First, I have no pictures of Cash because he’s basically back to his normal self after his toe amputation – sleeping all day on his bed until it’s either time for a walk or time for a meal.  He seems perfectly fine after the loss of his toe – although he’s not liking the booties we got him to protect that toe nub from the elements on his walks.  But he’s a Greyhound, he expresses displeasure so quietly it’s hard to notice at all.

My last post was right before Halloween, so we’ll begin there.  The week before Halloween the kids and I found a yard in our neighborhood with lots of leaves in the grass and they could not resist playing in them:

Kids in Leaves

It’s always such a struggle to get them both to look at the camera!

Anna in leaves

Following that, over the weekend, Mike and I painted Anna’s room.  My mom came up to watch the kids (thanks mom!) while we painted her room per her request “pink and purple”.  Here we are almost done:

Pink and Purple Painting

The next day was Halloween and the beginning of a week off from work for Mike – our own little “Staycation”.  We went to the Denver Botanic Gardens and the kids had a great time playing in the children’s garden and having a picnic in the grassy amphitheater.  That evening our nephew came to our house for some trick-or-treating and we managed a few pictures of the three of them before they ran away in search of sugar.  Anna had requested to be a “pink and purple butterfly” (sense a theme here?), Brendan was a mummy (his mom made the costume!) and Henry borrowed Brendan’s old Zebra costume.

A Butterfly Fairy, a Mummy and a Zebra

A butterfly fairy, a mummy and a zebra walk into a bar…

Anna had been asking for a while to go to work with her Daddy on the bus and the train.  Mike drives most days, but when he has the time he likes to walk two blocks, pick up the bus and then take that to the train station.  From there it’s a short train ride and walk to his office.  So, one morning we packed Anna up with her backpack (full of books), her lunchbag (with a breakfast snack) and Mike up with his backpack and they headed off to work:

Off to Work

After they rode the bus, train and walked to work they had a little breakfast and then I came to get Anna.  She had a great time!

Henry is a good napper (I’m hoping I don’t jinx myself with that), but sometimes he naps so hard that he has some awesome hair afterwards:

Best bedhead ever

I took the opportunity to take a picture of my beloved boys – they’re both so gorgeous!

My Boys

Anna loves to take pictures with my camera and sometimes she grabs it and takes loads of pictures.  Here are the results of one of her picture taking episodes:

Self Portrait

The Artist's Brother

The Scary Monster!

This is either Mike’s Elvis impression or he’s working on a fart…

Nice one eh?

And last, the most artistic of the bunch:

The Artist's Dinner

I call this one “Toast”; I’m sure it will be worth millions some day…

Henry can’t take pictures of his food, but he does like to do other things with it, like throwing it, smashing it or putting it in his hair.  He’s watched me plenty of times putting lotion on my face and one day he decided that his ketchup would work as lotion.  I got some good pictures before I stripped him down and put him in the bath:

Rubbing on the Lotion

Scary Ketchup Monster!

I think that’s it for now! We’re mostly caught up! More posts later!

Age 3 is maddening sometimes, despite these funny moments.  The 3 year old brain is testing any and all boundaries and thus will listen to instruction and reject it almost immediately, just to see what happens.  But Anna is still pretty darn cute about 70% of the time.

So far we’ve survived three actual days of preschool (which meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11:30).  On the first day I asked Anna if she liked school and she said, “Yes”.  But then later when I asked her if she had any friends at school she reported, “Yes, but not all of my friends are nice.  The boy with the red and black shirt pushed me.”  So she sweetly thinks that all of her classmates are her friends, that’s good right?  Tuesday she reported that she liked school and the boy did not push her – but today he was back to his old antics and had pushed her again.  According to Anna’s report, the teacher, “gets mad” at the boy – so I’m not going to get involved, but it’s hard to have my little girl’s early days in preschool marred by another kid.  Here’s hoping he keeps his hands to himself!

As for her true friends, this evening Anna informed me while eating some of my homemade Cinnamon Brown Sugar ice cream that, “I love ice cream very much.  You know who else I love very much? Timothy!”  I had hoped that some member of her family would be in that statement, but she spent all of yesterday morning at playgroup with her best buddy Timothy and has been declaring her love for him ever since. Seriously, how cute are they?

Timothy and Anna

It’s a little too early to start planning the wedding or anything, but it is nice that Anna has a best friend that she truly adores and has a great time playing with every week.

