Happy Birthday Jack!

Baby Jack is no longer a baby - we celebrated his 1st birthday today with a big posse of friends and even some of my family members - my Dad, stepmom and stepsister drove out from Missouri and my aunt, uncle, cousins and another uncle drove out from Centennial.

My dad brought us a family of ceramic pigs that had belonged to my grandmother.

Every baby is drawn to a lit candle...

...but mine reaches right past it and goes straight for the cake!

The party theme was stars and primary colors. I made these crayons by melting the different colored crayons and layering them in a star-shaped ice cube tray. I was also trying to limit the amount of trash we produced, so I was excited when I saw this idea for Mason jar juice "boxes" online. The straws are paper, so we were able to put them in our compost bin. I was a little wary of giving 2- and 3-year-olds glass jars, but not a one broke and the kids loved the blueberry lemonade.
The menu was pulled pork and cole slaw on slider buns, corn "cobbettes", fruit salad (blueberries, pineapple and strawberries, to keep with the color theme!), plus mac & cheese for the kids. I intended to serve baked beans as well, but I put the dish in the oven to warm and promptly forgot about it for about 6 hours. I baked brownies for the grown-ups and cut them out with a star-shaped cookie cutter (I had elaborate plans to create star-shaped cake pops but realized that was going to be a LOT more work than I had time or energy for!)

I baked individual (unfrosted) banana cakes for all the kids, which were a hit. Jack really enjoyed his; Ryan was the only child who asked for "a 'poon" to eat his instead of picking it up like everyone else.

We waited until after the party to open gifts; as expected, Jack's favorites were the boxes, bags, and ribbons. I was worried that Ryan would have a hard time understanding why Jack was getting presents (even though Aunt Sarah wasweet enough to get a gift for him too), and I was right. About 10 minutes after we started Ryan wandered off, then came back with no pants on (not an unusual occurrence around here these days). I asked if he went potty and he said yes, and I asked which bathroom he used. He said, "Oh, I peed in Jack's room!" Indeed, he had just taken a whiz right there on the carpet...

All in all it was a fun time! You can see more photos from the big day here (though, truth be told I was a little busy and forgot to take a lot of pictures - the plight of the second child!).

My Little Big Man is One!

Dear Jack -

Happy birthday to you, my darling little man. I don't know where to begin detailing how exciting, crazy, fun and honestly stressful this last year has been, but every time I see a huge grin break out on your face, I know it was all worth it.

You are a sweet, sweet little man. You have a contagious giggle and a big smile for almost everyone, and you're starting to babble and have little conversations with us. You say bye, da, ma, ball, and "sh-sh" when we give you a rattle or other noisy toy and say "shake-ah shake-ah".

You are a never-ending source of entertainment for your brother, who delights in sharing toys with you (and then un-sharing them!) and who has become quite the guardian. I hear "Jack's on the picnic table!" fairly frequently as you have decided that your main goal in life should be to climb UP - no matter what the object is you're attempting to scale, you just want to be up.

You are pretty fearless as a recent trip to the pool suggests - you got dunked a couple of times but just blinked and coughed it off, and you delighted in sitting on the edge of the pool and leaning forward until you fell into my arms in the water. Eventually you turned around and lowered yourself into the pool much the way you've learn to scoot down stairs.

You have a big mouthful of teeth with a molar or two clawing its way out now, which interrupts your 75% sleeping-through-the-night average.

You're eating what the rest of us eat now (you'd eat corn on the cob morning-noon-and-night if I gave it to you), and bottles and formula are a thing of the past. You love drinking milk out of your stainless steel sippy - we might have to buy a share of a dairy cow to keep you in the white stuff.

You've taken a few steps on your own (mainly to the outstretched arms of Grandma Nancy or Grandma Charma) but you're still pretty content to cruise around holding on to furniture - or crawling if you need to get somewhere quickly.

At your 12 month check up you stayed on your growth curve - at 22 lbs 10 oz you're in the 50th percentile for weight, while your 32 inch length continues the 97th percentile pattern. The doctor checked your eyes, ears, etc. and watched you crawl, cruise and walk, and declared you PERFECT - but we already knew that.

We also had your final spine x-ray at Children's Hospital, and it was totally straight. You charmed the doctor and interns by giving high-fives to everyone, and they all lingered in the exam room after sharing the good news just to enjoy your charming personality.

It has been an absolute joy watching you grow and develop - I try not to compare you too much to your brother (because honestly I can't remember much beyond yesterday, much less 2 years ago...) but you do have more hair than he had at this time! I can't wait to see what you do next (and I'll try to be better about taking pictures of it!).

"Love" doesn't feel like a strong enough word,
Mama

Butterfly Pavilion

Jena and I took the boys to the Butterfly Pavilion today. They have a whole room full of giant cockroaches, centi- and millipedes, and tarantulas - LOTS of tarantulas, including Rosie, who the kids can hold (Ryan wanted nothing to do with her while David charged right up and practically snatched her out of the volunteer's hands...).

The real attraction of the Butterfly Pavilion, of course, is the Butterfly Pavilion itself, a greenhouse type glass house populated by tropical plants and thousands of butterflies.

In Westminster, not Kauai

Watching the butterflies snack on overripe bananas

The boys did just fine in the pavilion - no chasing or stomping on the 'flies, no picking flowers or climbing into the fountain (though I could tell Ryan REALLY wanted to). They were much happier, however, when we left the pavilion and went into the Tropical Discovery Zone, which has lots of kid-friendly things to climb on.


They also have a kid-sized zip line. Ryan rode it once with me walking behind him and pushing him slowly. David was a little more confident:

Camping is Like Childbirth...

We went to Jackson Lake in northeast Colorado over Labor Day weekend. We borrowed a pop-up camper, which was a heck of a lot more comfortable than sleeping in a tent on the hard ground. Regardless, I couldn't help draw parallels between spending time in the great outdoors and pushing out a near-9 lb baby...

1) It's more painful than you remember - from the loading and unloading of all the gear to trying to get settled on a thin mattress in a strange bed, nothing about camping is comfortable (though I didn't get to lounge around drinking beer in the maternity ward...).


2) It takes a long time to prepare for what ultimately doesn't last that long - granted, it wasn't 10 months of gestation like pregnancy, but between the coordinating with friends, planning menus and preparing meals, and digging out and sorting through all our gear, I spent a solid week organizing a three day, two night excursion. At least I wasn't having intermittent contractions at the same time...


3) No matter how organized you are before you go, you end up bringing home a lot of random stuff in utter disarray.


4) You spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for things to happen with no clear idea of how long you'll be there (though beer and S'mores make for easier relaxing than ice chips and apple juice).

5) There's no easy way to take a shower while you're in the middle of it, and by the time everything settles down and you can finally luxuriate under a showerhead, you get interrupted by a crying baby.

But when all is said and done, you end up with stories to tell, photos to share, and memories to savor. Unlike childbirth, though, we will be going camping again!

*Jack's new Harry Potter scar came courtesy of a face plant in the gravel and, a mere ten minutes later, an accidental whack with a board book by his brother.

Handprints on My Heart

Ryan and Jack are going to an in-home daycare in our neighborhood and so far it's working great. They brought home this adorable artwork last week:

I can't believe how big Jack's hands are - almost as big as Ryan's!