Ever Feel Like This?

The well-practiced "Stink Eye"

He's 1!

How did this happen? How did he get to be 1? Arg, I'm clearly getting old, sitting here talking about how time goes too quickly, and how kids grow up too fast. But it's true!! He's 1! My baby somehow turned 1 today.

To capture this moment before it passes and we're celebrating his 16th birthday, here's a few things about him right now:

*He crawls ridiculously quickly, but then gets serious and lowers his head (to decrease wind resistance), and goes into super speed. Sometimes he plows right into things.

*He refuses to even attempt to walk on his own. Just not interested.

*He LOVES food. Upon being put in his high chair he expects food to appear immediately. If it doesn't he starts to do this move where it looks like his head is going to explode and he's trying to squeeze an imaginary beach ball.

*When he's done eating, he clears his tray using his arms like windshield wipers. It's effective.

*His favorite book is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" He really loves to help turn the pages. And he turns around and makes goldfish mouths at me on that page. So cute.

*He loves to be upside-down.

*He's obsessed with climbing on everything. It's a disaster. I left the room for a minute, came back and found him climbing onto the piano keys. This is leading to a lot of falling. Thankfully nothing bad so far but he doesn't really get that it's not a good idea.

*He thinks his sisters are hilarious. He loves it when they try to make him laugh. He's not so fond of them picking him up or of

them trying to keep him from doing something he wants to do.

*His blankie signals bedtime to him. He can't resist the silkiness when he's tired. If we merely toss it on the floor, he crawls over to it, leans down, and starts rubbing his head on it.

*He loves to fold his arms when we pray. He does it once at the beginning, periodically throughout the prayer, and then quickly when we say amen as if to say he was folding them all along.

*He loves cars. He has just started to say "vroom,

 vroom" when he pushes them back and forth.

*He loves to roll/throw a ball back and forth. Most of the time he drops it on his foot and it rolls to you and he smiles huge, very proud of himself. But it is the thing that keeps his attention the longest.

*He likes to stand at our screen door and wave goodbye to his daddy. In fact, after watching him drive away each day, he has started to wave at any car that drives past. He has even started saying "da" in reference to Coop.

*For months whenever we tried to get him to say Mama he'd blow a raspberry. Now he just ignores the request altogether.

*He has 1 1/2 teeth - making him the first of our children to have a tooth before they learned to walk.

*He likes to dance to music. So far his favorite is the samba music in the new animated movie Rio. He shimmies. Seriously.

*We have a Sesame Street toy where Elmo sings
ABC when you push a button. He's pretty much

become reliant on it in the car. However, he never lets the song finish before he pushes it again. When he's particularly agitated, he pushes it, starting the song over, every few seconds.

*He really likes to put the rocks in front of our house in his mouth. He looks at me each time he does, waiting for me to say no, then he tosses it, picks up a new one, and does it again.

*He's very interested in my teeth. He likes to touch them when I'm singing him to sleep. Then he starts to try to dig them out with his nails.

*Sometimes instead of laughing he does a big, open-mouthed smile and makes this slow, audible intake of breath sound. Don't know how else to describe it. Just weird.

*He loves to sit and flip through books by himself.

*He loves to open cupboards and empty them. Our collapsible strainer is his favorite. He also loves to climb inside the dishwasher. And he sprints towards the fridge anytime it's open.

*His feet and neck are extremely ticklish.

*He's a super happy baby, but not the friendliest. He can keep a straight face for a remarkable amount of time when a stranger, or even an extended family member that he hasn't seen in a few days, tries to make him smile.

Ok, I've indulged myself long enough. We love our little man. He's adorable. He's not a huge fan of birthdays though as a side note. Don't let these pictures deceive you. We first put the cupcake on his tray when we were home last weekend celebrating with family and when he reached for the candle, we all said no a little too loudly and scared him. He freaked out big time. It took 10 minutes to get him to stop crying and at least 30 to keep him from screaming at the sight of a cupcake. It took an insane amount of coaxing to convince him to eat it. But we persisted. We needed these cute pictures for posterity. And for me. We tried again tonight on his real birthday with a chocolate cake, so as not to bring up bad memories. He started whining when we sang to him, and refused to put a single bite in his mouth. He stuck his fingers in the frosting, then proceeded to try to shake it off, getting more and more frustrated when he couldn't get it off. It wasn't too long before he threw it all on the floor. Double failure. That makes us 0 for 3. Not a one of our kids have dug into their first birthday cake. What's with that? Oh well, Happy Birthday dude!

