For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 88

We need nothing more than the events of the weekend (a temperature plummet, chilly football games followed by pick-up games in the backyard, and the preliminary work of putting this year's garden to bed) to remind us that the seasons (and time) march on. The fall clothes are being pulled from the dressers, and the few pairs of Audrey's pants that I held onto from last year thinking she might still be able to wear them have been a bust. It seems my once-slow growing girl is slow growing no longer. Of course, judging by her wit and words, she always seems a little "too big for her britches" to me:

Monday, at dinner, she asked Jason how much he loved her. "Do you love me to the moon and back?" she said.
"I love you more than that," he said.
"To the sun and back?" she asked.
"Even more than that," he said.
The thought entered my mind that we might have a preschool astronomy genius in our midst.
"To Rebecca's house and back?!"
Rebecca lives next door.

Wednesday while Nathan napped, Audrey asked if we could play in the playroom. "I promise I'll be quiet. I'm the best quieter," she said. "I'll help you be quiet because you're not the best quieter."

During dinner Wednesday night, Jason told her, "You make it fun to have kids."
"I make it fun to have kids over, too," she said.

Thursday, we were reading books on the couch when she hunched over to the side out of my view. "I just wanted to hide. I wasn't picking my nose at all," she said.

Thursday, Audrey came home from preschool with a fill-in-the-blank list of her favorite things. It read:

My favorite thing to do is make pictures and color.
My favorite place to go is the library.
My very favorite food is chocolate chips and oranges.
When I am big, I want to use big girl scissors.

On Sunday, her Sunday school teacher asked each member of the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. After a slew of future firefighters told of their aspirations, she asked Audrey who answered, "a doctor." On Thursday, her biggest aspiration was to use big girl scissors. By Sunday, she wanted to be a doctor. I'm guessing from the tools, she might opt to be surgeon.

Our little man is becoming just that, exploring and finally using his knees when he crawls, sometimes. He might also have just a bit of a protective streak. Nathan tagged along with me to a doctor's appointment this week. It was a routine check-up, but while I was there, they gave me a flu shot and did some blood work (everything checks out fine). Nathan smiled at the nurse as she filled out my paperwork, rarely making a sound. He continued to smile until she gave me the flu shot and took my blood (which tends to make me feel faint, a couple failed sticks and this appointment was no different). Nathan stopped smiling and eyed the nurse suspiciously as she gave me a wet washcloth and some water to bring the color back to my face. He began to whine at my side. The nurse was finally able to calm him down a bit by rocking him in his car seat, but he never smiled at her again.

Each fall, certain images come to mind: richly colored leaves, pumpkin flavored dishes and big bowls of soup, corduroy jackets, rows of knees tucked under on blanket across aluminum bleachers, and candles lighting up the faces of jack-o-lanterns. Images of goodness and warmth. I just might have to add growing babies to the list.