Taking down borders, putting up fences...

How is it possible that they keep getting cuter?
Sheridan is a full-fledged crawler now. We have to put the baby gate up to protect her from the stairs and the cat from her. She loves chasing after Fiona, all the while emitting a high-pitched squeal of glee. The cat always runs in fear. Huh, I wonder why? Who could be scared of this cute girl? Oh, only every other kid between the ages of 6 months and 2 years. For some reason, they get very scared when she focuses her laser-beam gaze on them and starts advancing. Perhaps the high-pitched, gleeful emissions frighten them. Perhaps she just looks a little too intense. For whatever reason, before she even gets close to these kids they start crying.
We just had her 7.5 month pictures taken (what?!? not everyone takes 7.5 month pictures of their kids? Nah, you're just out of touch with other parents!) and will post the ADORABLE picts when we get them online. The photographer was far too good and should be fired for taking so many great shots that we were unable to choose thriftily. The burden of having cute kids, huh?

Jack continues to amaze us with how much he's grown, and by how smart he is. Of course, he is going through the indecisive, terrible almost threes (Mommy, I want this. WHY ARE YOU GIVING THAT TO ME AFTER I ASKED FOR IT?!? No, Mommy, please I really want it!). Do all nearly-three-year-olds have bipolar disorder? Because, seriously, I feel like I'm in the house with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Tonight, our neighbor stopped by to invite us to dinner on Wednesday (don't worry, guys, we still have openings to come to your house for dinner Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday). Jack was in the middle of an amazing meltdown--it was bedtime, he hadn't eaten well, and he hadn't napped--when he saw the neighbor. Now, on the way to church today he'd notice that Neighbor had some nice pumpkins. The tantrum froze (tears and all) and he asked so sweetly "Can I have a pumpkin".
WHAT?!? All we have to do is distract the kid with a pumpkin and the tantrum is over? Hmmmm.....
Meanwhile, Grammy sent Jack some COWBOY BOOTS! This is an exceptionally great time to do so since Jack has just discovered Toy Story. The above picture is (what must be) his juxtaposition of Buzz and Woody. Naked.
And, finally, Jack can tell you that his birthday is November Fifth and he'll be Three. He was recently pouring over the Toys-R-Us ad from the paper. I swear, he looked at the page with trains on if for 15 minutes (which is his max attention span for anything other than TV). Don't tell him, but we will be getting him a train for his birthday. Lucky kid.
Finally, the house continues to devour any "free time" we ever thought we had. Of the 50 projects we'd planned to do in September we completed 30. Since there are only 16 projects on tap for October, we might complete the other 20 this next month. Probably not!
Still no open house scheduled, but please contact us if you want a private tour. We have a wonderful 2-year-old tour guide (hint: he'll show you his toy room first and try to convince to you build something with him).
The borders in our house are all gone, bar the one in Jack's room. I finally found that I was supposed to prime over the rub on borders. They look much better now.