For the record...

It is nearly impossible to get a one-year-old to spread his fingers out and stamp his handprint on a shirt in any sort of orderly fashion. He'll be angry, and paint will go everywhere. It's okay. We're making memories here, and memories make messes.

It's nearly impossible to get a four-year-old girl to stamp her handprint on a shirt when (a) the paint is not glittery and (b) the turkey feathers you're trying to make are not pink. Some tears may be shed. It's okay. When she sees the matching tutu I'm making to go with the turkey shirt, I'm pretty sure the lack of glitter and pink will be forgotten.

It is extremely simple to get an easygoing two-year-old to smear paint all over his hands and make turkey feathers out of them. And when he's as agreeable as my two-year-old, he happily spreads his fingers and presses his hands down exactly where I tell him. I think Caleb was so thrilled to be getting the one-on-one attention from mom that this type of crazy craft requires, he was willing to do whatever I said.

When they wear these cute little shirts on Thanksgiving (the one and only time my kids will ever be dressed alike), I'll remember that Jacob wanted nothing to do with it, Abby wanted sparkles, and Caleb just wanted to spend time with me.

It's okay. We're making memories here.

Stick a fork in it

The kids wanted lollipops for lunch, and they weren't backing down.

So I stuck a fork in their fruit.

Mom wins again.

Punk princess

If Abby ever wants to start a grunge band in our garage, I'm going to tell her yes, and I'm going to give her one rule.

When they make it big, I want to see this picture on her first album cover.

She'll thank me one day.

Big kid now

He wants to do everything his big brother and sister do.

So when it came to his first hot chocolate, a sippy cup just wasn't going to cut it. He insisted on one of those Starbucks' kids cups (the ones I talked the kid in the drive through into giving me bunches of for just such an occasion).

And afterward, when the cup was empty and there were no drips to clean up, I started to wonder. Perhaps the secret to limiting our food- and drink-related messes around here is to give the kids something so delicious that they finish it too quickly to spill.

I might be on to something here. Brownies for dinner anyone?

A proper celebration

When your best friend (or your best friend's sister, in Caleb's case) is having a birthday 600 miles a way, you have to get a little creative with how to help her celebrate.

So after chatting with the birthday girl and her little brother over breakfast, Abby talked Caleb into following her upstairs. She had a plan, and she needed his help to pull it off.

(Shortly after turning four herself, Abby became deeply concerned by the fact that her best friend was still three. She has prayed nightly for Abby Mae to turn four, and, I think, feels that she may be partly responsible for the occasion of her friend's fourth birthday.)

The would-be party goers returned a while later and headed out the door for what will henceforth be known as The First Annual Abby Mae's Birthday Cowboy Parade.

We marched up and down the street, and Abby informed everyone we met (all two of them, and their dogs) that it was her best friend's birthday.

If Abby Jean had had her way, we would have continued to march all the way to Abby Mae's front door. We had to settle for singing to her via Skype.

Never has a birthday been so fully celebrated from such a great distance. Happy fourth birthday Abby Mae!

Happy Birthday, Jacob!

For the third time, I have blinked and found one of my babies celebrating a first birthday. I am fairly certain that I was handed a tiny newborn Jacob just yesterday. But the cake and balloons would seem to indicate otherwise.

Jacob must be one now, because...