Henry also loves ice cream – when he heard me say ice cream tonight, he immediately went to the kids’ dish cabinet and brought out a spoon for himself.  He raised his spoon high above his head and said “geeki” or something like that…

Yogurt Power!

This was him with some yogurt that he was working on getting into his mouth a few days ago.  Yogurt 1 – Henry 0…

Lately, however, Henry also loves tractors.  Henry has a “Touch and Feel” book about tractors, and when he sees a tractor, or anything resembling a tractor (backhoes, bulldozers, etc.) he says in a gravely voice “tactor!”  I’m not sure why he feels the need to lower his voice when saying “tactor”, but it’s adorable nonetheless.

As he approaches 18 months, Henry’s language skills are really picking up steam.  He has about 25 words that are either close approximations to real words or understandable words (at least to his parents).  Tonight, while reading him one of his bedtime stories, “Night-Night Little Pookie”, I read the line, “There are gentle winds blowing and stars all above you…’ and Henry blew some air out of his mouth when I said, “blowing” and then pointed to the star in the book and said, “tar”.  Sometimes it is the best part of my day when Henry kisses me and says, “Night-night”.

I’m also proud to say that Henry is doing really well with me dropping him off in the recreation center nursery for a little bit while I exercise.  The first day of Anna’s preschool, which was the first day that I dropped him off there by himself, the nursery staff reported that Henry, “Got a little sad, but got over it.” And he’s been doing great ever since then when I take him there after I drop Anna at her preschool class.  Still, Henry is ecstatic to see me when I come back after an hour and that’s really great too – Henry is a great little hugger!

Granted, Henry is also trouble – last week on a trip to the grocery store the kids were in the plastic car part of those heinous car carts eating their free cookies when I heard a scream from Anna.  “Henry bited me!”  So I retrieved her from the cart, to discover that Anna was covered in her own cookie crumbs, and also had a big wet spot on her chest (ringed in wet cookie crumb) from where her brother did indeed bite her.  While explaining that she was “sharing Henry’s cookie” (read “attempting to eat her brother’s cookie”) Anna continued to cry and then wiped a HUGE booger all the way down the long sleeve of her dress.  Pro that I am, I continued to select the graham crackers I needed from the shelf during this ordeal, because seriously, I’m a busy mom!  We were a lovely sight at the checkout, let me tell you – although I did manage to roll up Anna’s sleeve and thus encase the offending nose secretion…

So yeah, kids are cute, sometimes really frustrating and gross, but there are good times to be had and also great pictures to be taken, as seen here:  (Please enjoy the pictures, because the real things are slimy, smelly, snotty little creatures… But I love them!)

Cuties reading

Kids in the water table

Kids in the tent

It’s always surprising to me how quickly time flies with kids.  One moment they are happily playing in the sink and the next they are obviously way too big to play in there anymore:

Just a little too big...

Instead Anna is now volunteering to help with the dishes in order to get a little sink time.  Granted, this is with limited success on the actual cleaning of the dishes.  In this instance Anna pretended the wash cloths were mermaids and sang a little mermaid song:

Anna "helping" with the dishes

Cute, but not so much of a helper…

For the past few weeks I have been trying to prepare both Anna and Henry for the new routine.  Every Tuesday and Thursday morning (the days that Anna will now go to school) we have been going to the recreation center where Anna’s preschool is held.  I would drop them off at the nursery, where they got to play on the same play equipment that Anna will now play with for school recess, and I would go and hit the cardio machines.  On our way in and out I would point out Anna’s classroom and last week I was able to let her go into the room and show her the little back pack cubby with her name on it.

Tuesday we went to the classroom, met her teachers and Anna got to explore the whole place.  So today when I walked her into the room, Anna confidently hung her back pack up in her cubby, found some toys she liked and said, “Bye Mama”.  I’m sure there will still be some adjustment issues for the next few weeks, but it was as good as I could have expected it!

And for her first day of school I was able to con her into letting me choose her clothes – a rare feat indeed.  A few months ago my mom brought up some dresses that she had made for me when I was a kid and there’s one that just about Anna’s size.  I proudly put her in my old dress this morning, despite the 70’s style, and snapped a photo of my little girl heading off to preschool:

Anna's 1st day of preschool

And just to prove that I actually wore this dress, here’s an old picture of me at about the same age in the same cute dress my mom made:

3 year old Dorrie

Now that she’s a big school-going girl, this will probably be the last school day I’ll be allowed to pick out her clothes, but still it was nice the one day!

