Yet another milestone for Reid, his first cereal! He has been really interested in food for several weeks. Whenever I’m holding him and eating he often grabs for whatever I have or opens his mouth and his head turns and follows the food all the way to my mouth (how mean!) or he talks to the spoon or fork full of food! So with a plenty full weekend we decided why not pack one more thing into it and give Reid his first taste of rice cereal. Check out how messy he got. We brought up the high chair from our basement and he did pretty well sitting in it. Although he does lean to a side and then stays propped up from the side of the chair for now. He was so grabby that we went through 2 spoons since he grabbed one out of my hands and threw it on the floor. And another time he grabbed the bowl of cereal while I was holding it and spilled it all over everything! He is quite fast. But he seemed to enjoy the process. He was a bit tired so after the photo op and trying out the spoon many times we opted to mix a bit more and put it in a bottle for him to eat more easily.
Earlier in the week I was able to take the morning off work in order to take Griffin to a party for one of his Monkey friends, Julia, at her home. It was a “get to know our friends” party given by her parents. There was a balloon/facepainting artist there and the kiddos were able to make their own ice cream sundaes (a great mid morning treat in the eyes of Griffin!).
Griffin loves to take my phone and snap photos of various things. Sometimes I don’t even realize he’s done it since he knows how to take the pictures without unlocking my phone. I found this one from this week. He is very good about having independent play time in the loft where he colors or plays dominoes or other games on his own. He really likes lining up these piece :).
Griffin also got to make some tasty apple crisp this week with Debbie. It was delicioso!
This fall has been a pretty busy one. The weekdays and weekends seem to fly by. I’ve been swamped at work and when I get home I feel like I’m often working from behind there too. So the mornings we have to just be still and laze around are so nice!
Kevin was able to go to Griffin’s field trip to Leeds Farm this year with his preschool class. They had a good time on a brisk fall morning feeding the goats, riding karts, taking a wagon ride to pick gourds and such. I was bummed to miss, but am thankful that Kevin got to go and enjoy the time with Griffin. I was spending the days at Millcreek as we had a two-day visit with consultants in town from Florida/Montana to assist us with some process assessment and potential changes. It was a great two days of brainstorming, walking around the property, talking new and different processes for increasing efficiency, and picking the brains of the two gentlemen who have clients in every industry including over 120 clients in the green industry, many of whom are our vendors. There client list and efficiency gain statistics are impressive!
On Saturday, we had another progressive dinner with our neighbors. This time we went with an italian theme and began at our house with appetizers and drinks. We also decided it would be fun for the kids (and adults, lol) to carve pumpkins. The Buckeye-vs-Iowa game was on also and it ended up being a pretty intense evening! Nate and AJ are moving the first week of November so this was our last dinner before they depart. 
And if that wasn’t enough for a Saturday, it was also Lily’s 9th birthday! These aren’t the best pictures as I actually took them when I was upstairs feeding Reid during dinner with our friends! I didn’t break out the party hat this year :(. Seems hard to believe our girl is 9 years old. I remember when Kevin and I had just begun dating and she was still a bundle full of energy. She has arthritis is her wrists and shoulders and knees and hips and even with her daily medications she still has a slight limp which is better some days and worse on others. She and Brutus play pretty hard from time to time and she puts up with a lot from Griffin too. She’s as sweet as ever. She definitely does not like loud noises, shouting, amazon air bubble packaging (she leaves the room when we open boxes!), and she and Brutus have had more than a few battles when a new bag of food is being opened. And though I don’t get much these days, she still loves to cuddle on the couch, to hide and relax in small and tight spaces, and to be given any kind of people food that isn’t fruit. 
On Sunday we headed to Mom and Dad’s after church to get the Hostaworks website and seed shoppe up for business for the 2017 seed sale. We figured it would be best to be together in person to get it all right. We enjoyed our visit and got most everything done though we ran in to a bit of a snag at the end! Nothing that can’t be fixed with a bit of time though. 
