Ollie at one year

I'm posting these almost two months late, but I have to post about Ollie at one-year-old, and the joy that he brings to our lives.

 This little guy is so friendly and full of smiles.  He has absolutely no stranger anxiety (I think it's because we don't leave him with babysitters because we worry about him having a seizure while we are gone).  We will walk up to anyone and lift his arms up, begging to be picked up.

 We visited a new ward a few weeks ago, and he reached and reached for the woman sitting behind us until she picked him up.  He continued to reach and be passed back about five rows, and I had to crawl over people to get him while he kept smiling and charming everyone.  One of the cute older ladies he visited said she called dibs to be his adopted grandmother.

 He's still very tiny, between the 10th and 25th percentile but his pediatrician thinks he will shoots up soon.

 Just after his first birthday, he stopped talking and didn't say or sign anything for a few weeks.  His doctor wasn't worried because he was still so social and happy.  Now he's started talking again and has a completely different vocabulary.  He doesn't say things like "hello" or "bye-bye" anymore, but he says "doggie" and "uh-oh"

 Ollie happily goes to bed at night, and is usually asleep within minutes. He still wakes up once or twice a night though so we're looking forward to Creed and Ollie having separate rooms where they won't disturb each others sleep (and more importantly, our sleep ;) )

 It amazes me how much he understand what we say to him.  If we mention going outside, he is waiting at the door or bringing us shoes within seconds.

 His favorite time of the day has got to be bath time.  He frantically tries to get in the tub while we fill it and undress him.

 Ollie is a climber.  Creed was always timid, but Ollie is fearless.  He is an amazing climber and has no fear of falling.  I'm not sure when he will start to get it and not walk off high surfaces because we always catch him, for fear falling with cause another seizure.  Any advice?

 He loves to share big slimey kisses with us.

He's becoming a better eater than Creed but he will not touch raspberries or strawberries. He has an unfortunately love in Cheez-its and even recognized the box in the grocery store the other day and strained to grab it off of the shelf.

He loves making us laugh and will do the same thing over and over if it causes us to giggle.

He's found his love for books and is constantly bringing them to us so we can set him on our lap and read each book over and over.  His current favorite is Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell.

He's becoming fiercely independent and gets upset when we try to help him with things.  He wants to climb and eat and drink by himself, thank you very much.

He's not grumpy very often, but when he is, you can whisk him outdoors and he's as happy as can be.

Creed has always been a Momma's boy but Ollie has a special bond with his dad.  He sprints to the door when he hears Larry come home from work and flaps his arms with joy.

He LOVES I-phones and gets upset if we try to pass him the I-touch instead (how does he know the difference?)

I know this post is crazy long, but I couldn't resist posting the rest of these pictures to sum up the last few months of Ollie's life.

He likes to wander the house exploring on his own, getting into everything possible.

He loves to color and gets desperate to get a hold of any crayon or pens he spots.

He's such a terrific little person!

Clothes Make the Man, I mean, Boy

Creed is wearing 5T clothes these days, which makes me very sad; not because he's growing up, but because he'll soon be moving from toddler sizes to boys' sizes and the cuteness factor seems to plummet at this divide.  Candice warned me a few years ago that once I had to start shopping for Creed in the boys' department it would get much harder to find cute things, and she was right.  

I've mentioned before that I like to shop ahead and stockpile clothes the next size up because I hate paying full-price for anything, and I hate being stuck choosing from whatever is available at the moment because Creed has to have longer pants or the next size up in shorts right away.  

I've been looking for some tees for Creed that meet the balance between being cool enough for Creed's tastes (he's very opinionated about these things) and still maintaining enough happy boyish charm for me (he is only four afterall).  Here are a few of my favorites at the moment.  They are all a little spendy, but if you can catch them onsale, I'm finding these more expensive brands last longer and are still in good enough condition to pass down to Ollie so they are worth it to me.

 Kickball Legend on sale now at JCrew (Creed barely knows what kickball is, but this shirt makes me laugh.  I would totally wear this shirt if they made it in my size)

 Cycle on sale at the Gap

 Creed just spotted this one from Tea Collection over my shoulder and is begging me to buy it because for reasons that I cannot explain, he loves Crabs.

 This Gorilla tee is probably my favorite from Tea Collection at the moment.

 Creed really loves Rock and roll lately so I think he would appreciate this one from MinBoden.

and this one from MiniBoden might be something my yellow-lovin boy needs.

