Baby, Halloween and NFL

Lyn's post

Hello everyone,

Firstly and most excitingly, Mandy has had a baby. Beautiful Bella was born on Monday 2nd November. I've only seen her on skype but she looks gorgeous. Can't wait to meet her in the flesh and see her Mum, Dad and big brother again.

Halloween

There have been decorataions and hype up for halloween since september, so our expectations for it were pretty high. It did not disappoint. Sam had been to 2 halloween parties the week before and there was a general party atmosphere and people dressed up in mad get ups all week. It felt a bit like the week before christmas except much more American.

On Halloween itself we all dressed up in our fancy dress costumes - Max was Winnie the pooh, Sam was Darth Vader and a Ninja type hero, Tom was a chef and I was a fairy. We went to a children's halloween festival in our local park. There were bubbles, music, big art activities and haystacks to jump around on. It was loads of fun and very cute, seeing all these fairies, ladybirds, witches, astronauts, spidermen jumping around and playing in the hay. Then we went to Central park and went to a pizza restaurant. Michael Douglas came in, ate a pizza and sat on his own at the bar. As we were leaving, a firework display started in the park to celebrate the marathon. We love our fireworks. Then we decided to go and watch the big halloween parade that goes through the Village. The parade was fantastic with brilliant floats and music and truly amazing costumes. The thing that really struck me from the whole day was the absolute enthusiasm and complete lack of self consciousness shown by everyone. I expected the parade to have great costumes, but everyone on the subway train and in the pizza restaurant had obviously put huge amounts of effort into their costumes. The atmosphere at the West 4 subway station was really something. I've never seen so many adults in fancy dress in such a small area in my life - all as happy and excited as can be. I can't imagine anything like that ever happening in London because we would all be too self conscious.

Sam had a lifetime's worth of candy in 1 day. Shops, firestations and just passers by were just giving it to him. He ate toffee for the first time and said, "This sweet is making my mouth work very hard!"

He was a bit disappointed when he went to shops in the days following and no-one was giving out sweets.

Miami Dolphins @ New York Jets

On Sunday, Tom and I went to our first NFL game with Tom's colleague Preston and his lady, Kristin. Preston played American football at school and he was very helpful at explaining the intricacies of the game to me. Tom has been a Dolphins fan for years and was excited to get his first chance to see them live. I was a complete novice. It was loads of fun but felt a lot more serious and passionate than the Yankees game. The ground was full was noisy. The first half was very defensive ending 3-3. The second half even I could follow with touchdowns galore and 49 points scored. The highlight was a 7 minute period of three touchdowns, including two kick off return touchdowns for the Dolphins. Both times he caught the ball and ran 100 yards past every player on the pitch, something that is very rare, and for it to happen twice in one game was an NFL record. You can see it here - even if you have no interest this is worth watching, just for how much fun the man is having! The game was close right up to the end and it could have gone either way, but the Dolphins held on to win 30-25.

Sam and Max

Max is a very sociable little boy. He's recently got very excited about waving and says, "heyho". He likes to wave at people down the street and photos. He also likes Row row row the boat and shouts Wo Wo Wo and rocks back and forwards when he wants to sing the classic. He's desperate to walk and pulls himself up on anything that stays still for longer than a second which can be a bit irritating. He really loves swimming and splashing in the bath. He's beautiful.

Sam quite likes school. The teacher said he is immaculately behaved, very quiet but confident. I'm very proud of my Sam, but I wouldn't call his behaviour immaculate! She recommends play dates so he can make more friends. I've lined him up a list of prospective suitors. Tom and I went to a school parents' pot luck party where we met all the parents of Sam's classmates and we took their phone numbers. Sam loves his teacher too and told me he wants her to come and live with us. He likes it here and loves the fire engines, the lifts, the playgrounds, the towers and the dogs. He does miss people from England though.

We're off to Arizona next weekend. Have a lovely week. Talk soon.

Lots of love
Lyn and Tom xx

p.s. Tom also put a post up today with photos, so keep reading if you haven't seen it yet.