He's TWO!

When did that happen? How did that happen?

Vinay and I were just talking about the 8 pound bundle of sweetness that used to grunt everytime we turned off the lights at bedtime and how all of a sudden he's a 24 pound bundle of energy who hogs the bed and chatters all the time.

We had Kev's birthday party yesterday and it was a great day! Thank you to everyone who called to wish him a happy day - he doesn't necessarily know you called, but he knows he's loved and that makes him smile.

Kev's party was a circus theme because he's all into animals lately - especially elephants - and because, frankly, all these kids over for a party makes for a bit of a circus atmosphere. And so it was.

Amiya and her friend Aubrey colored clown faces, Amiya made a poster, we ordered all sorts of circus-y things for goody bags, etc.

We had planned to have it outside, but the weather made it impossible. So we set-up inside. Rainbow stripes and polka dots everywhere. In a stroke of crazy luck, we found mini corn-dogs at the store and how easy are those and tator tots for two year olds? Fabulous!

Not so fabulous? Camera batteries dying during the festivities! So thank you to my friends Sue and Steph for the pictures!

Because I know my Mom will want to see it, I'll include one picture of the "set up." Lots of popcorn boxes and balloons everywhere, along with foods set up to look like rainbows (strawberries, mandarin oranges, bananas, grapes, blueberries, etc.)


The excitement was too much for Kev:

This is his standard response when a situation is too much for him. He lays down and stays down until someone rescues him with a hug to distract him from the chaos. He did this many, many times during the party - it was just too exciting!

We had a bubble show at the party and Kev wasn't sure what to make of it. It was worthy of many lay-down moments for Kev. He's (sort of) smiling here because everyone was telling him to, but you can see he isn't really sure he wants to be bubbled.

Much better. It's cool to be bubbled!

The big sister, on the other hand, loved being bubbled! She's been having some jealousy issues this weekend with all the attention and toys Kev has gotten, but she's trying hard to deal with it.
She's alternately extremely loving with Kev and extremely annoyed when he won't share a new toy.

After bubbles we had cake - the kids were in love with this table. Sugar, sugar and more sugar. If you notice in the background - it was pouring. 15 kids + parents = mayhem. But, we've got a good group of friends and the house wasn't too terrible when all was said and done.

Here's a close up of the cake. Everything is edible except the wood sticks and the twine that the flags are flying on. I am really proud of this one - it took a long time, but I planned it out and worked ahead on things that I could. The design is based on another CakeCentral cake, so I can't take credit for that. Maybe the best part is that Kev and Amiya really, really loved it. Amiya kept asking to look at it in the fridge and Kev kept running to it during the party to point out the elephant, lion and seal.

Some of the little clowns. Probably as many are missing. This was the end of the party when we pushed them out the door hopped up on sugar. Mwa ha ha ha ha.

The day after. In a new shirt and laying in and on new toys! What a birthday!

And what a boy. Vinay remarks all the time that Kev really completes our family and it's so true. He's the quiet to Amiya's crazy. He's the adventurous to Amiya's trepidation. And as much as he's the yin to her yang, he's also just Kev. A tyke of his own. And we couldn't love him any more than we already do.

Happy Birthday Monkey!!!

Picassos and Pirates

It's a good day today in Florida. I'm jinxing myself, probably, but it's been nice! The weather is sunshine and 60 degrees - we rarely ever get cool and sunny, so I'm soaking it up!

Kev had a playdate at a friend's house this morning and Amiya and I picked up a bit for the cleaning lady who is here now doing a deep clean. It's an occasional splurge that makes me smile! Expensive salon highlights, nope not on our budget. Cleaning lady every few months - heck yeah!

The kids played on the lanai for a while, each one painting on one side of the easel.

Amiya is (finally) getting to a stage where she will take her time with an art project. Before it used to be all mishmash with no plan, no goal. Now she is starting to color/paint/draw objects that look like what she had intended. It's been a real struggle to get her to color within the lines or to care about how certain things look. Her homework, for example, she colors a whole page red - solid red - sky, Abraham Lincoln, horse, train, you name it. All red. It used to make me crazy because I wanted her to color neatly, but I bit my tongue and let her do her own thing - it's her project, not mine. But, we've been drawing the line at homework. That has to be done according to the directions. So, it seems that we've hit on a good set of parameters for Amiya. She knows she's free to do what she wants when it's her own thing, but when it is destined to turned in, she had best do it well!

