Happy Birthday Little Boy!

Well, can you believe it has already been a year since our little baby was born? I can't get over how amazing babies are. They are born as helpless, nearly sightless, hungry little lumps. They can't control their limbs, they can't feed themselves, reach things that they want, or convey their needs any other way but through crying. Slowly they learn to smile, to laugh, to control those flailing limbs. They figure out how to roll from front to back and back to front. They learn the "pincer grasp" and how to sit on their round little bottoms. Crawling gives them freedom, and they suddenly can get the things they want and manipulate them with fingers that actually do what they want them to do. They start to communicate, delighting when people around them actually understand what they are trying to say. Finally, they stand, and eventually take those first tentative steps....all in a few short months. Amazing.




Rowan celebrated his first birthday in style. We had a nice little gathering of family and close friends, enjoying delicious pizza provided by Gramma and Grampy. I made him his own little cake, which he enjoyed destroying with his fork. Some might have even made it into his tummy.



A pile of presents were stacked on the coffee table and he was so happy to realize that they were all for him! (With the exception of a few small gifts for Big Sister, who was very good the entire day!) He ripped and tore, and explored the toys and especially the boxes that they came in.




Finally, the day was done and everyone was glad to get to bed.

I finally captured a bit of Rowan's walking on video. He walks around the house all the time, but for some reason, I never have the camera nearby when he does it. It won't be long before he can walk for real, and I can stop carrying his heavy little butt around!

This birthday is particularly sweet for many reasons. One year ago our sweet baby boy came into the world, and our lives were turned upside down by the nightmare of postpartum anxiety. I can't even begin to describe how awful some of those days and nights were, as we waited desperately for the hormones to subside. Despite feeling terrible for many months, we tried to delight in Rowan's precious infancy as much as possible, although I must admit that in the throws of anxiety, I fear I missed out on many opportunities to cherish those moments that I will never get back. During those trying times, I leaned heavily on my awesome husband, without whom I'm not sure I could have gotten back on my feet. I also learned to lean on God, and that no matter how difficult life becomes, He is always by my side. The important thing is that we survived, and thrived, and I am so very thankful for my precious children!

I am a little sad that this is the last time we will celebrate one of our children turning one year old, but then I think about midnight feedings, and 12 diaper days, and colic, and rocking for hours, and bottles, and the infant carrier, and I am thankful that Rowan is leaving infancy and becoming a little boy. Besides, there will always be babies that need a little snuggle while mama takes a much needed break!

So here's to another great year of firsts! I can't wait to share them with our family and friends!!

Slippery Fish

Lola has been going to preschool for half a year now. I decided that it was time we had a "parent teacher conference"- our first ever! We went and learned all the cool things that Lola gets to do in preschool for three hours every Monday and Tuesday morning. I wish I was in preschool! They sing songs, paint, dance, dress up, and tons of other really great stuff. That night Lola decided to serenade me with one of her favorite preschool songs, Slippery Fish.

The next night we were reading one of her favorite books "Where the Wild Things Are" and we got to the pages where the animals are having the "wild rumpus."

I asked her on each page, "What are they doing here?"

"Dancing!" she yelled.

"How about here?" I asked, turning the page.

"Swinging!" she said.

"How about this page?" I asked, on the final page of the rumpus.

"Humping!!!!" she squealed.

?

I have no idea how she came up with "humping." It was enough to make Daddy lower his newspaper and ask her to repeat herself.

"Humping!" she yelled again.

"Honey, what is humping?" I asked.

"You know, Mom, like this!" and she threw her arms in the air and wiggled them around violently in circles, while simultaneously jumping up and down. OK, weird, and seriously hilarious!

In other news, Rowan's brew is coming right along. Last week it was transferred into a giant glass jug, a process which Rowan thoroughly enjoyed. Tonight it was carefully bottled and put away to await our taste test in about two weeks.

I bought Rowan and Lola a toy in the discount toy aisle, and they LOVE it. It is a big blow up car with tons of little plastic balls to play in. They "drive" it all over the living room. You know who else loves it? Wil. He loves how I continually add to the toy explosion that has become our living room. I know he does!

Lastly, we went on an awesome weekend getaway to a local indoor waterpark with friends. It was an absolute blast. The hotel was nice, and the water was nicer. The kids loved going down the fun waterslides, and even Rowan splashed in the kiddie area. I don't have any water pics, as I was afraid I would lose my camera in all the commotion. Sunday morning the girls decided to do their own makeup with Lola's toy makeup kit. Let me just tell ya, Princess Pink lipstick does not come out of blonde hair...even when exposed to high levels of chlorine and rapid rides down water slides. My daughter is going to school as a punk rocker in the morning!

