Thanksgiving and a one year old's party

One of these days, I will be all caught up on the unpacking and moving into the new place, and have plenty of spare time to update the site. Unfortunately, that time has not yet come.

 I cant believe it has already been a year since Hudson was born. He has grown so much and is starting to figure out his own personality. In fact, we got into our first argument one evening. He grinds his teeth , and does it so much that he has started to wear grooves into his teeth. Heather and I try to discourage this behavior. So we were sitting down to dinner one night, and I hear him grind his teeth. So I look at him and sternly say, "Hudson, no." He starts crying tears of sadness, but that quickly changes to tears of anger. He then cuts his eyes at me, balls up his fists, sets his jaw, and while still looking directly at me, grinds his teeth again. I repeated "Hudson, NO!" which started his crying again, starting the cycle over again.

He had a wonderful time opening his presents. Like most babies, I think he enjoyed the wrapping paper more than the actual gift.

Hudson said that, for his birthday dinner, he wanted spaghetti and carrot cake. At least, that I what I heard. But then, while we were at the store, he found a bright green cake in the bakery and lunged for it out of my arms. His birthday meal was a mess, and when we brought out the cake, it just got messier.

By the end of the day, he was pretty tired, so we hosed him down in the bathtub and then off to bed.

Thanksgiving was exciting. Heather's aunt, cousin and family came to our house on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Our house was able to successfully accommodate all 9 people in recently unpacked rooms. All the kids had fun playing around the house. Unfortunately, the party was cut short due to a stomach bug, and they headed home on Tuesday.

The best way to start of a weekend full of unpacking and organizing the house isn't complete without chocolate donuts with sprinkles.

Now that we have the games unpacked, Sara Beth has found several that she has not seen before.

Hudson loves his food. It is one of the few things he has a strong opinion about. He has progressed to the point where he basically can feed himself. I will put pieces of food on his tray and he will grab whatever is his favorite and shove it in his mouth, or smash it up and throw it to the floor if he is full. Or, if he is chewing on something and I put a tastier piece of food on his plate, then he will reach in his mouth and pull out whatever he was chewing on, so that he can shove the new food in with a minimum of delay. Of course, he does like to be babied and spoon fed when there are people around that will do it for him.

There is only one thing that can make Hudson take his mind of a tray full of food, and that is his sister. He will always watch whatever she is doing and he will get all excited and smile whenever she over and starts interacting with him.

Hudson is getting better at walking around. He can push the trash can and chairs all around the kitchen, and only rarely will he pull one on top of himself. There have been a couple times in the past week where he has been standing up, balancing on his own for a couple seconds without holding onto anything.

Unpacking

No pictures for the update this week. The camera, like most other things in our house, is somewhere in a box. Heather and I continue to chip away at the stacks of boxes, and by the time her family comes in town on Saturday, we should have the house in some semblance of order.

There are occasional road bumps to the unpacking process, Last week Heather, Hudson, and Sara Beth all had a throwup virus. Hudson had it first, then he passed it on to Heather and Sara Beth. One evening, Heather was exhausted from fighting the disease so she went to bed early. Around 12:30am, I hear Sara Beth throwing up. I tell Heather that I got it, so she can get some rest. I go and put Sara Beth in the bath, change the sheets on her bed, then place her back into a fresh bed. Right as I finish tucking her in, I hear Hudson throw up. I go over and start cleaning him up, and before I even put him in the bath, I hear Sara Beth throw up again. At that point, I reluctantly get Heather to help me. Sara Beth threw up once every half hour till around 5am, but she got it all in the trash can.

On Sunday, the kids were healthy so I took them out for a walk around the neighborhood. Two doors down from us, some kids were playing around the house. Sara Beth went up and asked to join them. Apparently it was a 3 year old's birthday party, and all the older brothers and sisters were outside playing. Sara Beth had a wonderful time playing some sort of game involving plastic swords and scooters with the neighbor kids.

Hudson sprouted two more teeth, bringing the count up to 8. I'm pretty sure that there are a couple more ready to come through at any moment as he is still drooling and chewing on anything he can get his mouth around.

So, that is pretty much what has been going on here. Heather says that she knows where the camera is, so we should have some pictures for the next update.

Moving Houses

These past couple weeks, we have been busy moving out of the old house and into the new one. There was plenty of excitement with the title company not giving us a closing date till the last hour, and things not fitting in the moving truck, but all of our stuff is now in the new house. It is still in the moving boxes, and will stay in the boxes for a while, but it has all moved.

