The Wills Family

This is the cutest tradition! Last week the "elf" appeared on a shelf in our living room. He "watches" Harper to make sure she is being nice, and each night he reports back to Santa. Every morning he is in a new spot and Harper has to find him. She runs through the living room shouting "Pelf on Self!" We're pretty sure she understands the concept because she says "pelf on self watch Harper." I don't think she gets the Santa part yet, but we'll do it again next year!

http://www.elfontheshelf.com

Two weekends ago we traveled to Black Mountain, NC, just outside of Asheville, to visit Harper and Roman's great-grandma Abie. Harper and Roman and I drove down to Charlottesville on Thursday night to celebrate La La's birthday, then the four of us (with La La in tow for back-seat entertainment) drove to Black Mountain on Friday. The kids were amazingly well-behaved in the car. Roman literally slept the entire way, only waking up briefly at Wendy's to have a bottle. Harper colored and watched The Little Einsteins ("Rocket") for 4 hours straight, then napped for the last hour of the trip. Portman flew to Asheville after work on Friday and we picked him up after dinner.

The weekend featured gorgeous fall weather and the leaves were only a few days past their "peak colors." On Saturday we showed Portman around Montreat, then Portman and I went to the Biltmore while La La and Abie played with the kids. Saturday was the first day of the Biltmore's Christmas season, so the house was completely decorated for the holidays. This was Portman's first visit to the Biltmore and he was shocked at how beautiful it is. We both agreed that it is more spectacular than any of the castles that we've visited in Europe!

Apparently there was some sort of Corvette convention in Asheville and Saturday was the day that they all visited the Biltmore. There were literally hundreds of Corvette's in the parking lot, so we took the opportunity to park Abie's 1995 Toyota Corolla right in the middle of a line of them!

View from the back of the house:

On Saturday night we celebrated La La's birthday at the Red Rocker Inn, our favorite southern eatery in Black Mountain. The food was everything you could hope for in a home-cooked southern meal. Portman and I stayed at the Red Rocker both Saturday and Sunday nights and enjoyed our first time away from the kids together in almost a year! As you might guess, the front porch of the Red Rocker Inn features... red rockers.

Finally, on Sunday Portman and I took Harper into Asheville to visit "The Health Adventure," which is the Asheville children's museum. It was honestly the best kid's museum we have ever seen. It was full of all sorts of hands-on projects for the kids to explore, and we got lucky and caught the special Curious George exhibit! There was a huge room with slides, dress ups, dolls, a kitchen and more that was just for kids under 5. I can't even begin to describe how much fun this museum was!

Harper's favorite things at Abie's house were the "bu bird" and her "sopping cart:"

It took us 30 minutes to get ready to go on a walk today. Here's why:

Equipment required:

• 1 double stroller (stored in car)
• 2 sleeping bags for stroller
• 2 fleece pullovers
• 2 winter coats
• 1 "baby bunting" bear suit
• 2 hats
• 1 juice cup
• 5 'Nilla Wafers in a pumpkin baggie... regular zip-loc does not satisfy
• 1 water bottle
• 1 cell phone

The plus-side was that I got some exercise and RoRo was super cute in his bear suit. The bear suit was a gift that I got for Harper but it was way too big for her in the winter. It fits Ro perfectly and is great for chilly days like today!

Just 2 days shy of his 4-month birthday, Roman achieved some major milestones. To start off, yesterday he rolled over twice on his own! Both times he was asleep and when we went to get him up he was on a different side... so Harper definitely wasn't responsible for his accomplishment! Second, he has discovered his toes and is very entertained by them. I tried to get a photo of him playing with them, but every time he sees me he stops playing and smiles. So here's a picture of him smiling instead!

Finally, my favorite milestone...drum-roll.... last night he slept through the night for the FIRST time! He went to sleep at 7 as usual, Portman fed him at 11:30, and the next time he woke up was 7:30 AM! Hopefully this is the beginning of a new chapter in his sleeping career.

We have had a very exciting morning. A few hours ago our piano was delivered! Portman's mom is going to be downsizing soon, and she graciously gave us her antique baby grand piano. It is a c1900 Hopkinson (London) piano that Portman grew up playing. His mom bought it at an auction in London when they lived there and it followed them to the US when they moved here in 1996. Portman plays beautifully but is very modest about it, so I am excited for him to get back into the habit. Harper has been banging on it all morning - maybe a sign of musical talent, or just a love for loud noises!

We're not sure if the piano has been tuned since it was shipped here from the UK over 10 years ago, hence the title of this post. It is so incredibly out-of-tune that Portman refuses to touch a key! Also it was possibly damaged in a separate move, so I've scheduled a tuner/repairman to take a look at it. I was surprised to learn that I had to call a special "antiques" tuner - I guess there are some people that specialize in old pianos? Unfortunately it has to "season" in our house for 2 weeks before he will look at it, so until then we will have to endure Harper's tune-less concerts.  

Last weekend we went down to Charlottesville for UVA's Halloween on the Lawn. Unlike last year when we just dressed up Harper and stuck her in a pile of leaves to take photos, this year she totally "got" Halloween... well at least she "got" the candy part! Harper proudly marched up to several Lawn rooms and announced "ticka-teet!" and then plopped herself right down on the sidewalk to eat her spoils. She didn't quite understand that you are supposed to keep trick-or-treating... she just wanted to eat her candy right then and there! RoRo made a very cute cow and managed to stay awake for most of the event.

