Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Moses - 13 months

In the past month or so, Moses has developed a great interest in animals. Last week he impressed me when he heard a dog barking somewhere outside, pointed towards where the sound was coming from, and said "dog!" Today while we were at the park, he saw a woman walking her two dogs. He pointed at them and said, "dog! dog! woo-woo!" (by "woo" he of course means "woof") Whenever he sees a cat he points at it and exclaims "dat!" (he can't quite say words that begin with "c"). He also gets very excited whenever he sees a squirrel, which he also calls a "dat".

Moses seems to understand a lot of things for his age. For example, he understands the meaning of "hot". He often touches the space heater in our bedroom and says, "Hot!" The other day he touched some of my food at dinner and said, "Hot!" He also impressed us a couple weeks ago when he put the cap on a milk carton the correct way. He knew without even having to experience trial and error that he needed to turn the cap over to fit it correctly over the spout. He did the same thing with the cap that goes on my bottle of moisturizer. I know these things all sound mundane and inconsequential, but I'm just recording them here for posterity, so please bear with me.

Moses is a very good eater. For breakfast he can eat nearly an entire fried egg all by himself. The other evening I was dropping the boys off at Mimi and Papa's house so I could help Joe get some work done on our new house. Joshua was feeling tired and didn't want me to leave, so Mimi tried to distract him by offering him some veggie chips. As soon as Moses heard her say "chips" he perked up and pointed across the living room at the pantry doors and began to get excited. "Chih! Chih!" he happily exclaimed. He knew exactly where Mimi keeps those chips hidden. Thankfully, Moses' taste for chips is tempered by his love of vegetables. As noted before, he likes asparagus and will feed himself several stalks of asparagus in one sitting. More recently we've discovered that he really enjoys steamed broccoli. The other day at dinner he fed himself several large florets. What a contrast to his picky older brothers, who even to this day will protest most vegetables. I've often agonized over the theory that children's preferences for certains foods are not innate, but rather a product of their environments--meaning that if your kid refuses to eat vegetables, it must be your fault for letting him eat junk food all the time. But now that I have a child who was introduced to junk food at the same time he was introduced to vegetables, but has already voluntarily eaten more asparagus and broccoli in 13 months than than his junk-food-deprived older brothers have in 4 years, I have tossed that theory out the window once and for all.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Sold!

Sold

In case you're wondering why I've been neglecting this website lately, it's because we bought a house last week and I've been kind of busy getting ready for the move!

Ok, let me back up a little. We put an offer on our house at the end of January, which the sellers accepted the very same day, even though our offer was well below the asking price, the house had been on the market for less than a month, and they were already in negotiations with another buyer. Our home inspection occurred the February morning that "snowmageddon" hit, and then we closed this past Friday.

During the settlement, the seller (a kind, elderly man with three sons of his own who had grown up in this house and were also in attendance) told us that he had arranged and paid for the pool company to open the pool in May, have someone perform weekly maintenance all summer long, and then winterize the pool in September--the highest level of service that the pool company offers. Both our realtor and the settlement lawyer told us they'd never before witnessed such a generous gesture at a closing. That's right, our new house comes with a pool! As most of you know, I grew up swimming and have always loved to swim, but I never imagined I'd own a house with a pool. I feel like I'm living in a dream and I keep having to pinch myself to see if this is real. All that I can say about this whole situation is that when you give to God, He always gives back!

Here's a picture of the boys that our realtor took in front of our new house on the morning of the closing. As you can see, Joshua had just rolled out of bed and was (and still is) in dire need of a haircut. Anyway, we hope it'll tide you over until life settles down and I get a chance to edit and upload the enormous backlog of pictures which are waiting impatiently to make their long overdue ourbabywolf debuts.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Third Child

This evening, in between bites of freshly baked homemade brownie, Joe turned to me and asked, "are we supposed to give Moses chocolate?" I glanced at Moses, who was standing at Joe's feet, earnestly begging his Daddy for a morsel with an outstretched arm. "Sure," I replied, "that brown stuff that's all over his hands is the chocolate chip I gave him earlier while I was baking."

About half an hour later, I walked out into the living room to find Moses, alongside his big brothers, hovering over a bowl of grapes, nonchalantly popping them into his mouth. God only knows how many hours of my life I've spent peeling and meticulously quartering or halving those infamous little choking hazards for my two first-born, but here was 12-month-old Moses feeding himself whole grapes like an old pro. 

So this is what it's like to be the third child. I don't think Joshua and Caleb had their first taste of chocolate until they were at least two years old. I don't think I let them feed themselves whole grapes until they were close to three. Yet Moses, at the tender age of 12 months, is all too familiar with chocolate and whole grapes, and a whole slew of other delicacies that I won't mention lest we be judged unfit parents. I can only imagine the kinds of things a fourth, fifth, or sixth-born child would get away with! And now when I think of the story about the time when Mimi (who was the youngest of seven children) was a baby and had a near-fatal encounter when her well-meaning big sister Sooja mistakenly gave her a drink of alcohol, it makes total sense! :)