Unless you count Halloween, Maya’s birthday this past November was the first event in a crazy month-and-a-half long string of celebrations. She’s so much more aware of things now, we really wanted to try to do something special for her. Alas we defaulted to more or less the same thing we’ve done for the past couple of years, but you know what? She loved it anyway.

One of Maya’s birthday gifts – a ball pit!

For one, there were balloons. (Bawooooons!!!) Sean sprung for a few helium-filled mylar type balloons that deflated ages ago but that I’ve only recently managed to throw away. We also got several smaller balloons that we just sort of blew up and let her play with. She was so happy. One of her little friends from gymnastics class came over to celebrate with her, and Maya simply could not understand why the girl wouldn’t immediately take the balloon she offered. Because bawooooooons!!!

This is the first of her birthdays where she’s been able to really talk, so we actually got to ask her what she wanted. When I asked Maya what kind of cake she’d like, she was torn between an octopus cake and a rainbow cake and a duck cake. The best looking mold I could find was for the duck. I used 1.5 times this Smitten Kitchen recipe, some basic buttercream icing from the Wilton site (makers of the ducky cake mold), and more finesse than I’m generally capable of to construct her cake. The cake matched the pillow she sleeps with, right down to the blue water. Maya was suitably pleased, though she insisted the icing be removed from her piece.

Blowing out the candles

We were lucky to have my parents (aka Grammy and Grandpa) visit for her birthday. We were a little unlucky otherwise this year. Our normal group suffered illnesses and alternate plans, and so we were fewer in number than we have been in the past.

This year we sprung for a Franklin brisket (purchased cold and reheated), and augmented with sides from Rudy’s. As usual, it made for delightful leftovers for quite some time after that. I actually still have some brisket in the freezer that I’ll use to make Franklin’s pinto bean recipe.

Tall girl could reach the gifts we lined up “safely” on the banister

Maya is definitely hitting her “threenager” stride. We are pleased to report that she’s becoming ever more independent. She has her own opinions about how she wants to spend her time, and often, how you spend your time as well. We do regularly get cold-cocked by the random temper tantrum (“I don’t wanna pee,” “I want to play with [whatever Ian has picked up],” etc), occasionally in public. Potty training is a pretty sore subject around here.

As with all kids though, she tempers the crazy with sweetness, kindness, and a budding intelligence that we just can’t help be admire. She worries about the people around her, fussing over us if we bump an elbow or have a headache. She still tries to make Ian feel better when he’s crying (“It’s okay Ian, buddy.”) Her new thing this week has been to drag her bed – yes, her bed – around her room so that she can climb on it to reach things in the upper drawers of her dresser.

Lately she spends most of her nap time playing instead, often wrecking her room in the process. It felt like it was causing more stress than good, so with much sadness, we’re trying to skip Maya’s last remaining nap now. We’ve implemented an earlier bedtime, so we’ll see how she adapts.

Birthday dinner for the big 3 year old

For the night of her actual birthday, we asked her what she’d like to have for dinner. Of course her answer was “hangewbangew … and fwiiiiiiies,” so we took her to Hat Creek Burger for some hamburger and fries, complete with chocolate milk. And then our big three year old girl spent several minutes trying to figure out how to negotiate a play area full of even bigger and faster kids. Needless to say, she had a fantastic time, and we had fun celebrating with her.

Sean’s birthday is exactly in the middle of the kids’ birthdays, 15 days after Maya’s, 15 days before Ian’s. Amazingly, we managed to fit in a little birthday celebration for the big 4-2 (you know, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything).

Daddy is 42!

Maya helped choose a couple small things for Daddy. It was really nice to show her how it worked to give gifts to others since she had just experienced receiving so many nice presents for her birthday.

Maya assisting with present opening

She and I baked him the best birthday cake I’ve made so far, a triple chocolate malt cake that is so worth the effort. A couple alterations: first, I used one fewer sticks of butter for the icing and and second, I eventually used a meat tenderizer to smash the malted milk balls to decorate the outside of the cake. It seemed to work much better than cutting them, though it did create a bit of malted milk dust. The cut malted milk balls are shown in these photos.

