Patches of pumpkins in a sea of craziness

October has been an extremely hectic month for us. We've spent most of it playing catch up from our trip to Spain and just trying to get back into the swing of things. Jack had a bunch of therapy and preschool sessions to make up both from the trip and from a (thankfully brief) fever he had earlier in the month.

These last couple of weeks, we've been coordinating the transition from his current services through the Regional Center to the school district. This has comprised a series of tests and then meetings with district officials to come up with a plan of action best designed to meet Jack's needs. I'll go into all that more in a later post, but all of these appointments have served to shake us out of our routine. I'll be eager to have things settle back down to "normal," or whatever passes for that around here.

In the midst of all the craziness, however, we did find time to visit a couple of pumpkin patches to get ready for Halloween. Two weekends ago, we went to Bates Nut Farm with a bunch of friends. It was super crowded, but the weather was perfect. We went on a hay ride, picked out pumpkins, and Jack got to ride a pony. I had sworn as we were driving up that I was never going to go on a weekend again. It seriously took us at least half an hour to get through the last two and a half miles to the pumpkin patch. But thinking back on it, it was actually all the weekend-y activities they had that made it so much fun. So I think next year, we'll just try to go a little earlier in the day to avoid the worst of the traffic.

The Friday after that, we went to Oma's Pumpkin Patch with some other friends. It was HOT that day. They had a great petting zoo, though, and Jack had a wonderful time tackling and teasing all the livestock.


His favorite part of the pumpkin patch was probably the giant trough sink they had for all the kids to wash their hands after petting the animals. He kept wanting to go back to wash his hands over and over again. I hope it was just because he was hot and the water was cool and not a sign of a budding OCD.

They also had this big hill of cottonseed that they let kids sled down in little saucers. Jack did NOT get the concept of sledding. He would sit down on the little saucer, go about one foot down the hill, and then let go and slide off the sled. That's right, Jack, sledding - and skiing and anything else you would ever want to do in the snow - is completely overrated. Stay in Southern California with your mama.

Our friends very sensibly left around noon, when it was "only" 97 degrees. But Jack wanted to go on the hay ride, which was another half an hour wait. The hay ride took us on a tour of the farm's cow barn, where we learned that all the cottonseed all those kids have been sledding on along with who knows what may have fallen out of their pockets gets fed to the cows after the pumpkin patch season is over. So just another reason I'm glad we're vegetarians, I guess.

As we were driving past some of the cows in the field, inhaling the aromas of a typical farm, Jack wrinkled his nose and said, "It smells like camels." Haha. My city boy has clearly spent more time at the zoo than he has on a farm. By the time we picked out our pumpkin and left, my car thermometer said it was 101 degrees.


We have one more frantic week left in October, and then we cap it all off with a Halloween bash to celebrate my little pumpkin's third birthday.