the best way to spend a birthday

It was a fantastic Wednesday for a two-year-old little boy. Wesley got to:

• Wake up at 7 am on the dot because he was so excited. Not of my choosing.
  
  
• Run around Spartan Gym. It's basically a gymnasium owned by the City of Shoreline and they have all these huge fun toys and kids go buck wild in an enclosed space. It's great. There are push toys and pop-up firetruck tents and play kitchens and plastic slides and soft climbing cubes and balls and more. The best part was our friend Karly and her daughter Ali were there so we had some friends.
  
  
  
• Skip his nap. Again, not of my choosing. But who wants to spend a single second of their birthday sleeping? (answer: me.)
  
  
• Swing at a park. It was raining, but there was a short break in the drizzle and we went for it. I packed a hand towel, drove to a park, dried off a swing... and found that it immediately started sprinkling. But Wesley LOVES swinging so I had to let him do what he loves on his birthday! When it started to downpour we had to leave. And he cried.
  
  
• Run in puddles. I let him have his fun. We got home and he ran and ran and ran. It was pouring rain. Am I a bad mother? He loves running in puddles. I think everyone should do what they love on their birthdays. I think I already alluded to this. His shoes will be soaked for days. I need to make sure that boy has rain boots come next year's rainy season...
  
  
  
• Indulge in a birthday cupcake and ice cream. Yum!

• Open a few presents. Check out that loot! Most of them we are saving for his birthday party Saturday. (Really we aren't spoiling him. Most of the gifts we already had around the house but hadn't given him yet, or are second-hand, or are ridiculously practical like toothpaste and flossers. Seriously.) Tonight he opened a squeaky shark (picked out by his father), a very cool microphone (an exact replica of one he got at Christmas that he has destroyed beyond repair), and a family of farm animal Beanie Babies (since I wanted to give him toys he could safely throw... that sounds good right? and his birthday party theme is a farm and the Beanie Babies will be incorporated).
  

• Fall right asleep. That's right, we wore him out folks. I didn't tell him he's getting shots tomorrow at his 2-year well-baby pediatrician visit, so it's all sugar plums and rainbows in dreamland. Lucky kid.

Happy Birthday sweet Wesley! They week has only begun. Wait for a recap of Saturday's farm party. I hope it goes well.

why i love my family, part 4

Wow. Today my little boy turns 2. I am a mother! I have a son! My life has completely changed since he entered the world 2 years ago today. And I love him.

• I love how happy Wesley is. Seriously, at all times. He smiles at everyone we meet. Even when he is on the brink of a complete meltdown, he can usually find something to laugh about (if I'm doing well at distracting him). Shane and I often joke that we can't tell if he's laughing or crying.
  
  
• I remember my mom once saying that at one point, my brother's son (Wesley's cousin, my nephew) was in a stage where he wasn't interested in interacting with anyone but his parents. My mom would travel thousands of miles to see him (and my brother, presumably), and yet he didn't want anything to do with her. I suppose that was just his temperament. Lucky for me, Wesley is quite the opposite. He loves everyone, especially his grandmas. Grandma Twining has had him laughing and laughing lots of times during our visits. I feel blessed that he is such an easy-going kid.
  
  
• In those same respects, Wesley is so independent. He can play for hours by himself, without any interference from me. Since we're working on communication, however, I often interrupt his play to interject some cooperative play. He tolerates me. I am his mother. But I love to see his little mind work. I have no idea what is so fascinating about throwing stackable rings on the floor and seeing them clatter, but he does it. Over and over and over again. He loves it. I love when we go to a park that I can let him wander (in my eyesight, of course) and he just adventures and observes and learns. I'm so impressed by his imaginative, thoughtful spirit.
  
  
• He loves the swings, which is completely adorable. I can swing him for literally hours and he will still cry when it's time to go home.
  
