Pausing and Pictures

When we first moved into our house 2 years ago, we purchased a Tivo to record our TV. In addition to recording our favorite shows, we can pause live TV. Clara loves this feature and uses it whenever she has to get a snack or go to the bathroom. She is very confused that my mother's TV doesn't pause. Last night at Enrichment, I made her a cute bookmark and told her it was to keep her place in her book if she wanted to stop in the middle. So today she was reading her book for homework and she stopped in the middle and put the bookmark in. She turned to me and said, "I paused my book, mom"

Although we have a lot of candid shots of Collin, we have not taken his pictures professionally yet. Our friend took family pictures when he was about 7 months old but that is all. Really, its the second child syndrome. We have a ton of Clara and none of Collin. So I figured we had better at least take his one year old pictures. So here they are.

The many faces of Collin

Really I am going to post some pictures of Clara someday, but Collin is in such a cute stage right now that we just have a ton of pictures of him. So here are a few of the favorites.

Collin loves to ride the little bike we have. He doesn't balance really well on it yet but he's getting there. He gets really mad if you stop while he's on it and chugs back and forth until you go again.

He's really curious about the bathroom right now. He loves to play in the toilet if we forget to close the lid. He likes to throw everything over the side of the bathtub. And he loves to unwind the toilet paper.

He's also obsessed with vacuums. It started with a little hand vac my mom gave him and then it advanced into larger vacuums. Our babysitter has a little vacuum that he plays with at her house so we bought one similar to it. He can't walk and push it around yet but he pushes it while crawling. We also have a hard time vacuuming with the regular vacuum because he'll follow us around and try to play with it.

He loves to take baths and loves to splash. Our bathroom is covered in water by the time he's done.

This kid loves food. He eats pretty much anything. He loves fruits and vegetables. Below is him eating blueberries.

It's all about teeth

So Collin is finally getting teeth. He's had a toothless grin for over a year now and we were starting to worry that they were never going to come in. So a few days after his birthday one broke. It was on the top over to the side. Mark called him Sloth. In the course of a week, 2 more came in and he has 3 more just about to break. He's a miserable little guy with 6 teeth coming in at once.
Clara also has her first loose tooth. It is on the top. She keeps hitting her teeth into things which is why her top one is prematurely loose. She feels the need to tell anyone and everyone that she has her first loose tooth. Waiters at restaurants, random people at the park, teachers. Anyone who will listen. This was her conversation with the Shopko cashier yesterday:

Cashier: I really like your red hair. (Most conversations with strangers usually start out that way)
Clara: Thanks. My brother has red hair too. His name's Collin. He has 3 teeth. I have a loose tooth. Right here on the top. See it wiggles. I hit my mouth on the fireplace when I was dancing. That's why it's loose.

It probably would have gone on from there if I didn't herd her out of the store. The cashier couldn't get a word in edgewise. She's a talker.

Collin's Birthday

Collin's birthday was March 22. I can't believe he is one already. Here are some pictures of his party. I attempted to make a cute bear cake which my friend Erin said was really easy. Easy for me means Betty Crocker (See boring sheet cake picture which is what everybody else ate) so it was a needless to say a little challenging. The cake baked okay but then I had to frost it. It required using tips and frosting bags which apparently I'm not good at. I was using my mother's old set and the bags were really old so the minute I put frosting in them they started to split apart. After the third bag split and I had frosting all over my hands and table, I found on the internet that using a corner of a garbage bag would work. It did...for a while and then just started to stretch making it hard to get enough pressure to squeeze the frosting through. I was able to get the front done, but then was so frustrated that the back, I just frosted. It turned out cute, I guess but I remembered why I've never done a fancy cake for Clara. Collin didn't really eat too much of it. He kept trying to shove it off
of the high chair. I finally got him to grab the whole cake and take a few nibbles. He did better with the ice cream. At least we got some good pictures.

Here it Goes

I always thought that blogging was for really cool bands and Rosie O'donnell. I had never really read a blog until my friends started sending me their links. It was fun to catch up on what they were doing in their lives but never really thought I would have much to say on my own blog. But then I started to realize that blogging is a good way to journal your life. My mother is always nagging me to write in a journal, especially what my children are doing. She kept journals about us as children and they are so fun to go back and read. So this blog is dedicated to my mother and my children. I hope that I can capture some of the things we do so my mom will stop bugging me. Love you mom.