The Zombie face and her brother

Or if I can get them to look at the camera, one of them looks grumpy and the other one turns out not to have a clean face…

Both kids looking!

Even when Anna wants me to take a picture, like the other day when she so proudly displayed the picture she had drawn (this was actually her first real face-like drawing), all I get is the picture and part of her face:

Anna and her picture

Instead, I need to rely on capturing them in action on the sly and hope that someday maybe I’ll get the perfect picture by accident.  The other day for example, I caught them both in the pantry in their pajamas:

Partners in crime

And yes, that is a lollipop (which by the way is NOT considered a breakfast food in our house) in Anna’s hand.  I guess I should be glad Henry hasn’t figured out how to get the lid off the vegetable oil or we would have a whole other situation.

I failed to take a picture of Henry last week after he discovered that he could get into one our cabinets, hoist himself over my flour bin and stick his hands into the whole wheat flour bag.  Picture in your head a small boy covered with flour, flour all over the kitchen, and me desperately trying to clean him before he touched our furniture with his floury hands.

I did catch him feeding Cash his turkey at lunch:

Henry feeding Cash

I’m thinking Cash, despite an initial hesitation about the kids, could be warming to them and their willingness to feed him their food!

Henry adores his daddy and loves to do everything that Mike does. A few weeks ago Mike grabbed the iPad and I set Henry up with his version of the iPad and they sat quite happily on the couch together for quite a while:

The boys - hanging out

And when we discovered that Mike and Henry had similar shirts, I just had to force them to wear them for a picture.  Of course I didn’t get a good one of them facing the camera, but this one was cute:

Dad and lad - drinking juice

I sneaked up to Anna’s room a few days ago to snap a picture of her quietly “reading” her books in her room.

Anna before

Anna was so sweet that day, flipping through her books in her nice clean room…

You’ll note that I have captioned the above picture as the “before” picture.  For the past few weeks/months Anna has been attempting to give up nap.  I spend a lot of time and energy convincing her that she should nap, but rarely does this work.

Instead, Anna tends to stay in her room for about 5 minutes and then come out and announce that she would rather have an early bedtime.  This would be fine with me if it weren’t my only chance to get a break from both kids (Henry takes a nap in the afternoon around the same time) and also, if she doesn’t nap, Anna is just a little grumpy (read “REALLY grumpy”) without a nap.

It’s an ongoing battle and the day that I took the above picture I tried getting Anna to stay in her room for “quiet time” if she wasn’t going to nap.  She came in and out of her room about five times and then finally quieted down and I assumed she was reading or something…  I went upstairs to check and discovered this:

Anna's room "after"

Absolute chaos and destruction in her room, and the little girl totally crashed on the floor!  The best part of this, aside from the fact that Anna was wearing her rain boot on her left foot and her winter Elmo boot on the right foot, is that I was able to take lots of pictures.  I left the room, went downstairs to get the camera, went back upstairs and took multiple pictures, got Mike to come up and check out the mess and then took some more pictures.  Anna didn’t wake up until I tried picking her up and putting her in her bed – amazing!

Even with these on and off illnesses, I think Anna had a pretty good birthday.   The celebrations definitely make-up for last year’s stunted celebration – due in part to the birth of her brother and to our lovely flea infestation.  Last year we didn’t do much at all and this year there were plenty of goings on to make a 3 year-old happy.

Anna got to spend some time on her birthday with her cousin playing and having lunch and the day after we went to her favorite place for dinner (where they have “family night” on Wednesdays) and she got a butterfly costume made by a balloon artist (picture giant pink and purple balloon wings).  Then on the Sunday following her birthday all of Anna’s friends (except poor sick Piper) met her at our Rec Center for playing in the tumbling room, snacks, cake and presents.

I think everyone had a good time at the tumbling party, but especially Henry.  There was a bar to hang from:

Henry hanging

And there were balls to play in:

Henry in play balls

With the price of the tumbling party a store-bought cake was included, so of course I ordered a “Princess” cake.  Here is the birthday girl blowing out all the candles on top of her heavily frosted sugary nightmare of a cake:

Anna and her cake

The kids ran around like spinning tops for a while after they ate and then I’m pretty sure they all crashed from the sugar high after they went home.  Sorry parents!

And to top it all off, after nap that same day we had family over for more presents, food and cake.  It was exhausting, but well worth it!