  
• He's doing very well with body parts identification lately (as you recall from a previously posted video). My new favorite is his cheeks. He loves to smack his face -- two hands -- when we ask where his cheeks are. But it gets better: when I ask, "Where are mommy's cheeks?" he comes up to me and put his palms on my cheeks and holds my face in his little hands. It is such a sweet moment I love sharing with him and it completely melts my heart.
  
  
• I love how Wesley has taught me to treat other people better. I just look at him and instantly my heart melts, I love him so much. I can't imagine anyone not loving him like I do, much less hurting him or teasing him or rejecting him. How could they? And then I think of all the people who annoy me, and how I say mean things sometimes, and I realize I need to be a better person. Everyone has a momma who (we hope) loves them as much as I cherish my son. And I should treat them better. It's a work in progress.
  
  
• His eyes are so blue. His eyelashes are really long. Wow, we have a good-lookin' kid.
  
  
• I love how Wesley is always up for a little intrigue. Sometimes we play peekaboo games in the grocery store. Sometimes I chase him through the racks at the library. Sometimes he giggles around the parking lot while I sing "I've been working on the railroad." He is always up for something, and whatever it is, we can make it fun.
  
  
• As a piggyback to that, I love how anything can be a source of entertainment. Eggs filled with rice make great shakers. Empty cardboard boxes are fun to throw. An office chair is perfect for swiveling. In his little mind, it's all exciting. That helps me be a little more positive about whatever is out there, too.
  
  
• You've never seen zest for life until you've seen Wesley run with glee, arms flailing, in any and all directions. He truly loves to move. I should be inspired to go for a jog, right?
  
  
• I like to think I'm very lucky that Wesley isn't mischievous. He only discovered he could yank on the little guys on his mobile a few months ago. He is almost 2. Most mobile companies tell you to stop using them at 6 months. Not Wesley. He doesn't get into stuff. He isn't hitting or biting. He certainly doesn't climb out of his crib. He naps well. He plays quietly. He doesn't put peas up his nose (yet). He is all around lovable and easy-going and wow, am I lucky. (He isn't too keen on sharing... but we're working on that.)
  
  
• Wesley isn't much of a talker, but he is a singer. If he's not "aieeeee!"ing or "ka!ka!ka!"ing, he is "eieio"ing or humming a tune like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or (new!) Mary Had a Little Lamb. Everyone notices. The cashier at the grocery store today was so impressed he was "singing." Basically it's like humming except out loud. It's cute. I love his enthusiasm for music, and I think I'll reward that with a percussion set for his birthday. I know, I'm crazy right?
  
  
• I'm grateful Wesley loves books. He throws them all over the house and rips them up (and all have been rescued and repaired with packing tape), but he also opens them and looks at the pictures and brings them to me and begs me to read them to him. Sometimes, the same book, over and over and over again. I always want to read to him.
  
  
• When Wesley is sitting on my lap and we are reading books or singing songs, every once in awhile he leans forward and turns his little head around and looks at my face with those beautiful blue eyes. And something about it completely melts my heart. It's like he hears something that really makes him smile, and he wants to meet my eyes and flash me a grin to see if I heard it, too. And I can't even remember what it was because I'm too distracted by his cute face.
  
  
• I love how his face lights up when he sees me or Shane. He is so happy to see us, especially when Shane gets home from work or it's first thing in the morning and we go get him from his crib. I remember when Shane and I were dating and falling in love, and Shane told me once how much it meant to him that I was always excited to see him. And I was! He was a handsome catch. And now, we have a handsome son, who couldn't love us more. That unconditional love brings with it serious responsibility, for me to never let him down and to always love him back (even during the teenage years). I will always cherish the memories of his bright smile as he runs toward me then POW runs into my legs and bear hugs me.
  
  
• I love how Wesley has made me a champion multi-tasker, an entertainment coordinator, a discarded food-picker-upper, a nap enforcer, a vehement Sno-Isle library supporter, a summertime walker, an emotional marshmallow, and a better person, among all sorts of other things, seemingly overnight. I love that little boy.
  

