Happy Birthday Caleb!

A fun time was had by all in honor of our little guy's first birthday. Homemade apple cinnamon waffles for breakfast, storytime with mom, an invigorating game of crawl-tag, a power nap, lunch with dad at Chick-fil-a (complete with free balloons), a long afternoon nap, unwrapping presents, messy birthday dinner, chocolate cupcakes, and a birthday bubble bath combined to make for a fun-filled and memorable (for me atleast) birthday.

So how have things changed since Spike came into the world during that awful sleet storm one year ago today?

• He has significantly less hair. But not for lack of trying. This kid can grow hair like nothing I've ever seen before. He'll probably have a full beard by the time he starts kindergarten. His full mane of black hair has grown so much that he's had more than one haircut a month since birth, and he's left with a blond buzz cut instead.
• His communication skills have improved greatly. He understands a considerable portion of what we say, and recognizes quite a few specific words, including bathroom, playroom, kitchen, foyer, couch, shoes, hat, food, milk, breakfast, lunch, dinner, blankie, bath time, sharkie, duck, blocks, and airplane. His vocabulary includes words for Mama, Dada, Sharkie ("duh-duh"), banana ("nana," which is also his word for food in general), bye-bye, night-night ("ni-ni"), ball ("buh") and today he added balloon ("baba").
• He's a much better sleeper. Okay, so he was really never a bad sleeper. But a one hour morning nap, a 2.5 hour afternoon nap and 12 hours of nighttime sleep sure beats that waking-up-every-three-hours thing he did as a newborn.
• He eats people food. And lots of it. He finally mastered a sippy cup and is completely off the bottle and into the world of delicious whole milk. He's a huge fan of food, all food, and is setting himself up to eat us out of house and home before he turns three. Before Caleb was born, we were about a 1.5 gallons of milk a week family. Today, we go through an average of three gallons of milk a week. You do the math.
• He has no interest in walking. He's a champion speed crawler, and is completely satisfied with his current on-all-fours mode of transportation. He'll walk with us if we hold his hands, but collapses into a big heap on the floor if we threaten to let go. I blame it on his expanding waistline. Those chunky legs are going to need a little bit more muscle on them if they're going to hold up his top half.
• He's cuddly. He prefers being around people to being alone, and prefers being around his mom and dad to being around strangers. He has this primal scream that he whips out whenever we drop him off in the church nursery, and rumor has it that the only thing that calms him down is eating his weight in Cheerios. Last Sunday, even that didn't do the trick, and toward the end of the sermon we could actually hear him screaming from downstairs. I'm hoping he grows out of this before high school.
• As far as little brothers go, this one's proving to be big trouble. He loves to torment his big sister, and adores imitating everything she does, particularly when it annoys her. He repeats sounds she makes, climbs up next to her on the couch when she's trying to play by herself, and brings chaos to anything she's trying to order. If she's coloring, he's throwing her crayons on the floor. If she's reading, he's piling toys on top of her book. Today he crawled over to where she was sitting, put one hand on each of her shoulders and stood up and pushed her over, then fell on top of her and pinned her down, all with a big grin on his face. "Dude, stop!" is Abby's most frequently used expression.

I adore this kid, and he's growing up too fast for my liking. Since I can't seem to make time slow down, I'll just continue to enjoy every minute of it.

Happy birthday Caleb....I can't imagine my life without you in it!

Give peas a chance

There is some sort of supernatural phenomenon taking place at our dinner table.

What other explanation is there for the fact that Spike has gained almost 20 pounds in almost a year on a diet that consists primarily of chicken nuggets, Chedder cheese and canned peas that he eats one at a time? Add in the fact that his first four months of life were sustained entirely on a liquid diet, and I think we call his chubbiness nothing short of a miracle.

Learning is fun: Letter N

We're getting back into the swing of things with our letter crafts. Picking up where we left off last year, we focused on the letter N this week, complete with a Noah's Ark that actually rocked back and forth and lots of glittery raindrops.

I precut the rainbow and the water for her, and had Abby practice holding her crayons properly and try to stay in the lines this week. She impressed me with how well she handled both challenges. Her proper handling of drawing utensils is much better than that of her eating utensils, which gives me new resolve for insisting she eat like a big kid and not with her fingers.

Our ark was attached to the backdrop with the help of a brad I had lying around the house, and Abby was pretty impressed to have created her first interactive craft. Now if I could just convince her that we don't need to keep taking it down off the wall to rock the boat back and forth...

Read any good books lately?

Caleb's turning out to be just as much of a bookworm as his big sister, although his love of reading is manifesting itself in distinctly different ways. Distinctly different boyish ways, that is.

Whereas our little girl at this age would crawl over to the bookshelf and select a few books to look through, carefully turning the pages and examining their contents, Caleb has a slightly different methodology.

