There's no place like Colorado

Hello again friends. Sorry about our absence the last few days. We've been partying in Colorado!!



My grandparents home in Snowmass Village has been my home away from home since they bought the house 20 some years ago. We went there almost every year on our family vacations when I was growing up and Hubby T and I went there for our honeymoon, but this trip was extra special because it was Baby B's first time there!

The reason my whole extended family gathered from all corners of the country this weekend was to celebrate my uncle's 50th birthday. And while I love my uncle tons and tons, I was most excited to give them all a chance to meet Baby B. Look how captivating he is, even when he's doing something as mundane as taking a bath (in the kitchen sink:)



I also got to share some of my favorite parts of Colorado with him (see jacuzzi picture above). We had lunch at Boogie's on Friday, which is a diner that me and my cousins consider a must-go-to whenever we visit. He wasn't so sure about the Oreo milkshake but I think it'll grow on him.



This trip was also his first experience with snow! I will admit that even though I'm thoroughly annoyed that winter seems to have skipped my part of the country this year, I'm glad we don't live somewhere super cold because dealing with a baby in the extreme cold is a hassle. He doesn't fit in his car seat if he wears his coat, so I have to bring the coat and hat and mittens with me whenever we leave the house and then put them on him whenever we get out of the car, even if it's just to talk into a store, because if I don't then I'm the terrible mother who has a baby out in 30 degree weather with no coat, and then take it all off when we get back to the car...whew. It's exhausting.



Oh, and his snow boots! Don't worry, I won't go there, but they're also exhausting. Anyway, Baby B and snow! The first time we pushed him down a little hill on a sled he fell forward and face planted in the snow. He lay there stunned for a second until we got to him and fussed a little when we picked him up, but on the whole he seemed to enjoy the snow.



And that's as far as my story goes for now. Because my camera battery died halfway through the trip. So when I get more pictures from my mom in a couple days I'll finish telling the story of our Colorado adventure. Stay tuned...

Baby B's Love of Reading

Hubby T and I were both big readers as kids. We still read a lot. No matter how tired I am, I can't fall asleep without spending a couple minutes reading. My mom is a librarian. Hubby T's mom is a preschool teacher. Literacy, I suppose you could say, is in our blood.

And I am very please to report that it seems to be in Baby B's blood too!! We have been reading to him for most of his life, but in the last month or so he has become much more engaged with all the books around him. The majority of his books are in his room. For awhile now, one of his favorite activities has been to pull them all out one by one. Some get more attention from him than others before being tossed to the side. They make quite a mess, but I try to stay positive about a mess of books. There are much worse things in the world. And in case you look at the picture below and think, oh that's not so bad, don't be fooled. There was already a whole bin of books dumped out behind the camera before he got to that bin.



After Christmas we rearranged our downstairs furniture and now there's a bookshelf in our family room, where Baby B spends most of his time. We piled a bunch of his books on a shelf that he can reach, in hopes that he will focus on taking those books down and not our books. (We're successful about 70% of the time, so far.)



I wish that words could help you see what I see when Baby B is "playing" with books. (I have no pictures to help because every time the camera comes out, he loses all interest in the books.) He will pick one up and forcefully hand it to us with an expectant expression that says, very matter of factly, "Read this to me now please." Oftentimes he is sitting on his knees, bouncing up and down, again, very expectant. He has a few favorite books, which he will sit through without any trouble. Many times he even laughs when we start reading. My son laughs with delight at reading. How lucky am I?!

I find all this absolutely amazing. His little brain has developed enough to have favorite books and to remember certain parts of the books. Is this normal for all kids his age? I have no idea. But I will still celebrate and encourage it. Baby B's growth continues to be a mysterious and awe-inspiring thing to me. I can only hope that this love of books continues to grow as he grows.

