18 Months

Happy half birthday to Irene!  Here are a few pictures of her sharing her brightest camera smiles!

I have tried teaching her to say "cheese" so she might at least look a little more like she is smiling, but this is a happy look for her, no doubt about it.

So what's new for Irene?

*It doesn't seem new now, but she wasn't walking at 12 months and she is toddle running now.  She is fast...and fearless.  She takes off in whatever direction fancies her and I scurry behind.  Actually, what I try to do is outrun her and meet up in the direction she is going.  I'm not sure if she knows where I've come from, but she likes it.
*She has more words, but still only a few that are really understandable.  She signs some and points and nods a lot.  It is usually crystal clear what she is asking for.
*Her first set of molars is in - hallelujah!  That was character building.

Another thing she is doing is potty training.  Actually I am doing the training and she is complying with it from time to time.  I never potty trained a child this young, so I don't know what to expect and I'm keeping my expectation low.  Why and how is a whole other conversation, so I will skip it.  What we have found in the process is that Irene LOVES zebras!  She can sit for an amazingly long time and look at pictures of zebras.  The kids and I joke that when she is older she is going to need to pee every time she sees a zebra and wonder why!

She likes spaghetti...or pick-up-sticks...or dumping things, probably dumping things.

She likes bubbles...

And she likes dirt.

And I like a nice hot bath and a cup of peppermint tea at the end of the day!

8 1/2

I have been warning the kids that we will be toning down our half birthday observances.  Natalie's half birthday is December 23 - a day we are usually on the road, so she is going to get left out every year and when there are 4 kid birthdays to celebrate, we won't need so much to jazz up the birthday-less part of the year.  There won't be much of the year where it won't be almost someone's birthday!  But we went ahead and made a cake to celebrate Caleb's turning 8 1/2.  I made a whole cake because...well, I wanted to :)

3 smiles - it can be done!

His half birthday was yesterday, but we ate the cake today.   Here are a couple of other pics from today.

Meredith Inspired - I suggested to Caleb he make a leprechaun trap and this is it.

Reading!

Four and a Half

Half a cake = half a princess

The proof!



  I have had a hard time with icing the last few cakes I've made, I finally realized I'd been trying to make it with an all butter recipe, which is ok for just basic icing, but for decorating...falls flat.  I added margarine and it helped a lot.  I've been trying to avoid margarine and shortening, but I guess every now and then you have to use a few unnatural tricks.

Two and a Half

Annalise is 2 1/2 today, so we defrosted our half cake and got decorating :)

Originally, when I asked Annalise what she color she wanted the cake to be she said she wanted a "pink cake". What should be on it? "Candles!" I kept asking her for specifics and she finally decided on "pink cars" (???) we morphed that around to a cake themed on Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, because she LOVES Goldbug.

Here is Goldbug, he shows up just about everywhere!If you are familiar with the book, you'll notice the "5-seater pencil car" above Goldbug's pink car. We also had Mistress Mouse's pink tow truck.

Annalise at 2 1/2. Two and a half seems to be a big step towards becoming a kid. I notice things about her all the time that seem less baby-ish than before. She still has a lot of baby to work out (our last potty training attempt ultimately had me crying "Uncle!") but it is a lot less baby than 2.

4 and a Half

Today is Caleb's "half birthday". He has been extremely excited about today, although all he really got out of it was a cake! Or rather, half a cake. I froze the other half for Annalise's big half-day next month. Honestly, I think more than the cake, he wanted a party, but I told him I was not up to that, so a cake was it!

Caleb directed all the decorating:
At his request - a beach cake, half sand/half water. He said it is Ft. Myers Beach. And just in case you're thinking, "Oh look, there's Dory." I must correct you, that is Sneezy. Caleb "acquired" Sneezy at a birthday party last month and chose the name because Sneezy makes a sneezing sound when you squeeze him. That's because Sneezy is a bathtub toy that has never been in the tub. I told Caleb if he took Sneezy in the bath, he would have to change his name to Spitty.

The cocktail umbrellas were by special request too.
I was kind of sentimental about him being half-way to five when Rob pointed out, he's actually half-way to nine. Ok, five doesn't look that bad after all.

18 Months

Annalise is 18 months old today! So we had a half birthday cake. Actually it's half of the cake I baked a week ago (I froze half) for our anniversary.
Doesn't it look funny to see a baby wearing a watch? But she insisted!!!
It took several tries, but she blew them both out, and very drily too I might add. I didn't notice that much until Caleb asked it he could blow them out (we missed his half birthday because we were in Orlando) and he was a spluttery blower! ick!

And if you're not tired of caterpillar pictures yet...I have more! Right now we have (at least) FIVE caterpillars on the milkweed plants! Three of them are bigger, probably 3rd instar, and two are very small...
this is one of the smaller ones, I think it is 2nd instar though. 1st instar is only 1/8 of an inch and this was easily 1/4 inch long.

And we have many more eggs that have not hatched yet. The ants and the aphids seem much too preoccupied with milkweed itself to bother these guys much - although the flower part of the milkweed is just covered in aphids. I am curious to see how much damage 5+ caterpillars can do to two milkweed plants! We may have to wait for the plants to regrow all their leaves if these guys all make it to the chrysalis stage.

Half-way to Five

Call me a copy-cat - I loved Lori's idea about having a half-birthday!

A great excuse to make a cake...er well half a cake :) I looked at it as an opportunity to practice with my icing tool. I still can't get the icing a good consistancy to make them look like they do in magazines, but it tasted good...
Caleb said he wanted a car cake, which is new. The last few (very few) days he has been all about cars and trucks.
Annalise says, "Can I have some?" Ha! Not for 7 more months!!
Happy 2 1/2 Caleb!