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!

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.

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.