I am not a cake decorator

We had dinner at Launderette that night. The place is surprisingly kid friendly. They even have a kids menu (though at least the one thing we ordered from it was pretty bland). We enjoyed our dinner well enough even though Ian managed to fling one of their plates to the floor and break it and Maya spent the majority of the dinner standing up in her seat.

I checked just to verify, and sure enough, we managed to post on the day of Maya’s first birthday. Second kid syndrome strikes again! Actually, it’s really the proximity to Christmas that’s the problem here. We wanted to have Ian’s first birthday as close as possible to the actual day, so we celebrated his birthday on the 19th of December, a day after his actual birthday, but right before we left home for more than a week of holiday travel. It was hectic.

Ian – 1 year old

We were fortunate that Lolli and Pop were down anyway for Christmas, so they were able to come celebrate with us. Aunt Darci, Uncle Will, and cousins AP and Steele came down for a quick visit as well. Several friends came and helped us celebrate.

During Ian’s smash cake photos earlier in the week, I clued into the fact that Ian really wasn’t that into icing. For his actual birthday, I made him a little chocolate cake and sprinkled it with a bit of powdered sugar. It met with his approval.

Smash cake!

To differentiate from Maya’s barbecue celebrations, we secured tacos and sides from Torchy’s Tacos for Ian’s party. The food was great, and there was a ton of it. We chucked most of our leftovers in the freezer and have been enjoying them since returning to town.

Ian has been such a different child from Maya. Right or wrong, it’s impossible to talk about him without making comparisons. We don’t even mean to do it, but the one whole child we had before him is our frame of reference, and frankly, she made some things pretty easy for us.

Maya photo bomb

Maya was a sit and play kind of baby. She liked to read books. She liked to sit and linger over her food and mealtimes. We talked a lot with her calmly regarding us. Ian, on the other hand, is a mover. He wants to go go go, all the time. He’s a speed crawler. I thought Maya sprint crawled. Nope. I’ve never seen a kid crawl so fast as Ian when something has caught his interest. You almost have to trot to keep up with him.

Ian so badly wants to walk. It’s clear to me that even now we’re a ways away from that, but he’s really motivated. He’ll crawl up to my legs, pull himself to standing by my pants, and then grab the index finger of each of my hands so that I can walk him around the house. He covers a lot of ground that way, even doing a passable job of going up and down the stairs. And he giggles while he’s walking, he’s so happy to be doing so.

New chair for his birthday.

Maya was and continues to be a fairly independent child. Not so with Ian. He wants your attention, and he wants you on the floor and playing with him. 13-year-old Ian may kill me for this, but he’s a very snuggly little guy. First thing in the morning, you fetch him from bed, and he greets you with a giant grin and as soon as you pick him up, he nestles in. Once he gets his affection, he leans back a bit, pats your face a few times, and then wants you to carry him around a bit. Then, naturally, he’s ready to move again, and even while he’s on the go, he wants you with him … unless you’re doing something annoying like keeping him from crawling head-first down the stairs.

He’s a Lego master (the Duplo variety, anyway). If you build him a Lego tower, he’ll carefully pull it apart brick by brick. I’ve even watched him put the bricks back together a time or two. He’s so interested in disassembly and reassembly. Take things out of the container, put them back in the container, ad infinitum.

Ian’s better at the mechanics of eating than Maya was, but he’s more particular than she was. And he’s more aggressive about denying what he doesn’t want to eat.

There are only a few books Ian will reliably sit through – another way he and Maya differ. Right now, he really likes Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr. and Tails by Matthew Van Fleet. He wants to be the one to turn the pages, and especially with Brown Bear, his timing is spot on. Most other books, we get about halfway through before he’s trying to shut the book and chuck it off your lap. All I can say is that we’re working on it.

