A WEEK OF FIRSTS

This past week brought several firsts for our kids.  Lennon celebrated his first birthday.  I know it doesn't sound very exciting, but we sliced strawberries on top of a piece of whole grain sandwich bread at breakfast time and put a candle in the middle and sang "Happy Birthday."  Mia and Lennon both thought it was pretty cool.  He sort of blew on the candles - he does the sign for "hot" now - put he didn't get them out.  The rest of the day was pretty average.  We went to a park in the morning where we met up with Jessica, Ella and Diva and they gave Lennon a pair of handmade leather baby shoes from the country fair in Oregon.  They are so cute and look super comfy!  After his first nap we went over to Amy's house and hung out with Lennon's baby friend Bianca as well as Mateus, Miranda and Michael.  Bianca is now about 20 months and she LOVES Lennon.  Whenever she sees him she runs to him and gives him big hugs.  This particular day he also went up to her and gave her hugs.  It is the cutest thing ever.  He has actually started giving lots of hugs.  It's always on his terms though.  He gives Mia the most hugs probably and then he sometimes chooses a random stranger to hug.  Like on Thursday we went to the Science Museum with Mia's friend she made in Plymouth, Nicole, and while we were there Lennon went up to this random man who was there with his kids and gave him a big bear hug around his knees.  The man was caught off guard and thought it was totally sweet.  It was pretty funny.  

Another first this week was Lennon's inaugural trip to Breakheart Reservation where we had Mia's 5th birthday party.  We went there all the time before he was born but hadn't been back since.  He had a great time.  The water was the perfect temperature and he had a blast dropping stuff in the water and retrieving it and playing in the sand.  Mia and Mateus spent a lot of time digging a channel that Lennon and Biance spent a lot of time sitting in.  

This week we also had Shelby's annual company picnic.  This year it was at The Museum of Science.  So, yes if you are paying attention that means we nerds went to the museum on thursday and on friday.  It was great though.  The food was awesome and they had tons of toys bought from the museum store for the kids to play with during the picnic.  The kids both had fun and Mia made a new friend named Maia (maya.)  

Our last first of the week was Mia's first guitar lesson with Shelby on her new pink guitar.  It was a little rough starting because she has a hard time doing things that she isn't instantly good at, but in the end she was really enjoying it.  She practiced more after dinner and then again sunday morning.  Tonight when Shelby was on the phone with Dusty Mia asked to play what she had learned for Dusty.  It was pretty cool watching her sit down and play guitar with Shelby.  

I am finally starting to feel like I have two kids rather than one kid and a difficult baby.  They are really starting to interact and Mia and I are able to do more and more while Lennon is around playing with his toys.  We read a few days ago for about 45 minutes while Lennon played nearby with various toys.  He is really loving dogs right now and we're pretty sure he says "daaawwg"  when he sees them.  He is also definitely doing several signs now.  He does the sign for food, more, hot, fish, he gives high five and he has started walking back to his bedroom and basically asking to go down for naps.  He's having a blast communicating with us.  He will clap his hands anytime someone says patty cake and he gets a big grin on his face.  He no longer hates his car seat.  He does great in the car.  We've also been going on lots of walks lately around the neighborhood and he seems to enjoy those as well.  Mia likes to point out which houses she would like to live in, but tonight she said she liked the area our house was in better than the other houses because we have a nice view of "the forest."  She likes to jog during our walks and we talked about starting to jog in the mornings before Shelby goes to work.  She's so much fun.  We spent the last hour and a half she was up tonight organizing her vast collection of jewelry in her bedroom tonight.  She mentioned several times how much fun she was having.  It was so nice to hear her unsolicited enjoyment of such a mundane task.  I will bask in it as long as it lasts.  

You know sometimes when you just have that realization that your life is sooo beyond awesome and that you are so lucky to be where you are and have what you have.  I am totally having that today.  I know I don't live in a super fancy house or anything, but I love it and we don't have tons of money, but we definitely have everything we need and more and such a wonderful supportive loving family and it just rocks!  My kids are awesome, my husband is awesome (he has been getting up with the kids every morning again and letting me get some extra sleep) among other things.  I am just really lucky and I'm happy that I can realize that because I think a lot of people don't ever realize it.  I love all of you who are reading this and I can't wait to see most of you in Texas in just a couple of weeks.