the weather has kept us in most of the week + the weather was also not great last night so we got 1/3 the usual number of kids = we’ve eaten more candy this week than we usually do all year.
- Between the fruits of trick-or-treating and the extras, we still have lots of not-empty candy wrappers as well. Oh dear.
- Last night, my 3-year-old looked like this:

(Actually, I think that’s his cheese-face, as opposed to his roar-face. Cool facial scales are courtesy of Auntie Em; lavender fairy wings – I mean dragon wings – are courtesy of Auntie Beth; dragon hat is courtesy of the Great-Aunties. Sorry the view of these features isn’t better.)
- That same kid has been trying to get into the mini-boxes of Smarties ever since. They’re his favourite and he wants to eat ALL OF THEM. NOW. (Please.)
- Our front porch looked like this:

(Angry jack-o-lantern by Uncle Ben, starry-eyed jack-o-lantern by Daddy. E sobbed heartwrenchingly because, for some unknown reason, he didn’t want the pumpkin to have star-eyes, and Daddy went ahead and thwarted His Royal Bossypants. E is rather dramatic of late.)
- Speaking of stars, we are thanking our lucky ones: Sandy the Frankenstorm has moved on. We have been very fortunate in our part of Ontario – we had some scary-sounding wind and plenty of rain, but very little actual damage.
- We are sending our best wishes to folks not as lucky.

- It’s damp and chilly out, so I can’t be that sorry that I’m not getting out much, being mostly pinned to the couch with my newborn.
- The trees (at least the ones I can see from my house) are very bare indeed. Very Novemberish.
- It’s National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo)! That means bloggers are encouraged to write a post per day for the whole month. I’m pretty sure it was BlogHer‘s idea.
- I thought about trying to participate this year, and then determined that, with a month-old baby and a husband most likely starting a brand-new job any day now, I’d have to be insane to do that.
- Then I mentioned it yesterday, in the company of Sean and Skye, both longstanding supporters of this blog, and they both said I should do it. Just give it a try. Why not? What’s the worst that could happen?
- So, I succumbed to peer pressure. 🙂 I’m trying Day One, at least.
- I’d like to think that if I don’t succeed, I won’t be too hard on myself, since I have such good excuses. (And frankly, judging by today and how long it’s taken me to get one li’l blog post written, the prognosis ain’t great.)
- I’d like to think that along those same lines, I won’t stress out about it too much. (Though, as I was reminded last year during NaBloPoMo, I am confoundedly stubborn about things like this.)
- Finally, November 1st means it’s my Gramma Sue‘s birthday. Her first one where she is not on Earth to celebrate. We are all thinking of you, and we love you very much, Sue-Sue.
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More peer pressure (and support) from over here!
Thank you, Krista! For longtime support, for the blog and many other things. It means a lot. 🙂
I love you!!
And that is a GREAT-looking dragon.
berty
I love you too!!