Mark this date on the calendar. Matthew ate lasagna…
…and asked for seconds.
(Nearly 16 years of parenting has taught me that next time we have lasagna he will refuse to eat it and claim he’s never eaten it and that it will poison him. But today I will bask in the glory of everyone having eaten dinner without complaint.)
Recipe here, for posterity.
But it was. My whole site. And while I haven’t blogged in a while (yes, I know it’s been an embarrassingly long while, time is relative) this blog has so many sweet memories of my kids, and just life in general, that I couldn’t let it all be lost to the circular file of the internet.
So. Does anyone have any idea how hard it is to dust off 16 years of cobwebs from web and php programming knowledge? It’s hard. It almost broke my brain. But I fixed it. Kind of. Maybe it’s time for a fresh blog start?
Sometimes I wish I could completely freeze him at this perfect age, but then I’d miss out on all the future fun things he’ll learn how to do!
So, random bits of fun cuteness, courtesy of 16 month old Matthew:
1. He absolutely thinks the dog is underfed. No matter what he’s eating, he will always share with Murphy – even bacon! Poor Murphy is very conflicted about this. He has a choice between running away from the maniacal toddler yelling “dah-dah-dah-dah” (“dah” is Matthew’s attempt at saying “dog”) or risking chokehold hugs in exchange for sharing the contents of the snack cup.
2. He hums. Like all the time. Mostly “twinkle twinkle little star” (or the alphabet song, hard to say without words) but also “frere jacques”, “old macdonald” and other unidentified (yet) snippets of things.
3. The organ sound on the digital piano is his most very favorite sound, and he will bang out long, loud, discordant chords and laugh maniacally. Pretty sure he’s got the whole “mad scientist evil organ music” thing down.
4. When we listen to songs from my latest musical in the car, and they get to that ending chord hit (the “button”) he giggles hysterically. Piano glissandos ending in a big octave hit cause the same reaction. He does it *every single time*. I think it’s like the auditory equivalent to a jack-in-the-box: predictable, but still somewhat surprising.
Take one toddler with wild hair.
Add two lollipops, a TV, some scissors, and a camera.
And suddenly you have a big boy.
But he still has curls, and I didn’t cry at all, and I guess I can stop carrying around hair ties in my pockets.
I was practicing piano for a new show earlier, and Matthew was quietly (well, not so quietly) playing with some of his new percussion instruments behind me. (He has an uncanny sense of rhythm, so this was not as hard as it sounds.) Halfway through the piece I suddenly realized he’d gotten all quiet.
And giggly.
Fortunately, I had the camera on the back of the piano (one of the few places left that’s out of his reach) because I turned around and saw this…
Mind you, there’s a perfectly accessible matching window just on the other side of the couch. No table in front of it, and it’s exactly the same view.
Apparently, Matthew cannot wait to be taller.
Everyone has gone back to work and school and Matthew and Murphy are both napping. It’s so quiet after two weeks of everyone being home and together. Matthew spent the morning running to the window every time a car went by, saying “buh? buh?” and looking for the school bus. I’m apparently not as much fun to play with as his sisters!
Most years I’m eager for the return of routines after the break, but this year I would gladly have kept everyone home for another week or two!
In an attempt to revive my blog, capture some memories, and become a better photographer, I have joined both Shoot 2015 and Project 365.
The first assignment for Shoot 2015 was to take a selfie as a profile photo. I am not much into taking selfies – and to be fair, I set the camera up on the tripod and composed the shot but Carolyn actually pushed the button so I wouldn’t have to mess with the timer, so maybe it’s not technically quite a selfie? Honestly, I’m generally not much into having pictures of myself taken, so it was all kinds of uncomfortable to fulfill this assignment! Black and white because the colors were distracting. (And I have this fantasy that it softens the double chin.)
I hereby resolve to get in the picture more with my kids this year!
In the past two weeks, Matthew has figured out so many new things, it’s astounding. He can crawl with his belly off the floor, he can get himself into a sitting position, he can pull up to kneeling and standing, and he’s starting to climb. He’s started signing “milk”, “more”, “dog”, and “water”. He’s also cut two teeth and last night? Last night he slept ALL NIGHT LONG in his crib for the very first time ever – 8:30 PM to 6:17 AM. I’m completely out of breath trying to keep up with all of his changes, but I am also almost completely rested for the first time since before he was born!
Is this thing on?
It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
Let me explain. No, wait, there is too much. Let me sum up.
Lots of everyday, crazy fun and messy life has happened in the past, oh, almost two years now. I’m not really sure why I stopped blogging except that things got busy for a while, and then I fell out of the habit. And then things got *really* busy again. Because, well, this little man joined our family in August, 2013:
And nothing makes time shorter than a new baby – they grow and change so fast and the moments slip by even while you’re trying to hold them tight. New babies completely rock your world.
But then, while trying to remember when one of the girls started walking, I thought about my letters to them every month, and the posts I had written capturing all of those little moments that you promise yourself you’ll remember but you’re so busy and sleep deprived and distracted that you don’t. And I realized that I want those for Matthew, too. I’ve written some things down in other places, so I may post-date a few things so I can find them someday, but whether I get to those or not I’m going to work to keep things updated going forward. Because you don’t get those moments back, but reading about them years later is almost as good.
So. Here’s to spring, a renewal of warmth, light, growing things…and blogging.
Happy birthday, Lisa, we had fun picking strawberries with you!