Queen Bee turns one.

Friends

Last Saturday, chaos reigned supreme as Rachel celebrated her first birthday.

8 kids, 8 adults and it would have been more if Ethan and Reid were healthy. A good time was had by all. Rachel made the expected mess out of the lasagna and cake, and all of the kids played well together, and until later than the parents expected.


Some gender stereotyping was on display in that she got a play kitchen set and a baby doll to play with. Rachel's not one for easy categorizations, though - when it was time to open the box with the doll, she went to get Daniel's toy drill to help.


Her one-year appointment was earlier this week, and she is, of course, perfect. Five shots were no fun, though. She weighed in at 20lbs, 11oz (40th percentile), 30 inches tall (75th percentile) and 18,125" head (also 75th). So she's tall and skinny, but no longer with a little head.


And that has to be because there's a lot going on in there. The doctor was impressed that she's both walking and has some verbal skills/words. She signs mama, papa, dog, hat, food, more, eat and what is basically "gimme that" and probably some additional signs (possibly "book"). She also understands a lot of things she can't verbalize yet. When we sing "the cleanup song" she starts putting things in boxes, when we sing "bathtime song" she goes to the stairs and climbs up. If you say "Daniel" she finds him.
















Daniel has been a great sport lately. He's been helping out with the party preparations, and he ground the nuts for Papa's hazelnut birthday cake.

"See you later Nuts. You're going to be cake.."

From the rear left:
Daniel, Harrison, Carly, Rachel, Eli, Ella, Carlos and Sergio.

That's about it for now. We'll have some fun things to report next week, but until then we'll have to leave it as a surprise.

Hasta Luego, Amigos. A.D.R.E

Little boy genius speaks

So, I know it gets old when parents brag about their kids, but Daniel is just SO smart. He really is, and I worry that if I don't write down the cool things he does, we'll forget them.

So yesterday, Anida was out of the room and Daniel asked "Where's Mama?".
I said "I don't know"
He said "I don't know too" and then thought about it for a split second and corrected himself:
"I don't know either..."

We haven't worked on this. This is all the work of little Mr. big-brain.

The day before, he was sitting at the kitchen table and he said something to the effect of "I eat the napkin, and then I spit it out" - and then he proceeded to repeat the sentence, but with a new word. He probably went on for 10 minutes. He probably ran through 100 separate words of things he could see and some he couldn't. He never repeated a word - there were 100+ unique things he "spit out".

OK, I'm not sure if that's being smart or being obsessive, but the boy is bright.

Love, A.D.R.E

I want to go on the date too...

Friends.

Almost three weeks without an update? Sorry. There was a business trip in there, and Anida's camera was/is out of commission again (never buy Canon compact cameras), but that's just not right.

Especially since it's been a really packed couple of weeks. The quote in the title came from Daniel on Friday night. The playschool hosts once-per-month date nights, and dropped off the kids and went to a nice dinner. Despite a last-minute desire to join us, they had a great time and were still playing at full speed when we picked them up 3 hours later, so we'll be doing that again.

Daniel's big thing lately has been imaginary play. He'll declare that he is a Lion/Tiger/Monkey/Scuba Diver/Mailman/garbage man and will roleplay with his toys. Then he asks that you join him: "You're a mama scuba diver" or "Rachel's a baby lion". It's good fun, and it's just remarkable to follow his fantasies. He's also really good at drawing parallels between things and coming up with accurate conclusions.

Oh, and if we didn't know it before, we need to be careful about what we say around him. The other day, Rachel was crying because she slipped and her pride was hurt, and he said "Oh, get over yourself Rachel...."





Yes, it is a video. Doubleclicking on the link or on the picture should launch it. It's from January 4 or so, so her walking is a lot more stable and now she'll stand herself up.

Rachel, well - she's been walking exclusively for the last couple of weeks. She's walk, slip and then crawl over to a wall to push herself up, but then about a week ago, she figured out how to stand up on her own. So now there's no stopping her. She'll walk up the stair from the playroom to the kitchen without falling, tries to run (and falls) and does an adorable little dance if music is playing. Basically, she has a role model to live up to, so she hasn't stopped building on the walking skill at all.

