The Cutting Edge of Four

Those of us who have known Luke throughout the year have followed his every obsession: We started with jackhammers, then moved on to things that are underground, then fish, and now blades and grinders. If we had stopped at fish, the implementation of the cake would have been a lot easier. But how do you make a blade cake? Lucky for us, Joe offered a final inspiration in a pinch and we were able to put together this super-cool saw blade. (Side note: It was also Joe's idea to put a layer of fudge in between the cake layers, and by the time we put on the frosting and the kids decorated it with candy, the cake was so super-sweet it was kid paradise and adult gross-out.)

Anyway, Luke is truly coming into his own as a person. I'll be the first to admit when he is a real pain (high maintenance, loves to play the victim). But over the course of the year he has really shed many of his toddler annoyances and become a truly fun person to be with. When he gets up in center stage to make a speech or sing "Mele Kalikimaka," or sing something of his own composition ("Robot Ocean Clouds") my mom-heart swells up and my eyes get all teary.

One hard thing about having baby #2 is having less special time to be with Luke, but the amazing thing is that he doesn't see it that way. He really just accepts Zach as part of the family and seems to enjoy him as much as we do. That alone makes me even happier that Luke is who he is: a big-hearted, affectionate, sweet, sensitive, non-stop-talker of a little man.

I love you, my four-year-old boy.

Cousin-o-rama

Lots to write and little time, so I'll keep it short: The "older" cousins are becoming quite a threesome. Sam and Luke are instant buddies; Lily is doing her best to keep up and hang with the pack. Some group efforts have worked out well - the pajama band, for instance, and the team decoration of Luke's cake. Other times it dissolves quickly into, "She hit me!" "He called me a mushy face!"



Sam and Luke have had a sleepover for the past two nights in Sam's room, and they are digging it. The first night they were giggling well past 10 pm; we were all stretched out in the living room and too tired to do anything about it. Of course they fell asleep eventually but the next morning they were both worse for wear. I asked Sam how the sleepover went and he said, "It was awesome!" Then he paused and added, "It was a little rough in the beginning..."

On Luke's birthday Luke and Sam had a big-boy outing with Dave and Papa to the helicopter museum where they flew planes and had great imaginary big-sky adventures.



One thing that has been so much fun about Zach is that he has been so happy. He will laugh at just about anything. Dave and Joe took the boys to a play center at the mall and nothing has ever been funnier than air hockey was for Zach. He though every pop and whizz was hilarious. Then of course he greets every person and every meal with huge smiles. Funnier still that he can have a ragged night of sleep/wakeups and still get up in the morning cooing and gooing and laughing for everyone to hear. He is going to be quite a character.

Next installment when I get a chance: The Big 0-4.

The Boys of Winter

OK, let's just get this out of the way and say that these are the Two. Cutest. Brothers. Ever. Everyone in agreement? Good. OK, then. Moving right along...

Christmas Day started with Luke and Zach's first-ever bath together and they both thought it was pretty darned funny. Found: A new activity that somehow entertains them both and simultaneously gets them clean. Hope that doesn't get old.



Once they take a bath, they clean up pretty nice, right? Here's Luke under the tree at Grandma and Papa's house, and here's Zach under the tree at our hotel/dinner room.



This year marked a break with tradition: Instead of Christmas dinner at our house, we packed everything up and moved the whole operation to a reception room at a nearby hotel (thanks to Grandma Bobbie and Granddad for sparking the idea) and it turned out to be a stroke of brilliance. There was plenty of room for seven kids and fourteen adults to eat, play, cavort, watch Fred's magic show, and sing Christmas songs with Jeremy - all without worrying that someone might accidentally step on a new Christmas toy or break Grandma's antique china, or what have you.

Of course getting the whole thing together took a Herculean effort on the part of my mom (primarily) and the supporting chefs. So when we were at dinner, I was inspired to get up and lead a toast to my mom and others.

Then, unbeknownst to me, Dave had a plan up his sleeve the whole time to lead a champagne toast in honor of 10 years to the day he proposed to me, so he got up and did his own little speech (sniff, sniff) and he had arranged with the hotel to have champagne for all of us and sparkling juice for the kids so we all could clink glasses together.

Then Luke (who knew he had such a need for a spotlight and a podium?), not to be outdone, decided that he needed to make a speech too. (At this point, people are probably thinking, what is it with the California contingent and the speechifying?) So Luke went up to the front of the room and started off something like this: "Everyone! Everyone! Listen! Everyone be quiet and listen to me!" When the room got quiet, he continued: "OK! Um....There's a plastic bottle outside and it's lying in the road, and every time a car drives over it, it makes a loud noise!"

