Cousins

It makes me happy that my kids are friends with their cousins on my side of the family. I was Smunch's age before my first cousin was even born, so it makes it that much more fun to see my kids interacting with my sister's boys.

Given my general success with Christmas photos, you might wonder why I'd be interested in taking all the kids to a cheap studio for photographs, but it's kind of fun to have someone else do the work from time to time.

Thankfully, we scheduled these photos for Saturday. Although Lucas! had taken several face-altering tumbles by then and Spencer! had given himself a goose egg on the forehead the previous afternoon, Lucas! had a couple more tumbles after this, making it look like he'd been in an altercation with an angry guinea pig...and Smunch hadn't yet been hit in the face with a baseball.

Hard to believe Mam's the only one who survived the holidays intact, but then, we've got a couple days left...

Squishy

I'm not a "baby person", but I've gotta say, my new nephew is a sweetie. Well, you know, they're all sweeties when they're sleeping. Aren't they? But when he's not hungry, or eating or pooping, he's really quite charming.As I suspected, the kids weren't particularly interested in their new cousin, except in small, small doses. When they bothered to pay attention to him, it was very cute, but that wasn't often really.Lucas is only four months old, so he doesn't do a whole lot yet. By the time we get to see Lucas and SPENCER again maybe they'll find him more interesting.

And look! It's almost next year already. Tomorrow it'll be time to start packing up the Christmas decorations. It usually makes me sad. But I'm kind of looking forward to getting the holidays behind me...even if they were a lot of fun.

Family Frenzy

Christmas 2010 was one of those special ones where Aunt Karen's family joined us for the holiday. As far as Mam and Smunch are concerned, that means SPENCER! Each day, Mam would ask how many days were left until Christmas. As soon as I told her, she asked, "How many days until Spencer??"

I sent Smunch to baseball camp for most of that first week that they were out of school. It served dual purposes. He was out of the house, so he couldn't fight with hs sister and he has evaluations for spring baseball on January 8th, so I figured he could brush a little rust off while he was there. Mam was supposed to have three days of cooking camp, but only made it to one after coming down with a fever.

No sooner was baseball camp over than SPENCER! arrived with his mom, dad and new baby brother, Lucas. And the holiday free-for-all began. I'd forgotten just how nuts things are with a baby around. There's not a single unusual or bad thing about Lucas, but gosh, he's a BABY! He has to eat and sleep and have his diapers changed. He gave me a nice perspective on my older children at least.

For the most part, my sister and her family stayed with our parents, but the whole crew stayed over at our house on Christmas Eve to wait for Santa. We had a low key dinner with spiral-cut ham, fresh, homemade bran rolls, sweet potatoes and veggies...with cookies for dessert, of course. The kids joined Grandpa on the sofa for The Night Before Christmas before bedtime.Each kid picked out a cookie for Santa and they left a carrot for the reindeer...a really big carrot.All the kids went to bed and my sister and parents unloaded their cars of all the presents they had brought. Soon, the living room was awash in gifts.Fortunately, we arranged for the adults to open their presents that evening or I'm afraid Santa would have had a hard time finding a place for those giant Nerf guns.

Welcoming the Newest Family Member

If you look back a couple of posts, you'll notice my last post about San Diego mentioned an impending new addition to the cousinhood. As I wrote, I had no idea that the new addition would arrive the very next day, on August 21st. So, SPENCER! is now a proud big brother.Lucas, who will doubtlessly be known as LUCAS! before too long, followed the family trend of arriving a little before expected, but weighed in as the most monstrous baby my sister and I have produced thus far...at a whopping 5 pounds 11 ounces.

Everyone sounds happy and healthy. Oh, Aunt Karen, if you thought the first one was an adventure, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

Cousins

It's always hard to leave San Diego when the kids have so much fun with their cousin. Having never had cousins near my own age, it always floors me what a great time they all have together, even if Smunch is often left out...as the eldest and a boy who is quite different from his cousin. It's still a trip they look forward to with a lot of excitement. And next time? There'll be another cousin to be excited about.What chaos awaits!

Boom!

You would think that Christmas was on the 4th of July if you saw my children on the morning of Independence Day. This is really one of their very favorite holidays. I'm not sure they really care about the nation's birthday or our independence from British rule. It's all about the fireworks. It seems so unfair that they have to wait until dark, but then, it makes for a grand finale to the day.

