**Sugar & Spice**

There is something really fabulous taking place at my house. Stay tuned for the reveal...

"Happiness? The color of it must be spring green..."

~Francis Mayes

A Conversation with Noelle

I called my niece, Noelle, today to wish her a happy birthday. We had a nice conversation on the phone. She told me all about the fun she had at the IKEA Fun Place while her mama shopped for patio furniture, and her pending play date with the neighbor boy. I asked her if she knew just how fantastic I think she is, to which she politely replied, "No, I didn't know that!" She totally knows I think she's fantastic because her very next sentence was, "Hey Auntie, next time you are at Costco, will you buy me Fairy Fashion Secret? You can just wrap it up and drop it in the mail." How am I supposed to respond to that? I mean, OF COURSE I'll buy her Fairy Fashion Secret* next time I'm at the Costco. Girl knows a sucker when she sees one.

*Fairy Fashion Secret is a Barbie DVD. Noelle's all about Barbie right now.

15

Somehow I managed to miss your 14 month birthday all together. Actually, our little family spent that weekend at our house in Idaho where there is no wireless, no computers therefore no update. I thought about a write-up for several weeks and now its time to move on. So, Happy 15 months, little buddy!! The other night you fell asleep on the way home from preschool. This is not breaking news since you fall asleep EVERY DAY on the way home from school. Your teacher told me recently you are one of the "rambunctious" ones in your class and you are pretty tuckered out at the end of the day from playing so hard. You went to bed still in your coat and shoes and stayed that way all night. You slept for almost 14 hours and I am not kidding when I say you grew a mullet and two inches taller overnight.

I think part of the rambunctiousness comes from your new found freedom on your feet. You are a walking fool! For the longest time you would cruise around the furniture with maybe two or three steps between me and The Dad. You generally were not interested in walking. You were perfectly content and quite efficient on your knees while all your little {and younger} friends were walking circles around you. Until one day you stood up in the middle of the room without any assistance or props and walked six or seven steps to Dad. Its been all feet ever since. And all stairs. While at the cabin last month I must have climbed the stairs with you at least 100 million times. You have the going-up part perfected. Going down is still scary...for me. You have no concept of down, falling, injury, broken skulls. Sometimes you would take the safer, on-the-belly slide down option, or more often attempt the dangerous standing on two feet, step by step forward option. Inevitably you would miss a step or get distracted and, "uh oh!" down you'd go.

Your vocabulary is expanding. "Uh oh" was possibly your first word after "mama" and "dad" ("dat"). You are also very polite by saying, "Please" ("pease") a million times until you get what you want, and for breakfast it's all about "bananas" ("nananas") and "cheese.". Other words include "blanket" ("banket") and "bink" and while changing your poopy britches I said, "YUCK!" and like a little parrot you repeated "YUCK!" While I say "I love you" a million times a day, you show it with your open mouth kisses and bear hugs. My sweetest boy.

Fabric, Glue Guns and Girls Gone Wild

Last weekend I was invited to Girls Weekend at my friend's cabin near Pineview. I know you would rather see pictures of the Girls Gone Wild part of the weekend, but every picture that was taken someone said, "I better not see this on Facebook!!" Fortunately for all of the ladies there, I didn't take a single picture, but I did make some couture pillows. Pillows? Yes, there was a lot of crafting going on. You wouldn't believe what some of those girls can pull off at 2 a.m, soused to the gills. I spent some quality time with my felt, sewing machine and a needle and thread. I am really happy with the outcome. JW noticed the new pillows pretty quickly. Not 5 minutes after I put the pillows on the couch he started pulling on the beads. {sigh}

JW The Destroyer

Welcome to the Tampax to the Max Tournament of Champions.

I Have a Teenager

I'm pretty sure I start every birthday post with, "You are growing so fast," or "You are the best baby." I can't help it. These things are true every month and it blows me away everytime I think about it.

Lucky 13 started out with a gail force wind...CHRISTMAS! I don't think I took a single picture of you on Christmas day. I KNOW. You are going to be talking about this years from now in therapy. At the end of the day, the whole Christmas-presents-Santa-Baby Jesus thing was of no interest to you. You were, however, interested in the Christmas tree, the glass ornaments and getting your fingers on what ever you could. At one point, early one morning while I was "resting my eyes" on the couch, I heard "cling cling cling cling." I opened one eye to you tugging on an ornament pratically bringing down the whole tree. A few weeks ago while sitting in one of my church meetings I noticed your little friend, who happens to be one day older than you, laying on the floor holding the bottle he was drinking. A wave of envy blew over me, as I wished you would hold our own bottle. All I could think is wow, how that would save me a good 10 minutes every morning. I've tried to get you to hold your own bottle, but you throw your hands in the air expecting me to wave a palm leaf and feed you grapes. It wasn't more than two days later when I walked into preschool to pick you up and lo and behold, there you were on the floor holding your own bottle! I was so happy and cheered you on like it was the first time ever. Miss Katelyn told me you had been holding your own bottle for awhile. You were busted. It wasn't until the next morning when I prepared your bottle and laid you on the floor to drink it did I began to miss our 10 minutes of cuddle time.

You are so close to walking. You took your first steps recently, but you are still quite nervous on your two feet and still prefer crawling. This is ok with me. I have a feeling once you figure out your feet, you will be unstoppable. We have recently given you the nickname of "The Destroyer." This is because you get your hands on anything within reach and rip it up, throw it, eat it, drag it through the house. A little ball of dust and chaos you are.