At 3 Anna is both fun and frustrating at the same time.  She loves to dance, run and play and is wonderful to talk to; one of her favorite phrases is “I’m thinking about…” This is generally followed by something like, “going the park, zoo, grocery store”, etc. She likes to make plans and loves to inform me of what we are going to do next through out the day.  Although her temperament is generally improved over age 2, she is still prone to complete meltdowns at the drop of a hat over silly things like the color of the plate I give her for dinner.  Mike and I like to say that she is 3 going on 12.

Anna seems also to be trying out phrases in order to figure out exactly what they mean.  She often says, “Now I’ll never…” which is completed with something silly like, “play with play dough again”, etc.  Anna is also working on the meaning of “I’ve never had this ____ before”, even though it’s something she has had before like honey or marshmallows.    She has also started giving out compliments, although in a strange high pitched voice; Anna will say, “Oh, what a pretty pants Mama.”  It’s nice, but a little disconcerting because her voice sounds fake, like she’s really just giving the compliment to get something in return.

My favorite Anna story of late is one that we heard from our babysitter.  We were informed one night after we came home from a date that the babysitter had been asked, “Kelly, do you have boobs?  Because I see those lumps in your shirt.”  And then when told that yes, her babysitter did have the aforementioned appendages, Anna said, “Are you going to feed Henry with those?”  Hilarious!  Anna and I had a lovely talk the next day about how only Mama’s boobs feed Henry, even if all grown up girls have them.

For her birthday Anna got a pink and purple bike with Disney princesses on it from her parents, along with a princess helmet and bike bell.  It’s a two wheeler with training wheels and she does okay with it, but seems to have trouble keeping her feet on the pedals while riding it.  When we took her with us to a bike shop to check out new bike options for Mike, she did just fine on the little bikes there, so we may need to see if it’s something strange with the design of the princess bike that is slowing her down.  Once she gets comfortable on it, I’m sure that there will be no stopping her!

Anna is still my little chocolate fiend; here she is “helping” me make fudge the other day.  Now that’s the kind of help I need!

Anna and fudge makings

Now that we seem to be well on our way to diaper-less land with her (hooray!), Anna will be spending the summer taking swimming classes, etc. and will start pre-school two days a week in September.  She’s really growing up – but she’s still my baby girl!

The class was attended by 5 other couples whom we shared small talk and snack duty with for the duration of the class.  On the last day of the class the teacher asked if anyone wanted to organize a “reunion” for the class after all of the babies were born.  I volunteered (I do love to organize get togethers!) and got everyone’s email addresses and phone numbers.

A week later on April 5th Anna was born – so glad I scheduled the class when I did!  When Anna was about 5 months old I was able to organize a reunion with some, but not all, of the couples from our class. Our friends, Brooke and Ryan, whose twin daughters were born 4 days after Anna, were regrettably unable to come, and I never heard from the other two couples.  Anyway, we met at our house, noshed on some snacks and talked with our teacher about how everyone’s labor/birth went and how we had been doing so far.

Here is a picture from that day in August of 2008:

Reunion - August 2008

From the left are Bryan and Katie and their son Drew, Angie and Steve and their son Timothy and of course us, with Anna.

Ever since then we’ve been trying to get together regularly with the kids so that the kids can play and we can all get some adult time.  One of our original member families has moved (or at least disappeared off email), but there are three of us whom we have become great friends with; I consider them family at this point!  Mostly it’s us moms getting together with the kids these days, but every once in a while we can wrestle the guys to come on a weekend.

Anyway, recently I went through all of my pictures from playgroup to show what an amazing transition all of the kids have made in the three years that we have known them and their parents.

Twins and Anna - October 2008

After the reunion in August of 2008, the next time we got together was in October of 2008 and the twin girls were able to come, as pictured above.  There’s Keira on the left, her sister Morgan and then our Anna.

In December of that year we met again, without the twins unfortunately, and dressed the kids in their Christmas finery.  Here are Timothy and Anna from that day:

December 2008 - Timothy and Anna

We got together with Drew in February of 2008 (again without the twins) and I snapped a picture of the three of them standing up:

Anna, Drew and Timothy - Feb 2009

In March of 2009 we went to see the twins at their house and put all the kids on the couch for a candid shot of them eating the foam floor pieces:

Twins, Anna and Timothy March 2009

There is Morgan, Keira, Anna and Timothy all looking so big!

After that it was a while until we got together again (Angie and I were both pregnant with our second kids during this period).  But in June of 2010 we had playgroup at our house and everyone sat so nicely for lunch:

Twins, Anna and Timothy - June 2010

Ever since then we’ve been able to get together pretty regularly with the twins and Timothy and it’s been wonderful.  The kids are learning to play well with each other and us moms are having a great time too.

