Last picture of the decade

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"Are you a Hanukkah duck?"

A conversation between two rubber duckies overheard while making dinner last week:

Duck#1: Are you a Hanukkah duck?
Duck#2: Yes I AM! Are you a Halloween duck?
Duck#1: Yes I AM!

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. The two ducks have been inseparable ever since. Gotta love pretend play :)

The 4th and beyond

The Island has a pretty big to-do on the 4th of July -- lots of food, booths, kids activities, music, etc. It's pretty much an all out festival, complete with a dunk tank, giant inflatable castles, and a parade which features a library staff book-cart drill team.

Silas got to blow bubbles:
He made a flag shaker at the Library's children's fair:

And most significantly, he got to ride a pony for the first time.! He played it pretty cool while he was riding, but he has mentioned it several times since, so I think he thoroughly enjoyed it. Now when we walk up the hill by our house to see the horses and he says "I ride them sometimes!" we can say, "that's true, Silas!" (sort of).When we arrived home from the events on the 4th, we found some balloons waiting for Silas on our front porch, courtesy of Patrick. That boy loves his balloons! They floated around the house for about 5 days and I was really surprised they hadn't deflated and sank to the floor. Unfortunately, a couple of days ago, Silas came running to me with tears in his eyes saying "I popped them away!" What he actually meant was that, despite our warnings, he'd brought them out onto the deck and let them go. I ran outside, but they were already at the treeline, and still rising. Bye-bye balloons. Thanks for staying as long as you did.
For those of you who don't know, I usually take a good chunk of my vacation time in July, so I'm off of work this month from July 2nd till the 27th. That means I've been doing lots of extra activities with Silas, like going to a children's play (the Emporer's New Clothes) last Tuesday, which was part of the library's summer reading program. Wednesday was our wedding anniversary and I wanted to go hiking, but it was quite overcast and rain threatened, so the three of us headed up to Port Townsend for the day instead and will save the hike for another time in the very near future. Last night, Patrick hung out with Silas so Drew and I could go out to dinner, which was lovely.

And that's pretty much the update. I am rarely on the computer and can't even remember when I last checked my email. It's been nice to take a break since I stare at a screen all week long when I'm working. But, I will try to post again sometime soon.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer!

Spring showers for our egg hunt

When I looked outside this morning and saw the lush, drenched, green landscape, I was grateful that we'd only dyed 5 eggs yesterday. The egg hunt was short and sweet. Silas caught on after I showed him where the first egg was hidden. After he'd found the last egg, he said "find more eggs!" We pacified him by retiring to our warm dry house to eat some hot crossed sticky buns. Yum!

We hope you enjoyed some spring cheer today!

Chinese New Year Celebration

Last Sunday, we took Silas to the Chinese New Year celebration down town. I was pleasently surprised that the noise from the lighting of 1000 firecrackers (accompanied by drumming and a dragon dance), didn't seem to bother Silas at all. In fact, he loved the dragon and wanted to get as close to it as possible.
He also loved the gigantic red ball:
Here are my two handsome boys, enjoying the parade.
We had a fun time and ran into several of our friends (that's small town life for ya!).

On the home-front, we are getting ready for our trip to Wisconsin. We leave on Thursday. There may be one more posting tomorrow, but if not, we'll see all of you Wisconsin people soon!

So Long, and Hello

Despite Snowman's desperate pleas for help, which we captured on film above, we were not able to save him from his fate. Alas, the only things which remains of him now are his carrot nose and a few bean buttons which have yet to be eaten by birds. Snowmen are not forever. We said "goodbye" to him, along with 2008.

Today is a new day, and a new year, and Silas is looking forward to it.
We hope you are too, and that 2009 is filled with much happiness for you all.

T'was the night after...

Christmas morning, 7 am... Silas discovered the presents by (and in) the tree. We waited till 8 am to remove the gate and let him open a few presents, and find the animals in the tree. Grandma and Papa watched him via video chat the whole time he was opening gifts and we all enjoyed Christmas morning together, despite the 2000 miles separating us.

Silas helped his dad empty his stocking. Thanks, Santa Shannon, for filling our stockings on xmas eve!

Silas got a cool kazoo.

And a pig! (adorable outfit courtesy of Grandma G, by the way). We talked to Grandma G and family in the afternoon and were able to wish everyone a merry Christmas.

Then, it was on to Patrick and Shannon's house for a wonderful evening with friends. Silas enjoyed hanging out with Ellen and Carl's dog Al, in particular. There were two other kids there as well, so it was quite a kid-powered time.


From today:
Silas loves the animals so much, he has to get right in the corral with them!


And from Christmas eve, a pic I meant to post with the others on the 24th, but forgot:
Silas calls the popcorn garland "cake and berries" because the popcorn looks like the rice cakes he loves so much. Needless to say, right after this picture was taken, I rushed to remove the garland from him before it was crushed to pieces and/or eaten.

I planned on taking down the tree today, but it looks so cheerful in the corner, we decided to wait one more night. It is a living tree, though, so we can't keep it inside too long, for its own sake.

This Christmas was so peaceful, joyful and all-around enjoyable (and we had electricity the entire day!). I could not have asked for a better day. We try to keep our celebrations and decorations simple, and the gifts few in order to create a stress-free holiday. It seems as though we succeeded this year. Plus, seeing the day through my son's eyes reawakened many happy memories of Christmases past. I hope your holiday celebrations, whatever they may be, were every bit as lovely!

