Jamisen as Personal Trainer

Ah, Jamisen loves his little sister. He wants to hold her, make her laugh and mimic what his Mommy and Daddy do. He even tried to play peek a boo with her tonight! (video above; must click through to blog to see it as it does not embed in email).

Notice the sweet car carpet? I can't wait to start bribing ... er, I mean, rewarding (!) him with Hot Wheel cars for potty training to drive around that carpet. He still shows absolutely no sign of wanting to potty train. But really, could you blame him? He would have to quit playing to go to the bathroom in the toilet.

Baby Lily continues to delight and amaze at all times. She is growing extremely slowly. She is in the bottom 5th percentile for height and weight. She is only 9 pounds, 14 ounces - and she's over 3 months old. She is just over 22" long and is perfectly proportionate for all of her measurements.

Jamisen gets more and more energy with each passing day. He literally radiates energy from his every pore and sometimes, he gets so excited that his entire body shakes - almost like those teensy dogs that can't keep it together when someone throws the ball to them multiple times. Here he is, pushing me to get back into shape after Lily.

Jamisen loves this geodesic dome that his Grandpa Faiola spent hours (FIVE!) putting together for him. He has conquered it (!) and happily climbs to the top all the time now - a full 2 years before he's supposedly ready for it.

If there was one thing that Grandpa Faiola taught me .... well, one of ten gazillion great lessons ... it was that it's fine to introduce kids (within reason) to things that are supposedly above their age group according to the 'experts' or in this case, the toy designers. We let him explore and when he's ready, he goes for it and we're right there to catch him if it doesn't work. Granted, that may jump back to bite us at some point in the future, but right now? We're going with that theory and Jamisen is thriving with it.

This picture is from a few weeks ago but the connection that Lily and Grandpa are sharing is timeless ... even a couple weeks late.

Jamisen has been missing Grandma Faiola but she will be back next week to visit. He was super lucky to get a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Renoud this week (pictures in another blog post) so that helped him missing those special people in his life. We love our family and are so thankful for all of their support.

Dressed for Success

Big thanks to Grandpa Winston and Grandma Kelly for this amazing, perfect, adorable (!!) dress for Baby Lily.

I dressed her in it to come to work today and she stole the show. It's a good thing she napped a bit or else no one would have gotten any work done for all of the cute overload happening in this one little person. Thank you Grandma Kelly and Grandpa Winston! =)

Our little happy girl is coming to the office less and less. This week, she'll only be there for 10 hours. She's only working part time now and I miss her during the day but am so happy about getting more work done than I have the last 3 months.

Blackberry Picking with the Fam

We love Uncle Erik and Aunt Cheriss but even though we live 17 minutes from each other, we don't see each other as often as we want to (busy blah blah blah kids blah blah blah work blah blah blah). Here, Chris is expressing his joy at seeing the family while simultaneously photo bombing the picture. Who knew that was his secret superhero talent?

Team Cherik invited us to go blackberry picking. They found the mother-lode of all blackberry haunts along a public trail in Bellingham, right by the freeway of all things. Jamisen was very happy to look at all the trucks and cars passing by below the freeway overpass.

Chris and Jamisen were an amazing team. I had Miss Lily in the Baby Bjorn so was a little less efficient than the dynamic duo. Picking blackberries is hard work (!!). Seriously, ridiculously hard work. I have a new respect for why organic frozen blackberries are $6 a pound in the store.

  

Little Jamisen and Little Toby had a great time racing eachother. Jamisen loves his doggie cousins and even tolerates many doggies kisses from Toby's older sister, Samantha.

 

Jamisen also had a wonderful time 'flying' - "Daddy, swing swing swinnnnnnnnng!" We all enjoyed eating the blackberries and even were able to freeze some for smoothies and protein shakes.

 

Cheriss is a natural with baby Lily. We loved spending time with Erik and Cheriss and can't wait to do it again soon.