Morgan, Keira, Anna and Timothy - March 2011

Although I do feel badly for Timothy; he’s surrounded by girls and when he wants to play dress up, he has to use girl clothes.  Here he is in one of Morgan’s favorite sweaters and her boots:

Timothy in boots and sweater

And later that same day he tried on an Easter hat and some Barbie shoes:

Timothy in hat and shoes

Bad for you Timothy, but good for your parents and their “blackmail” file later…

The “next generation” of playgroup, Henry and Timothy’s little sister Kate, (born two weeks apart) are working on learning how to play together as well:

Playgroup - next gen

And last but not least, here are all the kids making an absolute mess of Henry’s birthday cake.  Oh the good times we have had and will continue to have!

Kids on Henry's birthday

As for me, I have just finished Run, by Ann Patchett.

This is my third Ann Patchett and I am back to loving her after reading Run.  I read Bel Canto a long time ago and loved it so much I recommended it to everyone I knew.  But then I read The Magician’s Assistant and was disappointed that I was not as enthralled with the story or the characters as I was with Bel Canto.   Run has wonderfully developed characters; you love them all, despite their faults, and this was again one of those books that I did not want to put down.  The book does a great job examining family, adoption and race.  I recommend to everyone I know that they should read Run.

For my next book I’m reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese; I’ll let you know what I think!

Mike is currently engrossed, but not done with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

I don’t have a final review from him, but he can’t seem to put it down and I’ve already bought him the second in the series, Catching Fire.  On his bedside table Mike also has Brew Like A Monk, The Gunslinger (Dark Tower I), Under the Dome (both by Stephen King), and Michael Chabon’s Fatherhood for Amateurs.

We generally read Anna three stories at naptime and bedtime and being a toddler, she sometimes gets stuck in a rut and likes certain books repeated.  For a long time I got to read The Wheels on the Bus, Curious George Goes to a Costume Party and The Little Red Caboose over and over and over.  Another lovely tradition is reserved for the times when her daddy puts Anna to bed; Mike makes up little stories about a little girl name Emma (who is basically Anna) who goes on little adventures.  Emma goes to the park, the ocean, on helicopter rides, etc. and Anna truly adores her Emma stories.

Lately her favorites are: Bedtime for Francis by Russell Hoban,

I Like You More Than Elephants, by Norm Byers and Good Work Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish.

I grew up with the Francis series and with Amelia Bedelia so it is lovely to be reading these books to my own daughter.  The Francis series are about a little girl badger who is pretty much like every little girl in the world.  Bedtime for Francis is about Francis finding every little excuse to avoid going to bed: ” ‘There is a giant in my room.” said Francis, “May I watch television?’ ”

I Like You More Than Elephants is a book that Anna came home from school with and is truly adorable: “I like you more than elephants, they don’t fit in the house…I like you more than timber wolves, they tried to eat my mouse!”

And then there is the always lovable Amelia Bedelia series; Amelia Bedelia is an inane housekeeper who takes all of her instructions literally.  When asked to “Make a sponge cake.” she makes cake batter, cuts a sponge into pieces and stirs it in!  When told that her employers would like a “chicken dinner”, she serves them cracked corn since, “That’s what chickens eat for dinner.”

As for Henry, we are still at work on a consistent bedtime routine, so the books that I read to him are the same every time he goes to bed or nap.  I did this with Anna, always reading Eric Carle’s, The Very Hungry Caterpillar last.  That way, Anna knew, since she wasn’t able to understand what I was telling her, that it was bedtime.  We do the same things in the same order every time and it makes bed time a lot easier for babies.  Currently we are reading You and Me Baby by Lynn Reiser:

It’s full of color photographs of real babies, mommies and daddies.  It’s great for babies and toddlers, since babies like to look at other babies – especially themselves in the mirror – but other babies will do just fine.  As for Henry, he loves to reach out and touch the pictures of the babies and then help me turn the page.  It’s not high literature, “Hey baby! Look at you, looking at me!” and Mike can’t stand reading it, but the simple language and pictures are enough to make small babies happy.

And to finish up right before the light goes off and I kiss him good night, Henry listens intently (but yawns) to Time for Bed by Mem Fox and Jane Dyer.