This cake (and cupcakes below) are for a little boy's second birthday tomorrow. The cake is Italian Cream with Italian Meringue Buttercream flavored with cream cheese. It's supposed to be rough iced so it was especially nice to not have to get it smoooooooooooth. The topper is made of polymer clay, hence the layer of saran between the cake and the topper. Once the cake reaches its' destination, the Mom will sprinkle "sand" on the saran to hide it and pop a couple of shark fins into the water surrounding the island.

The cupcakes were butter cake with caramel Italian Meringue and toffee bits. I got the inspiration from cupcakes at Cake Central, so I take no credit for the design. The faces are fondant. I love them - I think they look just like a little kid would draw a pirate. But I never. ever. ever. want to do them again. Ever.

Ever.

Ever.

Animal Kingdom

We threw the kids in the car last Saturday and told Amiya we were going to run errands - specifically to the "fruit stand." Here's how they looked:
That's right. If Didi's wearing a hat, then Kev has to, too. Never mind that it's pink with embroidered flowers on it. (And please don't tell him I told you, but I think he secretly likes his pink Dora diapers with little flowers better than his manly blue Diego ones.)

Back to the fruit stand. Right. The fruit stand is a farm market kind of place with really fresh produce and really good prices. Our real intent was to head out to Disney, but we thought she'd figure it out when we cruised by the fruit stand exit. But she didn't. And she didn't get it when we rolled into Orlando past the big Mickey Mouse head power grid. But she did get it when we pulled into the gates of Disney. Finally!

We bought 3 Day passes in December. You may remember a post about a magical day with G & G and all of us. Well, 1 day down, 2 to go. We decided we'd better end with another day at Magic Kingdom, so if we were going to do Animal Kingdom, today was the day.

It was a lot of fun - a bit zoo, a bit amusement park. It's sort of a tough time because Kev is too little for 90% of the ride and Amiya is too little for 50%, but we persevered. While Daddy went on one ride, Mommy read chapters from The Rainbow Fairies: Sunny The Yellow Fairy to Amiya. It was a stroke of brilliance on my part to stash that book into the stroller. It took a good 15 minute chunk out of our wait time and made the whole thing bearable! Kev enjoyed it, too:

Kev did not, however, enjoy the character visits much at all. Here we see the Kev "get me the hell outta here" stance:

Poor Rafiki. He gets no Kev love.

In the Asia part of Animal Kingdom there is a fairly extensive area designed to look like India. Vinay and I both thought it looked pretty authentic (in that very squeaky clean Disney sort of way). Amiya offered no opinions until we spotted the above sign. Then it was very "cool." I was instantly reminded that while she may lament never being able to find "Amiya" on a bike license plate or a pack of pencils in the store, she only hast to go to India to see her name plastered here, there and everywhere!

Best of all on the trip were two rides - a train ride and a safari jeep ride - that involved close quarters and lots of cuddling. As much as we enjoyed our trip to Magic Kingdom with G & G, it was nice to be four and spend a day just being the little family that we are.

Teagan's Baptism

Our neighbor is being baptized tomorrow (Lutheran) and I exchanged my cake "services" for free hair highlights. Being a Mom-at-home means that while it's fun and nice to have the perks, $90 on highlights every month isn't a really good use of our money. So, I jumped at the offer to make a cake and get a cute highlight job in exchange!

The bottom tier is banana cake (not bread) with caramel Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC). The top tier is triple chocolate with Oreo IMBC. If you've never had IMBC, you're missing out. It's better than just about anything else you could ever put into your mouth.

The design of the cake is based on the invitation. I ((heart)) it very much. My fondant was a bit wonky (probably because I haven't done anything with fondant in months), but the outcome pleased me nonetheless. Everything is handpainted, including sleeping baby Teagan on the top of the cake.


But enough about cake, let's get back to that church thing.

Amiya is dying to go to church. One of her friends talks to her about church with some regularity and that's fine. At some point our little chica is going to have to decide what she believes (if anything) and it might just turn out that she goes for the most conservative religion out there. As long as she's an inherently good person, acting out of respect and care, not dogma, whatever floats her boat works for us.

However, explaining all of this to an almost five year old is much harder. It's hard to imagine answering her questions in a way that isn't tempered with my own feelings toward organized religion. So, I'm reading this book: Parenting Beyond Belief. It's an interesting book about how it's possible to raise children without religion. (Jacki - if you're reading here and you'd like a copy, lemme know and I'll send it to you when I'm done.)

I've also done a bit of reading to see what would be acceptable to me (because I'm still Christy, not just Mommy), should Amiya decide that she would like to be involved in some spiritual community. I took a little quiz here: BeliefNet.com Quiz-O-Matic to see where my thoughts lay and how they line up with some organized community. I am, it would seem, 100% Unitarian Universalist, followed by Liberal Quakers and a type of Judaism that I can't recall. My lowest percentage of agreement lay with (brace yourself Mom!) Roman Catholics. Only 14%. So, in the event that she wants to explore more, hopefully we'll have some idea of where to start!