Creed's Bee Birthday Party

For months, Creed's been telling people he was having a bee birthday party.  He loves the Bee Movie (the only kids DVD at my parents house so it has been watch too many times).  He regularly pretends to be a bee so I guess a bee party was a given.  I had some great ideas for other parties and tried to convince him, but he was certain about what he wanted.  I was not so certain of what we would do for a bee party so I kept suggesting other things.  Finally he said, "I know, I really want a Hello Kitty party!" Umm, so, bee birthday party it was, and he was SUPER excited (I would have been ok with a Hello Kitty party if he actually liked Hello Kitty, but before he said her name, I didn't even know he knew who Hello Kitty was).  

I let him choose five friends to invite and we made them bee shirts for the festivities.

 I got the idea for bee shirts here and then adjusted it a little and added wings to the back.

We just put up some honeycomb bees around the house and the decorations were done.

Creed barely slept the night before because he was so excited (picture him waking me up at 3 am to ask if it was time for his party yet) so he was crabby when everyone arrived and there were lots of tears (please tell me that your children do this too)

 We started off the party dancing to "Flight of the Bumblebees" which gave me a case of the giggles and a bunch of blurry photos.  Then we colored bees.

 and we hung them up for all to admire.

 I was hoping for warm weather so we could have a pollen hunt like this one, but it was snowing outside so while the kids colored we hid "pollen" around the house for them to collect (yellow pompoms, werthers, rolos, small cadbury eggs, etc.) I think it was their favorite part of the party.  They were hard-working bees.

Then we ended with lunch.  The napkins, paper bags, plates, straws, and candles were from Sweet Lulu.  Have you checked out their shop?  It's full of the sweetest party supplies.  I wanted to buy two of everything and stock all my cupboards.

We had to have lots of honeycomb shaped oyster crackers on hand.

I just used a beehive cookie cutter to cut out the peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and I stuck little sugar bees on top.

 And I used bee cookie cutter to cut out watermelon to top the fruit kabobs.

 And of course bees only drink from flowers

 I had grand ideas for a bee cake, but Creed loves the chocolate donuts a Costco and we figured this was a good time to give into his begging.  I just stacked them into a beehive and stuck some candles on top.

 And afterwards we had a surplus of donuts to deliver to friends.

 We sent each of the bees home with bee notebooks and pens (thank you dollar section and Michael's)

 And Bee balloons with bubbles + bags bursting with "pollen".  What more could four-year-olds want?

 The smile on this guys' face at the end of the party was totally worth it. Think there's any chance something as sweet as a bee party will please him as much in ten years?  Can't we just freeze time?

Simple Joys of Turning Four

Creed turned four two weeks ago, and I'm still shocked at the reality that I have a child that old.  How did that happen so quickly?  Larry took the day off and we spent it just being together.  We tried to fill his day with things we knew would bring him joy like this giant number four balloon he's been begging me to buy at the party store.  I knew he would be thrilled.

We wrapped his presents up in black and yellow because he was having a bee birthday party later that week with his friends.  It looks like a lot, but some of them were pretty dinky and most of them were picked up at after Christmas sales.  Of course when you are four, a pile of presents is the most thrilling thing in the world to wake to.

He got right to work opening presents 

 And put them all to use immediately

 Ollie got in on the action too.  In fact he has claimed these Minion goggles and wears them all the time.

 We feasted on donuts (Have you been to Beyond Glazed?  Wow!  So sugary, but so good)

 And while the boys played.  I threw together a birthday shirt.  I dug through his dresser until I found an unworn shirt that he wouldn't miss.  Then I printed out a big four on cardstock.

 I just used a sharpie to trace the number and fill it in a little and wallah!  So simple but it did the job!

We let Creed pick the activity for the day and he had his heart set on bowling.  I asked him why bowling, he hasn't even been bowling, but he told me that he had a feeling that he would really like it so he should try it.

 By the end, he didn't need our help.

 I thought he might get competitive, but most of the time, he didn't even watch for the pins to fall, he rushed back to watch his ball magically reappear in the ball return.

 He loved the arcade too.  I do not love arcades, but birthdays are all about special treats you would normally say no to, right?

 Ollie enjoyed the Dance-Dance Revolution

 Then we headed home to make a cake.  I was going to make it ahead of time, but Creed really wanted to help so I let him go for it.

 It wasn't anything special, but it had Cat's brown sugar frosting, and he told me that I was the best cook in the whole world.

 I hope all his birthday wishes came true!