This is a beautifully illustrated book that is about all sorts of parents putting their little ones to bed. I actually have it memorized so that if Henry is especially sleepy I can “read” it to him in the dark, “Time for bed little goose, little goose, the stars are out and on the loose.”  Cuddled on my lap in his fleece sleeper with feet I can feel Henry relax, see him yawn and rub his eyes and I can tell he knows that it’s time for bed…

As usual, it’s been a while and mostly what has been missed is Henry’s development (more about that later).  But there’s plenty to talk about with regards to all of us – here goes!

For Thanksgiving we went to my sister’s for dinner and before we ate we took a few family pictures.  This is what happens when you put a four-year-old and a two-year-old in charge of holding an 8-month-old:

All the kids

Anna had an adorable dress on that day and I tried to capture how cute she looked, but as usual, she wasn’t much into posing for me:

Anna in her party dress

These days Anna is going to one class, another pre-pre-school class that is one day a week, but lasts from 9 -11:30.  For her first class last week she wore underwear, came home dry and apparently peed on the potty at school.  This is great news, since we have been duking it out with her over potty-training.  Anna was doing great with it for a while, but then decided that the baby was getting more attention and decided for several weeks, “I want to be a baby” and wanted to wear diapers.  We just had to grit our teeth through that stage (cross our fingers that it’s over) and we seem to be onto a stage where she’s working pretty hard at getting this potty-training thing right.  She even got out of the bath the other day to pee (and then promptly got back in all by herself).

Anna is in a “I’ll help you” stage that is pretty cute.  She decided the other day that she wanted to help her Daddy, who was programming on his computer on the couch:

Anna helping Mike

Mike decided that this was the best place for her, so that he could get some actual work done.

And she also likes to help me bake.  The other day when I was kneading bread dough she wanted to help and was even willing to don an apron to do so.  Granted, I discovered that her favorite part of helping me knead is to put her hand under the dough and have me squish the dough onto her hand:

Anna helping with kneading

Perhaps someday she’ll be a little more helpful…

Anna’s favorite toys that she got for Christmas are her tea set (straight from The Empress in Victoria, B.C.), her playdough set, and her new baby doll that can take baths with her and whom she has named, “Jessie” after the cowgirl in the Toy Story movies.  Jessie sleeps with her, goes practically everywhere with her and even sometimes has to be fed some of Henry’s baby food.  My favorite thing that she says these days is something she says to me when I’m trying to leave her room at bedtime, “I’m just talking to you!”

And finally, I took Anna to get her haircut the other day and had them cut her hair into a bob to make her thin hair look a little more plentiful.  We think it looks pretty adorable:

Anna in her new bob haircut

Henry is in that baby stage where changes come frequently.  Since my last post at the end of September (when Henry turned 6 months old) he has gone from sitting up, to commando crawling, to pulling up to stand, to cruising around from piece of furniture to furniture.  He’s still incredibly adorable though – that hasn’t changed!

Henry on Christmas

Henry just had his 9-month check-up on Dec. 29th (yay! no shots!).  He weighed 17.5 lbs and is 28 inches long.  He’s 5th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for height.  Since he’s apparently so, “small” our doctor advised the same thing that she did when Anna was his age, slapping butter, olive oil, cheese and cream into all of his foods.  I’m thinking about switching doctors…

Henry’s favorite toy is anything that his sister will let him play with – which isn’t much – and his favorite activity these days is crawling around and finding something to pull himself up to standing upon.  He’s pretty good at it, but every once in a while, there’s a mishap and he has the bruises to prove it.  Up next, walking!

Henry’s other favorite activity is unfortunately bugging poor Cash.  Cash has never been a big fan of babies, not that he knew much about them until Anna came along, and he’s definitely not a fan of them in his space.  He is however, an easy dog to train; he growled at Henry just one time, was spoken to harshly, and has since backed down.  Case in point:

Henry and Cash

Here is Cash quite content to have Henry on his bed and chewing on his rawhide toy.  Anyone who says that Greyhounds are not docile dogs hasn’t really met one!

As a side note, our back-up babysitter is in Vet Tech school and told me that the school adopts a certain number of Greyhounds every year as they come off the track.  These Greyhounds spend a year in the school being the “test dog”, for the students to practice examining, taking blood, etc., and then are apparently adopted out.  It makes me a little sad to know this, because it can’t be that great going from the track to being a student practice dog, but on the other hand, these are some of the most docile dogs that have ever walked the earth.  I hope that they find great homes eventually – ours has!

