From then til now - already

Minutes old, and I was already totally in love with him.
It seems like Micah's life has already gone so fast. He was four months old last week, and I can hardly believe it! It seems like he was just born, and already he's so big and old. A few weeks ago he began sleeping through the night. And by through the night I don't mean how the books define it, which I think is like five hours. Sorry, but that is NO ONE'S through the night. Micah was going literally all the way through, from 8:00 to 8:00, and then going back for a nap from about 8:30 to 10:00. It was like heaven. Or Iowa. He's only done that a few times so far, but even the other nights he's done really well, waking up anywhere between 3:00 and 5:30 to eat once, then going back down until about 7:30. I think he even would have done this sooner, but I was scared to try putting him in his own crib and still had him sleeping in our bed (I swore I'd never do that, but then I discovered that I could actually get enough sleep to allow me to function if I did it that way). I thought if we moved him to the crib he'd be up every two hours. Instead, it seems like he was almost relieved to be on his own.

The day he turned four months old he rolled over from his back to his front, and now he does it all the time and it's so cute. He props himself up on his elbows and looks around and smiles at everyone. And this week we're supposed to start him on solid food already! I just can't believe it's gone so fast. I feel like I'm going to turn away for a second and when I look back he'll be in first grade.

Here's a short visual history of his short/long life.

Less than an hour old, Labor Day (in more ways than one) 2007.

With Gramma Cowell for the first time, looking very wise already.

A few days old and mad at the world. Or possibly screaming at the paparazzi that he's NOT anorexic, so KNOCK IT OFF.

Tummy time! Also known as faceplant time. Which is what happened shortly after this picture was taken.

Sporting his bling a couple weeks ago. Napkin rings aren't just for napkins anymore, not at our house, anyway.

Best buds. Judah "read" that book to Micah several times and Micah loved it.

Float on

Last year (the end of 2006) my parents and Heather and I signed up to help decorate Rose Parade floats. We had such a good time that we decided to do it again for this year's parade. It's really a lot of fun. We got to work on the Lutheran Hour float again this year, which is a small but beautiful one. The first part of the day was a lot of sitting around cutting the petals off of dried flowers, which was pretty boring. Then, because there was nothing going on at the Lutheran float, we got moved over to work on the Long Beach float for a while. But soon we went back to our original float and, due to Heather's persistence (go Heather!) we got to do a little work up on the scaffolding, putting pink carnations on. We spent most of the rest of the day doing that, and finally moved to the Farmers Insurance float (the really tall Indian, if you watched the parade) to help them out for the last 45 minutes.

It was, once again, a really fun experience, even if we did get half high off the glue that was everywhere and our fingers were sore from forcing toothpicks into foam on the carnations. We'll definitely do it again for the 2009 parade, but we think that waiting one more day and going on the 30th instead of the 29th would be better, since then we'd probably get to work more with the fresh flowers rather then the dried flowers.

This is what the warehouse looked like when we got there. Our float is on the left. By the time we left, the lion next to it had the most beautiful mane.

Our float before we started working on it.

Heather and me up on the scaffolding, our favorite part of the day.

Our float toward the end of the day. That's our handy work on the pink and yellow carnations. Very artistic, yes?

I spent 45 minutes pinning these pine branches to the Farmers float, which was quite enough. They were a pain to work with.

Buckets of seeds and flower petals used for the details on various floats.

Heather and me with Jack, the donkey on our float. Isn't he cute? He had a sign on him that said DO NOT TOUCH JACK! Apparently, being touched was not in his contract.

Tagger

Guess who found the Sharpie?

My fault totally. I left it at toddler-level, and of course the toddler took advantage of it, as any self-respecting toddler would. So now Lightning, Mater, a storage box, and the chair in Micah's room have permanent tattoos. I'm actually pretty glad that it wasn't worse. Looks like Lightning needed a new coat of paint anyway. There's a lot of wear on the old one.