I can't end without mentioning your first haircut. As we can all see, you don't have much hair to begin with, but while it was all business in the front, you had a little party going on in the back. So The Dad got out the clippers and cut off your mullet. I am obsessed with rubbing your fuzzy round head. I am obsessed with you.

*Pictures were taken by Auntie Kati.

Just Another Manic Sunday

Yes, I said Sunday. Sunday is really the day of madness in my life. Monday's are a breeze. I think the stress revolves most of the time around church. I might have to go inactive until Dubs is three and can go to his own class. Here's why:

1. It doesn't matter what time church starts, it doesn't work for baby. It always falls during one meal time and nap time. I thought I had the meal time figured out today - I took a baggy FULL of snacks as well as a jar of apples. Dubs devoured the baggy of snacks the first hour (mind you, he ate a full meal before we left for church). By the third hour he was crazy. Feeling especially prepared, I whipped out those apples. Dubs would not eat them. BRAH!!

2. Dubs can not sit still for any length of time. In fact, I think his goal is to be as disruptive as possible. He likes to spend as much time as possible playing "I'll drop my toy and you pick it up" with the lucky family sitting behind us. When he bores of this, he crawls away looking for any purse or diaper bag to disassemble. Today he played peek-a-boo under the table cloth in Sunday school. To top it off, Dubs DOES NOT understand that if he nose dives off the pew he may seriously injure himself. I was prepared to intervene during his Spider Man manuever today when I caught his foot as he took a dive. Lucky for Spidey he only had a little rug burn on his forehead. Beats a broken nose!

3. I'm still working on the last 10 pounds of baby weight, which means most of my clothes don't fit quite right yet. A favorite dress of mine has buttons down the front and I forget that I can bust out of that dress in no time. I spent the better part of the day keeping myself buttoned up. Now I remember why I don't wear that dress.

There was one bright spot today, though. We celebrated Grandpa G's 85th birthday. 85!! Now there's a guy who has seen change happen. Happy birthday Grandpa!

Eli's Christmas

If you've ever hung around downtown Salt Lake, there is a chance you've heard Eli Potash working his cello. He'll appear in front of any venue where there is something going on. He carries around his old cello and plays whatever he's feeling. Sometimes it can be quite lovely, other times, well, let's just say it's how he's feeling at the moment. You can almost always catch him in front of the Broadway Theaters just before a show.

For Christmas this year, three guys in a band decided to do something extra special for Eli.
A simple demonstration of the magic of Christmas.

One Year Older and Wiser

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JW!!! I have been thinking about the events of this day one year ago. Being my first and only child so far, you hold an extra special place in my heart. You have shown me so many firsts. First pregnancy, first labor and delivery, first real experience with NO-SLEEP wackiness, the heartaches of breastfeeding, your first smile, laugh, crawl, babble, food, patty cakes, which you've demonstrated that you can actually "roll it," but now that I have noticed you won't do it, and now your first birthday. I can hardly believe it has been one year! I finally get it when someone says, "Enjoy them now because they grow up too fast." No kidding.

I was recently thinking back to the day you were born. My memory of that day is very vivid. I woke up around 2 am to go to the bathroom, as I had done for many months like clockwork, when GUSH. What a weird sensation. My water had broken and it was not a trickle. I woke up The Dad and told him it was time to go. We were very nervous and excited to meet you. Labor was better than I expected, not that my expectations were high, since I didn't know what was about to happen. I must admit though, as awesome as The Dad was during the whole labor thing, I really just wanted Gramma Nay. Babies needs there mamas sometimes, even when they are all grown up. My only regret was not having her with me. With a few practice pushes you were ready to go. Along came the doctor and just after noon, you were born. I had dreamed you would look like an alien. Well, more like a lemon head. Fortunately you didn't look like a lemon head, you looked JUST LIKE your dad.

You are a real punkin, Dubs. Everywhere we go, people on the street stop to flirt with you. You are generally ambivalent to such gestures and the look on your face easily says, "Get lost." You have become quite the social butterfly at the preschool though. Most days I drop you off and you get a little sad when I leave, but the other day you could not get off my lap fast enough. Your little buddy Henley was there ready to play. I put you down and away the two of you went, crawling as fast as your little hands and legs could move. Your teacher, Miss Maurine, says you follow each other around, pulling all the toys off the shelves and basically just roll and tumble together all day. And when the door to the "big room" opens up, the two of you high tail it out like bandits to be with the big kids. You have not learned yet that you are not quite a "big kid" and can be quite offended when you have to go back with the "infants." You do not understand that this is to protect you from being trampled by the big kids, but you are an adventurous boy and safety is not high on your priority list.

We had your first birthday party a few days ago with almost all of mama's family and a brief visit from Auntie Jen and Ella. I would have to say you were a little underwhelmed with the whole thing. You are still a little young to understand that all the commotion was about YOU. The balloons, gifts, cake, people...all for you. You had your first piece of cake (that I know of, since what happens at Gramma's or Papa's stays at Gramma's or Papa's). You didn't dig in to your cake like I thought you would. You were too concerned about the frosting being stuck to your fingers, leaving us all in stitches as you tried to shake it off.

You have me in stitches everyday, lil' buddy. Watching you learn and grow and begin to understand the world around you this last year has been nothing less than awesome.

The song is Nothing by Steve Foxbury off the album Do Fun Stuff. This album is a compilation of fun children's music from various artists with all the proceeds going to SMS research. You can download the album from iTunes. Dubs and I LOVE it.