Jump, Play, Splash, Swim

The last two days, the kids have been pretty active. On Monday, we went to Mt. Jumbo Gym, which is an old high school gym now used as a parks and rec space. Everyday from 10:30 AM-noon they have a preschool open gym for 1-6 year olds. It's great because there are all kinds of toys to play on, balls to throw, bikes to ride, and even a bouncy thing. Plus it's only a dollar per kid. The only bad part is that it's all the way over on South Douglas, so we don't really go that often. So far we seem to be going once every two or three weeks. And that seems to be just about right for them. We usually go when Shawn is busy on one of his days off. Monday, is usually his day off, but he was hunting for goat with Andy. No goats though.

Here's Carly on a bike and at the top of the bouncy gym slide. She's always bummed when the bouncy gym gets put away.

Isaac with whatever ball he could get his hands on. It was usually a basketball--Uncle Eric H.!
The crawl pose. He wasn't really crawling but more investigating. But I don't feel like I got enough pictures of him crawling. He was so fast and really didn't do it for very long.
Also, tonight Carly had her third swimming lesson. If you remember from my post last week, the first one didn't really go all that well. The second one wasn't really that much better. In fact, her teacher asked me after the second lesson if this was her first time to take swimming lessons. (Of course it is--it's the preschool 1 class!) But tonight went SOOOOO much better. She was much more confident. She was still nervous about jumping into the pool into her teachers arms, but I can't blame her. And I think it's a huge improvement to only have one area of nervousness rather than being nervous about every area. And she even let her male teacher help her once or twice. It was so nice to see her enjoy it more. She looked at me several times and smiled or waved. I could tell it was much more fun tonight than previous nights. Apparently, Shawn had a talk with her today and helped her "practice" for her lessons tonight. I'm not sure what he said, but it must have connected with her. I'm very thankful for how involved Shawn is in his children's lives.

Cake for All

Tonight after Bible class we had cake and ice cream for everyone in honor of Bea's 80th birthday and Isaac's 1st. And Bea was her normal servant self and couldn't resist from passing around the plates of cake and ice cream even though it was her party!
I made the cake and Bea's daughter, Karen, took care of the ice cream. I really enjoyed making this cake too. I always want to write on my kid's birthday cakes--you know with the bag and all the fancy tips--but I always chicken out because there are so many other party details to take care of. So I usually plan a cake that will just look clever, but not require the skill of cake decorating. But this time, I actually had all day to decorate the cake, so I took the opportunity. The long rectangle is actually two square, two layer cakes smooshed together. One side was red velvet and the other was carrot. And cream cheese frosting over all of it to make it look like one long cake. The red velvet was surprisingly very popular. I almost could have made more too because every last morsel was eaten. I guess I wasn't expecting that many people, but I should have known that lots would come to give such a special lady a birthday wish.
Anyway, here are a few pictures from the evening.

Isaac wasn't into his cake nearly as much tonight. I guess it just wasn't exciting the second time around. Actually, I think it was that he saw all the other kids running around and having fun and he wanted down to join in on the excitement.
Sorry for the brightness. I claim no responsibility for these two--Shawn took them. (Sorry, honey.)

Finally free

Isaac's buddy Matthias, sporting his party favor tee shirt. These two boys are bound to become partners in some sort of mischief. I spotted them both over by a bookshelf of Bible's tonight contemplating how to best get them all over the floor. Fortunately, their plans were diverted. I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Happy Birthday Isaac

October 7, 2008 (above) and 2007 (below)

Isaac celebrated his first birthday pretty quietly with our family. No cake tonight since he had some yesterday and there will be more tomorrow. But he opened a couple presents from us--a new pair of walking shoes and a book. He was all over the place tonight, so I had a very difficult time getting a picture of him that was in focus. Here's one of the less blurry movin' photos.

Brother and sister for the first time, October 7, 2007

Best of friends October 7, 2008 (and very wiggly)

We went out for dinner tonight to celebrate Isaac's birthday. Our first choice was closed for remodeling, so we went to Ken's, a Japanese/Chinese restaurant. Yum, yum, yum it was delicious. I had udon soup for the first time since we lived in Japan and it was very tasty. Carly and Isaac shared a plate of chicken fried rice and practically licked the plate clean. Shawn had chicken and beef teriyaki. Here's Isaac with the three fingered stuff.

Learning to use chopsticks

Before dinner, we took Carly to her first swimming lesson. She'll have eight sessions total, but tonight was the first. At first I was annoyed that we had to have the lessons in the evening, but now I'm glad because Shawn can come with us and help with Isaac. I don't know what I would have done with both of them in the locker room at the same time.

Despite our last name, Carly didn't exactly take to the water all that well. She didn't cry or come running to me out of the pool or anything like that. But during the actual lesson she did not look relaxed and comfortable. If I had to pick just one word to describe how she looked it would be nervous. The good news is that Carly said she had a really good time with the lesson and was very up beat after wards. She told us over dinner all the things she had learned. (Of course, we had watched the entire thing.)

She has two teachers, Amber and Nick, but she seems very reluctant to let Nick help her with anything. She'd rather wait for Amber. I think it's just her thing against men she doesn't know.

