Creative Solutions: brought to you by dad

So Mason has been suffering from a little case of the sniffles. In our land, that means he acts tired more often than normal, but occasionally notifies us that "I need medicine. My nose isn't workin'." He really is a trooper when he's sick (kind of). It also means lots of hanging at home time playing with his birthday presents, but we'll have another post on that later.

Well, since we've only had a couple of minor go-rounds with illness, we have always borrowed a humidifier until now. We decided to purchase one so that I can double up the usage and maybe try to sleep through a single night while I'm pregnant.

After our purchase today, it was conveniently naptime. So I got the new humidifier all arranged in Mason's room, all the better to test its function without leaving it running unsupervised all night for the first trial. Mason immediately decided he didn't want it there (of course). He is so particular about what goes in his room while he's sleeping anyway that this wasn't a huge surprise.

So what did my fantastic husband do? He turned it into a game. Now Mason regularly runs up to the humidifier, presses first his nose then alternate ears into the mist, and says "It got me again!" Thank goodness for Dads. Mom was about to just tell him to suck it up and take a nap already.

Also: if anyone is in the market for a humidifier, don't take the picture as an endorsement just yet. It doesn't put out much, so I'm withholding any sort of review until I give it a chance to get going. It might be a direction-reader problem as well. We'll see.

Dear Mason, today you are three years old...

(Mason's 1st birthday, Jan. 2007)

... and I'm not sure you know exactly what a big milestone this is. To look at you now and compare it with photographs from such a short time ago is to see one of the greatest miracles of life at work. In the past three years, you have become such an individual and such an important part of our family that it is hard to remember what life was like before you came along.

(First night home, Jan. 2006)

From the start, you were such a robust little guy. You were 9 lbs. 8 oz. and born three weeks early. We had a hard time interrupting your sleep to get you to eat often enough; in fact, sometimes it is still difficult to wake you up. You definitely need your 12 hours of sleep or life is not always pretty.

(Oct. 2006)

You regularly throw caution to the wind. I gave up keeping you off the stairs and taught you how to maneuver them when you were around 8 months old. This was before you could walk or crawl, but you were so dedicated to playing on the stairs that teaching you how to do it with something resembling safety was the only option. More recently, you climbed a ladder without looking back so you could be on the roof helping hang Christmas lights. Often times, we are having the heart attack for you as you proceed through everything because your curiosity will not let you stop until you have conquered the task at hand. If you can but keep this drive throughout your life, you will do great things even if your mom is in the background freaking out a little bit.

(Mason's 2nd birthday, Jan. 2008)

You have learned so many things and continue to amaze us with your knowledge and your memory. You can identify nearly all the letters in the alphabet and tell us what phonetic sound they make; the only thing that holds you up here is your desire to do it. As often as not, you are likely to ask us what the letter or the sound is if only in either subtle mocking or desire to be more grown up. You can count to 15 or so, but usually get the numbers out of order on purpose so that we'll laugh with you and you can remind us that you are a "slilly boy". You sing songs and sometimes get the words right. Other times, it's just fun to hear what you come up with.

You are a particular little guy who will ask us tirelessly to make the train track the way you have envisioned or build a tunnel out of the couch cushions that stands up just right so you can crawl through it. All it takes to make a fort you love is a card table and a sheet; all you need to play in the yard is a shovel and some dirt. You can keep yourself busy for hours with a good puddle and a few rocks. More often than not, you would prefer to be outside and your enthusiasm for camping is bound only by your fear of the wind blowing your ears away.

Happy Birthday to you, our sweet and sassy boy. You are three, which means your world is full of frustrations when things don't turn out the way you were expecting; but hopefully this year will be full of surprises and excitement for you. You have a new baby sister coming, which will be a big change. I hope you will smother her with kisses the way you do me and proudly proclaim that you stole them from her, too. I hope you will clearly feel our love and encouragement as you take a big-boy sized bite out the world by going to school for the first time. I wish you could stay sweet and small, but more than that I hope you continue growing up into a smart, happy, and handsome boy.

Love and many stolen kisses,
Mama

Happy 28th Birthday, Alan!

So today marks the beginning of a very busy week at our house. Alan's birthday is the 11th, followed by Mason's birthday on the 17th. We tried to get in a good birthday celebration for Alan's, but he's working all around his birthday (as always). We went out last night with the guys from the fire station and their wives to watch the Jazz game and have dinner, so that might be the big celebration. We'll have family over later in the week to mark Mason's third birthday.

In honor of this, I changed the banner and our playlist. The playlist this week includes a few of the boys' favorite songs. Guess which ones belong to whom--it'll be fun!

I've seen a lot of people name X# of their favorite things about their husband to correspond with the number of years he is old; I'm not going to do that because I have a three year old trying to beat the tar out of the house with a toy golf club during this unsupervised moment. However, what I will do is still share some of the things I love about my husband as quickly as I can.

First of all, the picture I have above is one of him doing something he is pretty good at -- teaching. He was teaching me how to shoot a gun while we were camping this summer. He teaches me, he teaches Mason how to do things (some of them, like "pull my finger", I would probably prefer not, but.. well, it's kind of funny), and he teaches at work. He puts so much time and energy into learning and then turning around and teaching that it's fairly inspiring.

Second, he is a hard-working daddy who does everything he can to support our family. He's given up most of his interests and he doesn't understand the concept of "alone" time. He rarely takes a break and is always either at work or home with us. I know he loves his job and may or may not feel like the time away from us is sacrificed, but I appreciate all the sacrifices he makes so I can be at home (mostly) with Mason.

Third, he will do just about anything for anyone. He is always willing to help our family, neighbors, and friends if they need it, no matter how icky the job might become. If he is available to do it, he will and he'll keep doing it until the job is done to his exacting specifications. That being said, he also is a very creative problem solver who constantly keeps me in awe. Just one brief example: he once got navy blue paint out of our tan carpet; I only know because he told me.

Sometimes he's an exhausting perfectionist with extremely high standards, but everything he does is because he cares about our little family and our comfort in the long run. I appreciate the focus and determination he tries to instill in me, and everything he does to keep me focused on the "big picture". He's the exact person I need in my life to keep me grounded and I'm so glad to have found him. Happy Birthday, Alan!

Family Pictures

So we actually had these taken a while ago, but we gave our parents framed copies for Christmas so I didn't want to spoil the surprise. If this timing trend keeps up, we'll have family pictures in another three years or so. And we weren't specifically told not to post them on our blog, so I'm assuming I have the right to do so! No copyright infringement is intended.

Knowledge is power...

New Year = New Recipes

I've been wanting to find something to do for a fun New Years Eve tradition. For example, if you go to my friend Becca's home on New Years Eve, at midnight or shortly after you will quite likely eat gingerbread waffles with vanilla ice cream. It's just something they have always done together on that holiday. Likewise, I've wanted a little bit of that kind of tradition for Mason. This year, I think I found it. We had Maple Hot Chocolate and Rice Krispie treats, although it was earlier than midnight because we were all in bed by that hour. But surrounding New Years Eve, we also tried a couple of other new recipes: Baked Chicken Nugget Spaghetti and a Maple Bacon Pancake (to quell Mason's interest in eating a "pancake with cheese".) For these and other recent recipe trials, check out my recipe blog, The Unpampered Chef.