Belated Birthday Bash

Though Michaela's birthday did occur more than a month ago, it's always good to relive great family times. The credit for these photos goes to my father-in-law, who is the resident photographer at any family function. Thanks Papi!

As you can see, we ate...

Yummy Pirates' Booty!

The kids' table - a birthday present from Grandpa and Nana

It's a plane! (Greyson spent much of the afternoon looking up)

And it's a cupcake!

... we opened presents...

A whole box of fun princess/ballerina/fairy clothes

...and we swam... (read, the children splashed a lot)

I love my nephew's look of mischief!

and then there were three...

Little Liam, #4, will be in there next year!

Right after this someone poured a bucket of water over Josiah's head and he howled like a banshee...

and after cuddling and comforting by Mama

Summer Stuff

We may be well beyond order and organization in these posts from summertime. When the weather was so nice, I really had a hard time holing up in the office and working on the computer (wait - I used to do that on a daily basis! - how times have changed).  So the blog has suffered. But here I humbly offer some pictures from a few of our fun times this summer.

BEACH DAY, June 2012 ~ Fun but exhausting. The kids both loved the sand, and Josiah tasted it to see how good it really was. Michaela would love it more if it didn't make her so "dirty." It turns out that taking our black lab with us (who loves the water but whose stomach does not agree with ingesting large amounts of saltwater) just equals adding another toddler to the mix. But I love the beach, and breathing the salt air and dipping toes in the cold, cold water, is always refreshing.

SUNRIVER - July 2012

We spent a 4-day weekend with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and nephews. It was a baby vacation, with 4 kids under the age of 3. It was nice to get a change of scenery... who doesn't love Central Oregon? It was a big hit with our daughter, who still asks when we are going to go back to vacation in the 'Sunriver House.'  Hmmm... maybe when our 4 kids are all over the age of 3? And though you don't see them, Adam and Dave, and baby Liam, were all present as well.

Empty cooler full of water and melting ice cubes = instant fun

Air High Fives!

They were supposed to be posing for a cute photo...

Morning coffee hour on the deck

Smelly feet?

There was a great park at Sunriver

A Zoo of a Birthday

While I have yet to get and/or post photos of Michaela's birthday party, we did get some photos shared with us from our friend Sarah of Michaela's birthday trip to the zoo. 

Lily likes to hold hands. Michaela was humoring her.

Farm girls

Admiring the ugliest animal at the zoo - the warthog

Josiah taunting Lily with his cell phone

The girls have switched baby dolls by this point in the day

Who you didn't even see in these photos is Sarah, or her baby boy Nathan. But they were there, and added lots of fun to Michaela's birthday excursion. Thanks friends!

Tough at Ten Months

Josiah is cruising through Year One of his life. At ten months, he is constantly on the go. 

Talking to his new friend, Kenji

 He's always into Michaela's business. How are her toys so much better than his? Or how are my cupboards so much more interesting than his drawer? Sometimes it's just friendly play (which she still resists adamantly) or other times it's as if he's practicing to be a little brother.

Trying to help Michaela color.
Note Michaela leaning as far away from him as she can get.

First time realizing he can see out the window.  "Hi Daddy! I'm in here!"

He's really not saying any words that I can identify, besides Mama. But he consistently makes a noise when he identifies a dog barking, or sees a dog. He also started waving on his 10 month-a-versary. He first waved at our friend Sarah, and then later at me. He's also doing a legitimate crawl now. He's so funny, because he loves to stand up on anything (he tried the garbage can yesterday) but doesn't want to hold on to hands and stand. If you take his hands, he sits down. He doesn't want to try and walk, except pushing his little white chair around the kitchen - so I guess he does walk behind that. He also still tries to put everything in his mouth. In the past 24 hours I have rescued from his mouth- a cupcake sticker (from Michaela's dr. appt), a rose petal, a small toy, a piece of barkdust, and grass. Yum!

He can't go anywhere, but he loves to sit on it.

Three! Tres! Trois!

Michaela is THREE! According to child development books, this makes her not a toddler anymore, but a "preschooler"! Though she will be having a family birthday party this weekend, we did not let her go uncelebrated on the official day of her birth. We (kids and I) spent the morning at the zoo with our friends Sarah, Lily and Nathan. Unfortunately there are no pictures because I forgot my camera. Michaela loves to look at all the "aminals." She says her favorite animal at the zoo is the hippo. However, I'm skeptical about this because she spent most of the time yesterday talking about the tigers and polar bears. It must be the pressure of answering in the moment, because these are the answers she just gave me, which seem to not be correct to me. I will put what I think in parentheses.
Favorite color: Orange (blue/purple)
Favorite play activity: Games  - Candyland (baby dolls)
Favorite place to go: Mimi & Papa's (the park)
Favorite food: Chicken nuggets (ice cream, brownies, fruits of all kinds, cucumbers)

An 'on her birthday' present - a real soccer ball!

