Happy Halloween!

What a celebratory week it has been! Starting with our first trip to the little neighborhood pumpkin patch earlier in the week followed by our group pilgrimage to the mother of all pumpkin patches in Half Moon Bay with John, Hai Nhu and Evelyn and Ken, Naomi and Milo on Sunday. Hai Nhu captures all the day so nicely in her post which you can read here. I will say it was great fun and Rhea could barely contain her excitement at being out in the "country". She loved it all...the goats, the ponies, the birds, the pumpkins and the excitement of the playground.

Today was Halloween proper which we celebrated with a baby party at Monica's. This Halloween brought with it a couple of firsts...

Well of course there was Rhea's first costume...and I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture but the reason she looks so intent is she is carefully standing on her own. Now this isn't quite a first, but the length of time she stood...shifting her weight and finding her balance was the longest ever. All of this standing and balancing led up to her REAL first which were the unassisted steps/lunging she later took towards her Papa. Of course she would choose to try out walking when all dressed up at a party.

It's funny...Rhea's sleep has been extremely screwy the past few nights...she has been waking up at 5:00 a.m. and this morning she was up at 4:30!!! or should I say (@!*#!!) Those of you who have been reading this blog from the beginning might recall my revelation that when Rhea has an especially difficult time sleeping, she is usually brewing up some kind of new skill. Perhaps the prolonged difficulty with sleep she has been having this week is because walking is such a HUGE undertaking. And while these first little steps are amazingly exciting...I find myself hoping she will hurry up and master this skill because honestly this whole crack of dawn thing is growing tiresome.

Of course my minor complaints aside I can truthfully say that the weary to the bone feeling fades into the background when we have this little love to show for all our hard work.