Baby B's Basketball Adventure

One of the perks of living in a small college town is that you can participate in college events. In future years, I imagine us taking our kids to see the musicals the drama department puts on, the Homecoming parade, and, of course, football games. Yesterday, however, a rainy and cold winter day, was perfect for attending a basketball game!


Watching the game, wasn't quite sure what to make of it

Now this wasn't just any old basketball game. This is the game that held the college's annual Tribe Baby Race! During halftime, each baby participating started at the free throw line with one parent while the other parent sat on the half court line with a toy to help entice the baby to move. Not only does Baby B love me a ton, he also loves the iPad and camera I had with me a ton times a thousand. So I was pretty confident that he'd get his little baby butt in gear and leave our "competition" in the dust!



Alas, it was not to be. I knew we might be in trouble when he started resting his head on my shoulder during the first half of the game. (Little guy is teething and hadn't slept well the night before.) Then when we got down on the court and the announcer said "go!" the crowd went wild! You'd think that the team had just won in the last second of the game. I was intimidated by the sound, let alone my very confused little baby.



He didn't move until Hubby T started scooching with him.



At that point another baby had "won," so we were just trying to get him to cross the finish line. My mom told me afterwards that we were the only parents that kept working with our kid to get him to the end; apparently everyone else just gave up. I'd like to think that says something about our parenting, that we'll persevere with our child so that he can finish what he started...or maybe we were just enjoying the the race too much to notice what other people were doing. Either way Baby B got an awesome Griffin mascot doll out of the experience and some proud parents. Go Tribe!

Wisdom of Modern Family

Modern Family is one of our favorite TV shows to watch every week. Did you watch last night? My favorite plot line involved Cam and Mitchell and their three year old little girl Lily. The dilemma was that Lily had, most unfortunately, learned the "f" word. Cam and Mitchell struggle to handle the situation because Cam can't stop himself from laughing whenever Lily does this. Mitchell, however, realizes that this is a terrible reaction to have because it encourages her to say the word again to please her daddy (or so she thinks). This comes back to haunt them later in the episode, when flower girl Lily notices her daddy crying at a wedding. Mitchell realizes that Lily is going to drop the f bomb again to cheer her daddy up but can't stop Cam's blubbering in time. From the front of the church, angelic little Lily curses and everyone, including Hubby T and I, dissolved in laughter.

Oh Mitchell, I feel your pain! This afternoon at lunch I looked up to see this -



Which wasn't so bad, until it went about two inches up...right into his nose. Yes, my son had decided to stick his pretzel stick up his nose. On the one hand, how can you not laugh at that? On the other hand, that's gross! So I don't blame Baby B for being confused that I was shaking my head and telling him no while smiling and laughing at the same time. And, of course, he kept doing it and laughing, which made me laugh even harder. Oh dear. I'm sure this will happen again, and again, and again in the years to come. I've never had a good poker face. The joys of parenthood:)

First Birthday!

Well, Baby B's first birthday has come and gone. And boy was it a wonderful two day celebration! His actual birthday was on Friday, so we started off the day with a special homemade birthday caramel roll. We've never put a piece of food this big in front of him, so he wasn't sure what to make of it at first. But when we lit the candle - oh boy!!



Don't worry, no fingers were burned. Hubby T's blurry arm got there in time, but he did enjoy the roll! (Not the whole roll, not by a long shot. He may be one year old but his tummy's still not that big!!)

After breakfast it was time to get dressed in his birthday outfit, courtesy of his Gigi. As you can see, he was pretty excited about it!!



My mom and sister took the day off of their jobs to come hang with us which was great. Along with tons of birthday hugs and kisses, and a few presents, they brought birthday balloons! At first the boys weren't sure what to make of them but Baby B caught on pretty fast. Every picture of him with a balloon is blurred because he wouldn't stand still with them, they're so fun to shake and bounce around!





Much of the rest of his actual birthday was spent napping (by Baby B) and getting ready for his party (by the rest of us). The biggest project was making his cake!