The other good news is that there are seven more lessons ahead and that will give her time to get more comfortable with it all. I must admit though that I had a true "mom moment" watching her. I had to hold myself back a little from the urge to shout out some encouragement or jump up and tell her that she can do it. Encouragement is a good thing, but I knew if I did it right when the thoughts came into my mind I would distract her and make it even more difficult for her. So I just watched. But WOW, it was so hard for me to watch her struggle. And I realized that it's just going to happen again. I won't be right there to hold her hand and help her when she starts school, or high school, or college or whatever struggles she might face ahead. All I, and Shawn, can do is train her so that hopefully--Lord willingly--she'll stick close to God and let Him guide her as she attempts to kick her way up and down the pool of life.

So it was a good swimming lesson for Carly and a good lesson for me. And more good news, she's excited about the next lesson. Maybe the "Phelps" name will help out a little more in future swims.





And yes, the goggles were her choice. I know she looks a little silly, but I think they actually helped since she hates getting water in her eyes. If nothing else, they gave her a little confidence.

First Birthday Party

**Updated 10/7/08**Well, I've rested and now I'm ready to give out some of the details.
We invited the little boys from church over for a zoo animals party. Since there are so many babies at church we decided to just invite boys over for Isaac's 1st and 2nd parties. When he's turning 3 and more interested in the party (and not just overwhelmed that there's 30 people at our house), we'll invite the girls too. Anyway, even though we tried to "control the chaos" we still had plenty of action. The little boys all seemed to have a good time exploring with each other in the toys.
We definitely had to invite Miss Bea too. Isaac and she share the same birthday--October 7. There's just a mere 79 years between them. That's right, this year Isaac turns 1 and Bea turns 80. She is such a special lady to us and our kids. And on Wednesday night after Bible class we're going to have cake and ice cream for both of them.


Isaac wasn't all that interested in opening presents. He just wanted to be free and investigate things. But his sister and party guests were all interested in his toys for him. But now that the party is over, he's played with all of his new toys and books quite a bit. So far he seems to really like the Elmo remote control from Connor and the crash police car from Matthias and siblings.
This was the cake I made for everyone and the one below was Isaac's. Yes, Kelly, I did make it, but I'm telling you it was way easier than you'd think. The frosting is called fondant and I got it from a local cake decorating store. It's sort of like really dense bread dough that you just roll out into as thin of a circle as possible and then lay it on top of the cake. And it came with the color pre mixed into it, so it was really pretty simple.
For Isaac's little personal cake I made a "healthy" carrot cake from a recipe I found on Tara's blog. I had a taste myself and it was pretty good, not weird at all, so don't worry. Anyway, Isaac thought it was pretty good.
Just before we started the cake thing, Justus very politely came up to me and asked if he could have the little cake. I told him that it was for Isaac, and he didn't seem bothered by that. Whew!




These were all the party boys (from left to right): Owen (15 months), Elijah (3 months), Isaac (12 months), Connor (14 months), and Matthias (15 months and in the front). For their party favor they each got an animal shirt similar to the one Isaac is wearing in the top picture. Owen's was a crocodile, Elijah's was a lion, Connor's was a giraffe, and Matthias' was an elephant. (I'm in the process making more in different styles and sizes to sell with my baby towels at the next craft fair. FYI: Mendenhall Mall, Oct 18 & 19 if you're a Juneau-ite.)
This was the first time Isaac met some friends. Matthias (in stripes) and Owen came to see him in the hospital the day after he was born. My how they have changed in one year!

Tea Party

This afternoon, the sun came out for a little bit and fortunately I got Carly outside to enjoy it. It's a good thing she lives in Juneau, because she generally would prefer to stay inside. I think mostly because she doesn't have very many outdoor toys. But really, she has a few. Whenever she has a friend over, she loves to play outside with them, but not so much by herself. One thing she does like doing outside though is pulling around the wagon. So when I suggested that she take her tea party outside on the wagon, she thought that was a great idea. I went out to join her for a bit and take some pictures. She got quite "posy" for me which I'm didn't complain about, because it made it easier for me to get some pictures of her.
Her time outside really didn't last very long because just as she was getting tired of it, it was starting to rain again. Oh, well. I'm glad she got some fresh air today.

We have had some strange weather this week. I'm reminding myself that it's just what fall in SE Alaska is like, but it's still crazy. Today we had a few rain squalls all while the sun was shining brightly. I had to use the windshield wipers on high and my sunglasses at the same time--that doesn't happen very often. And then the other day it was something like 68! That's quite different from our normal highs in the low 50's right now.
Weather has definitely been interesting this week. I wonder what next week will bring. Hopefully not snow. I'm not quite ready for that.

The Last Week

Isaac's 1st birthday is less than a week away now. There are many things that will or can change after he turns one. Most of them are food related like he'll be able to try peanut butter, or eggs, or maybe retry milk again. Although I cheated slightly and let him have scrambled eggs this morning. I figured he was close enough to one for that. But I'll probably also hold off on retrying milk for a few more months or at least until after his 1 year check up with his doctor.

But one change I won't be cheating on is turning his carseat around. I'll wait until Tuesday (or maybe even longer until I get around to turning it around). In case you don't know, the rule is babies have to be 12 months and at least 20 lbs to sit front facing in their carseats. Since Isaac weighed 19 lbs at his 6 month check up, I'm not concerned about him not meeting the front facing standards. Yes, he is a big boy. We'll see at his next check up just how big he his, but my estimate is somewhere near 25 lbs (give or take a pound).

So I wanted to get a picture of him like this before things changed. For the next few days I'm going to remind myself how he's still a baby everytime I put him in his rear facing carseat. Of course, he'll always be my baby no matter how old he is.