 

Backyard Fun

 

We were so happy to have Oskar and his parents over again two weekends ago. It has been such a busy two weeks that I wasn't able to post this in a timely manner. Whoops! But, these photos were too dang cute not to post, even late. You'll notice that Jamisen is learning how to make a mess. YAY! See the red paint all over his shirt? And yes, that is his artistic genius, helped out by Oskar and his unique painting tools (play dough and play dough shape makers).

We also met a new play date buddy - JJ! Her parents, Phil and Stacey, are regulars at the social wine club that we belong to. We've seen them on and off for a couple years and finally, this week, I just happened to stop in quickly and struck up a conversation. When I realized their little one was 22 months old? Instant best friends. Duh!

The three little burgeoning maestros had a wonderful time playing a piano. For future reference, when three people play the piano, it's called "Piano Six Hands." There are actually pieces written for this type of mastery - and clearly, our children have said mastery.

 

Jamisen is getting better at NOT hopping off at the very tippy top of his see-saw apex, thus dumping his play partners. Both he and Oskar are wearing little train engineer hats (hello, cute overload!).

 

I am working on color theory with Jamisen and designed this fun little project, with the help of Pinterest, to create colorful building options using tongue depressors, food dye (Labcolors) and velcro. He loves the color matching game though I'll admit some defeat because he was more interested in trying to peel off the velcro dots than actually build. Baby steps. Baby steps.

 Jamisen loved these little egg extravaganzas and kept asking for more "cupcake." If he thinks those are cupcakes, I'll take it. #winning

Lest you think we've forgotten about our little Lily, she was present for all the fun - sitting in her chair or safely in our arms.  She is growing and our little happy girl. She giggles, coohs and absolutely fills our heart with joy and gratitude. We are so blessed and lucky as a family of four.

Team Jilly

 

Jamisen had a fun boo-boo this week. He managed to hurt himself on a plastic water sprayer. We're not quite sure how that happen but think it was a pinch hurt. He was smiling big for the camera because I told him to smile for Grandma. =) I am trying to figure out how to tell him that he can also call her the traditional Norsk term for Grandma, 'Mor Mor' but the concept of other languages is still a (eh hem) foreign concept to him. 

 

Baby Lily remains happy, cheerful and above all, a blessing in our lives. Even Jamisen seems to be growing quite fond of her. We continue to try to emphasize the 'team' aspect of them together - even giving them their own monniker "Team Jilly!" for Jamisen + Lily. That term is not fixed however and we remain open to great ideas on how to solidify their bond. 

Lily still is working full time. She is a normal little baby girl, crying, pooping and puking like a 2 month old. This is an artistic rendition of what happened this week at work - she literally puked on command on our Customer Experience Manager's desk. It was hilarious. He was making little baby faces at her and saying playfully, "Don't you puke on my desk. Don't you do it." And blacccch, she opened her mouth and sallied forth such a lovely gusher that she missed her own outfit and hit his desk squarely.

We just harvested a new crop of potatoes from our not-deer proof garden. This is maybe 1/100th of the potatoes in the garden. I'm a little terrified of all the things I'll be learning to do with them. I'm thinking that I'll end up learning how to make potato chips and give away homemade batches of potato chips for Christmas this year! =)

We were so happy and pleased when Team Cherick came to visit this week. It was great to have them over and I remain astounded at how good Uncle Erik is with toddlers. He's a natural and clearly, judging from Lily's expression, does pretty good with babies too. I think the look on Erik's face (and the look of giggly satisfaction on Lily's face) comes from a rather impressive toot that Lily had just let out =)

Play Date with Elliot

As any new parent knows, when you run into people that have children your age, you immediately try to make play dates. It matters not what the parent does, if they have a criminal record or if they have a small cocaine problem. What matters is that they have children, your age, and they can string four words together, preferably at the same time.

Thankfully, Elliot's parents fall into the WunderBar parental category. They live on a farm. Mom worked for Lush (a large cosmetics chain) doing all their international sourcing and Dad used to  be in a band and is recreating himself in college and has many fascinating things to share. They're smart and can string many multi-syllabic words together in addition to sharing many of our family values. Win-win.  We'd be friends with them even if they didn't have a little the same age as Jamisen.