He prefers to crawl full speed across the room and crash headfirst into the bookshelf. He has this pesky habit of crawling so fast and getting so excited about what he's after that his hind end fails to stop when his front end does. This results in his head landing squarely on the ground in front of whatever he was after as his bottom flies up in the air. He thinks it's hilarious, and has a permanent red mark on his forehead to show for it.

Once he's righted himself, he proceeds to pull every single book off the shelf, two or three at a time, and toss them behind him. Once the shelf has been emptied of every piece of reading material , he falls back into it and begins to select his subject matter.

Trucks? No, not right now. Crash! The truck book flies to his right and bounces off the ball pit.

Madeline? Nah, looks too girly. Boom! He flings it to the left and it falls to the ground.

Dinosaurs? Not right now. Bang! He tosses it over his shoulder and into the plastic piano.

Baby Einstein? Yeah...I don't think I've ripped all the flaps off the lift-the-flap pages yet. This one will do just fine.

Pink and twirly

I should have known she'd love ballet. Going to her first class involved so many things Abby loves. The pink skirt, the new shoes, the hairbow, the music, and the jumping (sauter actually...though what she does doesn't look nearly as graceful as it sounds) all combined to make for what was probably the most adorable 45 minutes of her young life.

I was proud of how well she followed instruction from her new teacher, and how well she participated in skills that were so new to her. Most of the other girls began this class in September, and considering she was a few months behind, Abby did surprisingly well. The enormous mirror covering one wall of the studio was quite a distraction, and twice I caught her wandering away from the group to stand in front of the mirror and twirl around in her pretty pink ballet skirt.

The nine girls in the class began rehearsing for their summer recital this week, and Abby is very excited to be one of the colors in the dancing rainbow and wave her pretty scarf around. Her instructor spent some time asking the class of very attentive two-year-olds questions about rainbows to introduce what they would be doing for their recital. When she asked where we see rainbows, my confident little newbie piped in with her response: "In the sky...for Noah!" (We may have read that Noah's Ark story a few times.)

When class was over, she asked to go to a nearby coffee shop that we've been to before. "I want a little coffee," she said, and then corrected herself when she saw my disapproving glance.

"May I have a little coffee please?" she asked much more sweetly.

How could I refuse? We ended our morning over mochas and hot chocolate while I told my pretty little ballerina how proud I was of her for following directions and obeying her teacher. Next week she's on her own. Miss Claire has informed all the moms that we are not allowed to stay and watch. Apparently all those cameras flashing was a bit of a distraction.

For more miniature ballerina cuteness, click here.

Better left unspoken

Things you don't expect to have to tell another human:

• "Take your toes out of your mouth."
• "No, we don't touch poop."
• "Please don't chew on mommy's nose."
  
• "Do not bite the dog."
  

No one will even notice

So what do you do when it's been below freezing for so long and then the temperature suddenly rises to 50 degrees? Head outside and pretend it's spring, of course!

And what does Abby do on her first trip back to the park after months of being cooped up inside? Trip up the big wooden stairs, of course!

Nothing says "fun" quite like a fat lip and a skinned chin. She was so excited to finally be outdoors again that she hardly noticed the huge band-aid I stuck on her face.

Goodbyes are never easy

Allow me to lend you my mommy-goggles for a second. If you'll peer through them, you'll see things the way I see them: adorable children with genius tendencies. (All moms have at least one pair of mommy-goggles. They're what we wear when we go to playdates and give parenting advice to other moms who obviously aren't doing things right, because look how much smarter/better behaved/cuter/kinder my children are!)

So peer through my mommy-goggles for a second, and join me for an awe-inspiring look at my 11-month-old's growing vocabulary.

We're realizing just how much Caleb understands now ("turn around and come back here" and "do not go up the stairs" are two of my favorites) and it's exciting to watch him discover new things or recognize familiar things in a new context (a toy that was in one place before his nap may be somewhere different when he wakes up, and he loves the hunt).

He'll dance on command, say "muah" and smash his lips in your cheek when you ask for a kiss, play peekaboo, stick out his tongue if you ask to see it, and throw his head back and laugh when he wants you to tickle his chin. He'll crawl up on your lap, then turn and speed-crawl away, pausing occasionally to turn his head back and invite you to chase him. He's quiet when he's trying to figure something out, and he giggles to himself when he's doing something he's not supposed to. (This has become a handy audible clue, since when I hear his guilty giggle I can simply yell, "Caleb, stop!" if he's in a different room.)

He says "Mama" and "Dada" when he's excited to see us, "nana" when he's hungry or sees a banana, "ni-ni" when we tell him night-night and put him in his crib, and he recently started trying to say "boo-beh" when he's playing with his blue bear. He calls the stuffed shark he sleeps with "duh-duh," probably because I sing the Jaws theme song anytime I tease him with it. (Its official name is Sharkie.)

