cat, i'm a kitty cat

and i meow meow meow and i meow meow meow.

actually violet doesn't meow yet. her only real animal sound thus far is panting like a dog. kevin taught her that one a few months ago, and he begs her to perform it for everyone we see. she snubs him every time. she is not one for public performance but of course loves to ham it up at home.

as aforementioned, we failed to buy a carving pumpkin at the real pumpkin patch, so we paid quadruple price at the parking lot patch near our house. i don't regret a thing. a couple of weeks ago, violet hadn't taken a full-fledged step outside the safety of home or school, but by this past sunday, she was walking up and down the aisles of pumpkins. kevin and i ate it up like the mushy-mushes that we've become.



increasingly aware of her ability to hypnotize us with cuteness, violet first requested these two pumpkins.



until she laid her eyes on these.



because kevin and i are already total pros at "setting boundaries" (known to those outside our house as "distraction technique"), we only bought one carving pumpkin (for the price of four). despite my still ailing hand

(i don't think i've yet shared the tale of how i crushed my right hand in my own power window... or the story of another day when i rear-ended a 2011 hybrid escalade on my morning commute... or many other details of how my once minor klutziness has bloomed like the chernobyl cloud)

i managed to get that pumpkin carved on sunday night at 10pm. i don't know if violet (or anyone for that matter) could recognize the likeness of a furry blue sugar junkie, but she seemed to enjoy the newly illuminated pumpkin. or "puh" as she calls them.





kevin has all of the trick-or-treating photos on his phone, so i'll have to get those from him to post. violet was a little intimidated on the doorsteps of neighbors, but she was thoroughly fascinated by the bigger kids running around in costume. while a few visiting toddlers got a good halloween scare on our doorstep by the hounds of hell barking from behind their gate, violet's biggest thrill was seeing barking dogs behind gates in other houses. the neighbors would be offering her a bowl of candy, and she would completely ignore them while grinning broadly and doing her waving-at-myself wave at the dogs. "hhhhi dahhh" is her first two-word phrase. (meanwhile, kevin or i would eagerly offer violet's bag for the filling. "hello, first-time parents," one man greeted us. well, if anyone needs candy...)

our own energizer kitty clearly does not need candy, but we let her eat a kit kat anyway. c'mon, a kitty cat eating kit kat? who can resist that photo op?





and in case you've got a sweet tooth like mine and need even more sugar, here's a sample of what we hear about a thousand times a day around our house:



and for your halloween pleasure, evil laugh: