And so, it turns out out that I'm a terrible Santa

Ezra has (had) a very specific item on his Christmas list this year.   This is the first year I took him to see Santa, but you would have never been able to tell.  He confidently and efficiently told the Santa at Brooks Brothers, even before he had a chance to climb on his lap, "I want train tracks that I can build on the floor all by myself!" (This is in contrast to the train table that he got last year where everything is screwed down.)

Well, it turns out that Cousins Max and Luke had a whole box of said track that they had outgrown.  Last week I hopped in the van with Aunt Becky and we drove a couple of hours up to their storage and brought back a box of all the track a little boy could ever hope for.  Santa had it made.  The perfect gift, and it was free!

Turns out that Santa needs to do a better job of hiding gifts.

I put the box in my closet and had been very careful not to open it when Ezra was near.  I was quite certain it was safe because little boy has never gotten in my closet...until today, when I suddenly heard, "Mama!  What is this?  It's track!  It's track!" And so, Christmas came early to the Caceres' apartment.  It was a fun afternoon- four straight hours of creating different winding, wooden configurations to frequent, oh so cute, exclamations from a two-year-old of, "Wow!  That looks amazing!" and "This is wonderful!"  

I don't mind that Santa's gift to Ezra turned into Max and Luke's gift to Ezra.  But now, what is Santa going to bring Ezra on Christmas Eve?  Not much.  At least Santa can thank me for lightening his load.  

A Little Bit O' Country

For the past several Octobers, we've had the little tradition of squishing in the Gilmore van and taking a short drive upstate to pick ourselves some pumpkins.  It's always fun-crisp air, a hay ride, apple cider, homemade doughnuts, and a real country experience.  Or as close as you can get to a country experience an hour and half from they city.   

This is what our real country pumpkin patch looked like.  The pumpkins grow nestled in a green, grassy field.  No dirt, no vines.   

I kind of like it because Lucia could crawl around without getting too dirty and the orange on green sure made for a pretty picture.  

                              
            
Our real country experience also included a decent crowd of people and even someone directing parking.  Ha, ha! Look at Lucia's face in this picture.
                                                  


Fun on the hayride.

And for even more fun, pictures from one of our first pumpkin picking adventures.  My how things have changed.  Look how little Ruby was!

                                      


And pumpkins used to be exciting enough to draw Luke out of the van.   To be fair, it was much colder  this year.
                                                   

The Little Red Lighthouse

Ezra received this lovely little book for his 2nd birthday from our friends the Cromars.  He has loved reading about the little lighthouse flashing it's light "one second on, two seconds off." It is one children's book that I really enjoy as well.  It's a good story(too bad it's not exactly true) and the writing is pretty.  The illustrations are really fun as the ships and the lighthouse and even the fog have subtle human characteristics.  

 Every September they have a Little Red Lighthouse Festival.  Of course, we had to go.  We met our friends the Maroon's and rode the train up to the Washington Heights.  There was a old-fashioned trolley-bus that shuttled us down to the river.  Emma and Ezra loved it.

The Gilmore's showed up later on and Ezra got to spend some time with his "best friend" Aunt Becky and his cousins.  We at food, threw rocks in the river, and did a lame-o "craft" which consisted of putting a white plastic cup on top of a red one and calling it a lighthouse.  The highlight, of course, was getting to climb up the STEEP spiral staircase and ladder to the top of the lighthouse.  Ezra thought it was pretty cool and Martin's fear of heights set in (it's not that high!)

Here we are inside the lighthouse.

And here is our happy boy.  Isn't that smile gorgeous?

(Lucia, although there is no evidence of such, you came too.  You had a fun time crawling in the grass and being entertained by Max and Ruby.  Next year we'll let you come up with us.)

Hurricane Weekend in Vermont

We decided to escape Hurricane Irene by spending the weekend in Vermont with the Gilmores. We left Friday night and had a wonderful day on Saturday doing Vermont-y things.

Picnicking, cheese sampling, farm visiting....

Oh, the novelty of grass for a city baby!

We went to a petting barn and the highlights for the kids were the baby chicks and an old silo that was filled with feed corn for playing in.

I love these pictures of Ezra. He easily spent a very focused hour in the silo. Note that this is how little kids play in the corn.

And now for big kid play.

And then, it got a bit out of control. Somehow, Max convinced Ruby that she wanted to be buried in the corn, even after Luke's turn had just ended in tears.

This is a photo of Ruby, her presence carefully camouflaged by strategically placed tractors and buckets. Ruby's face is under the bowl on the left side of the pictures.

Ruby's face after the bowl was removed.  Not suprisingly, she cried too.

Saturday night we stayed in a cute little cottage and while we heard rain all night long, it wasn't until we got on the road in the morning that we began to realize that we did anything but escape the storm.  I've seen flooding many times before, but nothing like the flash floods that ravished little Vermont.  The expected three hour drive home turned into an 11 hour maze of a drive as we were forced to turn around again and again because of washed out roads and flooded bridges.  While I was tempted to feel sorry for myself because I was stuck in a car with a crying baby, our discomfort was nothing compared to the loss that we saw that day. My heart goes out to all the people who were impacted by the terrible flooding!  

One Bedroom Apartment

It's hot outside and so I am sitting and enjoying the only room in our house with a good AC. The only room that has been livable the last few days-our bedroom. When I say "our bedroom," I really mean "the bedroom".

It may seem crazy, even by New York standards, that we all sleep here. I realize that it's a pretty un-American sleeping arrangement. What about teaching our kids independence? What about personal space? But the truth is, I love it. I may not love it forever. I probably won't even love it for another few months. But right now, it is heavenly. Martin and Ezra have fallen asleep next to a pile of books. Ezra is gently snoring. (He is so beautiful!) Lucia is sprawled out on her stomach in her pack'n'play. My little family, all here, so close.

How does it work, with different schedules, with a teething baby? Magically, night after night, it just does. Lucia cries, and Ezra may stir but immediately drifts back to sleep. Martin knows how to slip in and out silently in the morning as he readies for work. Somehow Ezra and Lucia always seem to magically wake up at the same time and love to spend the first few minutes of their day rolling around together on the bed, Ezra telling Lucia that he loves her in a voice that is much too loud.

But loud voices are a morning thing, right now I just hear a chorus of quiet breathing.

And if you still think I'm crazy, it may make you feel better knowing that our bedroom is quite large... by New York standards.

Last Saturday

Last Saturday was one of those days, or I guess I should say nights.  I was eating an ice cream cone and holding Lucia at the same time.  I thought it would be fun to let her have her first taste of ice cream and she was begging for it with her baby body language.  What could it hurt, right?

It ends up that she had a pretty quick allergic reaction-eyes red, swollen, and itchy.  She got hives all over her torso and back.  I started to worry about her breathing and ran and got the Benedryl. We gave her a dose and then Martin gave her a blessing.  While we worried over Lucia, Ezra found himself with the opportunity to get into some unsupervised mischief.  In the bathroom, I found Ezra and a mostly empty bottle of Benedryl.  We asked him if he had drunk  the medicine, and like any good one-year old would, he said yes. Chances are he dumped it down the sink, but we didn't want to take any chances.

A taste of ice cream turned into an evening in the hospital for Papa and Ezra.  The gave him a charcoal drink to absorb his stomach contents and kept him under observation for several hours.  The doctor said he doubted that any child would be able to tolerate drinking that much medicine and then he saw Ezra down the charcoal like it was nothing.  He said he had never seen anything like it.

Everything ended up being okay and Ezra talks about this hospital time fondly. What's better than one-on-one time with your dad, a cab ride, Jell-o (his first experience with it), and as much t.v. as you want?

Father's Day

Our neighbor, Jamie, had a great idea for Father's Day. Not only did she share her idea, she also offered to take and edit the photos.  To top it off, she did this kind thing not just for us, but for many families in our little playgroup. Sweet Jamie keeps on proving again and again to be an extremely thoughtful and talented person.

Getting the kiddies to look at the camera and hold the letters just right was challenging, to say the least. To complicate things, Lucia was still not a sitter at the time, so we kind of had to prop her up. After the photo session, there weren't any pictures of Ezra and Lucia together where both were looking or that Lucia wasn't tipping over. Jamie ended up having to Photoshop Lucia's head onto her body. Take a good look at the second picture. You can't even tell, right?

Papa loved his gift!

Rocks with PePaw

I haven't posted anything for months and so here I am playing catch up. I ran across these photos that I took in the late afternoon on a gorgeous, April day. I love how the low sun makes long shadows in the grass and how the silhouetted figures show Ezra and his Grandpa engaged in one of Ezra's favorite activities in the whole world--throwing rocks in the creek. A warm sun, a crisp breeze, and a bubbling, singing creek. It was one of those afternoons when the world truly seemed carefree and perfect. (Especially since Ezra didn't take an unintentional swim, like he had the day before.)

Not So Very Long Ago

I don't really have any nice newborn pictures of Ezra. I discovered with him, too late, that you only have a few days, a couple weeks at most, when they actually look like newborns (before the bald spots and baby acne). So when Lucia was born, I knew that I had to act fast. I asked my neighbor to takes a few photos for me and she happily obliged. Thank you, Jamie!

Look how teenie-tiny beautiful she was!

And now, she looks like this:

Last week, a little girl at church was sitting next to me as a took off Lucia's jacket. She said, with amazement, "Wow! She has big muscles."

Just think how impressed she would have been if she had seen her legs.

Also, as proof of her growing self, Lucia learned two new tricks last week- rolling over and thumb sucking. She can't seem to get enough of either one.

sweet as can be

Little Lucia,

You are such a marvelous addition to our family. It's been three months since you were born, and already I pull out the little clothes that drowned you when you were first born and can't believe that you were ever that small. You've got a healthy appetite and a belly and cheeks to match. Oh, how I love your cheeks! You've really figured out the smiling thing the last couple of weeks and that joyous, open-mouthed grin was well worth the two and a half month wait.

You are such a patient little girl. You put up with your Papa's kisses, although you do so with a look of displeasure on you face. At times you even seem to enjoy the overdoses of love that Ezra sends your way. The other day Ezra wanted to look into your eyes and decided the best way to do it was to plop his 27 pound body right on top of your tininess. When I turned around to find you squished under your brother, you had a huge grin on your face. Thank you so much for your example of patience, especially during a period when Ezra hasn't the slightest idea what that might be.

What more can I say of your 3 month old self? You're a very grunty-snorty baby, which is actually quite endearing. You spit up ALL the time which is quite the opposite of endearing and keeps the two of us perpetually smelling of sour milk. I find your body shape amusing. You are a big round belly with short, little fat-petite legs sticking out. I know that's a lot of adjectives stuck together to describe you legs, but I don't know how else to describe them. Tiny and petite, yet fat at the same time. Simply put, your thighs are adorable.

Simply put, you are adorable. I love you!

routinely happy

I feel like I don't have anything exciting to blog about and haven't for some time. We've settled into a winter schedule that gets us out of the house a few times a week for playgroup and music class, but mostly we just stay inside our apartment, sheltered from the cold. And while the world may not want to hear about how today Ezra ate oatmeal for breakfast or that we read "The Little Engine that Could" 8 times, I am truly happy. We are holed up in our little one bedroom with smiles on our faces. Smiles that get even bigger with dreams of the spring.

Lucia Wakes Up

After almost two months, Lucia is finally putting in some good awake time. It is so much fun to see her eyes and to watch her little body kick around. I love her more and more everyday.

Cheese Smile

Recently Ezra learned that you are supposed to say "cheese" when you see a camera. I'm not sure where he picked this up, but I am sure that his cheesy smile is one of the cutest things I've ever seen.