The responses ranged from "Huh?" to open, good-natured mockery. So he needs to work on his material a little. Nothing a good speechwriter couldn't fix.


Anyway, once everyone settled down and Fred had done the magic tricks, and Jeremy had sang most of the songs, and Luke had done his solo Mele Kalikimaka / Oh Hanukkah / Santa Claus is Coming to Town for the whole crowd, everyone kind of settled down for some slow happy songs and Dave scooped up the two boys on his lap.

I'm not saying it hasn't been challenging here; transplanting the family to someone else's house and being on vacation for a long time is enough to disrupt any kid's routine or sense of regularity. But every now and then you just have a perfect moment that you just want to bottle up, and this was one of those for me. Once again: Are they the best ever, or what?

Next installment to come: Cousin-o-rama.

Pig (out)

The pictures begin today with one defining feature of my parents' house: The Fisher-Price castle. Beloved by kids from ages 0 to 14, it's something that can entertain both Luke and Zach simultaneously (and even though it looks like they're fighting over it, they're not).

Anyway, here's one reason why I love my brother Joe: Because he's the kind of person who just happens to have, say, ten pounds of jumbo shrimp lying around that he'd really like for someone to eat; or because some meat purveyor just happens to mistakenly send him a $350 crown roast and tells him to keep it (which we're going to eat for Luke's birthday feast, by the way). It's the same quality that led Joe to call up yesterday and say, "I'm coming over for dinner tomorrow and I just bought a pig." A pig, as in a whole pig? Yes, as in an oink oink here and an oink oink there ...you get the idea.

So while the house fills with lovely aromas, allow me to give you a tour of my mom's kitchen: In the oven is said pig and on the stove are large simmering pots of broccoli rabe, rice, and black beans. In the refrigerator is a honey-baked ham and a jar of olives that Joe cured and brined himself. On the counter are no less than ten kinds of homemade cookies, plus the most divine apple and raspberry pie that Mom just randomly decided to whip up this morning. And downstairs in the basement is twenty pounds of beef marinating for sauerbraten; ten pounds of clementines (whoops - bought too many - oh well); and nine pounds of marinated chicken and carne asada that we brought back from California for some future Mexican dinner.

Do you think we are going to eat well this holiday?

Luke has gone through lots of obsessive phases this year: first jackhammers, then things that are underground, then fish, then bones, and now blades of any kind. (When asked what is his favorite part about Grandma and Papa's house, he said, "The meat grinder.") So anyway, he finally got his wish and we hauled out the meat grinder for him to make some ham salad. Big smiles all around.

He's also made it past some kind of developmental block where he no longer refuses to put on hat and gloves to go outside. I took him to Target and he picked out his own hat and gloves and today he actually volunteered to put them on so he could go outside to play with Sara and Lily.

A new phase that Luke is going through involves a lot of tricky questions about death and such. I think it started when one of the walking sticks in his classroom at school died; and then later those thoughts evolved when he was studying a picture of Dave's late grandfather. He doesn't seem bothered by it, but he is extremely curious: "When I die, will I move around?" "When I am an angel, will I have to wear a dress? Will I get to wear shoes?" He's been following Joe's dog Satchmo around, saying, "Poor Satchmo. He's sad because he's old and he doesn't want to die." Hmmm. I don't think there's a problem, but any child development specialists want to weigh in?

The other night when I was tucking him in to bed, he asked me, "Mom, how do you make a baby?" I told him, "It grows in a mommy's tummy."
"No, I mean how does it get there?"
"Um...The daddy gives the mommy a special seed that grows into a baby."
"But how does he give her the seed? Does he put it in her mouth?"
I look at the clock - 11 :05 pm (he's still on West Coast time a little bit). Forgive me for the lie I am about to tell, but it's time to just shut down this whole line of questioning.
"Yes, he puts it in her mouth."
"Oh." And with that he curls up and goes to sleep.

I just have a picture of Zach here because he is so darned cute. He's been curious and amused at all of the activity, especially the dogs running around. Zach has been a little rough on me, last night especially, waking up every two hours or so for some unknown reason, but it hasn't seemed to affect his mood today - he's as smiley and lovable as ever. I guess Luke's incessant singing finally drilled into his head: "He knows if you've been bad or good, so you'd better be good for goodness sake." Happy holidays and Mele Kalikimaka to all; I'll check in again soon.

Just getting warmed up

It's our last day before heading into the frozen tundra that is the East Coast, and I'm cleaning out my picture files before we go. First up is a shot from the sand snowman contest we went to at the beach last weekend. No snow in sight, of course, so the kids who were building this snowman had to compensate with powdered sugar (and there were many, many hands reaching into and licking from that little container).



