Molly’s birthday. As I’m sure the parents appreciate, with kids around, birthdays are no longer about yourself. It’s about giving the kids an excuse to have a party. In this case, the party was small… just balloons and cupcakes. But when you’re young, that’s enough of a party!
Whoa, forgot to mark a milestone! One month ago, we finally decided that Patrick’s hair had gotten too long. Actually, it was more me that campaigned to get his hair cut. The little red curly wings he was growing next to his ears were just too much for me. When he came out of the bathtub after a hair wash, his wet hair was down to his back. Yes, his hair was (and is) still sparse on the top and the front, at least compared to the other members of his family, but that makes it worse. Really, do you want to see an 18-month-old with a mullet? I took this photo right before he got his hair cut, and you can see some of the Medusa locks on the side.
I don’t know why, but we expected the haircut to be traumatic. It wasn’t. Kid’s Club operates like a well-oiled machine. The kids get to sit in cool cars (Patrick picked a race car), they’ve got boxes of toys for the kids to hold, and they’re fast.
Snip, snip… we were done in 10 minutes. No tears, no fussing, no mullet!
Alex, getting out of the bathtub on Monday night. “Look! It’s my elephant trunk. Bwrerr!” (Imagine him making a trumpeting noise.)
For those who are wondering: yes, I’m working on the 2009 book of photographs of the two boys. Don’t expect it to be done before February or March.
Working on the book, I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking at photos from earlier this year. And that’s when the obvious hit me: Little Patrick has really changed a lot in the past year. Here he is in February:
He could just army-crawl, he had almost no hair, and he was basically just a blob. I also wrote, back at the time, that he was the “pukiest member of the family.”
Here he is, from earlier today:
He walks runs (he’ll chase his brother and chase the cats). He’s got a full head of curly red hair. He’s got his own personality: He loves to go outside, he’s considerate but also has a stubborn streak. He’s learning to talk and he’s great at following directions. For the photo above, I asked him to stand by the tree, look at me, and say “Cheese!” He did it with gusto.
He also hasn’t puked in a long, long time. (Boy, I hope I didn’t just jinx things.)
Sure, we’re all a year older now, but 2009 transformed Patrick from a baby into a little person. And on top of that, a person who can be a real delight to be around.
Here’s looking at you, kid!
Here are some of the current Patrick milestones:
We almost cancelled Christmas this year. We all went to church on Christmas Eve, and Alex (once again) proved unable to sit still or listen. When he started hitting me because I picked him up from his sprawled position in front of the pews, I carried him home before mass was over and told him, “OK, that’s it. I’m telling Santa not to come.” He cried the whole way home, begging me to bring him back to church, but I didn’t do it.
Molly – who was more mad than I was about Alex’s pattern of bad behavior at church – had the job of putting Alex to bed on Christmas Eve. He was inconsolable. It surprised me when she told me that she relented. She told Alex as she put him to bed, “I’ll talk to Santa and see if he’ll come.” Alex’s parting words, as he drifted off to sleep: “Tell Santa I have a Santa hat.” I find it funny that he thinks that makes a difference in Santa’s bookkeeping. Little Susie – nice. Little Alex – naughty. Oh, but he dresses like me… well, okay.
This is what our living room looked like at 11:00PM on Christmas Eve. Notice how nicely wrapped everything still is. There’s no paper strewn about, no small toys underfoot to trip the unwary. And also note we had one toy unwrapped, set up, and ready for use. The original motivation was laziness – it would have been very hard to wrap this train set. But our laziness brought another benefit, as you can see from this scene from 5:45 the next morning:
Yes, our oldest son decided that 5:45 was the about the right time to wake up on Christmas morning. Because we had one present already unwrapped and ready to play with, Molly and Patrick got to sleep until 7:00.
The overindulgent spectacle of Christmas was lost on Patrick. Molly bought him a toy broom and dustpan, and surprisingly that’s all he seemed to want. He wandered around Christmas morning carrying the broom, and we couldn’t coax him into opening more presents. Because he’s such a team player, Alex stepped up to the plate and opened Patrick’s presents for him. Alex has done a great job playing with Patrick’s presents, too!
The rest of Christmas day was uneventful. Molly and I had a lovely Christmas dinner of duck, after the kids were peacefully asleep. Although the kids missed out on our two-person Christmas feast, we did let them indulge in a special dessert of meringues, peppermint ice cream, and chocolate sauce. Well, Patrick just had the ice cream:
…whereas Alex over-enthusiastically ate the whole concoction.
I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas!
Strange. When I created the post about our virtual recital below, I wrote the following, and I still see it on my computer, but it doesn’t show up on the website. So, here’s the missing paragraph and video.
You’ll just have to take my word that I performed Burgmuller’s Tarantella. Molly dutifully stood there with the video camera pointed at me, but she didn’t push the start button hard enough. I do have a video of me practicing at home. I did this a week before the recital to try to simulate some of the pressure of “performing.”
For some reason, I couldn’t sleep at all last night. So here’s what you get: More videos! This one is just Patrick splashing around on a December day.
Patrick keeps trying to use utensils more. I think the key word is trying. Here he is trying to eat pasta with a spoon. Standard disclaimer: There’s no way this video is interesting unless you’re related to one of the people in it.
Molly & I had our third piano recital this past Saturday. All of the kids who performed were really cute, and some were amazing pianists… and then there was us.
For those who couldn’t make it in person, we can do a virtual recital thanks to the magic of YouTube. Molly performed two movements of Spindler’s Sonatina in C.
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