January 18, 2008 ~ kid 2 is 1

Kid 2 is one now. Someone want to tell me where the last year went? I seem to be missing everything between, oh February and November.

The Friday before his birthday, I took both boys to the doctor for checkups. Dermot for his one year well-kid checkup and Gavin for a checkup in preparation for his dental work this week (more on that later). Gavin is 42.5 pounds and 41 inches tall, while Dermot is 30.5 inches tall and only 20#14 - a little string bean! At one, Gavin was a good 25 pounds.

We celebrated Dermot's birthday on Saturday, two days early. It was a quiet party with family, very nice. We were happy to witness an actual cake mushing, very unlike Gavin's first birthday where he barely touched the cake. Monday, the actual day of Dermot's birth, was nice and quiet too. Reliving his birth was wonderful. It's something I've done many times in the past year, but it was especially powerful this time. I wish there was a way to share the amazing feeling I have in remembering his birth - the power and strength of the birth, of me, of Jason and I working together. I wish there was a way to share the impact this birth had on me and the way it has shaped my personal growth over the past year. It was truly a blessed event!

Happy birthday my baby boy!

January 10, 2008 ~ Help me help a friend!

I have a friend who is the finalist in a contest to win $50K in business start up costs. She and her family are going to open a business called Cafe and Play, a family friendship restaurant that serves good food and has a nice play area. Please help me help her. The contest will be decided by votes from the public. You can vote once a day between now and the end of January. Please help!
http://jumpup.intuit.com/start/?cert=956.qp8jaH1lCgu

Edited later to add: Apparently I'm a little forgetful of the fact that you all can't read my mind, and therefore don't know the name of my friend. Sorry about that. Her user name on the site is aderouch, and their business is called cafe and play.

January 01, 2008 ~ happy new year!

Happy New Year to all.

We had a really nice holiday season, both Christmas and New Year's. On Christmas we stayed at home all day and had a quiet family day. Gavin was so excited about Christmas this year. I don't think he really understood why he was excited in the days leading up to Christmas, but he was. Then on Christmas morning, instead of being freaked out by the appearance of presents under the tree, like last year (we guess that he was scared at the idea of a strange man - Santa - coming into the house), he was overjoyed.

Dermot naturally didn't care a whole lot about Christmas. He was curious about the tree after we put it up, but after a few times of us saying no when he would touch the ornaments or the tree, he mostly leaves it alone now. That, as a side note, is a truly amazing, mind-blowing thing. Gavin was (is!) determined and wouldn't stop doing something just because we tell him no. Even as a baby, he would forge ahead with passion and play with the tree (or whatever) despite our admonitions. Jason and I expected that from Dermot also, but he is so different. He would crawl up the tree and point to it, or touch just the tip of a branch and look at me and shake his head. I'd shake my head and say "that's right, no touch", then he would shake his head again. We'd go through this a couple times, but he never did much more than that, and eventually he just left it alone. So. freaking. crazy.

Today we're going to celebrate Christmas with my family, since we didn't do it last week. Everyone is coming over this afternoon and we'll exchange presents and have our traditional New Year's dinner of bratwurst and knackwurst, black eyed peas, & sauerkraut. We almost had a black-eyed pea-less dinner. I couldn't find any at the store a few days ago when I went shopping for today's dinner, and last night we had to go to two grocery stores to find any. We found so many people in the bean aisle looking forlornly at the empty black eyed pea shelves.

December 12, 2007 ~ christmas prep and an old story

We've been busy lately with preparations for Christmas - a little shopping, lots of sewing and knitting on my part, some decorating. Gavin is really excited about Christmas this year. I don't know that he fully understands what it is and why he's excited, but he is oh so excited. For the first time in year I actually put up Christmas decorations, and all because he demanded that we do it. It's a lot of work and I usually wimp out of all but the Christmas tree and maybe a fake pine garland on the banisters. But no, this year he and I put up other things too. Things like statues and candles and whatnot.

We seem to have a pheasant living in our area. This is odd because we don't live out in the country. We don't even live outside the outerbelt. Yet the other morning I looked out and there was a strange bird strutting around the yard. I grabbed my camera and took some pictures. They all turned out really crappy, since my zoom sucks, but thanks to photoshop I was able to crop in closer. According to a google search, it's a ringneck pheasant. Quite interesting. It was lovely. I saw it again this morning, outside out yard in the field behind the house.

Here's a Gavin story I was reminded of today as we were outside putting up lights on the house. Gavin is a very friendly, outgoing kid. He talks to anyone and everyone and regularly peppers complete strangers with questions. He'll crawl over the counter at stores to ask how the cash register works. He opens the windows of the house to ask questions of passers-by on the street outside. You get the idea.

So one night several weeks go, right as the leaves reached their peak color, Gavin noticed that the bush outside our kitchen had turned red. Evidently he had never noticed the bush before because he exclaimed, with much raucous laughter, "Who brought us a new bush?!?!" He continued to gush about our new red bush all evening. The next morning he noticed it all over again. I explained again that it had always been there and that the leaves just changed color. He asked who did it, and I said that autumn did it - autumn fairies. Later that morning we were getting into the car in the garage and he noticed a woman walk by with her dog. He rushes down the driveway, calling after her.

"Hey! We have a red bush! Yeah, it's red and autumn made it red! We have a RED bush!!"

The lady kept on walking. I could tell if she didn't hear him, or if she just didn't know what to say. But either way, I was giggling. I love how the simple things in life give kids the most joy!

November 24, 2007 ~ jumping back in

I'm just going to jump back into posting here. I've been wanting to for months now but feeling like I need to catch up to the last 8 months or however long it's been since I stopped posting. Since I know that's never going to happen I need to just start where we are right now.

So, here are the boys in a picture I took earlier this week. Our leaves finally started turning - odd to have the peak color of autumn happening in mid-November instead of October. Gavin is 3 1/2 now and Dermot is 10 1/2 months. They're both so much fun and amaze us on a daily basis, many times a day. We get a big kick out of how they play together. They sit and laugh at each other, and crawl around and chase each other.

This evening Gavin and I were playing in the front room, drawing with crayons. I had written the word OFF, and Gavin started to write the word too, copying the letters. He got frustrated that his writing was running into other lines on the page, so I wrote the word on a clean piece of paper and handed it to him. I said, there now you can copy it. So he picked up the paper, walked over to the end table and slid the paper under the table while making machine noises, then brought it back to me. There, he said, there's your copy. Huh... that isn't what I meant by copy!

Dermot is starting to copy things too, although not in Gavin's interpretation of the word. He's mimicking sounds that we make, saying "uh-oh" and copying other random noises we make. It sometimes turns into a game where he makes a noise and we mimic him, then he mimics back. He and Jason invented another game today, where they pass a ball back and forth into each other's hands.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. We hosted at our house this year and had my sister and her family, and Jason's mom and sisters and Anita's new baby Logan over for dinner, and were joined by my other sister and her family and my mom. It was a much smaller group than we usually share Thanksgiving with, but it was the perfect number of people for our house. I like our house, but it isn't designed to hold large groups of people.

Gavin started preschool about 5 weeks ago. I had given up hope that he'd get into the school we applied for, the only one we applied to, since they started classes in September and we hadn't gotten a call from them. And yet, a month after classes started I came home to find a message from the school office manager that a spot had opened up for Gavin. I was so thrilled! We started the very next Monday. It is a wonderful school, and even after just 5 weeks has been amazing for Gavin. I am so thankful that we got in.

I need to go now but I promise I'll try to write again sooner than 8 months from now!