Uncle Jonathan joined us once again, and Yuke, Yeesha and Charlie were there to ring in the sugar-high. Dave, Jenn and Katelyn made the trek to Cville all the way from Cincinnati, and "Kiki" and Harper had way too much candy and closed down the Lawn. At one point they were chasing each other in a circle yelling "monkey! butterfly!"

Towards the end of the evening I looked in Harper's Halloween bucket and noticed an overwhelming amount of candy that had a bite taken out of it... and was still in the wrapper. Yup, that's how much she likes candy. All of the photos are up on Smugmug for your viewing pleasure.

A few weeks ago Portman and Harper started singing the "night night song." It is to the tune of "twinkle-twinkle" and goes like this: night-night Harper, night-night Mommy, night-night Daddy, night-night RoRo... and so on. As Portman sings, she starts listing all of the things she wants to sing night-night to, such as mimi (her lamb), beebee (pacifier), firetruck and Charlie, and Portman has to include them in the song. Well, lately she has gotten very specific about who and what we should sing night-night to. Her requests over the weekend included: "outside pumpkin," "Kiki butterfly," "outside PopPop," "Harper monkey," "football horsie" (the UVA Cavalier horse), and "choc milk." I thought that was pretty cute until this afternoon's nap when she insisted that I sing night-night to "Starbucks!" Clearly we need to get a coffee maker...

Over the weekend we took some video of the kids in the tub. This is a typical bath-time scene in the Wills house... completely chaotic! Harper likes to sing and make as big a mess as possible, and RoRo likes to kick.... REALLY likes to kick. Perhaps he will be the next swimmer in the family?! When he's older, I'm sure he will hate me for posting this.

Last night we went to Boo at the Zoo with our friends Ryan, Rebecca, Logan and Jett. This was our first year trick-or-treating the zoo and well, it was "a zoo!" It was very, very crowded, but it was still fun to see thousands of little kids screaming through the Zoo from treat station to treat station. The Zoo did an excellent job with the event and we got to see all of our favorite animals plus some special "extras."

Harper and Logan started off the night actually trick-or-treating, but quickly learned that it was much easier for them to just sit in the wagon while one of us trick-or-treated for them and delivered the goods. I'm pretty sure Harper spent the first hour just eating, with the exception of our stop at the Panda habitat where she was, of course, very excited to get out and look at the bears.

There were quite a few special animal events which were very cool to see. Harper's favorite was watching the elephants stomp on pumpkins (she has been talking about it all day today), and my favorites were getting to see the tiger being fed and the lionesses play with a ball. It was awesome to see them pouncing on the ball, but pretty clear to us that they could jump right out of those habitats if they wanted to!

Harper was so exhausted by the end of the evening that we turned her wagon into a bed and just let her lie down. When we got home, we walked in the door and she politely asked "night night, please!" This morning she woke up and was asking about "baby Jett," "Yogun" (Logan), "elephant pumpkin," and "hippo...water." We're pretty sure she enjoyed her first Boo at the Zoo!

Roman wore a cow suit but declined trick-or-treating in lieu of sleeping in the Baby Bjorn. He was very cute, but my back was killing me after wearing a baby cow around all night!

We were planning on going to Air and Scare at the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum today, but we are all exhausted from last night. I think we'll just stay in our PJ's and enjoy the rainy day.

We've been so busy this week that I haven't had a chance to write about our fun fall weekend. We celebrated Ro's 3-month birthday last weekend with lots of family events. The weather was cool and beautiful and it was nice to spend most of the weekend outside! On Saturday we had a session with a local artist who makes paintings out of kids' handprints and footprints. RoRo did a footprint (obviously - he still keeps his fists balled up most of the time), which will be painted into a frog prince, and Harper did a handprint, which will be painted into a pink and purple stegosaurus. The paintings won't be finished for a couple of weeks and I am just dying to see the results! For anyone else in the DC area, here is a link to the artist's website - That's Adorable LLC - we had a great experience and I think it is such a neat way to preserve your children's little hands and feet!

Harper took a record-breaking 4 and a half hour nap on Saturday, so we didn't hesitate to head into Georgetown and have a later dinner. What we did not know was that it was Georgetown University's Family Weekend, so it was insanely crowded and more stressful than fun. We still enjoyed some Old Glory BBQ and Haagen Daz, but vowed to never go to Georgetown during the school year again!

On Sunday we went to the Burke Pumpkin Playground (which is a mere mile-and-a-half from our house!) and spent several hours chasing after Harper. She had a gigantic smile on her face the entire time and was shrieking with joy. She even went down the big slides by herself! The slides, animals, and rides were fun, but we're pretty sure that we could have just stuck her in the pumpkin patch and she would have been just as happy. She is obsessed with pumpkins right now and wanted to touch every single one. The only thing she did not partake in was the pony ride, even though daddy paid for it ahead of time (non-refundable, thanks). She wanted absolutely nothing to do with the real ponies, but wanted to ride the carousel "horsies" over and over again! There are tons more pictures on Smugmug.

We rounded out the weekend with dinner at Lauriol Plaza with Jenn, Dave and Katelyn. We had the perfect table with a long bench backed up against a window-sill that basically formed a playpen for the girls. The girls romped through a two-and-a-half hour dinner and didn't complain once! Several margaritas later we realized that it was 9 pm and we should probably get them to bed! The "playpen" was pretty destroyed, but "Kiki" and Harper had a blast together... if only they didn't live in Cincinnati now and we could do this every Sunday!