"Amazing Grace"

Lately the kids have been singing "Amazing Grace" to Mudpupp -- don't ask me how this started, I'm sure I have no idea. In any case, he really likes it, and demands that they sing by repeating, "Song! Song!" until they do.

Stranger still, he has started learning the song himself. A few times now, he's sung the entire first verse all the way through -- although only when we're not paying direct attention. If we ask him to sing, he just looks at us silently, smiling. His pronunciation lacks a great deal, but he gets the basic shape of the words, as well as the melody: "Amazin' 'ace, sweet ah sound, ah save ah wretch lie me!" and so on, all the way down to: "...was los', now ah see!" It gave me goosebumps the first time he did it -- while I was changing him!

Mudpuppy likes to swing on the big-kid swings

Picking pumpkins last weekend - he was a little intimidated
at first by all the pumpkins, but enjoyed seeing a real cat
close up.

Helping with the pizza dough. He believes in being VERY liberal
with the spices!

Mouse and Jaybird carving their own pumpkins. Bear is
"too old" for such things.

Grandma hanging out with the kids on a sunny fall day by the lake.

This afternoon we were prepping the kids for our All Saints party at church -- Bear went as Paul Miki, Mouse as Elizabeth of Portugal, and Jaybird as J8ulia Billiart. We helped them find symbols of their saints to use as hints in the "guess the saint" game. At one point, I asked Jaybird to pick something up in the bathroom, and as she did, she cheerfully said, "Well, I am going to be a saint someday."

"You think so, huh?"

"Yeah, 'cause a saint is just someone who loves God a real lot and is dead. And I think I will love God a real lot when I am grown up!"

That's the hard part, isn't it -- the loving. The dead part, not so much.