• He's eating everything in sight. This is a very, very big deal. After months of feeding trauma and drama, after finding out he actually had an allergy to breast milk proteins, after spending a small fortune on specialty formula, after a number of trips to GI specialists, after one very awful barium-choking x-ray incident, Jacob simply decided one day that he was over his reflux. He started eating everything in sight, and he hasn't stopped since. His favorite foods are pizza (with pepperoni, pineapple and olives), bananas, cheerios, and lemon cookies. He does not want his food cut up into tiny bite-sized pieces, but prefers to gnaw on large choke-hazard-sized chunks of food that more closely resemble what is on everyone else's plate. He still can't quite handle whole milk, but all other dairy seems to be okay with his once-sensitive tummy at this point.
• There are no more bottles in my sink. As has been the tradition for the family of fish, his last night time bottle was offered to him on the eve of his first birthday. The others have faded away over time and been replaced by sippy cups of formula at meal times that he can drink himself. I'll be honest...Jacob's been my cuddliest baby to date. I'm going to miss feeding him his bottle. But since for the most part feeding time was starting to resemble my trying wrangle a screaming hungry octopus, I have a feeling Jacob prefers the new setup.
• He has zero interest in walking. Ability and desire are two very different things. The former he has, the latter he lacks. He'll stand unattended for minutes at a time without realizing it. He'll push his walker around then pick it up and sling it into a new position when he hits a corner. He cruises along the edge of the furniture like a champ. But asking him to put one foot in front of the other unaided is like asking an elephant to grow wings. It's simply not going to happen. Not yet, at least. When he needs to go somewhere, the one-knee, one-foot gorilla crawl is his preferred method of transportation. And he's darn good at it.
• He has a future in mountain climbing. I'm know, because there's nothing in this house he hasn't ascended to the top of. Chairs, boxes, stairs (lots and lots of stairs), the fireplace, mountains of laundry, his sister...you name it, he's climbed on or over it. He doesn't like to visit the same place twice, so when he disappears, it's a family effort to find him. This might be the baby that makes me break down and buy a baby gate.
• He's not much of a talker. Why should he be, when he's got a brother and sister to make all his decisions for him? He says "mama," which sometimes means me, and sometimes means whatever he wants at the moment. He used to say "baba" for bottle, but when we stopped giving him bottles that word disappeared. He barks at the dogs next door, which is cute, but as Abby reminded me, "Woofing is not a word Mommy." Justin's tried his best to get him to say "Dada," but Jacob just smiles and grunts back at him, or points and says "Mama!" He understands plenty of what we say, like "No," "Don't touch the dishwasher," "Get your hands out of the potty," "Where are the puppies," and "It's time for dinner." That'll get him by for a while.
• He's still a fantastic sleeper, in spite of the total lack of peace and quiet that comes along with living in this house. He sleeps from about 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. each night, and naps twice a day from 9:30 - 11 and from 1 - 4:30. (That afternoon nap is critical. Three kids sleeping at once is essential to mom's health and well-being.)
• He fits right in. Abby and Caleb love him, each in their own way. Abby is determined to protect him from anything she deems dangerous. Toys with parts that he might swallow are quickly removed from his hands, and crawling too close to the stairs results in him being picked up like a cat and dragged to a new location by his sister. Caleb has put himself in charge of making sure his brother doesn't embarrass him by playing with anything pink or doll-related, and he enforces some sort of truck sharing time limit that only he understands. They're both learning to be kind and patient with their little brother, even when he pulls hair, even when he destroys towers, and even when he steals toys. "He's just a baby," Abby will remind Caleb, "and he doesn't know any better." But if Jacob's going to make it around here, he'll learn pretty quickly.
• He's mild-mannered, fun, and full of personality. He loves to laugh, wrestle and snuggle, and he's friends with anyone he meets. He can sleep anywhere, unless there's a lot going on, and then he will forego whatever rest he might need to be a part of the action. He loves to wave, stick out his tongue at people, and thinks it's hilarious when we imitate the things he does. He's got a great personality, and I can't wait to see what it looks like in a toddler.

We celebrated his birthday with family and pizza and cupcakes, and he loved all the attention. We spent his special day doing everything he loves--the Chick-fil-a play place, the playground, and chasing balloons around the house. We even stuck a candle in a lemon cookie for him, just for grins.

It's been a fantastic year with our little guy, and we're so blessed to call him ours. Happy birthday Jacob!

Dreams do come true

There are only a few things Abby truly loves--only a few things that can mesmerize her. Things that, if missed, can truly break her heart.

Frogs and mashed potatoes top the list.

Ferris wheels follow close behind.

She's only ridden one in her short life, and it was more than a year ago. But she's never forgotten the fun she had spinning high above the ground, Daddy at her side, waving frantically to the tiny people below. She's reconstructed the scene countless times with her blocks. She's drawn up plans for her very own ferris wheel, and is convinced that if she nags us enough we'll install one in the back yard. ("Wouldn't that be fun, Mommy? We could go all the time!")