Mike has been working, working, working and sometimes taking a break for racquetball and beer brewing.  Today, for example he arose at 3:30 a.m. to be on a phone call for work at 4 a.m.  Yuck!  Anyone who knows of a nice PHP or ColdFusion job with regular hours, good pay and the ability to work from home frequently, email me!

Anyway, he does love beer, learning about it, tasting it, pairing it and especially brewing beer.  He spend this last weekend at the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines festival with his friends Nate and Scott.  As usual they had a great time, learned a great deal and came home exhausted (and maybe a little hungover) the next day.  Mike is always experimenting with trying out new craft beers and with trying to find good food to pair with beers.  We attended a beer pairing dinner in November and were fascinated to find the different pairings that a professional chef came up with – including a Cascadian dark I.P.A that was paired with a smoked chicken ravioli (that was yummy!).  I have to brag that Mike’s favorite beer pairing lately is my hazelnut fudge with a New Belgium’s Frambozen Raspberry Brown Ale.

Here is Mike and Henry on a recent brew day, checking out the beer process:

Mike and Henry on brew day

That particular brew day Mike was making his 16th batch of beer, a Belgian Blonde that he will be calling “Anna’s Ale”.  Henry, by the way, had his own batch of Amber Ale made around the time of his birth…

Here is Mike showing off the beauty and clarity of his beer after it was brewed:

Brew Day results

The beer has since been bottled and will be ready for tasting near the end of this month.

As for me, I am, as usual, trying hard to keep up with the two kids.  It’s rare that I have a moment to myself, and generally that’s during nap time, so I either clean, read or bake.  As can be seen from the previous post, I tried painting the kitchen during naps, with little success, but finally we were able to finish with the help of our friends Angie and Steve who had 4 kids on their hands for 4 hours! They’re great, but crazy!  The kitchen is now a lovely “Apple Crisp” color (that’s the official Behr name) and I’m loving the color.

When I do have time to bake, I have been trying to beauty up my results, I’m usually sort of a slob, figuring that taste will win out over appearance.  Mike requested a carrot cake a few weeks ago and I went so far as to toast the coconut that I put on top of the cream cheese frosting.  I think it looks pretty good:

Carrot Cake

So that’s pretty much it from here, we’re good, and the kids are alright (anyone else a Who fan?)  We hope you are too!

Henry has turned 6 months old and so I felt it was time for an update about him, and the rest of us…

Mike is working hard at his job, but he’s still fairly new, having only been at the place since early May.  I don’t think he’s having much fun, but I hear there’s a foosball table on the third floor that provides some fun/relief and he seems to be meeting lots of interesting people.

Beer brewing is Mike’s real passion and he’s spending most of his free time either brewing, racking (moving beer from the primary fermenting container to the “secondary”), bottling, or building up his equipment.  The other day he made a second batch of “Henry’s Ale” – and I took pictures of the operation.

Brewing in the garage

Now that Mike has gone “all grain” he’s moved into the garage and out of the kitchen – which is nice, since he took up most of the kitchen on brew days.  Once we get a utility sink in the basement (ahem honey!) the brewing equipment will be banished from the kitchen entirely.  And while I’m here, I’m going to take a moment to dispel some myths… A) Beer brewing is legal; B) Mike is not making “hooch” or “moonshine”, but beer, and the highest alcohol content beer he’s made was somewhere around 9%, C) Since it’s not the grain alcohol that we think of as moonshine, and not 100% proof – it’s not explosive.  I saw comments on a friend’s Facebook page that eluded to Mike’s beer brewing operation as being both illegal and explosive – not true!  Mike is on his (I think) 15th batch of beer and has made everything from an Amber ale to a black ale with stouts, wits and trippels in between – he’s having a great time perfecting his brewing!

As for me, I’m spending most of my time just trying to maintain the sanity/controlled chaos that is a house with a two-year old and 6 month old.  I have also been on the hunt for a babysitter (or two) that will help to give me some relief from the kids and perhaps a date night or two for Mike and I.  It’s a difficult process, especially since it’s hard for me to trust strangers with my children – they are the most precious things that I will ever have.  Mike and I had a babysitter last Saturday night, and she did great and so did the kids, but it was hard for me not to call and check-in and harder still not to worry.

I had Mike take a picture of Henry and I a few weeks ago, because a friend reminded me that I need to be in some of the pictures too – I have to admit, there are very few pictures of my mom in our childhood photo albums… We’re elusive (and generally behind, rather than in front of the camera), us moms.