Clownin' Around

So, little man turns two next Saturday. He's having a circus birthday party because he's too little to have an opinion and even if he does the child only speaks ancient Romanian and we don't know what he's saying. So, circus it is.

I'm having a blast with this party. I think birthday parties for little kids are really for Moms to plan and get some of our creative juices out. The cake is going to be fabulous (I hope), the goody bags have been in the works for a while and while not all that creative, there's some good stuff inside and, there's a bubble show where they will actually put Kev in a bubble*. But, I think these are my favorite so far:



I made eighteen clown magnets - each unique. Some are bedecked with hats, some not, some with mop top curly heads and others just a bit of fuzz above the ears. Each is smiling without scary clown make-up. Amiya likes the guy with the blue bowler hat the best - I think I like the little guy with orange tufts over his ears and one lone orange curl on top of his head.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'm getting rid of a single one. Those goody bags are already full of fun stuff - don't you think eighteen clown magnets should stay on my fridge?


*Sadly bubble is only temporary and Kev will be back to his usual mischief within a few short moments.

What's with this shit?

I am, I think, a somewhat easy going Mom about the gross parts of parenting.

• I've cleaned more feces off walls than the zookeeper on chimp duty.
• I've been puked on enough times that I can break the smell of vomit down into categories: dairy, meat, fruit or veggie. I can tell if that puke is violent cough induced or if it's stomach bug sick.
• I've pulled little fingers out of noses, replete with gooey green things and found the nearest disposable paper to wipe them on. I've watched my "girly-girl" four year old pop a booger in her mouth and tell me it's good.

And yet, I think Kev may have bested me.

Three times in as many days he has shat his diaper. Fine. That's what he does, I'm ok with it. I would happily clean it up. But no, he somehow manages to dislodge his diaper so that it's hanging between his knees while his pants are still up. Therefore, the insides of his thighs become coated in crap, the insides of his pants become coated in crap, pulling his shin/foot out of the pants/diaper/crap ensemble creates more skin covered in crap.

There aren't enough wipes in the world to get him clean before he starts clamoring on me (and we wonder why Mommy has so many shirts in the wash each week?) to get a book, a ball or whatever isn't decorated with body art.

It used to be that Kev would cease all movement and grunt audibly when he pooped. I think I need to feed him more cheese because now it's no big deal - I have no clue when he poops and he somehow pulled off today's surprise while no more than 5 feet from me since waking up.

So anyway, good times. This'll be my second shower in 2 hours because I have the unmistakeable stench about me. And while I may be ok with vomit, poop, boogers in regards to my kids, I'd rather not people wonder if I've messed my own pants.

Brownies, anyone?

Seriously.

I'm not sure if you can really make out the fact that he climbed his little self into the tub while Amiya was taking a bath and he was still diapered and dressed.

I let him out of his high chair and he went straight for the bathtub where his Didi was. I took the scenic route through the kitchen (.478 feet longer than his route) to throw the washcloth into the sink. That .478 foot difference meant one very, very full diaper, one saturated shirt and two children, giggling at the look of resignation on their adoring Mommy's face.

February Things To Do

Freshly back from a weekend away with a handful of friends, I caught up on my favorite blogs and saw this great list of projects that a friend wants to complete in February. It was such a positive list of creative endeavors that I decided to do the same. So, Kev and I sat down to color this morning after dropping Amiya at school and I made my list. And then I decided, since it's going to be hanging on the fridge for the next 25 days, it may as well look good! Here it is, in all it's glory:

Happily, it doesn't include the daily grind - laundry, dishes, cleaning (say what?!?), etc. And that right there is the point! Those things still have to get done, but I'm hoping the happy gesture of coloring a page of projects and seeing them accomplished will keep a very busy month from getting overwhelming!

And speaking of projects, if you look closely you'll see that I've listed "sew an apron." I'm a bit in love with aprons lately and I sewed this little one for a friend's daughter. The fabrics of the apron (floral and green stripe) are absolutely precious together, but I think her little self makes it even more perfect!

Is she not the cutest thing ever?

Four and five/sixths

If you ask her how old she is, that's what she says.

"Four and five sixths."

And yet, this is how she sleeps.

Bristling by day at the slightest hint of being anything but a big girl, she tells us she's only a couple of days away from being a teenager. Talk of college and marriage and houses and all that, yet at night, she curls up tight with Kelly and Elly and we go right back to early days.