  Sara Beth enjoyed playing with all the toys that we had shoved up in the attic when we were running out of room in the playroom, including a trampoline that had been sitting up in our attic for years. Sara Beth asked to come up into the attic while I was clearing stuff out of it. I let her, and she diligently worked hard cleaning up a mess I had made of spilled packing peanuts.

We did take time away from moving to go out with my dad on his new boat. Hudson's life jacket looked like it was trying to eat him, but he loved being outside.

Sara Beth enjoyed the boat too, though sometimes the wind and splash from the water got to be too much. My dad decided to navigate through the wooded part of the lake, and Sara Beth sat up in the front in the boat carefully pointing out if she saw any tree stumps in front of the boat.

While in the transition process from the old house to the new one, we have been living over at my parents house. It has been fun having all the extra help. Hudson loves crawling around and finding all the cabinets full of glass items, ready to be grabbed at.

Heather's birthday was on Saturday, the day the movers brought all the boxes to our new house, so things were a little hectic. Tuesday was my dad's birthday; we had more time so we had a nice seafood dinner. Sara Beth was fascinated with watching the blue crab. She loved eating the mussels and then that night, asked me if she would get big muscles since she ate so many of them.

Hudson's mobility continues to increase. He will now scoot across a room, pull himself up at a table, and then try pulling the lamp over. Fortunately, when he is outside, things are less likely to break, and I just have to make sure he doesn't put too many plants into his mouth.

Sara Beth dressed up as a princess for Halloween. She dressed up the previous night too and regally strutted around my parents house. She would not acknowledge any comments directed her way unless we referred to her as princess and she claimed to have no knowledge of where Sara Beth was.

Food and the Fair

 For Hudson, food is serious business. He eats nearly as much as Sara Beth, but he does it with intensity. He will slurp and smack oblivious to the noises. He can now hold a cup on his own, and is getting better at actually drinking out of it.

Like his sister and father, I think his favorite food might be spaghetti. We stripped him down to his diaper before giving him a bowel of it. Not many noodles escaped his mouth, though he did smear the sauce all over the place.

Sara Beth used to love staring at the TV when she was a baby. Hudson will sit and watch TV with a vacant expression on his face for a short time, but he likes the interactive electrical toys that blink much more. Whenever he sees me using my cell phone or iPad he will crawl over and try to grab it out of my hands.

One day, when my parents were over, Sara Beth asked to play candy land. Some previous times, she has been caught cheating, and then will go pout when we call her out on it. But this time she won both times, without even cheating.

We went to the state fair this past weekend. Sara Beth got to go around and perform chores on a simulated farm. We also got to sit in different shows at the car show. Sara Beth preferred to sit in the back while Hudson sat in my lap in the front seat and "drove" the car.

She had a good time with all the sights and sounds at the fair. She pointed out the people on all the really high rides, though I don't think she was interested in going on it herself.

While we are packing up the house for the big move to the new place, Sara Beth has decided to open up a book store in our living room. She will announce that the book store is now open then tell us about the specials that the store is offering. Most of the time, her prices are around ~$80, but sometimes she will have a book on sale for just $1.

Sara Beth is growing bigger, but she is still small enough that I can do all the fun gymnastic flips with her. Well, either she is small enough, or I am strong enough. Either way, she loves to hang upside down or do big jumps where I help her jump 6 feet into the air.

Sara Beth has said off and on that she wants her ears pierced. When she turned 4 and got all her vaccination shots, she decided getting poked by metal was not fun and she wanted to wait a while. Yesterday, she decided she was ready, so we go to the store, she picks out the ear rings, sits in the seat, and then as the store clerk comes at her with the gun, she decides that she is not ready yet. Fortunately, she has a good collection of screw back earrings from her great grandmother that work just fine on un-poked ears.

Hudson is definitely getting more mobile. He can pull himself upright, and is now easily able to explore cabinets. He also likes to close doors behind him, so if you are not watching closely, he can easily disappear from sight.

No place is safe from Hudson's inquisitive reach, including Sara Beth's dress up bin. Hudson loves the fire fighter hat.

Returning to normalcy

Sara Beth definitely takes after her mother. This past week she decided to do some organizing after we put the house in disarray for stagging. So she organized her sock drawer and the dish cabinets. Not to be outdone, Hudson "reorganized" the tupperware cabinet, but the results were not as spectacular. 

She also organized and reorganizes her princess table. Now that Hudson can pull himself up, we have to make sure he doesn't go into her room unsupervised and pull down everything from her table.

