Oh-Bla-Di

After our third house, Ava said, “Trick or Treat!  I did it!  We can do this every day!”

Hope your Halloween was great.

I’ve talked about them before but we discovered a new (to us) band last year called Rabbit! and we listen to them several days a week.  In our minivan, Rabbit! is called “New Yusic” and probably always will be.  We were listening to it again last week and I finally figured out why “Camera” is one of my favorite songs on their Connect the Dots album…it perfectly sums up the vague parenting feeling that it’s all slipping by too fast to capture it.

I wish I was a camera
I would take a picture of
All the small and subtle stuff
Everything we can’t give up
I’ll keep my memories all intact
Of how we love and how we laugh
I wanna be a camera
I wanna be a photograph

I want it all to just slow down long enough that I capture all the little things that make my babies special, the things we swear we’ll never forget but that fade by the time the terrible two’s have passed.

I wish I was a photograph
Of times and places in the past
The truth is every picture’s old
Taking seconds or a year ago
This way we could stay the same
Let the world around us start to change
I wish i was a photograph
Or maybe just a picture frame

The time is so fleeting that, seconds after something happens, it’s all a memory.  Babies roll over for the first time only once; only one step is the first one.  Every milestone, every change moves them farther along their path.

A box and a pinhole set in the window to capture the path of the sun
You can hold on to lighting right when it’s striking, if you keep the shutter open
Digging through the thumbnail proofs
The ones I keep are ones of you

Maybe if we set things up just right – start a blog, take thousands of photos, terabytes of videos – we can remember it all or at least archive it for later reference?  How do you capture the way they smell when they’ve been outside to play on a spring day or just after a cozy winter bath?

I wish I was a picture frame
The kind that you can get engraved
One that says “I love you Jill,”
One that says, “I miss you Jane.”
Now I know you won’t get scratched
Underneath a pane of glass
I wanna be a picture frame
I wanna be a photograph

I want to bottle up their lives and memories and put them under glass, so nothing will hurt them or tarnish them.  Something this precious should be protected.  The frame would say, “I love you” so that no one would ever doubt that the protecting was all simply for love of those kiddos.

I wish I was a photograph
So nobody would have to ask
Who was in your high school play?
Or, What was on your wedding cake?
I could be a college crush
I could be an image of
How we live and how we love
I wish I was a camera

How we live and how we love
I wish I was a camera

All the little moments -the ones to review, the ones to relive – I want to record the times they can’t remember so that my kids can look back and know.  So they can see how they were happy; so they can see how much they were (are) loved.  I want them to remember, through my own memory, how each day, development, word, deed, and thought was cherished (even the crummy ones).  I want to be an image of that feeling for them; I want them to know how we lived (for them) and loved (for them).

(Bear with me…when your baby turns one, you use a TON of pictures to tell the story.)

For the grown-ups, the birthday started Friday night as we did some prep for the party the next day.  Grammie & Grandad were here to help Matt and I get the cake ready.  In spite of a few stressful moments when we weren’t sure we’d be able to get it into a refrigerator, we had a great time letting our creativity run wild.

So, needless to say, yesterday was a momentous day.  Noah slept in until 8am.  Just kidding….he really did sleep until 8am, but obviously this day was HUGE because it was our baby boy’s first birthday.  Since his big sister didn’t hook us up with a chance to really sleep in, I had plenty of time to go get our party balloons filled and pick up some special treats for breakfast…donuts!  When we were all awake, we had a special birthday breakfast of breakfast casserole and donuts.

After that, we spent the morning just hanging around playing with Grammie & Grandad and even practicing some walking.  While he’s nowhere near proficient, Noah has taken about four or five steps at a time on several occasions.  He’s such a fast cruiser he hasn’t had much incentive to get up and walking in open spaces.  Because, really, when you can cuddle up with your big sister on the floor, why would you start walking?

Before we knew it, it was time to toast Noah’s birth and open his first present!

After lunch and during naps, we took advantage of some kid-free time to put some finishing details on the cake and decorations.

And, then, it was time for the main event…a first birthday party! The guest of honor had to be woken from his nap, but was ready to have a great time after a quick costume change and hair combing.

All dressed up in the outfit Matt wore when he turned one.  Thanks, Grama!

With the guests arrived, we set about preparing dinner.  For this party, we served Matt’s awesome In-n-Out replica hamburgers, pasta salad, fruit salad, baked beans, veggies, chips, salsa, guacamole & Liz’s famous green chiles.  We determined that Noah is definitely a meat-eater…he really tore into that hamburger!