This year was a little bit different because my cousin was visiting from Texas. After a nice breakfast of bagels, muffins and varieties of Starbucks, followed by a significant amount of lolling around my parents' house, we finally packed up some food and headed to a local winery for a picnic.Unfortunately, Daddy was feeling particularly ill, so I drove him home before we left on our adventures.The rest of us had a lovely, if slightly too warm, time at the winery. My cousin's husband treated us to a bottle of rosé and we took a short walk to "the pond". Mam was sporting her Independence Day best. And Smunch (pictured here with my cousin) was looking pretty festive too. At this time of year, the pond is little more than a few large puddles among the reeds. It turns out that the reeds were alive with tiny little frogs, each about the size of a thumbnail. I loved watching them jump around. They were fast and hard to photograph, so this is the best I did.And, like all good ponds, there were a couple of mother ducks overseeing a group of teenager-y ducklings. They looked so picturesque among the reeds and the pond weeds that were blooming with pink flowers.We also spotted this cool, red dragonfly.We walked back to the car and parted ways to get ready for the neighborhood block party on our street. Our block party is a really fun, yearly event where we all set up tables in the middle of the street, barbeque, make ice cream and supply potluck dishes to share. Both my parents and my cousins joined us for a mellow evening of food and company. I didn't bring my camera. Just as well. I could barely roll my own bloated body home, much less anything additional.

My cousin and her husband decided to forgo the fireworks, instead watching them on TV while the rest of the family headed to our oldest fireworks-viewing haunt to wait for the pyrotechnics to start.

Turns out, as the kids get older, this whole thing gets much easier and more tolerable. They happily played several hands of Uno with us, begging for another one as soon as the last one was done.As has been the case for the last couple of years, there were glowsticks, but we didn't use so many this year with all that card playing.I don't remember exactly what was going on when I took this picture. I just liked the backlighting on Mam's hair. It cracks me up though.Finally, the show started. I'd forgotten how rewarding it is to drag the kids out to the park. They have such a great time watching fireworks, commenting, squealing, exclaiming over their favorites. I annoyed people by trying to capture their reaction. This isn't a great photo, but I think it captured them rather well.We all had a really nice time, well worth the crabby Smunch we had this morning. I don't think I'll tell them they'll get to see plenty of fireworks at Disney World this summer. I can't wait to see the look on their faces when they just start exploding overhead.

Cousins

I mentioned briefly that my sister came to visit for Smunch's birthday, bringing her adorable (and very loud) little munchkin, Spencer, with her. Spencer is almost two. He slept through almost all of Smunch's 2-4pm birthday party...and wasn't overly happy about the free-for-all in the backyard when he woke up. But all-in-all, the kids were thrilled to be together again, as evidenced by an earsplitting "SPENCE!!!!!!" at 6:30 Saturday morning when they all rediscovered they were in the same house. The enthusiasm was really something to see.

Here they are posing on the sandbox at Gram's house.
Wearing matching jerseys while playing the piano (lovely!)
Mam's best attempt at getting her cousin to laugh.
Spencer checking with his broker.
Inspecting a gummy worm from Mam's "Cup of Dirt" at Friday's

That's what cousins are for

Older cousins exist to teach you how to do things. Here's Mam showing Spencer proper jumping technique. This is the technique to be used only when jumping while chasing your cousin around the tree in the driveway.Cousins are also handy for teaching you how to make silly faces. Smunch was in not-so-rare, but gosh-we-wish-it-was-rarer form at our farewell breakfast this morning. Honestly, he was being a brat, but Spencer seemed unfazed by the generally annoying behavior of his older cousin.
Clearly my nephew has this whole thing figured out. And obviously, he's a genius because learning from his cousins seems to be second nature already. Hopefully, he'll leave it at copying silly faces and forget about being obnoxious!

Take THAT, nasty ol' school photos!

A few months back, I wrote a post about the lousy photos I'd gotten of my children this year. Mam's school photos were abysmal. Smuch's were nonexistent and his Little League photos were passable. I promised to take them both to Sears Portrait Studio and get something decent of them. I took them last month, along with their cousin, Spencer. You may remember that was a little bit of an adventure too.

Today, I picked up our photos from Sears. For comparison, Mam's school photo is on the right. The one from Sears, purchased with a killer coupon for about $3 is on the left. I know it's just Sears and the photos aren't the highest quality you'll find anywhere in the world. I could've paid a lot more, but I LOVE these photos!...especially this one of Mam. Many, many thanks to Puja, the photographer at Sears Portrait Studio in Cupertino for these photos. She was awesome.



The photos of all three kid together turned out pretty great too. I'm especially thrilled with our eventual choice of clothing for the kids. It's sort of like interior decorating. I get the idea, so it's a mystery to me why it often turns out looking pretty crappy. This one, I love. I love that I went and spent the money on that cute little checkered dress at Gymboree. I love how it looks with the boys in matching jeans and white shirts. And, I love that the kids are barefoot...even though I forced that decision by forgetting Mam's shoes. I also love that in my joy over having such terrific photos, I've completely forgotten what a pain it was to get all the kids there and happy. I don't miss that lovely red bow that was supposed to be in Mam's hair. It looked great, but you know what? Her hair looks fine anyway.


I'm also pretty pleased with these two photos of Smunch. I know the first one shows more personality and may even be more true to Smunch than the second one. But I'm in love with the second one anyway. Because that's how I think of my beautiful little boy. He's got big, gorgeous blue eyes, a sweet smile and beautiful, unblemished skin...because, unlike his sister, he's timid and careful and his face is relatively scar-free. And something about this picture makes me actually believe my son is an angel, regardless of the fact that he's been extraordinarily difficult and is always making us worry about something or other. It's hard to imagine when I look at that picture. He looks like the sweetest little boy in the world...even if it's a rather institutional-looking shot. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes is really is a sweet little boy. But those moments usually pale in comparison to the moments when I'm struggling to pry him off the ceiling.