I made a simple yellow/lemon cake with chocolate icing and decorated it with mini M&Ms. The batter was enough to cook two 9x13 sized cakes, which I was going to stack on top of each other to make a very large layer cake. Then one of the cakes fell after I took them out of the oven. Boo. We ended up cutting the fallen center out of that cake, added two of the sides to the unfallen cake (making one very long rectangle), and used the other two sides to make a mini-cake for us bakers to enjoy after Baby B went to bed. Auntie A was a big help on this project, besides the minor fact that she let Baby B "lick" the icing knife!



Yup, neither one of us made it out of this experiment very clean. Fortunately it was almost bath time, as you can tell by those sleepy eyes! After Baby B went to bed, I finished out his special day with a large glass of wine in front of a warm fire watching a Twilight movie with Auntie A. (So much better than the hospital room I was in 365 days before!)

Phew, this post is getting long and I haven't even gotten to his party yet! Saturday was the party, which included all four of his grandparents and two of his great-grandparents. What a lucky guy. He decided not to nap that morning and started nodding off during his birthday lunch, this has never happened before!!



He woke up as soon as all of us started cracking up at how adorable he looked. Needless to say, cake and presents had to wait until after he napped for awhile. Even though he woke up rested, he still had no idea what to make of his huge cake, so Hubby T and I helped him out.



Baby B is a very methodical eater, so he didn't attack the cake. He poked one finger very gently into the icing, licked it, then poked a little bit more...finally I cut a small piece out for him and then he started getting the hang of it.



He is having a blast with all the presents that he received, pictures of our little future David Beckham kicking his new ball are forthcoming:) I know he won't remember his first birthday but I'm still so glad that so many family members came to celebrate with us. Hopefully what he will subliminally remember is that he is very very loved. So, for one last time (this year anyway)...Happy Birthday Baby B!!

One year

(Baby B turns one tomorrow and I'm feeling rather sentimental. This post is an expression of my motherly gushing. Don't say I didn't warn you. If you want to read instead about how his birthday goes, check back in a couple days when I've finished cleaning birthday cake from every corner of my kitchen!)

My sister gave me Taylor Swift's Speak Now album for Christmas. It's been on shuffle for the last couple weeks with the new Lady Antebellum and Glee albums I also got for Christmas. I was standing at the sink doing dishes tonight, thinking about the baking I need to do tomorrow, the load of laundry I need to do, the family we have coming into town this weekend, how badly the kitchen floor needs to be cleaned, how tired I am of doing dishes by 6:30 at night...you get the picture.

Then this song came on, called Never Grow Up. It's a soft, lullaby sounding song that revolves around the chorus of,

"Oh darling, don't you ever grow up,
Don't you ever grow up, just stay this little..."

This refrain strikes me every time I hear it because part of me wants just that. Stop growing Baby B! The baby ways you feed yourself, the way you wave goodbye, the way you hold onto your legs while I change your diaper, the ways you laugh and "talk" to me, it's all so precious! Baby B is so wonderful just as he is.

Yet at the same time, I also hear this song and think, no way, he has to grow up! All of my hopes for him depend on him doing just that. I have pictures in my head of him playing ball with Hubby T in the backyard, swimming in our neighborhood pool, walking, talking, and maybe (just maybe) even learning to sit still in our laps while we read a story...and that's all for only the next year!

What a conundrum. I suppose this is another lesson I am learning in parenting. You can't hold onto them, no matter how much you may want to. But you can enjoy every minute of the ride (and take a bazillion pictures along the way!) I'll post pictures and the story of his first birthday in a couple days when we've recovered. We've got some celebrating to do!!

A good afternoon for pictures

This afternoon was one of those times when I had a chance to curl up in Baby B's rocker recliner and watch the boys play on their own for a few minutes. I consider these moments Mommy "nap time." They mostly happen when Baby B and Baby D decide to boycott their nap times. (Just to be clear, no napping actually occurred on my part. Just sitting above the fray un-accosted by baby drool and boogers for a couple minutes, well, mostly un-accosted.)