Rowan has decided to learn the stairs. After a few controlled tumbles, he is starting to get the hang of it!

Well, I am exhausted, and it will be awesome to sleep in my own bed tonight. Yeah!

The soothing sounds of fermenting beer

The soft burbling of beer gently fermenting is enough to soothe anyone to sleep. Lucky for Rowan, he gets to listen to this for several days. Wil received a beer brewing kit for Christmas, and was anxious to create his first brew. Unfortunately, the beer needed to ferment in a nice warm room. Our house is not known for its tropical temperatures, especially at night. He thought and thought about where he could put his precious brew during its most tender growing period. Ah ha! Rowan's room stays a balmy 70 degrees since the addition of his oil heater. What better place to brew beer than the baby's room? Lucky kid. Not many babies have a brewery in their closet!

Welcome to our Nursery/Brewery

Forteen....Nineteen......Schmortyteen.....

Lola can count to 14 on a good day. After that, she can count to 20 as long as someone is counting with her. The other day we were in the bathroom getting ready to leave the house and she had spread out several little plastic bracelets on the floor. She counted them easily up to 10, but then seemed to lose steam, stumbling on to 14, then up to 19, then....schmortyteen. I'm not sure how many bracelets it takes to make schmortyteen, but it must be an awful lot!

I have been working so much lately, that I was ecstatic to have 5 days off in a row this last week. I planned at least one outing each day that I had off, savoring even my trip to the grocery store with both children wiggling in the shopping cart. On Thursday we drove about 60 miles to visit the "Jumping Place". This ingenious play place is basically a warehouse filled with those huge inflatable playhouses that you often see at fairs and carnivals. The lady at the front desk sold us an hour of playtime, assuring us that it would be plenty to wear Lola out.


Lola didn't know what to do first. She spent her entire hour running, jumping and zinging around the warehouse like a pinball in a pinball machine. Even Daddy got into the act, taking both kids down the slides and through the bounce houses. I braved the wobbly ladder to go with them down the big slide after much pleading and begging from Lola. Later, Gramma and Grampa came to meet us there, and I think they enjoyed the bounce houses as much as Lola did!



After our hour was up, Lola was still ricocheting around the room, much to the amazement of the front desk lady, who had previously assured us that an hour would be enough. We coaxed the little wild thing out of the bounce house by promising her pizza for lunch. The pizza place advertised a "gigantic ball crawl" which we thought would keep Lola busy after lunch while we all chatted. I used to think that day care was the true cesspool of disease, but that was before I met the "gigantic ball crawl." I'm pretty sure that there might have been fossils from small prehistoric mammals buried in the lower layers of the ball crawl, which was nothing more than a huge plywood box filled with ancient plastic balls. Floating amongst the sea of dirty spheres were lovely artifacts such as petrified breadsticks, shoes lonely for their mates, and bits of napkin and peperoni. Of course I imagined used heroin syringes, toenail clippings, bandaids, and other foul objects swiming in the deeper layers. Needless to say, Lola did not get to play in the "gigantic ball crawl", and instead spent her time wasting Gramma's quarters on the dumb merri-go-round and the lame Dino the Dinsoaur ride.

Overall the day was great. I fell asleep on the ride home, along with the exhausted kids, leaving poor Wil to drive alone. I woke up just in time to see a huge mama moose and her gigantic baby trotting alongside the road. The moose allowed us to stop the car, roll down the windows and snap a few great pictures. Wil jokingly suggested that I get out for a closer shot. I decided that this would be less than smart, and that the pictures I got from the car would have to do.

This was a welcome change from the last few weeks of work. Last week, the snow melted so suddenly that the rivers filled up too fast and resulted in flooding in our area. We watched nervously as the water got higher and higher, eventually reaching the first step of the clinic, and threatening to enter the kennel building. Luckily Wil brought us a pump, and we were able to keep the back door open for the appointments with a combination of pumping water, levies, and channels.

Finally, Rowan took a step! He has repeated this feat several times, but now he thinks it is super funny to take one step and then launch himself into my arms. He knows that I will never drop him, so he won't ever take more than one or two steps before the lazy little poop falls giggling into my lap. Of course I have not been able to capture this elusive behavior on film, but I'm sure I soon will. Only one more month until the little guy is a year old! I can't believe how fast this year has gone by.