Michaela had her first dental appointment this week. She has 20 teeth, all in great shape with no cavities. She was a champ sitting in the dental chair and wearing the neat-o sunglasses they provided her. This was the first time we tried this dentist - close to our house - and they seemed really great. I think the hardest part for her was having to choose a prize from three full drawers of options.

We just got back from the doctor for her 3-year checkup and she was pronounced in great health. She has just bested 30 pounds and is 38 inches tall. This puts her in the 50% for weight and the 74% for height. Maybe Josiah won't outgrow her so soon after all.

It's hard to summarize her year in just one post, so I won't even try. Some recent accomplishments are that she can pedal and steer her tricycle up and down our street (with a parent right on her tail). She is like a new driver, however, who can't look one way without also steering that way, which is very dangerous for all concerned (say if you have, perhaps, a mother walking next to her pushing a baby in a stroller...). She still loves reading. We try to go to the library every week to get a few new ones. But she also regularly requests that we read the kids' Bible we purchased for her. She loves to talk, talk, talk, all the time. On a recent drive I was trying to find a new place and needed to focus. I asked her to stop talking, please. She said, "But I love to talk!" So we agreed that she could talk but I would not listen or respond until we reached our destination. She asks, all the time, 3 different questions: "How are you doing?," "What are you doing?," and "Why?" Recently she's been telling me, "I'm not talking to you, Mama, I'm talking to my babies."

Look at all the tiny pieces of hardware!

For her birthday, Adam and I purchased a play structure and Adam put it up in the backyard. The pictures that follow demonstrate all the man hours he put into it. She loves it, and says it's "like a park!" It is. Puckett Park.

I didn't get my counter top back for a week

Hmmm... glad for directions

Michaela initially thought the play set was going to be like this, and was worried she would bonk her head.

So glad to finally be up in the fort!

After the zoo and a short nap, Michaela got to go out to birthday ice cream with her Daddy. If this isn't a happy face, I don't know what is! Then Adam brought her home and left me with a child on a sugar high for the afternoon.

Happy Birthday to our amazing daughter!

Navigating Nine Months

How to describe our little guy at nine months? Well, he is personable, smiley, kind of shy when mom's not around, short-tempered and loud in the middle of the night, too cool to sleep through the night (or maybe, as Adam suggests, he just misses me), and perhaps most notable... everywhere! He pulls himself up on nearly anything he can reach. He is particularly fond of my legs, and once or twice Michaela's art easel has thrown him for a loop when it refused to tolerate his climbing by falling over. He still has just two teeth, but seems to gnaw anything in sight, as well, so perhaps sometime soon we'll be seeing more chompers (I feel as if I've been saying that for a while).

At Grammy and Papi's the morning of his 9-month-aversary

He loves his big sister and tries to be involved with whatever she is doing. This has become less amusing to Michaela lately, and we have to keep putting her books and toys with little pieces at ever-increasing heights to keep them out of harm's way.

He's started clapping all the time, usually when he's happy or excited. It was fun to see him clapping during worship time while the rest of us were singing (and not clapping).

Blueberry picking. He supervised from the stroller.

He takes two naps a day and is now supposed to be eating three solid meals per day. He loves food and eating and my challenge is getting enough to keep up with him. He's doing some finger foods and watermelon seems to be a big favorite right now.

Josiah likes wrestling on the floor with Adam and Michaela, is pretty interested in water and the little wading pool, and thoroughly loves bath time. He's outgrown his baby bathtub and sits in the big tub all by himself. I don't have enough hands to bathe both at the same time and also referee the wildness of big sister toppling over little brother. He is almost steady enough to combine the two, and I look forward to cutting down bathtime by half!

And I couldn't leave out Michaela when I put a picture of Josiah blueberry picking. To be fair in my reporting, Michaela did pick 0.6 pounds all by herself - she really did a great job!

Michaela blueberry "picking" - I kept hearing her repeat, "Mmmm, I like blueberries."

oy vey

The Spanish major in me is proud to hear my daughter walking around reading Buenas Noches Luna (Goodnight Moon, in Spanish). That parental pride is overshadowed, however, by my chagrin over her saying, jibberish jibberish jibberish "moon-o." And then her informing me that Spanish is a little hard to say.