Winter Weather

A few weeks ago, we had our first--and presumably, last--snow of the season. It wasn't the six inches I was unrealistically hoping for, but it was about an inch and it did stick enough that we were able to go out and play in it. Usually, I get very excited about the mere possibility of snow--and usually, I'm disappointed because they always seem to predict more snow than we get. This time, the week before had been so warm and spring-like that I flat out didn't believe the forecast, so it was a very nice surprise when we actually did get snow. Luke absolutely loved the snow and stayed and played in it for far longer than I thought he would...and then, woke up the next morning and played in it some more. Raleigh being what it is, it was upward of 50 degrees that next day, so it melted much faster than he might have liked, but he did get some good snow play in while he could.

I told him to find a winter hat...this is what he came up with.
Weston: dressed, ready, and utterly unimpressed.
Why, yes, I did borrow McMoose's ludicrously puffy jacket. And why not?
McMoose let Weston feel the snow. I believe his reaction was, "I am touching something cold and wet. I do not approve."

There wasn't enough on the ground at this point to make a decent snowball, so Luke just got some off the cars instead.
McMoose's rendition of a firebird. Quite the artist, that one.
I'm not sure who brought the bucket out--I suspect it was McMoose. But making snow castles was great fun, according to Luke. Step One: Run crazy circles around the car, collecting snow in a bucket:
Step Two: Plop!
And not pictured here is Step Three, which is also known as The Most Fun Step: Stomp!

Lennonian Wisdom

You know how interviewers love to ask where you see yourself in five years? I'm pretty sure I was asked that question five--okay, six--years ago, when I was visiting graduate schools. I obsessed about my answer to that question beforehand. Ob. Sessed. I saw myself as a researcher. I saw myself holding (or at least being well on my way to holding) a doctorate. I saw myself as a writer. I saw myself as a professor. I saw myself as a clinician.

Here's what I didn't see: A sweet, sleeping baby drooling on my arm. A child who is approaching his third birthday at a rather alarming rate asking me to hug and kiss his imaginary dragon. (I responded that I was worried that the dragon might blow fire at me, to which Luke replied with a great sigh that, "It's just PRETEND, Mama...Did you know that pretend dragons won't hurt you?") A McMoose who is, at this very moment, changing the oil in my car. Six years ago, I had no idea how much love my life would contain.

Six years ago, I also had no idea that I would stay up until midnight, sewing a penguin costume. What's that saying--life is what happens while you're busy making other plans?

January

The signature Weston look:

Luke, modeling a present from my mom
Luke has been giving us this look a lot lately. He says, "Mama, I'm 'cowling at you!" (For those of you who don't speak toddler, that's "scowling.")
Luckily, he follows it up with this look. "Mama, I'm 'miling at you!" (Smiling)
(Baby) Boy and Dog--this was back when the Dog actually allowed Weston to be this close to him, by which I mean that it was back before Weston showed an active interest in pulling the Dog's fur.
This child has a deep and abiding love of broccoli. In fact, the other night, he was eating his broccoli with such obvious enjoyment that even Luke asked for a second helping of the stuff.
He enjoys the occasional bit of banana, as well.
And he is very adept at guarding McMoose's gatorade and keeping it safe from intruders and predators alike.
Although he has trying out solid foods for a couple of months, this was his first experience with being spoon-fed a puree:
Ironic, isn't it, that the same kid who will happily chew on a piece of chicken has no idea how to handle applesauce?
Buddha-Bu strikes again!
I sewed him this cap and he's pretty convinced that the only reason those strings (ie-chinstraps) exist is so that he can chew on them.
He has been sticking his tongue out a whole lot lately.

Any guesses where he might have learned that?

Everything

We had a rough night last night. Weston has apparently decided that nursing to sleep is for newborns, so he's trying to figure out how to fall asleep without it, except that--having never done it before--he has no idea how. So he rolls away from me...sucks his thumb...pulls his thumb out...cries...sucks his thumb again...and just as his eyes drift closed, his other arm comes out of nowhere, smacks him in the face and wakes him up. Oy, babies. I do not appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night and then not being allowed to HELP him go back to sleep.

And then, today, Luke was moving at glacial speeds and we were late meeting our friends at the kids' museum. It rained and we forgot an umbrella. I forgot my baby carrier, so by the end of the morning, my arm felt like it was about to fall off from carting an 18-pound baby around. And to top it all off, Luke didn't nap, which meant that I didn't nap, so suffice it to say that I'm not a happy camper.

By 5 o'clock, I was a mess of grouchiness held together by grumbles and I was thinking about how TIRED I was and all I wanted was to be left alone for FIVE MINUTES and for goodness sakes, was that so much to ask for? And then, Luke (who up until then was, in my mind, The Ridiculous Human Being Who Was Fighting A Nap For No Reason But To Make My Life Difficult) leaned over and whispered, "Hey, Mama...I had a fun day with you today." Sweet child. Sweet child for whom I am oh, so grateful.

