Month: October 2007

Uncle John is home from the hospital. Sadly, the cancer has spread and they’re stopping treatment. We saw him twice; he seemed to brighten up a bit when greeting Austen. He didn’t seem like he was in pain, just a bit lethargic and he liked to talk about “normal” stuff like the football game and his collections. Janet, Jo Anna and Gloria seemed very happy to have visitors, so we stayed for a while. We also saw Don, Kristine, Jason and Mark.

At Jeffrey’s birthday on Saturday, Austen had a wonderful time playing with the boys … and Grace and Julia (“the baby”). There were tons of fun toys and activities like Austen’s first piñata batting experience, a John Deere ride-on battery-powered car, and a indoor-sized air-powered jumpy castle. And chocolate cake! Austen was in her best mood, talking a lot and running around. Sometimes she would yell, “Pa! Pa!,” and run up to Grandpa, but he didn’t seem too excited by this.

Grandpa was busy hanging out with Dolly, so we left earlier than we’d planned although we did squeeze in lunch with Janet, Grandpa & Dolly at MaGerk’s in Bel Air and a visit to the scrapbooking store, where Mama went wild.

Austen had a blast at Cousin Jeffrey’s birthday party.

She enjoyed the jumpy castle with all of her cousins.

Jonathon took Austen for several rides in his John Deere truck.

Austen even got Grandpa to hold her for a bit (although it might’ve taken some coaxing from Mama).

Austen’s jammin’ on Jonathon’s guitar while her older cousins danced to some music.

Who says you can only play knock-hockey with two people?

After all the kids took many whacks at the pinata with hardly a dent, Uncle James decided to help things out by tearing it a little. Then, Jeffrey gave it a big hit and out popped all the candy.

Austen also helped Jeffery open his gifts and then sang into his microphone.

The other day, Austen asked Dada to write not only her name on her doodle board but ‘Dada’ and ‘Mama’ — and ‘Pop,’ ‘Grandma Mindy,’ & ‘Chacha.’ She’s realizing that objects have names made up of letters.

Thus far she hasn’t been as interested in letters; numbers have been more intriguing to her. She sings the alphabet song and can spell her own name, recognizing the ‘A’ ‘U’ ‘S’ ‘T’ ‘E’ and ‘N.’ But, up until now, the letters on a page didn’t mean very much to her: they were just a bunch of bending lines. Now, she’s starting to get that there’s some importance behind the strings of letters she sees all around her.