Twins Separated at Birth

It's undeniable: Kai looks an awful lot like Xander did at his age. So much so, that Micah and I have a hard time figuring out who is who when looking at photos. It's even more challenging since Kai is wearing Xander's hand-me-downs. For example, if  (Great)Grandma Connie wasn't in this photo below, it would be hard for me to identify that 1-year-old as Xander. From the side, they look exactly alike to me.

Great-grandma Connie meeting one of her great-grandsons. 

Which brings me to my idea for this post, which will be slowly realized over the next week when I get some time: Recreate Xander's photos with Kai as the subject.

Until then, I leave you with a picture where they are very easy to distinguish. If only Xander would stop clowning around long enough for me to get a normal picture of him.

Family bath time is right up there with family meals, family story time, and family  bed.

Kai Birthday Weekend

We had a small, informal party for Kai today. Though none of the one-year-olds we invited could attend (nap issues) Kai did have fun with the big kids from Xander's preschool and across the street. Plus, the Magic Chocolate Flan cake was amazing.

Majorly decadent cake for a 1-year old.

Blowing out the candle.

Happy birthday, Kai!

After the party, Kai napped, Micah cleaned up, and Xander and I went to buy a Christmas tree and play in the park. It was short-sleeves weather--unusual for the Bay Area this time of year.

Kai-licious

Kai, aka Kai-bo, Kaibertalicious, Baby Kai, and all manner of other nicknames is turning one year old on Wednesday. Hard to believe the little man is already one. The luscious days of lying on the floor watching him learn how to move his fingers, focus his eyes, reach for objects, smile, coo, roll over, get on hands and knees, crawl, and reach for me with all his energy were too rare. I had (have) very little uninterrupted quality time with Kai; this is a poignant milestone. How did he grow so fast?

We will be celebrating this Sunday with three other families. I plan on making a stellar cake from the latest issue of Cooks Country: magic chocolate flan cake. Let's hope it looks like their photos and not some monstrosity from Cake Wrecks.*

I present some photos of the boy.

Mom, these spicy Indian pickles sure are good.

Seriously, do you think this seatbelt is going
to prevent me from launching out of this chair
when you have your back turned?

I have out-standing musical abilities. (Rimshot, please)

This brilliant idea gave mom fifteen minutes to cleanhousedolaundrytakeshowerputawaygroceries
takenapcheckworkemailpouraglassofwineeattoomuchchocolate

Guess what mom? It's an up-the-backer!

* If you have not seen Cake Wrecks, please indulge in my favorite post: Falker Satherhood. It hurts my tummy, I laugh so hard.

Thanksgiving

A week ago, the weather forecast for Thanksgiving in Garberville was looking ominous--heavy rain, low fifties. Micah's parents suggested it may not be wise to come up for Thanksgiving. We decided to take our chances and drove up north anyway. Glad we did: it was a beautiful time, with early morning fog, dew on the grass, and cold nights perfect for sleeping.

The dew was like diamonds,
and stayed on the grass for most of the day.

Self-portrait in the forest.  Madrone, douglas fir, tanoak, and others.

Xander contemplates the land from his moss "raft."
Micah and Kai are way downslope in the background.

We had a delicious "celebration meal" as Xander put it. The usual items, just minus the dairy and the gluten: turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie.

Xander made himself busy playing outside, building a "castle" out of discarded marble tiles, taking his pet whale for a walk, exploring in the woods. Grandma Ellen gave Xander a Go Fish card game and he must have asked us to play cards ten times a day. Kai went on a hike with us, played with musical instruments, and kept us up off and on every night (he's a terrible sleeper these days!).

Path leading toward the main house.
We slept in the "annex" to the right of this path.

Xander and Micah starting on the marble castle.

Xander in his dirt house.
We had to change his pants four times each day.

Kai happy to be hiking.

Temporary home while Denis and Ellen redo main house interior.
We managed to squeeze four adults and two kids in
here for Thanksgiving dinner.

On Friday, Micah went on a long bike ride out to Shelter Cove, where Xander, Kai and I picked him up. We explored the tidepools and saw an incredible sunset while waiting for Micah to finish his ride. It would have been a great evening for everyone, except Xander's motion sickness came back with a vengeance on the way out and the way back to the Cove. At least Micah got in a ride.

On Saturday, as we were leaving, we stopped by a friend's house down the road and were gifted with 21 (!) freshly laid eggs. They made it back whole on the seven hour drive home, and this morning we had the most delicious scrambled eggs ever. (Thanks Blaze, Erin, Riley-Dawn!)