Once everyone was stuffed with dinner, we took a little break and then rolled right into cake and ice cream!  Noah loved having everyone sing “Happy Birthday” and, just like his sister before him, reached right for the candle’s flame.  He wasn’t a very messy cake eater but sure gobbled it up.  After a while, though, the sugar finally got to him and he keeled right over.

After cake and ice cream, we got Noah into his new chair to open some presents.  He was surprisingly patient with and adept at the opening procedure.  Maybe his name was a clue, but there was definitely a recurring theme to Doozer’s gifts.  Animals and vehicles!  From a musical circus train, to dump & tow trucks, to a whole jungle full of animals, little dude is set for Little People animals.

Talking on his hammer “phone.”

Of course, opening presents is always more fun when you’ve got an adoring audience ooh-ing and aah-ing over your every rip and shred of the paper!

The big hit of the night was a gift from Grammie & Grandad.  Enjoyed by one-year-olds and 31-year-olds alike, the shiny red plasma car was an instant high-demand item!

Happy Birthday, baby boy.  Wishing you many, many more.  We love you!

And, just like that, he turned one.

More from the first birthday party tomorrow….

After our friends stopped through town on their way to Edwards last month, we quickly packed up our things and took off for the local mountain.  Matt, Ava, & I had been camping in this same spot a couple of years earlier and, now that no one in our family was pregnant or newborn, it was high time to take Noah on his first camping trip!

We got to Mt. Charleston at about 2:30pm and had our campsite all set up by about 4pm.  Since we bring everything but the kitchen sink and the toys, we’re still a car-camping family.    But, while I kept Noah occupied with snacks and took photos, Matt and his little helper got us all squared away.

New cots for the tent…hooray for easy camping sleeping.

Once we were all set up, we packed up our backpacks and hit the trail for a quick hike before dinner.  Although Ava generally loves to hike, this trail was too flat to keep her attention and the whining about being hungry started almost immediately.  Needless to say, we didn’t make it very far down the trail before we turned back to return to the campsite.

Ava’s carrying her own water in a pack these days.  Such a big girl!

Since we packed in hurry for this trip, we kept it simple for dinner.  Noah got his standard quesadilla and some puree, and we got campfire roasted hotdogs.  Add some Cheetos and we quickly had a campsite full of very happy people.

Pardon  the dirt…this is what little girls who play with charred wood found in a “fort” look like.

By the time the sun started to sink beneath the trees, we were already getting chilly.  One of the greatest draws of Mt. Charleston is the difference in temperature between there and the Las Vegas Valley.  Our house was 103 degrees when we left on Friday afternoon, and it was about 75 degrees at dinner time on the mountain.  Overnight, temperatures dipped to about 45 degrees…we were grateful for all the blankets we had packed!  Sleep that night was a bit fitful since the kind folks at the next campsite over decided it would be awesome to maintain their campfire by chopping at a tree all night.  With no real sense of time, I think they must have chopped sporadically for at least four hours, but it was probably a lot less than that.  However, when camping with children and staying awake late due to noisy neighbors, one can always be assured payback will come with the morning light.  And, indeed, we were up with the sun.

Can you see Ava?

Because we only planned to stay the one night, we packed up our stuff shortly after breakfast to maximize our morning hiking time.  We left just enough to maintain our space for a picnic lunch after a hike, but got mostly cleared up.  We hiked the Robber’s Roost trail and it was quite the adventure.  Lots of rock scrambling…just like Ava prefers.

Ava’s become such a proficient hiker.  We talk a lot about making safe choices and thinking about where to place our feet.  She could probably coach me through a tough one now.  Noah loves his backpack and does pretty well about keeping his hand and face inside the casing so he doesn’t get smacked by a tree.  And, I don’t know how Matt does what he does on the rocks with that baby strapped to his back…I think he burns more calories than all of us put together!  One of the things I’ve enjoyed the most about these excursions is the rocks.  I think I maybe missed a calling life to be a geologist…so many stories right there in the side of a mountain.  Very cool stuff.

After our hike, we had a quick PBJ picnic lunch back at the campsite and then loaded up the van to head home.  This was a great test case to try out camping with two kiddos.  I see it happening again often for us…especially once Noah is walking.  More fun adventures ahead!