One of his favorite things continues to be this big box of musical instruments we have, which has been pleasantly augmented with birthday and Christmas gifts for the kids. Ian bangs and shakes and taps on all manner of instruments and loves every minute of it. Still the most reliable way to calm him when he’s upset is to sing to him. It is now habitual for Maya to rush up, say “It’s okay Ian buddy,” and sing him Six Little Ducks whenever he’s crying and upset.

This past year has been tough. We had a rough start with the early birth and the NICU stay. Plus, adjusting to the second kid is just harder. Now, instead of directing our efforts to a single individual relying on us for their every need, we need to focus on two, often with different agendas and requirements, sometimes at odds with one another. Sean and I agree on this: we have no idea how you parents who are outnumbered manage. We have a two on two game, and we still feel outnumbered most of the time.

Covered in birthday cake!!!

A year ago, we may have thought we knew what to expect from babies as they’re growing and developing, but with Ian and Maya being so different, there are lots of surprises, even on a second run. This next year, we’ll hopefully get a few of our questions answered. Will Ian walk soon? When will he start to talk? What will his favorite color be? (Maya thinks it will be yellow.) Will he ever make his peace with airplane travel? No matter what, we’re looking forward to finding out.

Happy new year, everyone! We are slowly, slowly recovering from the holiday debauchery. Most of us are over our various illnesses. Holiday decorations are now making their way back into their storage areas. Piece-by-piece, we’re finding homes for all the kids’ new toys, puzzles, and books. I’m working on restocking the fridge with fruits and veggies so we can have nutritious choices at mealtime. Insurance should be covering the damage to the rental car. Wait, what?

Ornament? What ornament?

Our holidays were going pretty well before we started driving. We managed to get the kids down to Mozart’s to have some hot chocolate and see their fantastic light show. If you’re in Austin and looking to take the kiddos out for a low-stress outing, this is a good one. The Trail of Lights is an institution, but with a 1 year old and a 3 year old, we just weren’t up for it this year.

Deep thoughts during the holidays

We decided to take the kids to see Santa. Maya missed out last year (hospital, NICU, bleh), and we wanted to get some cute photos. We visited him at the Bass Pro Shop of all places. Not that we have a ton of comparative experience, but their setup seemed pretty nice. We spent maybe 30-45 minutes in line. Mostly I stood there while Sean ferried the kids about the store to keep them occupied, so it wasn’t so bad. The place is crazy huge. There are RC cars and trucks to play with, a little train set to watch, fish tanks to examine, a bowling alley. Not to mention the restaurant. The folks working there were all friendly and genuinely tried to get good, happy photos with the kids.

We had worked with Maya a little bit before going, explaining that you told Santa the things you might want for Christmas. She did a great job. She willingly sat on his lap, played with his beard a little bit … and calmly asked him for an octopus … please. I’m not sure Santa knew quite what to make of that, but it made her happy. Ian was kind of tired, so he mostly just sat there.

Santa!!!

We wedged in a first birthday celebration for Ian on the 19th (more on that later hopefully) and then packed on the 20th for the drive up to Dallas to spend the holidays with Sean’s side of the family and then later to Missouri to see mine. Luckily Lolli and Pop were at the house and could watch the kids while we loaded up the car, otherwise we might never have left!

Other than some scheduling issues with the kids, the Dallas part of the trip was reasonably uneventful. The cousins played together, everyone opened gifts, Maya had fun sleeping in the big hotel bed and riding around in the minivan.

Toward the end of our stay, we had learned that my dad was sick and we were dithering over whether or not to drive to Missouri, but we decided to go for it. The morning we were to start our long drive, we went into Maya’s part of our hotel room to get her going for the day and found that the poor girl was coated in vomit. She explained to us that she had to turn her pillow over (to the non-vomit side, so she could finish sleeping). That kid is awesome. Every once in a while, Maya overindulges in some kind of food, and we thought maybe that’s what had happened this time.