The mom and the boy

I have been doing a little baking, when I have time (which is generally on those rare days when both kids nap at the same time).  Last week I used up the last of a batch of fresh peaches on a version of upside down cake…

Upside down with peaches and pecans

Anna, who is so very two, is still the cutest thing around…

Anna on the tricycle

I took the picture above when we were visiting my mom a few weeks ago.  Anna loves to ride the Radio Flyer tricycle that my sister and I rode when were little that my parents still have in their garage.  At the beginning of the summer Anna was too short to reach the pedals of the tricycle we bought her, but now she can pedal on hers and the one at Nana’s – and she loves doing so!

Along with riding her tricycle, Anna is also back in her “school” class on Wednesdays and in tumbling on Fridays.  Anna is really strong and can pull herself up on the bars in tumbling class and jump pretty high on the trampoline – it is by far her favorite class.  We’re also spending a fair amount of time on potty training (I long for the days when other people’s bodily functions will not take up 80% of my time).  With chocolate as motivation Anna can go a whole day, except for naps, in underwear, but has yet to master #2 on the potty consistently.  I’ll spare you the details… It has been amusing to watch her with our babysitter interviewees; as soon as I mention to them that we are potty training her, Anna will jump up, ask them to come with her and shows off her ability to strip down, and pee on the potty.  We’re not shy here apparently…

Anna’s language skills are great; she speaks in long, generally grammatically correct sentences and is pretty easy to understand, even for those people not familiar with her.  I’ve started keeping a list in my journal of funny things that Anna says just to remember how funny she is at this age.  The other day I patted her butt and she said, “That’s not cool Mama.”

I got some great shots a few weeks ago of Anna, Mike and Henry:

Mike and both kids

and of Mike and Henry:

Mike and Henry

Henry (as of today at 4:09 a.m.) is now six months old.  He’s still a happy, cheery boy most of the time, except when tired or hungry, which is really pretty good for his age.  Henry has been eating solid foods for a while now; we started with rice cereal, moved on to oatmeal and now we have moved into veggie/fruit land.  I’ve been more organized than I was with Anna and have been able to make all of the veggies myself – I just steam and puree them all.  So far Henry has tried butternut squash, yellow squash, carrots, peas, green beans (hated those – my dad, who also hates them, would be proud!), sweet potatoes and apples.  Henry has a veggie or fruit for lunch, with a little cereal if he’s still hungry and then a fair amount of cereal before bed.  If I can get enough cereal in Henry I can put him down at 6 p.m. and not hear from him until 4 a.m.  It doesn’t always work like that, but when it does – I don’t take it for granted.

Here’s a more recent picture of my little flirt:

Henry - 6 months

Henry has mastered, although doesn’t seem too motivated to do very often, rolling from his tummy to his back.  If I put a favorite toy or object out of his reach he rolls part of the way over from his back, but has yet to complete the full roll from back to tummy.  Henry is still sleeping on his tummy, since that was the best position for his acid reflux, and last week when I tried to take him off the acid reflux medicine I got a grumpy boy instead of the cheery one I was used to – so experiment over – back on the meds!

At his 6 month appointment today Henry weighed 15lbs 8 oz. (15%) and was 27″ long (70%).  Henry started chewing on his food source a few days ago (that’s me!) and the doctor says she could feel a little swelling in his gums – so yay! teething coming up!

I got a great little video of Henry laughing the other day – with a burp at the end:

And that’s the story of us these days!

The other day I went in to her room after nap and Anna said, “I want to wear a dress and be a princess.”  Thankfully we had a pink dress that fit the bill that day!

So I should not have been surprised when Anna demanded a pink umbrella the other day (along with a pair of pink scissors – she’s in a paper cutting phase too).  Fortunately I found both at the grocery store (while Anna chomped on her free pink cookie).

That first day, since I’m not terribly superstitious, I opened it inside for Anna.  The umbrella went everywhere with her; she ate her snack under it and walked around with it for hours.

The next day it rained and Anna ran downstairs to get her pink umbrella and go outside.  Here she is trying it out on the porch for the first time.

Under the Pink Top

Then she got up the nerve to actually go out in the rain and try it out:

Out in the rain

And then, as if she had actually seen “Singing in the Rain”, she started twirling the umbrella and dancing with it:

Dancing in the Rain

In the end, much to the gladness of my tomboy heart, Anna handed the umbrella to me and just danced in the rain and splashed in the puddles:

Splashing

Pinkalicious!