Sometimes during times like these I pick up the camera and just start snapping because that's the beauty of digital cameras, you can take a bazillion pictures and maybe a couple will turn out good (and if not, you can delete them!) Now I'm not professional photographer, and I am more than a little biased about the subject of these pictures, but I like how they turned out.



This almost captures one of Baby B's new smiles, where he curls his top lip into his gum. Not sure why, but it's cute.



I am baby. See me drool. And make funny sounds with all the spit.




I love this picture. It's our new computer background because it's even better super sized. Such a beautiful face (and no red eye this time, victory!!)



And of course, this guy was crawling around too. Contrary to the look on his face, he did have a fun time with us today. I think he may have been frowning because this clown was crawling all over his feet.



He was peeking at me from under the foot rest, in case you're confused.

Here's to more nap times (or lack thereof) tomorrow!!

Thoughts of a Novice Gardener

Last year when I started staying home full time, one of the projects I decided to tackle was gardening. I have never been very enthusiastic about yard work. (My parents would call that a major understatement.) But when we bought our house, Hubby T and I decided that we wanted to do at least enough to make our yard look presentable. Our front flower bed did pretty well last summer so this spring I am going to take the plunge and try vegetables in the back!

For Christmas I asked for gardening supplies and was deluged by my family with gardening gloves, trowels, kneeling pads, and a great frame for my above the ground vegetable patch. Part of my other motivation in planting this garden is to cover up some of the dead space in our backyard, which won't even grow weeds, so the frame was a necessity. I'm hoping the roots of my veggies won't need to grow much deeper than the depth of the frame, otherwise I'm doomed!

To provide me with some inspiration, I also asked for the book The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for A Year by Spring Warren. The title pretty much sums up the book, it's the story of a northern California woman who turned her yard into a small farm and fed her family with her crops. The biggest take away I got from the book is that there is a big difference between a farm and a garden, and I am definitely waaay less ambitious than this author. This woman creates her own dirt; did you know that rabbit manure is an important part of homemade soil? Yea, that won't be happening in my yard. She created several different irrigation systems to try and water her different beds exactly the right amount. I'm pretty sure one watering can will be good enough for me. In an attempt to take advantage of every possible source of food from her farm, she even captured the snails in her garden, prepared them for human consumption, and ate them (with copious amounts of wine). I don't think words can express how much I will never have a desire to do that. I'll spare you the details of how the snails were prepared for eating, it's completely disgusting.

So what did I learn from this woman's farming experiment? Good soil matters. Planting at the right time of year matters. Bugs can be your friend, or they can be your greatest enemy. I also have a lot of research to do. My goal is to set up the frame in February, start looking for bagged soil sales, and be ready to plant in late March/early April (assuming that's the right time to plant what I want to plant). And what do I plan to plant? Well, that's a good question, which I also need to research! Maybe I should post this and get working!

If you have any suggestions for growing vegetables and herbs in the mid-Atlantic, please send them my way. Hopefully this whole project won't be a big bust. We'll know in a few months!

My growing boy

Although work started again for Hubby T on Tuesday, I've had the last two days "off" because Baby D has been home sick (poor guy). The upside is that I've had two awesome days of quality one-on-one time with Baby B! When we were driving home from our holiday trips, Hubby T and I agreed that our little boy seemed to have grown up a little bit more just in the two weeks we were on vacation together. And it's true, this 11 months and 3 weeks old little guy is no longer a little bundle of joy - he's an almost toddler of joy!


(In case you were wondering, he is indeed holding the side of that tambourine from the inside. He gave it two great whacks with his maraca and busted it wide open. Such a strong baby!!)