So I started thinking about all the other things I'm grateful for...the list has been building in my mind all night long and is too long to transcribe in its entirety, but for the sake of remembering the sentiment, here are a few of the biggies.

-McMoose. Lovely McMoose, who saw that I was having a rough day and stopped work a little early, even though it means he'll have to log back in to finish up later tonight.
-Luke. Sweet, crazy, goofy Luke, who is so completely two-and-a-half, who can drive me crazy one minute and make me melt the next. Whose hands still have that pudgy baby-ness to them, even as they're starting to do big-kid things like building big houses with Lego's.
-Weston. Precious Weston, who wiggles with joy when I pick him up, who holds onto my face with both of his hands and buries his face in my neck. Who smells like baby shampoo and innocence and love. Who snores ever so sweetly in my arms as he snuggles closer.
-The opportunity to spend my days holding and rocking and playing, going to museums and libraries, exploring parks and woods. How lucky I am that this gets to be my Every Day!
-The luxury of a pretty house, a safe neighborhood, a warm bed, nutritious food.

Luke has a book in which the main character collects little treasures and puts them in his pocket and when asked what he has in there, he replies, "Everything." I know that everything is an incomprehensibly big word, but quite simply, I have everything.

December Pictures

Here are some pictures from December.

The signature wide-eyed look:

Ah, there we go...a smile!

We decorated our tree. Luke enjoyed spreading out the branches...

...and inspecting the tinsel...

...and helping us put up the ornaments...

...while Weston enjoyed tasting his fingers.

I tried to get some cute pictures of them by the tree and...well...here are some of the results:

Here's Luke, ready to cheer on the Hokies!

Luke is very into jigsaw puzzles at the moment. In fact, as I type this post, my living room floor is covered by them.

A sweet, smushy-faced baby:

I put olive oil on his head one night for his cradle cap. The result?

And finally, my favorite picture of the month:

I fear I'm raising quite the, for lack of a better word, smart-ass. This morning:

Luke: Dada, I want to get something that all of us can play with. ALL of us.
McMoose: Like what?
Luke: I don't know. You figure it out and let me know.

This evening, during bathtime:
Luke: I want to do a car.
McMoose: A...cartwheel? You can't do a cartwheel in the tub.
Luke: No, I want to do a CAR.
McMoose: I don't know what that means.
Luke: A car is a vehicle. A vehicle is something that drives on the road.

DIY Halloween

About two months ago, McMoose and I had the following conversation:

Me: I think I'd like to make the kids' Halloween costumes this year.
McMoose: Homemade Halloween costumes are always so awful. They look so amateur.
Me: Super, thanks for the vote of confidence. Fine, then, YOU find them some costumes to wear.

About three weeks ago, McMoose and I had the following conversation:
McMoose: I found Weston a great baby Darth Vader costume.
Me: What about Luke's Luke Skywalker costume?
McMoose: All the ones I looked at sucked. They're thin and cheap looking and they won't keep him warm.
Me: Huh.
McMoose: You should just make him one.
Me: I thought you said homemade costumes never looked right.
McMoose: Yeah...but it's just a shirt and some pants...you can make that. I have confidence in your abilities.

And thus began the biggest fail of my sewing experience. Did you know that it's NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to find sewing patterns for a Luke Skywalker costume? So I thought, well, how hard can a shirt and a pair of pants possibly be? I went online and found some tutorials on making pants and robes--tutorials that said things like, "Measure the child's legs. Then measure out 3 extra inches of fabric." Except that I don't work like that. That's WAY too much room for error for me. No, I need patterns that I can trace over so I know EXACTLY where to cut and there is NO WAY to mess it up.

My first attempt yielded pants that wouldn't pull up past his knees and a shirt that was very oddly puckered. And I was totally going to say, "Oh, well, he won't remember and it'll be dark anyway, so it's fine." Until we were at the fabric store and realized that yes, there might not be any Skywalker costume patterns, but there are PLENTY of karate costume patterns. Thanks to McCall's, Luke now has a much cooler looking Luke Skywalker costume. And...because the costume patterns were one sale, I bought two other booklets, which means that I now have patterns to make 10 different costumes. Guess how I intend to spend my free time and spare money over the next year.

(P.S. Next time, I'm starting on the costumes 2 months ahead of time so I don't have to stay up until 2 am working on the darn things.)

Our Month In Pictures

As promised, here are some pictures from the past month.

McMoose and Weston waiting for lunch at a restaurant

This is his "See my big muscles?" pose:

Not exactly what I meant when I asked Luke to smile.