Twenty-one freshly laid eggs--a gift from Blaze & Erin.
(Oh, and the table they are on is made from a scrap of
madrone wood salvaged from underneath Blaze's barn.)

This egg puts grocery-store eggs to shame.
Tall, orange yolk, thick white, and delicious flavor.

Birthday Season

November: Birthday season is upon us. Xander turned four on November 6th, and Kai will turn a year old on December 5th.

We celebrated Xander's birthday last weekend, at Cordonices Park in Berkeley. The main attraction: a 40-foot long cement slide, (a.k.a. the Scary Slide, the lawsuit slide). About fifteen kids and their parents came to the party--most of them friends of Xander's from preschool. As expected, the slide was a hit, though there was a brief period at the beginning when it seemed like not such a good idea. (15 preschoolers + pizza + cake + 40-foot-long concrete slide = high potential for broken bones + concussions) After a rough start, in which Xander excitedly fell off the top of the slide and scraped his face, and another girl went down the slide and started to cry in fright, the kids settled in and there were no more incidents. Well, there was a preschool version of a fist fight at one point at the top of the slide, but that was quickly cleared up after we reestablished turn-taking and clarified that everyone could use the slide, not just the kids at Xander's birthday party.

I mommed out and made Xander a BART train cake.

Xander much happier, after viewing his
BART train birthday cake! (He has paint on his
face from Dia de Los Muertos)

On Halloween, Xander's teachers had all the kids dress up in costumes and took their photos. We got a CD of all the pictures on Friday, and they are great--and very artistic. Xander wasn't so into the dressing up. He's more of a realist--right now he's playing "traffic jam." However, we did get one photo (of the 188 they sent home) with him in it.

For Halloween, preschool had all the kids dress up and took pictures.

Xander wasn't too interested--it was yucky. Sad bumblebee.

Kai is beginning to stand up on his own for a few seconds at a time. He's babbling all the time - mama, dada and nanda for Xander. He also understands Spanish--ask donde esta el perro? and he'll point to the picture of the dog. Next installment will include lots of pictures of Kai. Poor second child, is he getting short shrift? (OK, I had to look up short shrift, as I wasn't sure what a shrift was or if I was misspelling the phrase.)

Happy Halloween!

Wow, we actually did Halloween this year! It's hard finding time to make/borrow/buy costumes, purchase/gut/carve pumpkins, and purchase/eat/purchase more/candy when you have two kids under four and two parents with full-time jobs.

Pumpkin guts were proclaimed "icky"

Happy family with...oh wait...

Last year's impromptu bonfire on our front lawn/s'mores distribution center was such a hit, we decided to do it again this year--with a lot of help from our neighbors. Key to success: teamwork and delegation.  Since we live in a duplex with a cottage in back, the three households combined candy, and our backyard neighbor, Else, was in charge of s'mores assembly. She recruited two friends, and they must have made 50 or more s'mores that night.  I made some very quick mulled wine (Two Buck Chuck!) and heated up some spiced cider. Micah was very ambitious and fired up the grill. We had grilled sausages on rolls for dinner.

Costumes this year were super-easy. Xander recycled his BART train costume from last year. Kai dressed as a bumble-bee, wearing a last-minute borrowed costume from a neighbor. Micah went as Captain America (well, a guy wearing the mask, anyway).

BART train Xander, Witch Jojo, and Princess Bella
shaking down a neighbor for Snickers Bars

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I typically think about costumes months in advance. This year, though, I went to bed the night before with no clear plan--particularly tragic as work was holding a costume contest with a $50 prize. I fell asleep thinking about my costume options. The next morning, I macgyvered a passable garden gnome, using Xander's fitted blue bedsheet, a post-partum support belt, striped stockings, Dansko shoes, and lots of safety pins. I left for work in a nearly complete gnome costume. I just needed to find something to fashion into a tall, red, pointy hat.

Since I was running late, I decided to save time by driving. As I was turning into the Goodwill parking lot, I ran over the curb and heard a sickening hiss. Punctured tire. In the end, I managed to find some cheap fabric for a hat and a nice passerby helped me change the tire. I dropped the car off at the tire shop near work, and once I got to work, used some 11x17 card stock and spray adhesive to make my hat.

Mom's Garden Gnome outfit. Only $140 if you count the new tire.