The only way we could get her to smile was to feed her candy cane

After an extra shower and devising storage solutions for now-stinky items, we got a late start out of town. Around lunch time, we were disabused of the notion that the barfing was an overindulgence issue. Maya, ever the trooper, had (mostly) vomited in her little barf bucket (thanks Aunt Darci!) and was ready to go into the restaurant we had stopped at. Except surprise! She barfed in the restaurant too, all over the floor. We were definitely their favorite customers that day.

She threw up one more time during our car trip, and told us several times that we were never going to make it to Missouri. Neither of the kids had been on a car trip quite that long before.

Once in Missouri, her stomach seemed to settle pretty well. She was playing with her grandparents and cousins, nibbling at food, and having a good time, so we thought it was probably just a little 24-hour thing. WRONG AGAIN! For our return journey, Our plan had been to drive to Dallas on Sunday and then to Austin on Monday. Saturday evening, just as the family holiday festivities were winding down, Maya threw up what seemed like most of her food for the evening. Then around 1a on Sunday morning (the morning we were to leave for Dallas), poor Maya woke up vomiting again. It was awful. That’s how she spent her next hour. And of course, Ian woke up too. Maya was freaking out about making a mess of her “wittle bitty be-ed,” and Ian was screaming for all he was worth. We finally got everyone sort of simmered down around 3a, and made the decision to drive all the way to Austin right away on Sunday so we could take Maya to see our regular doctor on Monday.

Ordinarily, that drive takes about 12 hours. With our various stops and slow-downs it took 14. With the kids, that’s actually not a terrible mark-up, but that trip can only be described as terrible. Maya managed to keep some gatorade, cheerios, and crackers down throughout the car trip. We even got brave at dinner time and let her have a few of her beloved french fries. Ian was sick, sick, sick of that car seat by the time we even started the drive. He only had two real modes for that journey: angry or asleep.

The real trouble was the weather. It rained pretty much for the entire 14 hours. Seeing how parts of Missouri look right now with the catastrophic flooding, I realize we got off light. The rain wasn’t even so bad for a while. Our fortunes turned around Prescott, Arkansas. We received EAS alerts on our phones for a tornado warning in the area while we were parked at a gas station. After doing a bit of examining radar and seeing the condition of this particular gas station, we decided to carry on. Not long after that, the hail started. Growing up in the midwest and living in Texas, I’ve seen plenty of hail, but nothing like this. When I say it looked at least baseball sized, I’m not exaggerating. There was no gentle lead-up; there were only intermittent giant thunks on the roof of our rental car, causing the adults to instinctively duck and Maya to laugh (who knows – I was just glad she wasn’t scared). We found an overpass to hide under as quickly as we could, but the damage was done: a couple of good-sized dents in our front hood and one broken windshield. The hailstone actually hit at the junction of the car’s body and the windshield and dented both of them substantially. It was scary, I’m not too proud to say.

The adults in the car were visibly rattled as we continued on our drive, the rest of which was marred by near zero-visibility torrents of rain and occasional weather-induced traffic slow-downs. Because things were so crummy, Sean actually never let me have a turn driving. He drove the entire 14-hour trip. Needless to say, his nerves were frayed and his brain was putty by the time we got home around 11 o’clock that night.

Ian, who had slept for most of the trip only wanted to play when we got to the house. Maya, who had kept her food down all day, requested water. Without even thinking about it, I gave her a glass full of water. She proceeded to chug said water and then vomited enormously all over the hall by her room, and the bathroom too, of course. It was well past 1a before everyone was cleaned up and settled in for a short night’s sleep.

Despite all of that, it was really great to see our families for the holidays. Despite illnesses and holiday-related chaos, spirits were generally high. Everyone was unspeakably generous; we’ll need to add a room for all the kids’ toys and things. Maya and Ian enjoyed seeing everyone, especially their grandparents. We made it home in one dented piece.