This last photo is one I almost didn't purchase. I don't know why. I just loved that other picture of Mam so much that this one looked a little silly. But I'm glad I've got it. Even though this photo is totallyposed, it says a lot about Mam's personality. Even though she's three and very, very...very opininated (latest quote: "Read my rules!"), she's still silly and hysterical...and really awfully cute.

Feathers

Did you know that this is the time of year when birds molt? That's right. They lose their feathers right about now. And do you know how I know that? You may be thinking that it's from all the years I spent volunteering at bird rehabilitation clinics. It's true. I did that. I even raised ducks for awhile and released them into the wild...but that was after all their feathers came in. They weren't around long enough for feathers to fall out.

Nope. I know that birds are molting because I have a little girl who is obsessed with feathers. In fact, on our recent trip to Shoreline Park with AK and Spencer (see previous post) I think Mam picked up enough feathers to make her own goose out of cardboard, toothpicks and her massive collection.

It turns out that Canada geese are champions at losing feathers in the spring. Apart from all of the pathways at the park being liberally coated in goose poop, they were coated in big, black feathers (which, likely as not, were also coated with goose poop). This particular goose looks a little concerned that perhaps Mam is making off with one of her offspring.

So, what, you might ask, are we doing with our stroller-full of feathers? Well, they're currently sitting on the patio table, waiting for a strong gust of wind to blow them away while I pretend to collect cardboard and toothpicks...

A.K. and Little S Come to Visit

You couldn't hold the anticipation down as the day of Aunt Karen's arrival got near. Smunch is particularly enamored with AK and Mam thinks she's pretty cool too. This time, as in a couple of visits past, the show was stolen by my sister's own adorable little boy, Spencer, who is cute as a button and now interactive enough that all three kids have a blast together, even if Spencer is following behind at a sprinting crawl.

He thought Smunch and Mam, in particular, were hysterical. They were his entertainment every time he got in the car. Glad I'm not to one who has to drive him around solo in the coming weeks!



AK and Spencer spent an entire week with us and, as usual, I'm not really sure where all the time went or what was the most fun. Honestly, the fun started when we picked AK and Little S up at the airport. Mam insisted on carrying Spencer's car seat while Smunch had AK's suitcase full of bricks...or something equally as heavy.

We went to a Beach Party concert in one of the local parks and packed ourselves a picnic dinner. That was a lot of fun! The kids ran around like maniacs, dancing and doing somersaults. They even went up front to join in some of the "real" dance moves.

We also went to the Ice Cream Zoofari fundraiser at Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose. I like to go to that one because it supports Hope Home Services, which provided early intervention services for Smunch for his first 3 years of life, but also because Happy Hollow is fun and this event features as much free ice cream as you can eat. Yum! It was just a bonus to have AK and Spencer along for the event. Even Gram and Grandpa joined us!

We decided to risk Spencer crying when we put him on this firetruck ride. I told Mam to take good care of him and make sure he was happy. Her solution? Tickle him whenever his smile started to fade. At least it kept the little guy happy...and made his first ride without Mommy a success!




As silly as it sounds, one of the best experiences of the visit was that promised photo shoot at Sears. After such brilliant school photos, I'd wanted to get some decent pictures of the kids anyway and AK's visit made it the perfect time to get some portraits of the kids with their cousin. I sound excited, but the truth is, it was the regular pain in the butt of getting the kids to look all perfect, then fixing it all when we got there.

Mam refused to let me put the pretty bow back in her hair. I forgot that I'd been thinking of trying to conceal the scar on her forehead. Oh well. They got some great shots, but the only ones of Smunch by himself were lousy. They were nice enough to shoot a couple more that turned out pretty good. Spencer cried when the photographer decided he was done with the rocking horse prop. The kids ran up and down the hall outside the studio squealing and throwing their belongings. BUT, it was so exciting to get some neat pictures of the kids, that it almost seems like it wasn't painful at all! Fortunately, Mam put off getting a giant purple goose egg in the middle of her forehead until this morning.

Speaking of geese, we took a walk out at Shoreline Park and found it overrun with Canada geese. And if you know Canada geese, you know the place was also overrun by goose poop. That was a nice, relaxing little trip after the big photo shoot day. I'll blog a little more about that in a different post.

After a breakfast, marred only by poor service, one cranky old woman and the crashing of one little Mam into the corner of a neighboring table (don't ask. I don't know how it happened), it was finally time for AK to pack herself and Spencer up and start the journey back to San Diego. Thank goodness we'll be driving down there in just a few weeks!

It was a busy week of visiting. I'm sure Spencer was a little tuckered out from all that attention, but I don't doubt he knows he's ADO(RED). And AK? Yeah, she's adored too!