That's more like it! These pictures were taken when we were getting ready to go to an annual international festival here.

Luke and McMoose at the zoo. We've always tried to go to the zoo in the summer, when it was ridiculously hot. Turns out October is the perfect time for it. Luke is still talking about the fact that the queen bee was not visible in the hive they have for display and speculating as to where she might have been. I never thought I'd have this many conversations about a stinkin' bee.

See the way our double stroller is set up? It's kind of fun because whenever people walk past us, they do a double take because from the front, it looks just like a single stroller, until they see the arms and legs sticking out from the bottom seat.

He always looks a little bit worried in pictures, like maybe he's worried the flash will steal his soul.

I could (and routinely attempt to) eat those yummy cheeks.

We were trying to get him to smile at the camera, but apparently, McMoose is just too distracting.

Three!

Weston turned three months old yesterday, which means we're officially out of the "fourth trimester." I think he knows that he's the second born and that he needs to speak up for himself because he is getting the hang of that particular skill already. This kid has the oddest preferences ever. He likes being held in arms better than...well, anything else, really. But he can tell the difference between when I'm actually holding him and when he's in a baby carrier, even if his body is in the exact same position and he makes it clear that he wants BOTH my hands to be devoted to him. One of the reasons baby carriers are great is that you can hold the baby AND do something else--sweep the floor, clean a counter, get the two-year-old's lunch ready, etc. But Weston has decided that this won't do and so when he's in the carrier, he prefers to hold onto one of my hands and have me pat his back with the other. Totally defeats the purpose.

He has a serious pout and cry when he's mad about something. The funny thing is that when he's hungry or sleepy or needs a diaper change, he has a sweet, quiet little cry, but if you offend him somehow, he will emit a horrifying, high-pitched noise. Luke loves it because he can go make mean faces at his baby brother and make him shriek. (This does not bode well for the future, I feel.)

He's very fond of routines. And by "fond of routines," what I mean is "requires everything to be exactly so and if it isn't he will TELL you about it." I had gotten into the habit of putting him in his pajamas and then rocking him to sleep in the living room while watching something on TV. Now, he doesn't actually watch the screen, but I guess he'd gotten used to the noise because one night, a couple of weeks ago, the TV was being ornery, so I turned it back off. Apparently, that was the WORST THING THAT COULD EVER HAPPEN because never before had I heard that kind of screaming come from this baby. In the end, I had to play music videos on YouTube to get him to calm down enough to fall asleep. (I haven't repeated the mistake since. I now know to have a back-up DVD in the player, just in case the TV is wonky while I'm rocking him to sleep.)

He's turning out to be a little bit of a daredevil. This afternoon, he was hanging out in the swing while I was getting lunch ready and all of a sudden, he lurched to one side and almost tipped the whole swing over because of the momentum of his head. He thought it was hilarious, I thought it was...not. And during his bath tonight, he figured out how to dislodge himself from the little seat in his bathtub and went sliding down the tub. McMoose, who was right beside the tub, caught him and set him back up, at which point Weston grinned, giggled, and tried to do it again. DUDE. Why is my non-mobile baby already giving me heart attacks?

He still loves to be held most of the time and we are happily obliging. Really, how can you refuse someone so cuddly and smushy and sweet? (More pictures of the cuddly, smushy, sweetness coming soon.)

Long Overdue

The benefit to being married to a pack rat is that even when we have no idea where the camera cord is, given enough time, we will come across another random cord that will fit both the computer and the camera. Here are some pictures from August and September.

A reclining Weston:


Baths are so exhausting. *Yawn*

When Weston was about 5 weeks old, he decided that the swing wasn't such a bad place after all. As such, it has gotten way more use this time around. (And by "way more use," I mean that sometimes, when his mood is right, he'll sit in it for 15 minutes while we eat dinner. Dude, it's still better than nothing.)

Gotta love baby fingers!

I'm feeling a little bit nostalgic about the sleeper he's wearing because I tried putting it on him tonight and I couldn't even get his feet into it.

Baby hand and toddler hand:

I believe that look says, "Enough with the pictures, MOTHER."

Cheeky baby.

Our first day in the new house. Weston was less than impressed by my attempts at a Self-and-Baby portrait.

McMoose and I can't decide what color his eyes are. He says brown, I say...I don't know...maybe hazel?

Why can't I get these boys to smile at the same time?

Our first (and so far, only) family picture. That's our swing. In our yard. At our house. YES, I'm still excited.

I spent a lot of time sitting around with a camera and a sleeping baby during our first weekend at the house. Can you tell?

Luke spent that weekend playing in the dirt.

This picture was taken on my birthday. Weston celebrated by sitting and looking worried.

First on-camera smile!