 Sara Beth and I ran a 5k over the weekend. And by ran, I mean walked. Except when we passed by any spectators that were cheering. At those times, Sara Beth sped up and sprinted past them, basking in the praise from the cheering crowd. By the time we had finished the race, she didn't want to do any more 5k races for a while. Instead, when we came home, she rode "word horse" around the house so she could rest her feet.

We went to the Plano balloon festival. When I initially mentioned that we were going, Sara Beth wasn't interested in going. I had to invoke executive privilege and insisted that we were all going. Once we got there and she saw the balloons, she change her opinion. She decided to ride on my shoulders and watch the balloons launch from there, but she was not interested in getting close. The large flame that heats the air in the balloons did roar, and she had no desire to be near that.

Hudson, on the other hand was just glad to be outside at the festival. His love of being outdoors keeps growing. If we are carrying him around the house and get near an outside door, he will get very excited. When we don't use the door, he will fuss and look longingly back at it.

Mud

Sorry about the lack of updates. It has been busier around here than normal. Between the last post and this one, I dug out a French drain in the side yard. It has been constantly muddy, meaning that when Sara Beth uses the play fort, she needs a bath as soon as she comes inside. Of course, in the process of digging out the side yard, it made a muddy mess worse.

Sara Beth had some fun helping me dig. I'm not sure if she or I got more muddy. About halfway though the process, Heather and I decided to put our house on the market to sell. So we spent a week moving furniture and all our personal things out of the house to get it properly staged. Then two days after the house went on the market, we got an offer for full price, so then we went full gear towards looking for a new house.

In the down times between all that, Sara Beth was working on being a doctor. She decided to specialize in brain surgery.

Hudson has become much more mobile. He can now pull himself upright. He sure is pleased with himself, but Sara Beth wasn't happy to find out that all the things that she used to store on her picnic table are now within his grasp.

One evening, while I was still in the middle of digging the French drain, Sara Beth was having so much fun that she did not want to come inside to eat dinner. Instead, she ate outside, so that when she was done, she could go right back to playing with all the mud. It was her first dinner that she ate one her own since the rest of us at inside at the adult sized table.

When we went up to Wisconsin, Sara Beth got a set of mini fabric napkins. She absolutely loves them and will routinely use them while setting up tea parties. Tonight, she placed one under each of our place settings for dinner; it was spaghetti so we had to be careful not to get any sauce on her pretty dinner decorations.

My sister came down for Labor day weekend. We were all happy to see her but Sara Beth had several specific things on her ToDo list. She wanted to show Jill how to play "Fruit Ninja" on the iPad. Then, after she did that, she wanted to play the fishing game where you collect rotating plastic fish with a fishing rod.

Heather and the kids went to the zoo with our nighbor and her two kids, each of which is a year older than our children. Hudson loved riding in the stroller next to a "big boy".

Food and toys

So Hudson learned his third word. Mama was #1. Dada was #2 and Nana is #3. He says it every time he sees a banana that he wants to eat (which is every banana he sees). He will get all excited and begin kicking his feet as he reaches towards the fruit.

He will also occasionally say nana whenever he sees some other food item that he wants to shovel into his mouth. 

Sara Beth has been bing into tea parties recently. We had purchased some sparkling lemon juice and fruit flavored teas, and she has nearly finished off both of them.

One evening Sara Beth announced that she was setting up for a tea party and we should all get ready. She  brought out all the fancy plastic china and set it around the dining room table along with some wooden cookies and spice containers. She then came into the play room where Heather and I were playing with Hudson and announced that the tea party was ready. Heather and Sara Beth were very excited to have tea.

Hudson and I are not quite as excited about the tea party thing but we played along.

We did "make your own pizza" last Friday. Sara Beth kept explaining that her pizza had just the right amount of olives and cheese.

So Heather has been asking me to bring down some of the toddler toys that we have stockpiled in the attic. I finally got around to it, and Hudson is a huge fan. He is our little electronics addict, and absolutely loves all the lights and sounds that the table makes. It is good exercise for him as his leg muscles still have trouble holding him upright, but he will play with the table till his legs give out.

I also brought down a play house. At first Sara Beth was having so much fun re-playing with it that she didn't want Hudson messing with it, but after she went back to her big girl toys and tea parties, Hudson quickly figured out how to push open the door, crawl through, and then spin around and close the door behind him.

But, sometimes the most basic things become the best toys however. Hudson will happily entertain himself with just a pile of towels.