Princess Anna Bananaboat

Yesterday I was hopping the baby gate on my way into the kitchen, when I saw my big black cat at the door wanting in. I reached out to open the door, not realizing that he was packing a passenger. A feathery passenger. I'm not sure you all know just how I feel about birds, but lets just say my general attitude is "look, but don't touch." Birds simultaneously gross me out and fascinate me, with their little beady eyes and pokey beaks, and scaley little bird legs. I like birds, but at a distance, or close up on my terms. Anyway, back to the story. So I let the cat in and he promptly drops, not just a little sparrow, but a freakin quail at my feet. I realize too late that the quail is alive and kicking. It takes off like a shot, careening off my feet and back out the door. Whew, you might think, it is all over. But no, as I watched the horror of four hungry cats chasing the little wounded quail across my porch, my veterinary instincts kicked in.

"Stop it you damn cats!" I yelled, running out into the snow in only my socks. I chased the cats, chasing the quail, all along our deck and into the driveway. My three legged cat, perhaps thinking that this was some kind of awesome kitty special olympics, dove after the quail in a burst of speed I didn't think he was capable of. He trapped the poor thing under a pile of brush in the snow. Thinking that the quail might be safe for a moment, I ran back into the house to get some boots. My bewildered children looked at me like I might have finally gone looney as I ran back outside, coatless to flush the quail out of the brush. It burst out and ran into my garage. The door was frozen shut, apparently only opening enough to allow passage of small game birds. I tore back in the house, found a flashlight, and hunted down the unhappy bird in the garage, finally (ick) capturingn it by the tail feathers, and placing it in a box while the household settled down. As this was all happening, both my phones were ringing and Rowan was screaming for attention. The bird deserved better than that chaos!

Later that night after Wil arrived home, I peaked at the little bird, expecting her to be dead. Yes, it was a her, because the little ding-a-ling on her head was smaller than some of the other quail in our yard, so I am assuming that she was a girl. I decided that since she was still alive, she deserved some medical attention.

And that is how "Princess Anna Bananaboat" (don't ask) was transported emergency to the clinic at 7:30 pm during a small snowstorm. Her skin was torn in several places, but she survived anesthesia and surgery to repair her wounds. I put the tough little nut on a heating pad and left her there for the night. In the morning, she was still alive. Sadly though, she passed away in my hands during her antibiotic treatment a few hours later.

I learned a few things from the short life of Princess Anna Bananaboat. One is that if you are a quail and you don't see a huge black cat stalking you in 2 foot deep snow, you might have an evolutionary flaw. The other is that despite being squeemish about birds, I was able to overcome the ickies to try to save her. This was a real profound moment for me, as lately my job has become stressful and I was begining to wonder if I was suffering from compassion fatigue. This one little quail recharged my comitment to my career, and I will never forget her.

My son, the ice cream freak

When Lola was about 9 or 10 months old, Wil and I used to set up obstacle courses through the living room for her to navigate. She would crawl with purpose around toys, through pillow tunnels, and even stand at the couch to squeeze her body through a narrow passage. Why, you might ask, would she be so driven as to put up with such parental silliness? One simple answer, two simple words:

Ice Cream.

Lola loves ice cream. She always has. It must run in the family, because we have discovered a similar genetic trait in her brother. Rowan will all but walk to get a taste of frozen deliciousness. We haven't taken it to the extreme that we did with Lola, partially because our living room is already an obstacle course of toys, books, and ripped up newspaper pages. Here is a video of Rowan in his quest for ice cream.

Enjoy!

Lola, amateur photographer

Lola received a digital camera for Christmas. At first she just pressed the buttons randomly, pointing the camera at various inanimate objects. Now, she presses the buttons randomly, while pointing at inanimate objects, but she has a purpose!

CLICK!

"Look Mommy! I took a picture of the chair!"

CLICK!

"Look Mommy! I took a picture of the chair again! This one is really great!"


For your viewing pleasure, I now present a selection of Lola's photos.

This one is entitled "The Chair"



Here is "Black Cat Walking Rapidly Away From Three-year-old Wielding Camera"


I particularly like "Mommy Look This Way, hee hee hee heeeee!"



Here is "Mommy, Rowan Has a Fruity Fruit Stuck to His Butt"





"Random Metal Pole From Gramma's House" is a nice study in lighting





"Coffee Table Up Extremely Close"





And finally, her crowning achievement to date, "Hippity Hop"

Her career is off to a great start! I look forward to future photos. Seriously though, she is pretty cute with her little V-Tech camera, especially when concentrating so hard on looking through the viewfinder that she backs into things...

I will post more photos as they come!