Last night we had a fantastic, beautiful Hanukkah with Dave's family and once again I'd love to provide pictures but I have none. Didn't remember to bring the camera. Again. I'm going to have to start taping it around my leg.

We opened intra-family presents this morning, and we continued playing with presents from last night, and let's face it - by the time we wrap up Luke's birthday, we'll have basically had one big present-opening extravaganza all the way through mid-January.

Anyway, the boys love every single present they received. I put just a sampling in here of them enjoying various presents just to show... Luke using his new grinder, preparing to snap photos with his new camera; and Zach studying the new drum shaker.

We're running around trying to get packed up tonight but we took a few moments for what was literally our grand finale in town: the Christmas fireworks. We walked down to the beach and stood, slack-jawed, as some of the most enormous, noisy, colorful fireworks we've ever seen just popped before our eyes. We had worried that Zach might be scared, but he just flapped his arms in approval. I missed it last year due to a case of needing to be in bed, but never again.

East Coast, we're ready for you now!

Rags.

Luke had his holiday performance with his classmates the other night; it was so cute you could pinch it. Why don't I have pictures of it to add to the blog? Well, that is the subject of some inter-spousal argument, but I will fill in the blanks to say that Dave is the BEST and he does tons of stuff for us during his every waking hour, and I couldn't ask for a better person to spend my life with or to have as the father of my children. Oh, and yes, we have video, just not pictures.

If I were able to edit the video and post it online like a modern techno-mom, you would see Luke in the back row looking a little star-struck for the first song and then fully hamming it up for "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Those of you who have spent any time with him in the last few weeks know that he has the most enthusiastic, never-ending version of the song you will ever hear. When he got to his favorite line ("You better not POUT!") he nearly shook the rafters with his vehement fist-shaking, foot-stomping pout. But the best part was when it was all over and he came off the stage over to meet us, breathless and red-faced, and declared, "That was FUN!" A star is born.

Lately when Luke is mildly mad (but not mad enough to justify a foot-stomping pout), he has started saying "Rags!" Turns out that it comes from the Charlie Brown Christmas special where Charlie and his friends say, "Rats!" and here Luke was all this time thinking that they were saying, "Rags!" The other day when I told him he couldn't watch TV instead of taking a nap, he told me, "Rags, Mommy, rags!" I didn't know whether to laugh or feel put upon...

Good news on Zach: The little spout of hair on the back of his head is just starting to get long enough where it can turn a corner and head back down to earth instead of sticking straight up. Bad news on Zach: He now has cold #2, so we are all suffering from lack of sleep just as we're getting ready to travel. The doc says in winter they get colds as often as every 10 days. To that I say, Rags.

Half step forward, two steps back

Today was marked by a not-so-much-fun jaunt back into the 19th century, thanks to a total neighborhood power outage. As it happens, I was home alone with Zach and total-basket-case Luke, who has been trying to get over the stomach flu. Anyway, I should have noticed at some point that the power was out because there were all sorts of little clues: Luke's white noise machine was off (he usually doesn't turn it off himself after his nap), the humidifier was off (it's new; I just assumed it was buggy), the light in the refrigerator was off, and then finally, when we were all set to leave the house, the garage door wouldn't open. I figured it was broken, so I called Dave, who started a series of phone calls to people who could help us, and Luke and Zach and I went back inside to watch TV, and the TV wouldn't turn on , and then all of a sudden it was like, ding! The light bulb of irony went on inside my head.

Not being able to get into the garage is a huge bummer - it basically means we are stuck because the car is in there (there's no entry from the house) and all of our strollers are there too. Grrr. So we sat and did non-power activities in the house for a while, until buzz, whirrrr.... The power came back on. Then we opened the garage door and took off for the book store, which turned out to be a good thing, because by the time we got back the power was off again.

The second time it was not cool because it was getting dark quickly, and the one flashlight I could find burned out almost instantly. And let me tell you, sitting in the dark with a sick kid and an infant is even less fun than it seems like it would be. I lit a few candles but even that seemed a little dicey because I was afraid someone would knock one over (Zach was not happy at all about being on the floor in the semi-darkness so I was mostly carrying him around; Luke was just wandering aimlessly and complaining). Luckily, we had parked the car outside this time because the garage door wasn't opening, so we took off again for the store to buy flashlights, and then just drove around looking at Christmas lights in other neighborhoods until Dave came home (and the power came back on). People used to live like that all the time. So why did it sap so much energy out of me?

Last time I wrote about all the regression that seemed to be going on; this time I have some minor progress to report. Luke can write the first two letters of his name - whoo-hoo! Apparently the "K" and the "E" are pretty tricky. And when I hold Zach's hands for him to stand up, he can walk...but only backwards. Same with crawling; he seems to work best in reverse.