She walks with her arms slightly raised, and if Daniel is playing with something, she'll walk straight into it, and usually destroy whatever he's built in legos or his train track. She's earned her nickname of "Godzilla" - she lurches over and just knocks it over. But she does it with style...
Oh, and Daniel can now dress and undress himself (mostly, buttons are hard). He's learned how to spit out toothpaste (spitting is harder than you'd think) rather than swallowing it. And he now has a little automatic sensor on his faucet, so he can wash his own hands without any help. In his own words "I'm not little" and "I'm not big" but "I'm a little bit big".

Reid turned 2 and had a barnyard-themed party to which Daniel went as a horse, Anida as cow and Rachel was a pig in a pink dress. Next weekend, we'll have a one-year-old party for Rachel. It's amazing that it's already been a year.

Hope all is well with everyone. I'll try to get another posting out next week.


Love, R.E.A.D.

Happy New Year 2008!

Friends

What a year 2007 was. So much to remember, so much to think about, so much to be grateful for.

The collages are a blatant rip-off of an idea we got from Sean's parents. One photo a month for a year.

"Terrible twos"? No such thing as far as we know. We've really enjoyed the last year of Daniel. He's an articulate, bright, charming little boy.

Every parent brags about their kids, so we won't enter into comparatives, but we think he's something special, we really do.

Rachel shows more dramatic development than Daniel did of course. From a little girl who barely made it into January, she finishes out the year walking, babbling and showing a strong personality.


Daniel is still Rachel's hero - anything he does, she wants to do. Anything he eats, plays with or touches is instantly the coolest thing in her world.

When she's not teething or has a cold, she's one happy kid, just enjoying the discovery of the world around her. It's pure fun to watch her grasp and understand more and more things in this world.

So it's 2008, and we're sure it'll be different from 2007, but different isn't bad. This is going to be fun.

Best wishes for a fantastic new year.

Love,

Eric, Anida, Rachel and Daniel

Christmas 2007

Friends

Getting a perfect shot of 2 kids is challenging enough - but 4? Impossible. So you're just going to have to take our word for the fact that this imperfect shot of the kids represents our most excellent (and somewhat chaotic) holidays.

Aunt Sara and Uncle Michael came to town with cousins Leo and Jacob, and Farmor and Grandpa joined the crowd. Having everyone here at once was the best present we got for Christmas this year.

There were too many special moments to post pictures of all of them. We got to celebrate Yule with the Blisses and the Finches. We had Christmas dinner around the big table. There was Christmas morning and presents for the kids (the adults celebrated the evening prior).
This was the year of "Cars" for Daniel and Leo, and they were ecstatic.

It snowed more than once, so we had a white Christmas, and the kids got to build snowmen and a fort in the back yard. We bought sleds and went sledding on a neighborhood hill (a bust) and down at Meg and Doug's house (a hit).

Jacob made snowflakes and garlands to help decorate the house, and all of the kids had fun with the play-doh sets. Jacob discovered pool, and had endless fun playing on the table downstairs. He got pretty good by the end of his visit as long as he slowed down to think about what he was doing.

Rachel kept on walking - she'll push herself up against a solid surface and then walk from one end of a room to another now - changing directions mid-stream, pausing, restarting. She's unbelievably proud to be walking, and just has this amazing grin on her face when she does.

Daniel largely did really well with the cousins here. Sometimes it was hard to share everything, but he managed most of the time. Jacob (8) showed a lot of patience with the younger crowd.

New year's eve was mellow - a trip out to the zoolights festival at the Denver zoo. It was cold outside and the kids were tired well before the 9pm fireworks, so we went home.

We neglected to get a photo of everyone all together at once here - an unfortunate oversight.

An old friend of Eric's blogged that her Christmas presents had a "theme of diamonds, leather, cashmere and wine" and while that sounded really good - ours had a theme of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and family and we think that was just fine.

Until next time.

Love, Eric, Daniel, Anida and Rachel.