Their daughter, Elliot, is 5 or 6 months younger than Jamisen and is calm, quiet and obedient. She paints an impressive contrast to our son who runs everywhere, talks to everyone, and has no problem getting his face covered in dirt and then eating the dirt.

We've been loving the little town of Bow Edison near our home. It's only 20 minutes away but it has blueberries, two cafes, a bread/cookie store and a cheese store. Jamisen loves his $3 macarons (seriously, what 2 year old eats French Macarons over all the other cookies in the store?) and the delicious herbed flatbread at Breadfarm. He also appreciates the $45/pound black truffle chevre at the store next door (note to self: never share expensive food with this kid).

 

Here Jamisen is enjoying a lime-soaked polenta cake. See, I told you he had amazingly young foodie taste though admittedly isn't a big fan of the silverware,

  We heart Elliot and her folks and hope for many more play dates, in Bow Edison or elsewhere.

Bottle That

If I could bottle the feelings, the scent, the sighs and smells of a sleeping baby in my arms, I would be a kaljllion millionaire bajillionaire. The incredible mix of love, peace, fierce protection and wonder is something that I've never experienced except when holding my infant children. It's bittersweet that this might be the last baby I get to experience that rush of emotion with.

Lily is showing us her gummy, toothless smile every day, at every opportunity she gets. She loves to coo and talk to us, the we both make this strange trilling bird noise that we haven't made since Jamisen was a little teensy baby. It must be some strange instinctual thing. She reacts so well to the sound that I don't care that we sound like blind birds in a deep fog trying to find our way out of the cove.

Jamisen has started repeating adult phrases that sound hilarious coming out of a little man's mouth. Stuff like "What's going on here?" and "Oh man!" and other colloquial phrases that adults throw off without a thought.

He takes amazing pride in his independence. Every time he finishes something, he says "I did it!" Sometimes he even raises his arms in the air, in a solitary victory celebration of sorts. He loves to state what he is doing, "I'm running. I'm running."

Perhaps the most fun new trait for Jamisen is his ability to sing songs, to a tune! He knows the ABCs all the way up through G or so and can sing the refrain to most children's songs now. We do 'Ring Around the Rosie' to my perverse delight (since I actually know what the song is about) but we've added a nice second verse about cows in the meadow, eating the grass so now the song is some sort of smash-up of morbid death foreboding and happy methane-emitting beef machines.

We are still having trouble with sharing. It's not just sharing in his own house either. If Jamisen sees someone playing with something at a park and appearing to have fun (a bubble wand was the latest casualty), he will literally walk up and grab it. Just poof, the kid is all bravado and attitude. He has glimmers of sharing prowess where he shares his food with Mommy but so far, people his own size and height... not so successful. I bought the entire selection of sharing books at the store and am hoping that helps.

At work, I'm in a world of excitement and a haze of exhaustion. My Soap Crafting book is here (!!) and we have our big book release party at the end of the month. But no sooner than had it arrived than our COO took off for another week (fishing trip this time), leaving me trying to manage the 2 month old, and the entire company. Normally, this would be a piece of cake but on top of his 4 week trip to Europe when Lily was just 3 weeks old, I'm less excited and more exhausted than if he were here. We did manage to ship all 362 book pre-orders, in addition to our normal orders, on Friday though so that was quite a relief. Mark, in the bottom right, is holding just a fraction of the shipping labels.

Chris's company is busy, busy, busy with ramping up domestic sales as the sales cycle in the Middle East continues to be fraught with any number of issues beyond their control. He's actually cold-calling paper mills, oil processing plants and other companies that would be interested in their services and doing his smooth Chris talk until he gets a decision maker. Already, his hard work is paying dividends and he has two major domestic jobs that should ramp up this year. I'm extremely proud of him and hoping 2014 is the year that it all comes together for his company after a few years of recession-related-doldrums.

On a funny side note, Jamisen only wants Daddy to change his poopy diapers. This is the best turn of events ever and I love it so much. "Daddy change the diaper. Daddy change the diaper." I am so glad that he gets that extra bonding time with Daddy.