Speaking of Zach, we have noticed what I suppose is a little personality thing with him: He has a determination that borders on ferocity. If he wants something, he puts his whole body into getting it. And when he plays, he plays hard. We have this little music table that Zach has taken an interest in. No wait, that's putting it a little too mildly... It's a music table that Zach is positively obsessed with. We have started calling it "baby crack." When you put him in front of it he positively attacks it, and he can't seem to stop pushing buttons, pulling levers. Juana observed the other day that he was so tired, so ready for his nap, and yet he couldn't stop playing with it so he was resting his head on the table while he continued pushing the buttons. Yeesh. This kid is hard core.

Before all of the sickness and darkness set in, we had been enjoying our weekend. Here's a quick pic of Zach and Daniel and Eitan at our "Shabbanukkah" dinner on Friday night. It took him a little while to get the hang of it, but he loved that bouncy thing. That was also the night that Zach slept through the night. It hadn't happened for weeks before then; it hasn't happened since. But maybe after today's unfortunate episodes our luck will turn.

Regression Analysis

There are some days when I walk into a room and Luke has bundled himself up in a laundry basket or the crib or whatever, and he declares himself a newborn baby in an incubator. Then we have to ooh and ah, and pat him, and sometimes pick him up and carry him. I know why he does this, in the grand scheme of things, but I don't know what will prompt him to do it at any given time - usually he does it when he's happy, not when he's feeling neglected. Funny thing is, Zach thinks it's hilarious. The other night I had to go out somewhere and as I said goodbye to Dave, Luke was cocooned in the laundry basket and Zach was sitting next to him, poking him and cracking up - not quite providing the hospital-level solemnity that Luke was seeking.

Speaking of regressing, Zach seems to be going backward in time. At his six-month checkup, he actually lost weight. No need for immediate concern, though. The doc says that last month their scales were not calibrated properly so he could have had a bad weigh-in. Or he could have worked off some of his weight just from moving around a lot more. Either way, he's now at 20 pounds, 14 ounces and he's still a chart-topper for his age. In other words, he has plenty of weight to spare.

Did I mention that his sleep patterns also did a backslide from iffy to disastrous? Wednesday night he woke up Every. Two. Hours. That didn't even happen when he was a newborn. The "good" news is that we have an explanation and a possible cure: The doc said he was likely uncomfortable from a sinus infection so she put him on antibiotics and we're hoping that in 10 days or so we'll be back to where we were. Poor Luke had been so excited about having Zach sleep in his room; now he doesn't want to deal with the crying, so Zach is mostly back in our room in the Pack-n-Play.

OK, so, lack of sleep, blah blah blah, what else is new? We did some quickie Christmas decorations for before we leave; we have a beautiful petite Christmas tree, a Christmas bush, and two poinsettias. I was hauling out the stockings and was momentarily mystified by why there were only three, and then I realized; duh, there was no Zach last Christmas. To be honest, things were so rocky back then we weren't even sure if we were going to need four stockings. But yay, he's here now, and I don't have to go through that again. He can regress as far back as the incubator if he wants to, but there's no going back any further than that.

Movie night madness

Tonight we took the plunge and hosted three three-year-olds, sans parents, for movie night. All in all, it worked out pretty well. Pizza and popcorn were eaten, kids all got along, everyone used pleases and thank yous. Hatcher decided the movie (Toy Story) was too scary so he read some books upstairs with Dave while Luke and Eitan remained completely glued to the screen downstairs. When the movie was over, they all came upstairs for a good old fashioned jam session and some general goofiness.

I haven't been blogging much because we've had some rocky times with Zach's sleep or lack thereof. I don't have too much to say on that except if there were one magic solution to the problem there wouldn't be shelves and shelves full of books at the bookstore about how to get your baby to go to sleep. Poor Zach is probably a little worse for wear today after unsuccessful "sleep training" and with his little body full of six-month shots. Dave had the right idea today in giving us all a break, getting a sitter for the afternoon, and just thinking about other things besides baby sleep. And thankfully Zach seems to be focused almost exclusively on the long term - all he really seems to care about during his waking hours is holding on to someone's hands so he can stand up and look around.

When I got out of the hospital my friends gave me a "mom" necklace; a beautiful chain with two little silver discs with each kid's name and birthday on it. Zach loves to pull himself up by hanging on the chain and today with all of his 23 pounds he finally broke it - pop! - and off came the discs. He's never known me without the necklace and I feel strangely lost without it. Tomorrow's to-do list: Buy a real "mom" chain - something that looks as delicate as lace on the outside but is strong as iron on the inside.