Silas' List of Thankfullness, '08

I've decided to start our own Thanksgiving tradition: Each year, Silas will make a list of what he is thankful for. Here's this year's response to the question "What are you thankful for?" Commentary and translation from Standard Toddler to Standard English, when necessary, are in parenthesis. Repetitions of words have been removed to keep the list from becoming book-length.

1. Mommy (I like how this is beginning!)
2. Pen (said while trying to grab the pen I'm using to write the list)
3. Ga-bige-a (bike)
4. Car
5. Tea
6. Coffee (You know your child is a native Northwesterner when this is one of the first words out of his mouth every morning)
7. Daddy
8. Fah (fire)
9. Ki-eeey (kitty)
10. Puppy
11. Gamma (grandma)
12. Pa (grandpa)
13. Pa-kwa (Patrick)
14. Shaaahn (Shannon)
15. Dolly
16. Llama (or maybe he ment Dalai Lama?)
17. Gummy (vaccuum--a story for another blog post)

And there you have it. We hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I'll post some pictures from today soon.

The 4th

On the 4th of July, we went to Seattle with Patrick to visit friends (Hi M, A, & I). I forgot to put my memory card back in my camera, so I couldn't take many pictures. I have just a couple for you:We had a good old-fashioned meatless barbecue :) Yum! Silas helped us cook. After eating, we headed out to a park:
Silas met a new friend, played in the sand, and rode this whirly ride. Note that Drew is riding with him instead of me. I call this the "Flashback-to-Morning Sickness-Ride." I was more than happy to watch from the sidelines, though even watching them spin did trigger a wee bit of motion sickness. Silas seemed to love it.

We had a great day in Seattle, and were home in time to see Mr. Bear off to bed at his usual time. No fireworks for him (recall his fear of sudden loud noises). I was very thankful that he slept through them.

The rest of the weekend was pretty low key, keeping in mind that our sole car was out of commission. In fact, Drew is at the dealership now getting it fixed. Let's hope it doesn't take too long!

Happy Easter!

Patrick and Shannon dyed these eggs for Silas ("Goober" is what Patrick calls Silas). As you can see, I let him handle them a bit. He only smashed one :)

Our Lucky Charm, With Disclaimers

St. Patrick's Day Disclaimer # 1: We are not actually Irish, Irish American, Irish Catholic, Irish Catholic American, etc. The luck o' the Irish is not with us, but Silas is still our lucky charm, and he looked so cute in the St. Patrick's Day onesie that Grandma G. sent to us.

Grandma also sent us this great bib. That's where St. Patrick's Day Disclaimer #2 comes in:
This is not Silas' 1st St. Patrick's Day. He was born on March 16th.
So this was actually his 2nd St. Patty's Day:
But, seeing as though he was only a day old for the holiday in '07, and seeing as though it never dawned on us that it was St. Patty's day due to the fact that we had a day old baby, maybe we'll just pretend that this year was his first. Yeah, that'll do.

And finally, St. Patrick's Day Disclaimer #3: No, Si didn't get that fat lip fightin' over green beer at the local pub (even though he looks like he's been hitting the pubs in this picture. I assure you, he hasn't. Washington State laws are very strict on keeping babies out of pubs). In fact, the fat lip is courtesy of a nosedive he took into our dresser on his birthday. I don't think it showed up on any of his birthday pics, as the wound blended in with the berry juice.

Oh tiny tree, we love you

Here's our tiny little tree, all decked out for the holidays. It's a living tree and will spend most of the year outside. Then, if we can keep it alive, we'll bring it in once a year for the holidays. Hopefully, it will grow from it's current hight of perhaps 14 inches to a nice big tree. We've decorated it with a string of popcorn and cranberries, and a dried flower for a star. It may be tiny, but it is the perfect tree for us, especially in light of the fact that we won't actually be home for Christmas (6 days till we leave for WI!).

Our Family Thanksgiving

Did you all have a wonderful thanksgiving? We had a great day and we hope you did too! Our little family visited with friends and neighbors, all of whom were charmed by Silas. Dad baked a sweet potato pie and a green bean casserole. Silas got to eat a bit of baked sweet potato (loved it) and boiled potato (not so much). Mom is enjoying getting to spend four days off in a row with her boys! Today we talked to our families back in Wisconsin. We will be seeing them all next month when we take a cross-country train ride to the Midwest for the Christmas holiday. Wow, Silas is already looking forward to it!

One more thing: All of our Silas-supported charities, toy registry and a book wish list are now posted on the sidebar on your left, right under the links to other blogs/web pages of interest.

Happy Halloween!

If you guessed Silas would be going as a Turtle for Halloween (as if the blog entry entitled "the ultimate turtle boy" didn't give it away all together), you were right! Mom made his hat and dad painted his "shell" which was made from a bike helmet. Green clothes and socks with turtles on them completed the costume. We headed downtown with our friend Jessica to take in the festivities. Bainbridge Island closes it's downtown to traffic for Trick-or-treat, and all of the businesses pass out candy. It was so much fun to hear little kids cry out "look, it's a turtle!" If you would like to see more pictures of Silas and his first Halloween, please visit mom's Flickr page.