So when I spotted the roadside carnival with its multicolored ferris wheel soaring high above the parking lot, I knew we'd do whatever it took to get back. (Ferris wheels are a two-parent ordeal. There's no way I'm wearing the baby and trying to keep both kids seated on that thing.)

So we surprised them with a trip to the ferris wheel after dinner tonight, and put a smile on our daughter's face that isn't likely to fade any time soon. Caleb was tall enough to ride this time, although he was a little wary of being able to look down on the buildings he's accustomed to merely driving past.

It was well worth the overpriced tickets and the cold weather. Some things are just too good to miss. Giving our kids something they only dream about is one of them.

A pack of wild animals

I've found a kindred spirit, another mom just as crazy as me to validate my insanity. I know, because she thought that two moms taking seven kids under the age of five to the zoo was a perfectly acceptable idea.

Turns out, she was right.

True to form, Abby tried her best to separate from the pack by running ahead, while Caleb unwittingly assisted by lagging behind, and Jacob slept soundly in the stroller for the majority of the trip.

To help control the chaos, we tried pairing my slowpoke with the speediest Wilson brother, but the boys refused to hold hands.

Abby, to my horror, was more than happy to hold hands with the eldest Wilson boy while they strolled through the zoo admiring the wildlife together. He's lucky he's only five years old. I'll be watching that kid very, very closely from now on.

An amphibian, a truck, and an icy beverage

For the record, Halloween and Hand, foot and mouth disease do not mix. While Jacob looked adorable dressed as a tall iced mocha (with whip), he wasn't much up for trick or treating. Consequently, we only have a few pictures of him in his adorable costume, and he's pretty miserable in most of them. But the stress of being dressed as a felt beverage did result in a great night's sleep for our sick little guy.

Abby and Caleb, on the other hand, could not have been happier to be traipsing around in the dark with the neighborhood kids demanding candy from their neighbors. One of the big kids even told me Abby was being really good and telling everybody thank you (but only after she filled her plastic pumpkin and her frog hat with handfuls of candy). You can get away with a lot when you're cute and little and dressed as a giant frog in a tutu. She's all of the above, and we've got mounds of Halloween candy to prove it.

Caleb, by all accounts, was about the best Tow Mater ever. For about fifteen minutes. I failed to factor in how heavy that cardboard costume would be once it was completed. Halfway through the trick-or-treating, he was totally over being dressed as a giant tow truck and shed his costume on our front step. He continued to collect candy, and being the youngest in the group even earned him the right to demand specific types of candy at each house. (M&M's and those little foil wrapped chocolate discs, for the record, taste better if you take the wrapper off first. But try telling that to a sugar-crazed two year old.)

Now that the sugar's worn off, the kids are sound asleep in their beds, perhaps dreaming of the Halloween Fairy that I promised would come in the night and leave them a surprise if they left their pumpkins full of candy outside their doors. Less candy for them, more candy for me. I'm loving the Halloween Fairy already.

Boys are filthy

They played here for over an hour. They were perfectly content to sit in a pile of dirt, pine straw and leaves and do nothing but move lawn debris from one place to another.

Jacob crawled around, grabbing handfuls of leaves and tossing them as far as he could. Which was about four inches. He rubbed dirt on his pants and his face, and occasionally poked himself in the eye with the stem of a dead leaf.

Meanwhile, determined to make sure I have no pants to pass down to his younger brother, Caleb dragged his knees across rocks and through piles of mud and acorns until his jeans were worn threadbare. When he wasn't ruining his clothes, Caleb did his best to impart a little knowledge to his brother regarding everything a boy needs to know about trucks.

"This is a digger," he told Jacob, holding up the digger so he could get a good look. "It digs."

Jacob grunted, which to Caleb seemed to signal understanding. So he moved on.

"This is an excavator. It's excavating with its big toothy bucket."

"This is a dump truck. It dumps." Here Caleb paused, scraped up some earth with the excavator's big toothy bucket, and poured it into the back of the dump truck. Then he went on.

"It has a skip. When the skip tilts up, the contents slide to the ground."

The lesson went on for quite some time, until Jacob tired of his studies and crawled away to pull flowers off my bushes.

When I finally brought them in, they were in desperate need of a midday bath.

But after the display of male bonding I had just witnessed between my boys, the filth and the ruined clothes seemed a small price to pay.