A little while after the Sharpie incident there was another incident, though. Again, my fault. Somehow the words "only draw on paper" don't compute with Judah. We (I) gave him a dry erase board in his stocking with a dry erase pen. While my back was turned he used the pen to tag up: the desk top, four miniature cars, the couch, his booster seat, the top of our beautiful table that Nathan made, Nathan's leather briefcase, and a large section of the wall which is, of course, painted with flat white paint, which violates that commandment that every parent knows: Never Use Flat Paint, For It Is Flat And Hard To Clean and Thou Shalt Spend Hours On Thy Knees Cleaning It If a Marker Should Mar It. Which I did. Okay, not hours. It totally could have been worse. But I spent quite a while, cleaning in shame. Nathan, bless his heart, helped me, even though he could have rightfully sat back and watched, since the marker was all my (horrible) idea in the first place. Lesson learned.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas is finally over for us, ended last night. It was quite a marathon this year. It started on Christmas Eve, which is when our little family has our time together. One of our favorite traditions is having Christmas Eve dinner at The Olde Ship in Fullerton. I don't remember how this started, but we've done it every year since we got married. The atmosphere is a lot of fun, and they pass out Christmas crackers, so there are usually a lot of people hanging out with paper crowns on, some of them totally drunk. Fun. The food is so good, I always get the lamb, and this year I decided to try the bread and butter pudding for dessert. It's traditional English pudding, which means it was more like really moist cake, and it was served with hot custard on top, and it was one of the best desserts I've ever had. After our dinner there we came home and opened our presents to each other.

On Christmas morning we woke up and opened our stockings, then went to Nathan's parents' for brunch and presents there, then went to my parents' for dinner and still more presents. And since Steve and Arla and Dave and Julie and all the girls were out of town for Christmas this year, we all got together last night to celebrate, and the entire family was almost lost forever in the enormous mountain of presents there. It was all really fun and I loved it, but I'm pretty glad it's over and we can relax and enjoy the cooler weather.

In the midst of all this, we're trying to teach Judah what the real meaning of Christmas is, but I'm not sure he's getting it yet. He wakes up every morning now thinking we're going to open more presents, and he's convinced that the baby in the manger is not Jesus, it's Micah. Maybe next year it will click....

Here are a bunch of pictures from our various celebrations. Unfortunately, the camera got left at home both times we were at my parents'. So, no pictures from there.

Judah and me at The Olde Ship, waiting (impatiently, on Judah's part) for our food.

Judah downing his traditional Christmas pint. Just kidding, Mom. The glass was empty. Almost.

The Christmas cracker. One of our favorite parts of Christmas Eve.

Nathan Cowell: Magi or rapper?

Judah playing with one of his favorite gifts, a harmonica. He was so excited about it, and now he walks around playing it like the world's littlest hobo.

Micah, before he totally ripped into that present. With some help.

Micah hanging out with Auntie Jenna. Doesn't he look benevolent and jolly?

Judah and a few of the several thousand cars he got for Christmas. He was in car heaven.

And Micah as Saint Nick. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Cat

Payasa really got into the Christmas spirit this year. I mean, like, really. She loved hanging out under the tree and especially enjoyed drinking all the tree water.

And then a few days before Christmas Jeff and Heather came over for dinner. Paya and Jeff have a love/hate relationship, where Jeff loves Paya and she HATES him. Hates him with the fires of a thousand burning suns. She was trying to escape from him, and wound up jumping into the fireplace. But when I looked in I couldn't see her, could only hear her growling. We concluded that she must be up the chimney, so we took a picture aiming up, and that's exactly where she was. I can only assume that she was looking for Santa.

Micah Cowell Superstar

This year Micah got to play the lead role of Jesus in a living nativity scene at Biola's Christmas tree lighting. He was onstage for only about 15 minutes, but did very well and seemed to like his manger bed, which was a lot more cushy than the original probably was. His parents and all the wisemen and shepherds were played by fifth graders, and it was really interesting to see them react to having a real baby in the manger. Instead of standing there looking bored and poking each other, they all leaned over to watch Micah and play with him, which made it seem very true to the actual event. Mary would have been just barely older than the girl playing her that night, and most likely all the visitors weren't standing around shooting the breeze, they were looking at the child. I loved watching that happen on the stage.

But I think the real highlight was when one of the shepherds went to the director and told her, "I think Jesus smells kind of poopy."

Yet another form of torture

There are certain things in life that Judah considers torture. The list includes hideous things like having his hair washed, staying in bed, eating chicken or really any meat, drinking milk without a straw, being put in his carseat instead of climbing in himself, and having to go anywhere without Lightning McQueen.