One tidbit from the consultants is the idea of progressive work. It’s something I’ve seen many times before but we haven’t implemented yet at Millcreek. Here our crew is trying out progressive sticking, where each person sticks cuttings into a portion of the tray and then passes the tray along to the next person. Our team did a few sample trays and in doing so, even their first attempts, they cut their rates down from 10 minutes a tray to 6 minutes a tray – even in a less than ideal atypical setup using our production line as a table. We will likely be making this simple change in our propagation area. 
After more research, we also ended up purchasing another Jeep on Saturday. The Jeep Commander was in need of more repairs and we’ve decided it’s not best for us to keep putting money into an 11 year old vehicle. Kevin’s parents are going to keep it and get it repaired. So we have a 2018 Jeep Cherokee, a small SUV for me to take drive during the week for work and such. I love it and am thankful that I didn’t have to be a part of the car-buying process at all thanks to Kevin’s research and negotiating skills! They even drove it to our house to deliver it since Kevin drove to the dealership by himself :).
This picture is a good example of these two lately. Griffin loves to hold Reid and they both are smiley and silly for a few minutes. Then Griffin says “ok, you can take him now” and he’s ready to be done.
I’m continually amazed at how neat and tidy Griffin insists on being while coloring! And more apple painting this week, at school. He also did some fun painting at home using foil. Check out the concentration face :). 
Our chair arrived this week! Kevin enjoyed relaxing in it while feeding Reid a bottle one afternoon. It’s comfy and it spins around. The floor is a bit slippery for the ottoman though as it moves when you bend your knees and use it as a rest! We’ll have to figure out something to do until we put our rug out when the couch arrives. 
On Saturday we went to Leeds Farm with the Kesslers for a fun afternoon of fall festivities. There is so much for kids to do there and it was a beautiful and sunny fall afternoon, a perfect day really! We went on a wagon ride, Griffin rode pedal karts, jumped on the orange pumpkin floor, went on a barrrel ride (Laura too, lol), and many other things. After we left Leeds we went home and picked up the dogs and headed to Mansfield for a short visit since we hadn’t seen Mom and Dad in awhile. It was a short and sweet visit. 
Reid is super close to turning over. He makes it most of the way and then usually returns to his back. He’s yet to pull his right arm out from underneath himself. He’s so close!
We keep finding Griffin asleep on the floor of his room near the door! It can be challenging to get in his room to move him to his bed!
Ever since Reid was born I’ve placed my hand on the side of his face to settle him down or get him to fall asleep. I love that he’s taken to grabbing my arm whenever I put my hand or arm near his face. He just clamps down and holds on!
Griffin typically takes showers but every now and then he enjoys a “play bath” where we fill up the tub with bubble water and he plays with his toys for a half hour or so. This particular day I thought, hey Reid needs a bath – let’s have him take a bath with Griffin. He was a bit apprehensive to hold Reid and then pretty quickly Reid squirmed and went under for a quick second. But no worries, back up quickly bathed and all done!
I took many pictures on the 20th, for Reid’s four-month birthday. He moves to quickly that I don’t think I got one photo that didn’t have some part of it blurry! But this collage sums up our quick photo session pretty well.
I’ve begun walking to get some exercise to enjoy the nice weather and to blow off steam once I get home from work. Being gone more than three months has me playing a lot of catch up and there is no shortage of work. Since I’m trying to unbury myself I rarely leave the office so by the end of the day I’m ready for some fresh air! Griffin is loving his new bike and we’ve discovered a Free Library in the neighborhood across Jewett Road. So our new thing is to go on walks and donate/take a book! Jack and the Beanstalk has been Griffin’s favorite bedtime story for a long time now and on our first discovery of the free library what book was in the box? Yep, Jack and the Beanstalk! He was so excited. I felt super accomplished on this morning as we got our walk in before church! 
Some days are just down right tiring. Griffin hasn’t napped since summertime and he rarely falls asleep when he sits or lays down during the day (unlike his Mama, lol). This day was another story, however, as he fell asleep on the dog bed!