Happy Birthday, my sweet son. I'm so grateful you are in my family forever.

we're in MD!

Blogging is on hiatus as we are visiting with Grandma and Grandpa in Maryland. We're having a bunch of fun.

If you're at all interested in what it was like to take a 5-hour flight in the middle seat with an almost-2-year-old toddler in my lap, here are some hints:

• he conned the woman next to us out of a peanut butter cookie
• he threw his toy bus at the other woman next to us many many times
• he fell asleep on my lap for 2+ hours, at which point my iPod decided not to work until I messed with it so much it finally was scared into submission, and then I could listen to music and play Solitaire on it... since I couldn't reach my bag to get any reading materials, not like I could read with one hand anyway
  
• he drank all his water then cried and cried and cried and I hit the call button for the first time in my adult life to get the kid some aqua
• did I mention my ankle is actually fractured and I am in one of those awful boots? that goes up to my knees? dealing with all this?
  

He's really a good traveler. I shouldn't complain. It went well. Thank goodness there were no poopy diapers.

THEN, the aircraft had a door jam problem and everyone's bags were stuck. Well, almost everyone. There was a teeny compartment somewhere that had like a half-dozen bags that got out, and all other bags -- including our gate-checked stroller -- were stuck. We thought, oh gee, this is awful, until all of a sudden at baggage claim I caught sight of, what is that?, my bag. It was one of the only ones that got out. The airline gave me a loaner stroller, and they'll keep my stroller until I come back to claim it. Crazy, huh?

Wesley slept until 12 pm the next day, and slept until 11 am the day after that. And this morning he was up bright and early at 6:45 am. Oh geez. He is napping soundly and I think I'll nap too!

More on our adventures to come... we love Grandma and Grandpa!

this is why i don't text

I thought this was so funny, I had to repost:

If God had texted the 10 Commandments to Moses

1. no 1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg's
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-x only w/m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.


As tempted as I am to um, make abbreviations in texting, I just can't bring myself to do it. at the expense of my thumbs. And people who use those same abbreviations in emails -- at work! -- drive me batty. But it's pretty funny to look at it from this angle. I guess this makes me appreciate the verbose nature of the Books of Moses even more!

tasty equation

This was my weekend creation....

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+

+

=

Pretty nice huh! The plate was from Ikea (found at Value Village!), chocolate cake, homemade white frosting, m&ms.... what else could you ask for?? It sold for $20 at a dessert auction... a steal! The gal who bought it was so thrilled (she said her kids would be so excited!). Some stuff sold for $80 or $130... but whatever. I was proud of my creation!

beat up on me week

Here are all the reasons I'm feeling quite run ragged:

• Elbow - ouch. I went to put Wesley in his high chair the other day and hit my right funny bone on the back of one of our kitchen chairs. But it wasn't my funny bone, it was worse than my funny bone. I put Wesley down and writhed in pain for minutes. I was paralyzed. It was awful. I had a huge bruise on my elbow for days and every time I touched it my arm froze.
  
  
• Shin - ouch. I walked past a construction job on a downtown sidewalk on Thursday, and didn't realize how close I was to the curb and stepped of and scuffed myself up. The construction guys all asked "are you all right?" and I said, "yeah, I'm fine, I'm an idiot."
  
  
• Nose - ouch. If we're holding Wesley in front of us somehow, so he is facing out, he does this fling-his-head-back thing and he hits us in the teeth or nose or wherever. I guess he does it all the time to Shane. It only happened to me today. My nose hurt so bad. I felt like my head was imploding.
  
  
• Throat - ouch. I was sick last week and everything feels better, except this awful awful awful cough. I feel awful. It is so bad. It is loud and painful and no fun at all, so much that I'm considering seeing a doctor just to make the stupid cough go away. People say, "you sound awful!" and seriously, I know, but I always reply, "trust me, I'm much better." And I don't know if that's true. I'm better from being sick, but the cough is possibly getting worse.
  
