happy bday mama!

happy birthday (yesterday) to Michelle, the bestest wife and mama around. we all love her so much. we had a good weekend together as a family and we got to go out to celebrate together on Friday. a bunch of us got her a cool MP3 player for her bday (a sandisk sansa -- cheaper better than an iPod shuffle!), and the kids made handprints that I framed for her.

and happy 18 months to Caleb (2 days ago). he's growing up so fast!

and now for various snippets from the kids:

Caleb constantly cracks us up, and we're often fascinated at the things that he does. we were both laughing quite hard the other day when he decided to put his blanky over his head and run around the house. he's actually pretty good at this trick, as you can tell he's looking at the floor to see where he is. of course we dont let him get into too much trouble, but we cant help but laugh when he runs into the couch near full speed.

speaking of his blanky, he's still obsessed with tag on it. he'll turn it over and over until he finds it and then exclaims his happiness when it's found. then hill hold it close to his face while he sucks his thumb. super cute.

he's turning into quite the organizer. he likes to line up his blocks or put them all in his changing table. but the best is the cards that he calls "mail." they're paper sample card from a paper company, and they used to be in a little book together. now they're all loose, and he likes to sort and organize them, making sure that they're all lined up properly. if it's the wrong time of day he'll throw a fit if he cant get it quite right, but usually he'll happily do this for quite a while. and when he's concentrating like that, he tends to hold his breath. (this is something mama also does, but she didnt realize it until we saw him do it.) he's certainly good at thinking things through.

he's been picking up a few more words, but I think it might be time to teach him more signs, as he's been more frustrated lately. but he does pretty well with the words he's got, although I'm sure we're the only ones who can tell what most of them are. the funny thing is how he says "please" for something. his word for "more" is "muh" and "more please" is "muh muh" in a sing-song tone. likewise "snack" is "nah" and "snack please" is "nah nah." thus far we need to remind him to say please pretty much every time, but he'll do it when we ask. he seems to be getting better at not whining for something by default, but it does feel like we're constantly telling him "no whining please." a lot of it depends on if he's feeling sick or tired.

I'm constantly impressed at how quickly he picks up on things. we were looking at a magazine or something and I pointed out the boys and the girls. then a little later I asked him to point to a boy in a different picture and he got it right every time. same with the girls. for all I know this is completely normal, but I thought it was pretty cool. I've been trying to teach him colors lately, but pretty casually. this morning he had a stack of legos of different colors and I asked him to point to blue, red, green, yellow, and he got them mostly right. could have been luck, but probably not. crazy.

he's been enjoying playing with the dog more and more, and she likes it too. he really loves her, and it's nice to see her willing to interact more. I'm pretty sure she's the reason he's SO into animals. some kids like cars or balls or blocks. our kid is really into animals. he loves all his stuffed animals, and he loves pointing them out in his books and such and making noises for dog, cat, sheep, duck, monkey, fish, elephant, bee, bird, lion, pig, etc. some are better than others (dog, sheep and duck being favorites).

and let's not forget little Alice. she's smiling and cooing more and more, and she positively lights up when we turn on the mobile for her. she also enjoys the play gym and bouncy seat whenever she gets a chance. usually she'll only need 1 bottle in the middle of the night, but sometimes she's pretty gassy, so that wakes her up and makes for a long night for all. but it's nice to have her on a 3 hour routine during the day. she's pretty good at spitting up when she takes a bottle, but if you're expecting it, it's not hard to handle. we look forward to when she can sleep longer, but we're realizing that time is flying faster with her than it did with Caleb. it's a lot of fun to have her all tiny and snuggly, but I cant wait until she can run around and have fun with her big brother. and oh yeah, she's got the cutest bunny slippers ever.