Fall fun: wild and free style

After the Halloween costume parade at Ethan's school, the twins and I went to one of our beautiful and very close metro parks. This particular one is known for it's gardens and does not have a playground (that I know of at least). I LOVE this park. I also thought that maybe I could get some good photos of the kids (any of the kids actually) that I have been longing for. But I knew it wasn't really realistic as they are constantly on the move. I thought maybe, just maybe, with only two of them that I had a chance. Albeit slim, but maybe. If not, I knew there would be lots of leaves to run in and paths to explore... or in their case... run like the wild and free children they are.

And I was right. They played in the leaves, ran down the paths, explored the different gardens, watched the stream flow, and generally enjoyed themselves.

I do need to note that Collin was my little defiant child today, refusing to listen to me and instead follow his own paths. Oliver was so cute looking at him and then at me and trying to decide what to do; who to follow. He was 50/50 on being a rebel with Collin. However, something fabulous did happen when Collin decided to finally join me after one of his little renegade missions: he chose the shortest path to me, rather than the actual path. As he shuffled through the thick brush, he said to me: "halp, halp!" As in the word 'help' people! He said HELP. All by himself without it being fed to him, shown to him (with close up mouth movements), requested by him, begged of him, nothing - just all by himself. And appropriately. It may sound small to all of you, but to an apraxic child, that was huge! btw, Collin does know of the word help and we (the speech therapist, Steve and I) have worked with him on it before, so it didn't come out of nowhere with no practice at all. the point though is that he used it without being prompted by me, which at this point for him is very difficult.

Though I managed to get some decent photos, none are great because when you have moving targets it's hard to get it in focus - at least for an amateur at best like me. (trust me, even when it appears in the photo that they might have been still, they were not ever still for more than a nanosecond)

Like I said, all was not lost - they had an absolute blast. Collin had a mini, even if only once, breakthrough word. And I thoroughly enjoyed watching every single moment of their joy.