  
• Ankle - ouch. Sooo to top it all off, I fell off a ladder this morning. What is wrong with me? We were stringing white lights on the wall for this dinner at Church. And boom. I fall 5 or 6 feet and land basically on my right ankle. It felt twisted, and I was OK, but the more time progresses the more it hurts. It's starting to swell. It now hurts to walk.

I just want to ball up in a corner and cry! I mean what else could happen to beat me up?

introducing...

You'd think I had a kid. Ahh no... but our family did grow by four feet this weekend, when we took in our friend Polly's cat, Stidean. She is divorcing and traveling the country looking for a job. At the moment, this is temporary, since we think she'd like kitty back, but if she finds herself relocated in middle-of-nowhere Alaska or Maine or Arkansas, then I guess we'll be keeping him more permanently.

The biggest concerns were 1) Stidean did not attack Wesley and 2) Stidean and Gabby get along, along with 3) Stidean did not pee all over the place, etc. #1 has been fine... Stidean is quite evasive. Which is hilarious. He is fast and nimble and skinny and all sorts of things that Gabby is not. But #2 has been tougher. At the beginning they both growled and hissed at each other. Now, Gabby is so over it, but Stid is a little more resilient to change and being a meanie still. We've seen him growl her into a corner (a couple times), and he walks by when she's eating then flips out. At one point, Shane was afraid Gabby was afraid to use the litter box because Stidean was in the way. It's kinda been a weird dynamic. #3 has not been a problem, thank goodness.

Plus, he's a crazy cat. He can jump and get into all sorts of stuff Gabby never got in to. He jumps on our furniture and counters (knocking our salt and pepper shakers on the ground and stuff), he chews plastic (like a bag of egg noodles when I left the pantry door open at night), and a combination of the two: he drags bags of cat treats off the countertops and chews through them and eats all the treats. It's really been funny... you know, in ah "oh it's a cat but that does sorta make me mad" way. He also likes doing all these things in the middle of the night, which has been less fun.

Plus, there's more barfing and more litter box poo to clean up.

BUT, today hasn't been so bad. Things are improving. I think he and Gabby are getting along better... here is some photo documentation of how close they've gotten. (I apologize for the weird alien cat eyeball photography.)




Anyway, I like the little guy; I wanna keep him... but Shane really just wants to sleep through the night again. So Polly is staying at a no-cat place in Seattle for the next two weeks, and maybe she'll find a job and she can take him back, or maybe we'll be sick of him and after she's done her time here she can take him with her (although traveling with a cat would be tough), or maybe we're all rainbows and flowers and peace by then and we'll hold on to him. It's all a little fuzzy.

But it's an adventure! He's our new little tenant! Meow!

seattle sounders

So far in Wesley's two years he's been to a UW football game (where we cheered for BYU), Everett Aquasox baseball game (when he was like a month old -- he slept through the whole thing), Seattle Mariners baseball game, Everett Silvertips hockey game, and now we are adding a Seattle Sounders MLS soccer match. Thanks to our old Bishop for having stake conference and needing to give the tickets away! We had "loge box" seats... ooh baby!... and food was included! We showed the concession people our ticket stub, and voila, free hot dogs! It was awesome.


Wesley enjoying his concession of choice, nacho chips...



My sweet boys enjoying the game... in that second one Shane is saying "you're taking too many pictures of us."


Cutie pie Wesley demonstrating our view. We had second-row seats in the first balcony. It was sooooper steep, but it was a nice view of the field and it was under the rafters, so in the event it was raining we'd be covered. Luckily, no rain, though.


"Look mom, I'm at a soccer game!"


Our little family walking to the car. Way-finding was awful. Wesley was super tired. We stayed up way past his bedtime! We were all a little bit sick, but we wanted to go. Thanks to our buddy Polly who is in town for being excited and coming with us.

Go team! They tied, 1-1, by the way. And we missed the only goal because we were late. Oh well. I love an evening out!