Fall in pictures

August brought a fourth birthday for Eytan (although he didn't seem to want to be the center of birthday attention so, at his request, we pretended it was Li'el's birthday),

an opportunity for duckie to sunbathe,

a visit from Saba and Safta,

nectarines,

and new student orientation for my program, which has come to involve cleaning out the goat pen.

In September, Malki and Frosty had babies -- all four born on Rosh Hashanah, and appropriately named Shana, Tova, Dvash, and Pooh.

Dairy class field trips began...

Butter being wrapped

and the kids all settled into new daycares, where, look!, they go outside even in the rain!  (Li'el and Eytan's new school is really great, lots of outdoor time, and Oren's is okay too (he's too young for the other place, til next year, but is right near Mike's work)).

One day, when we were cleaning up the dining room, Eytan found an egg on the floor.  Weird, I thought, did one of the kids take an egg out of the fridge and put it on the floor?  And then I remembered that our screen door doesn't always close all the way.

Turned out one of the chickens had started coming in the house to make deliveries.  Which is actually pretty awesome, and she even pecked up the little pieces of dirt too while she was around.  Would have been a great deal, actually, if she were potty trained.

In October, we built a Sukkah (Sukkot started in September this year, but we were late :)),

and I went to D.C. with my policy class and saw some old grad school friends (note, despite the size difference, Oren is 5 months younger than the other baby in the picture).

And then the semester got really busy and I ran out of time (but I think I'm back to a little better again now).  Mike ran out of time too, so Eytan and Li'el and I have taken to having little weekend outings while Oren naps so that Mike can get his teaching prep done.  These pictures of them and outings sort of track the progression of fall.

Kids in portable goat shelter

 

Kids on riding lawnmowers outside of Lowe's

Kids on swing near my office

Kids at birthday party of a school friend

Kids in leaves near playground

Eytan and Li'el these days, go back and forth between playing really nicely together, and playing not so nicely together.  Eytan goads or micromanages, and Li'el goes with it until she gets fed up, and then Eytan feels hurt, but hasn't really figured out yet that he's provoking this reaction.  Some of it is age too, like Eytan suggests hide and seek, and when it's Li'el's turn to hide she tells us all exactly where she is, to Eytan's frustration.  

Oren has remained pretty independent, i.e. as the only one of our kids who, even as a baby,  seems fairly happy playing on his own for short spurts of time -- the other kids do it sometimes, but they rarely did as babies.  He has also become really mobile (I'll try to get pictures of crawling for next time), and quite talkative (his first word seems to be "hi").

And now, somehow, we're past Thanksgiving and heading into winter.  So I'll try to have less of a gap from now til next time.