Lots of Firsts

First Day of 1st grade!!! With this came a few other firsts, like the first time we'd ever left the house before 8 AM. Her school starts at 7:55! That's insane. In fact, up until Wednesday, our house rule had always been no getting out of your room until 8. It's been a rough adjustment ... for mom. She gets up fine, but is definitely not accustomed to having to get moving right away. Keeping her going so she can at least dress and eat is a tad tricky (read space case). She's cute though and was really excited to wear her backpack. The first day she first put it on at like 7:10. And then again every five minutes after that. We had to keep telling her to take it off and get clothes on first, or eat something. Naturally she was a bit timid at drop-off (daddy brings her to school on his way to work - how cool is that?) but having got to go and meet the teacher and the classroom the day before really helped. I, however, spent most of the day wandering around the house feeling totally lost. I'm just not so sure about this all-day thing. It's a really long time! Is she really old enough for this?? Am I?

 Then, a few hours later at a more reasonable time of day, M had her first day of her new afternoon preschool. I haven't been so sure about parting with her either, especially because this program is a crazy 4 days a week! Twice as much as I was looking for! But she really needed something and we found this perfect preschool that is actually at J's elementary school, so I pick them both up at the same time at the same place, and the stars just seemed to align and so we went for it. And she's loving it. Absolutely loving it. She goes on and on about how it's so cool she's at the same school as J and she gets to have PE and Music and Library like the big kids, which is pretty unique. It helps her not miss her sister too much and really what was most important for her was to start learning to make friends of her own, so welcome to preschool!
And her little group got right to work playing with puzzles. For now there's only 5 little kiddos but they say the class usually fills up by the end of Sept. We'll see. I like the cozy numbers for getting comfortable.

And Dude stays with me. Thank goodness somebody does! Though if there was a first for him, it's probably first time having mom to himself. And first time we've had to be on such a rigid schedule. Wait, what am I thinking? His first is that TODAY is his 1st birthday! No, I'm not kidding. I don't have a clue how that happened so fast. More on that later. For now, he's happily going along with our new schedule, and loving all the walking back and forth to school. We live like 4 blocks away so it'd be a breeze if it weren't for the monster hill we live on. It's killing me. He doesn't mind that so much. But the heat does get to him, and all the rest of us. The first day of school it was over 100 degrees. Not okay. We were all sweaty beasts by the time we got home. I would feel just ridiculous driving when we live so close but 100 degree weather is not ok for walking up hills in. That sun is wicked hot (one of J's complaints about her 1st day was that she had THREE recesses and they were hot, hot, hot and she was too, too tired from all that hot). We're really hoping it starts to cool down a little, because I can't carry all 3 kids home. Imagine how sweaty I'd be?!

Here's us posing in front of their school at the end of the day. We made it! They're so proud to be wearing backpacks. Cracks me up. M just loved her day, "had lots of fun painting pictures for me, told the teachers [she's] an artist, but didn't have time to make friends yet." J had mixed emotions. When I asked how it went, she said "a little bit sad, and a little bit happy." I asked if it was because it was such a long day, since that was on my mind. "No because Lulu said she didn't want to be my friend, but I told her I didn't know anyone else but later she did play with me." Nothing else really mattered (Oh, and the next day, Lulu shared an Oreo with her at lunch and told J her hair was pretty, so I think it's all good now). She was exhausted, envious of some of the things M and I had got to do together while she was at school, and said she didn't want to go back, but the next morning she was up bouncing around getting ready happily. Good thing too, Coop left super early for a meeting, and I didn't even think to set an alarm clock. Glad she woke up! I would've felt so lame if she'd been late on her 2nd day! I need to get with it! For kicks, here's a good back-to-school comic. We have word confusion like this all the time in our house. Love it.

Best Corn Maze Ever

 We went to a few farms the other day in search of fruit for canning on our way into Portland. The girls were first enamored by this creative display.

 Then we were told their corn maze was already open so we went to take a look. But this was no mere corn maze. It was also The Princess and the Pear.

Every few corners there was another bit of the story, portrayed by painted gourds in delightful fashion. It really was so cute. The girls got a kick out of it, although they were not really sure the farm could just go and change a pea into a pear just because they grew pears.

Naturally the happy ending was their favorite part. The little guy surprisingly had a blast in the maze. Whenever leaves hit us in the face or we had to push them aside or duck, he laughed out loud. He was less thrilled to be held by his sister for the picture. As we exited the girls jumped up and down and begged to go through again. However, not having been prepared for such an occasion with my Moby or anything, and since Buddy weighs quite a bit these days, my arms chose to move on. Especially since I'd already promised we could go tour the flower gardens. Gorgeous. Totally recommend checking out this farm, especially during some of their upcoming festival days such as the Salsa Sizzle, or the Pear Party! Good times.