Also on the list is getting a haircut. Judah just got his first professional haircut. Usually we just shave his head every few months, but one of Nathan's patients offered to come over and cut both Nathan's and Judah's hair. She used to work at a salon that specialized in kids' haircuts, so I was all excited. She started out on the right foot with Judah by playing with his toys with him for a while, and then offering him a sucker. She sat him in a chair in our kitchen with his sucker, and all was well until he saw the cut pieces of hair on his sleeve. "What's that?" he asked Nathan. "Your hair," Nathan replied, and the screaming commenced. Within seconds Judah was a red ball of snot, tears, sweat, and hair, and the sucker was covered with hair as well. There was hair everywhere, in fact. It got on Judah's hands, and then he rubbed his eyes and it got all over his wet face and.....well, it just got worse from there. The minute he was done I rushed him up to the bathtub to de-itchify him and get all the snot off his face and hands. The bath cheered him up, and by the time Kassy left Judah loved her again, and was performing for her and showing off his dinosaur pajamas. He agreed that she could come over and play again sometime, but not cut his hair.

But he would not eat the sucker after we washed it off. It had forever lost its charm.

About as crafty as I get

I finally finished the project that I was supposed to do last summer. When we moved into our place I noticed that right outside our back gate were four stepping stones, but they were that plain pink stone stuff. I decided I wanted to make some of my own to personalize our path. So I bought the huge bag of cement last summer, but that was as far as I got because I was so miserably pregnant. When I actually got around to doing the project it was a lot of fun and way easier than I'd anticipated.

The turquoise tiles I used in three of the stones are really special to me. Back in the 1960s my church installed a mosaic window with about 14 panels of tiny tiles. In the center was a cross. The tiles all came seperately, and the women of the church spent hours and hours gluing them onto large glass panels. Both of my grandmothers worked on the project. In the 1980s, when the sanctuary was remodeled, the design crew decided to take about eight panels out of the cross window to make it narrower. The extra panels were then stored away, and I later spent years looking for them off and on. Then one day I happened to mention to my friend H.K. that I was looking for them. He disappeared for a few minutes and eventually came back carrying one of the panels wrapped in a sheet. I was so excited! I took the panel to Nathan's parents' house and my father-in-law took a blow torch to it, melted the glue, and peeled all the tiles off the glass backing, which shattered under the heat. I took the tiles home in a paper bag and then spent days hunched over the sink, peeling the glue from each tile and washing them all. I didn't know what I was going to do with them, and I was saving them for some special project some day, but then I thought it would be much nicer to work them into a lot of little projects, so that I can see them all the time. I know that my grandma Kimber would be proud. I love looking at my stepping stones and knowing that they represent a little bit of family history.

I made one stone for each person in our family. The fish is for Judah, because he loves the movie Finding Nemo, and loves fish in general. He likes to eat at The Whole Enchilada because of their amazing fish tank. The river is for Nathan because he loves fly fishing in peaceful places. The blue flower is for me and has to do with C. S. Lewis's discussion of the blue flower, which I've always identified with. And the star is for Micah, because he's my little star (and it didn't stay that dirty, I had just finished it when I took the picture and the cement was still wet).

Busted.

On Saturday morning I woke up with a burning thirst. Micah and Nathan were sound asleep, but Judah was up and running around in his pajamas, so I got up and Judah and I made a run to Del Taco. As usual, he said, "We need diet coke!" when I pulled in. I got my drink, and then we drove around for a while enjoying the beutiful day and the many trains passing by (5 within about 15 minutes!). When we got home Nathan and Micah were still asleep, didn't even know we'd gone.

Later in the day all four of us were out running errands and decided to stop at the same Del Taco for a quick lunch. As we pulled in Judah yelled out, "We need MORE diet coke!" Little rat.

Early morning conversation

"Hey Nathan. Are you awake?"

"Yeah. But I'm disappointed."

"Why?"

"Because we didn't win 20 million dollars."

"???"

"In my dream. I was flying a really crappy spaceship with some guys from Star Trek and I won 20 million dollars and I was excited because I could afford to fix my spaceship."

"Ah. Have you ever actually watched Star Trek?"

"Not in the last 20 years. I don't even like sci-fi."

"Very good. Go on."

"And I was going to repair my parents' water tower, because it got all shot up by some guys with rifles. But then I decided to put in running water for them."

"How nice of you."

"But then I woke up and was like, Darn, we don't have 20 million dollars. I guess I can't buy that motorcycle. Or repair my spaceship."