Milestones

6 months already

When Alastair was a baby I spent hours on the floor with him coaching him to roll over, convinced that without my assistance, he wouldn't figure it out. I was consumed with the milestones he was meeting and those that lay ahead of us. Hours and hours past while I baited him to crawl by putting post it notes just out of his reach. At the time, I didn't notice that with every milestone met, a bit of my baby was getting left behind in the wake of an emerging child. I am painfully aware of it this time around. My baby is now a little boy and he is getting bigger all the time. And my baby girl? This child has an intense focus and is going to be major trouble to keep tabs on once she is mobile. For now, I enjoy every cuddle and miss her when she's in her crib for the night. I just know she's in there growing up by the second.


For Emery's half birthday, I made a cake. I have been working very hard to get back into my old clothes so there hasn't been much baking going on over here lately. For some reason, I have more trouble with "instant" recipes than making food from scratch. First, I forgot I was baking a cake and couldn't hear the timer beep over Mathilde, the embroidery machine. Apparently, overdone cake shrinks to the size of a Frisbee. I was not to be deterred. After carefully removing the crust with a bread knife, I made some icing. Husbands of the world take note: light butter is not butter. In fact, I'm not sure what it is, but it separates and does not whip into icing like consistency. Fortunately, I had some freebie icing in the pantry from a coupon deal awhile back and I slapped that on. For all those moms that bake birthday cakes, I tip my hat to you. While I have no problem baking bread from scratch and can make a pastry crust that will shatter with the thwack from a fork, it took me a year to figure out the proper timing to make oatmeal in the microwave. Seriously. Easy is not my friend, but we knew that already, didn't we?

Alastair loved singing to Emery ("Happy Half-Birthday to you") and was happy to help eat cake. I was nice enough to make sure we ate cake was after she went to bed, since she hasn't been cleared on all the ingredients.

Some shots from a party we went to over the weekend:

Don't we need a swingset in our yard?


Speaking of growing up...

Alastair has traded in his three wheeler for a four wheeler, which is a confusing sort of progress to be sure.

Kim and I have been discussing when to move Alastair up to a bike and with all the walking we do, it was getting to be a major drag to push a sulking preschooler all around the neighborhood. It took 3.5 years, but Alastair finally figured out that sitting in the stroller for long stretches is super boring. Enter the bike. We figured that if we got him excited about riding, we could just "follow" him with Emery in the stroller. So far so good!

It took about two weeks for him to earn enough stickers to fill his sticker chart. Some of the categories included "being nice to sister" and "getting in the car nicely." It was a pleasant two weeks though and because I am a quick study, we are currently working on another for a trip to Chuck E. Cheese.

Alastair says the best part of his bike is the spider on it. Sometimes, I have to remind him to look where he is going because he is intently admiring it and about to ride off the path.

It is really fun to ride with him and he is excited about it. As soon as Emery's head is big enough for a helmet, we can all go out as a family. We are all looking forward to it.