And just today, as we were bidding farewell to some friends after Bible study, I swear he said "buh-bye."

I love my little wordsmith.

Boxed in

This two kid thing is getting to be more and more fun every day. Caleb's gotten to be extremely playful, and absolutely adores following his big sister around and imitating/destroying everything she does.

If she's building a tower, he'll patiently wait until it's just tall enough, then swoop in and knock it over. Abby's proved surprisingly long-suffering with him, often reminding him (albeit firmly), "No Caleb, don't knock Abby's tower over" or "No Caleb, it's not finished yet." (Apparently when it's finished, then it's okay for him to knock it over.)

He knows just how to push her buttons, and it's fun to watch him actually waiting and plotting ways to annoy her sometimes. Like today, when she wanted to play in this box. He watched her climb in and out, closing and opening the top over and over again. Somehow he figured out how long she would wait after shutting herself in before she would climb out again. And then, when the time was right, he waited until she pulled the flaps closed, then climbed up and plopped his big ol' self right down on top, essentially locking her in.

Abby was not pleased. But as his mom, I couldn't help but smile proudly at my son's first practical joke.

A moment to myself

I have a confession to make. Being a stay at home mom isn't always as sacrificial as we moms make it out to be. Every once in a while, I do something totally selfish. Something that's just for me.

Today for instance, I went to the bathroom.

By myself.

With the door closed.

Spike and Curly, sensing a total lack of parental supervision, made quick work of completely upending everything in the playroom. When I returned, they were staring out the window as if nothing had happened. They took this corner of the house from spotlessly organized to state of emergency in just under three minutes.

I think my children have futures as demolition experts.

Here comes trouble...

Crawling wasn't good enough. Caleb knew that if he wanted to keep up with his big sister, he was going to need to take some risks.

Things he can climb, or climb into, unassisted:

• stairs
• the ball pit
  
• the bathtub
• cabinets
• our kid-sized chairs, which sometimes bring him up onto...
  
• our kid-sized table (yikes!)
  
• the couch
• Abby's stool, which often leads to...
• Abby's toy box, which puts him in range of...
• Abby's twin bed

Having one dangerous child was bad enough. This is getting out of hand.

An Open Letter to Uncle Tom

Dear Uncle Tom,
Tonight, we thought of you fondly as we sipped our last drops of Angelina Hot Chocolate. With a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg and a few fluffy marshmallows, our days of enjoying that decadent beverage came to a close. Sorrow filled our hearts as we realized that your days of Paris layovers have long been over, and no more grounded milk chocolate will be arriving in our mailbox.

Thank you for introducing us to Angelina, and for keeping a steady supply of the French treat coming our way. Your kindness and generosity have been a blessing to our home and our taste buds.

We have enjoyed our Parisian hot chocolate through so many stages of our family. When the addiction began, we were soon-to-be parents. Almost three years later, the absence of Angelina's grounded hot chocolate in our pantry may be forgotten from time to time as we navigate this crazy world of parenting, but deep down, there is a void nothing else can fill.

We are left with no choice but to make a public and very urgent plea for more. If anyone out there knows of some way to bring more rich and delightful Angelina chocolate to the U.S. and into our home, please let us know.

Sincerely,
The Family of Fish

The right way to ring in the new year

The rest of the year is pretty much downhill from here. How do you compete with a day spent smoking and eating dry rub ribs, brisket and deep-fried chicken wings?

MeatFest started as a simple enough idea: bring two families together for a day of college football and outdoor cooking to start the year off right. A new smoker and a deep fryer, the guys concluded, could easily be combined to create a feast of delicious meat. And since delicious meat only comes about by careful supervision of the outdoor man-kitchen (which just happened to be only feet from the big screen TV inside), the guys would have the perfect excuse to stay close to the TV all day and not miss any key plays in the Bowl games.

The wives soon caught wind of their plans and learned that the only things on the menu for the day were, in fact, beef and chicken. Some quick thinking added guacamole, celery with blue cheese dressing, deep fried oreos and funnel cake to the menu to create a more well-rounded day of dining. And, in what ended up being our only actual meal of the day, we also enjoyed some ham and cheese sandwiches (pork...more meat) for lunch before the official kick-off of MeatFest 2010. The rest of the day was spent sitting around grazing as we enjoyed whatever meat came out of the fryer or off the smoker soon after it reached a safe temperature for eating.

Caleb and Sam woke up from their naps just in time to enjoy some delicious hot wings with us, and we later found out that both boys are huge brisket fans. The Abbys were more interested in the deep fried Oreos than anything else.

Sorry you missed it? You can purchase your official MeatFest 2010 t-shirt by clicking here.

Special thanks to our friends for hosting this New Year's Day edition of MeatFest 2010.