So that's the story of my $140 gnome hat. Thankfully, we've gotten some post-Halloween use out of it:

Baby Kai-Gnome

Child's Play

At 10 months, Kai is becoming more of a playmate for Xander, and Xander is becoming more of an object of obsession for Kai. They've started to interact more. This weekend, they were both coloring at the coffee table in the living room. Well, Xander was coloring, Kai was imitating him and bapping crayons on paper.

The boys coloring together. Kai has some marker on his eyebrow.

Kai's a proficient crawler and has been crawling into Xander's forts, making for Xander's train tracks, generally trying to do whatever Xander is doing. We're working on getting Xander to calmly say, "Mommy, Daddy, please move Kai!" instead of tears and "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"  Fortunately, he is getting  more patient with Kai, and is learning how to distract him with a different toy. Sometimes, they do play trains together:

Reindeer Kai

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This is the season of neighborhood block parties and Sunday Streets. Last weekend, we made a quick trip up to Rockridge Out and About with our neighbor. Her daughter, Bella, just learned to ride her push bike. Bella and Xander had a great time whizzing down College Avenue, which was closed to cars. All the neighborhood families came out for the party. Guess what kind of store these kids are looking at:

Yes, that's right, a toy store.

Today, we went to Berkeley Sunday Streets. The event closed Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley for a good mile. This was the first Sunday Streets in Berkeley, and it was a big success--lots of people and kids, and a whole bunch of free activities and booths. We saw the usual Berkeley suspects: a middle-aged couple walking meditatively down the road in bare feet, a woman dressed all in pink, on a pink bike that made pink bubbles, an anti-circumcision booth manned by "intactivists," several in-street yoga classes, UC Berkeley physics students' demonstration table, lots of pro- and con- signs for the upcoming election/ballot measures, a jazz band in front of a wine and chocolate shop, and  local/slow/organic/handmade/gourmet food samples. We stopped at a kids jam session, and Xander and Kai both got into it:

We hope he decides NOT to take up drumming.

Kai is a natural drummer.

Highlight for me was the demonstration bike box on Hearst Avenue, spraypainted on the road by the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. Xander saw the green and said, "This is for bikes, right Mommy?" So proud of my little biker boy.

Xander demonstrates bike placement in a green bike box.

Architectural Explorations of a Preschooler

I'm amazed every day at the intricate cities Xander constructs. His medium: legos and wooden blocks, wooden train tracks, matchbox cars, and whatever other objects may come in handy. He favors expansive megaprojects: railroad interchanges with infinite loops, skyways that curve over tracks and end abruptly in a cliff, intricate castles that tower over railroad stations, and long, long traffic jams.

Here are a few choice projects from the last month.

Tree-like castle with trains sleeping on the branches.
Very "carious" (precarious).

The long vehicle in front is a lego train designed by Xander.
It goes under  the tunnel made of wooden blocks.

Xander works on a traffic jam.

Tower taller than Xander. Lego structure next to it
is an elevator. Note railroad crossing (with signs) next to elevator.

Cars are asleep in their houses.

BART train zooms across the "road"
 (an eight-foot long board Micah marked up with a centerline).
Elevator is next to BART platform.

Kai is starting to take an interest in trains and cars--
much to Xander's frustration.

A long house. The little lego person was later joined by his "brother." 

Lego house brothers riding in their street sweeper car. The yellow part on the front
rotates (Mommy's idea). Kai, a.k.a. Mr. Destructo,  is being pulled away by  Daddy.

Loop-de-loop. He often uses the ambulance in his aerial train setups.

Curving ramp up to the castle.
This was about the time our nanny asked us to clean up more before she arrived.

Another view of the aerial ramp. Xander's proud--
he constructed this one entirely by himself.

Final view of railroad city, complete with long, snaking traffic jam.

Baby Wrestling

This week features naked babies wrestling on the bed. In fact, every week features naked babies wrestling on the bed. Both boys love to be naked, and a cute ritual has evolved: before Kai gets in his PJ's, we put him on the bed diaper-free, and Xander joins him for a raucous, naked gigglefest. No calming bath, lavender scented massage oil, quiet music, and lullabies for Kai. He gets bouncing, wrestling, pillow fights and near launches off the bed. It seems to work.

Xander repeatedly whaps his face into the pillow while yelling "ahhhhh!" as Kai seeks out  Mommy.

Kai and Xander approach Mommy.

Baby drool has amazing viscosity.