Happy August!

Slacking on the blogging. But the good news is that I’ve got all the photos in Caleb’s album from his first two years! Yay! I figure it will only take me another year to get Gavi’s first year album put together. I don’t have much of him on film, though, so I’ll have to figure out how to get all those digital photos printed without using up all of our ink. I hate trying new things. Hence, it will take me another year to figure out what pictures to use and where to have them printed. If anyone has had great success somewhere, will you let me know? (Shutterfly, King Soopers, etc.)

Gavi’s biggest achievement of late is being able to stand up on his own without pulling up on anything. It’s kind of shocking to just see him out standing in the middle of the floor with nothing around him. Before that, we’ve just been counting how many seconds he can stand on his own. He hit twenty seconds last week in Grandma and Grandpa’s little pool, and the few times we’ve counted since then have gotten us up to twenty-seven seconds. And just this morning, he moved one foot out in front of him in what I thought was going to be his first step, but then he just sat down as soon as it hit the ground. I guess that doesn’t really count. He’s so cute when he pushes baskets or walkers around. He just makes me sick how adorable he is.

Caleb, too, is just about the cutest thing on two legs. He’s a little tougher to be constantly delighted in because he’s often testing his boundaries and makes me angry a lot. For instance, I spent twenty minutes this afternoon scrubbing the dry erase marker off the door from where he parked himself while I was feeding Gavi. When I asked him what he was doing, he answered, “coloring!” I suppose I should have thought to ask WHAT he was coloring. Lesson learned.

But he’s so smart! (Smart enough to know that his best chance of coloring on the door was when mom was feeding Gavi, anyway!) I love to hear him reason things out. Like this morning on the way to the zoo, I asked him how many animals we would see at the zoo that had black on them. He came up with zebra and snakes. Brilliant! And he’s really solicitous of Gavi, which covers a multitude of sins.

They play duets together on the piano! I’ve had great luck with telling Caleb to only hit two keys at a time to keep it sounding like he’s pounding on the keyboard. Then Gavi hits another couple – all he can reach! – and they just sound adorable together!

Caleb has also invented a game we can all play in the sand. We call it “Castle,” but it’s really more of a… “pile.” Caleb and I stack up as much sand as we can in the time it takes Gavi to find us. Then he crawls over it and destroys our “castle.” While he’s destroying it, we immediately start piling more sand up in a mound until Gavi finds that castle. It sounds incredibly dull probably, but it’s a high stakes race against the clock. (The stakes being the height of the pile, and the clock being Gavi’s ability to crawl over and demolish a pile of sand.)

We had pictures taken at the studio last week. Ohmigoodness, they turned out WAY cuter than I wanted! The problem with great pictures is that you see how adorable your children are, and are tempted to spend a mortgage payment to purchase every single pose. Of course, the majority of us don’t have a mortgage payment to spare, so I have some advice for you: Take your kid(s) at the crankiest possible time of day. The photographer will be lucky to get one nice shot among the masses of angry, cranky baby shots, and then your temptation to spend a small fortune is removed. I settled with spending every penny I had on me, and it still wasn’t enough to get the multitude of great poses. I want to see if Jonny will get them formatted so I can get them up on here.

The Fashbaugh grandparents came to visit a couple of weeks ago. It was wonderful for them to be able to spend time with the boys ~ and us! ~ and I think it was honestly my favorite trip they’ve ever made. Gavi is getting more personable, and Caleb is just a sucker for Grandpa. (And pleasant toward Grandma, just not jumping over the moon excited to see her like he is with Grandpa!) Of course, the biggest joy was taking everyone to the zoo. I think everyone would enjoy the zoo with Caleb, though! His little comments and questions really draw you in.

And finally, the most awesome thing about being a parent of boys. Caleb is really into trucks, trains, tractors and trapezes. (Threw the last one in to see if you were really reading.) The other day, he was playing with his toy airplane and rotating a ball on the top. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Then he came to me and said, “Look, Mommy, a cement mixer!” I was blown away by his creativity. Then not an hour later, we were at the park when a real life cement mixer came to replace the concrete of one of the sidewalk blocks! So we got to watch as the truck lowered his slide, then opened the floodgate to send the cement flowing down, and how the men used trowels and boards to fill in and smooth it, then the slide lift back up. How could I have ever known that something that mundane would be the highlight of my day?!

 Terra replied...

You inspire me with how you find joy in the small things of your day. I need to learn that!