There have been several instances lately where he seems to be communicating with us in every way except words. Most mornings, for example, I bring Baby B into bed with us to nurse before I get up and going for the day. A few days ago, I had him in bed but didn't feed him right away, just to see what would happen. After a minute or so of fussing at me, he started pulling on the strap of my tank top, as if he was saying, "Come on Mom, we both know what I want so let's get to it!" A couple days later he pulled at my shirt again in a similar situation. At lunch today he kept pointing at my food, so I eventually caved in and gave him a pretzel stick, which he proceeded to happily gum to death for about 10 minutes. (You try eating a pretzel with no teeth and see how long it takes you!) We have been asking him questions and talking to him almost his whole life as if he could actually respond. It's thrilling to me to see these first couple glimpses of him being able to communicate back.



He also took his first step over the holiday break! His Papou did some grandfather-magic and got Baby B to stand up on his own for a few seconds, then he took about one and a half steps and fell into my arms. Amazing! I'm calling it his first step because it technically was a step and I almost cried, I was so proud of him. He hasn't repeated the feat though, so we're still waiting for more development on that front. Maybe his awesome new baby sneakers will help:) His Auntie KP also gave him some green Converse sneakers for Christmas that he should grow into in the next couple months. Too bad he doesn't realize how awesome they are, maybe that would give him motivation to figure this walking thing out!



In the next week or so there will be lots of birthday celebrating going on in our house - the first child/grandchild's birthday is a big deal! But for the other 364 days of the year, I'm so happy that I'm home and around to experience these smaller miracles that happen everyday and show me he is growing. God created a truly awe-inspiring being when he created man, especially (in my oh so biased opinion) my little man.

New Year's Excitement

Happy 2012 everyone! Hubby T and I rang in the new year by watching three episodes of West Wing and going to bed at 10:30. Yup, we are real party animals. Reviewing posts on Facebook the next morning of other young baby parents assured me that we were not alone, so I didn't feel quite so pathetic.

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions. But I have been thinking about a couple things to start doing or do better this year that I figured I could share.

My short term goal is to change all my computer passwords. That's right, all of them. They say you should do that every couple months but in my case it's more like never. So I'm going to use the new year as my motivation and just do it.

I'd also like to start making more homemade bread again. When I stopped working outside the home last fall I decided that one day a week would be "bread day" to make homemade bread. That worked for awhile and then evolved into muffin/breakfast bread day and then devolved even further into cookie day by the holidays. Time to get back on board with regular bread. Watch out yeast, here I come!

I'm also thinking about how to become a better play companion to Baby B and Baby D. I know that Baby B is going to mentally grow leaps and bounds in the coming year. For a few weeks now I could tell he wasn't as entertained by the chew toys that kept him happy when he was younger. Thanks to our generous family and friends, we are now loaded to the gills with four different sets of blocks, several trucks and cars, a couple puzzles and so on. I don't consider myself a very creative person, but I think it's time to pull myself out of that hole, because these boys are going to need a lot more active entertaining from me in the coming months. Creative open ended play, here we come!

But for tonight I'm just going to relax in front of the warm, wonderful fire that Hubby T made for me and enjoy watching the Winter Classic. This is only the second game of the season that Hubby T has been able to watch his much loved Flyers play. So we started off the day with some orange and black pancakes (finally found another use for those Halloween colored sprinkles!), then we had macaroni & cheese (also orange) and orange slices for lunch. To top it all off, all three of us are wearing Flyers apparel. Hubby T and Baby B are rocking the jersey look - so cool. If all this doesn't count as brainwashing Baby B into liking hockey, specifically Philly hockey, I don't know what does!



This was a rare smile from Baby B earlier this afternoon. He was being a pretty cranky little boy. He's probably missing all his grandparents (and aunts and uncles, and great-grandparents). Or maybe it's his first tooth that is struggling to come through. Either way, the only thing that made him happy was to throw his teething toy on the ground and then hang upside down from our arms to pick it up.



Such a silly baby. Hopefully his nap will work wonders and he'll wake up a happy baby again:)

Oh yea, and go Flyers!!