just eating cake

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Yes, there needed to b a post solely dedicated to Ray eating his first taste of cake. It was mini carrot cake cupcakes with butter frosting.

Ray was just testing the waters at first …. he’d delicately touch the frosting, then back away, then try again. Here’s the progression of things:

 

And then this was his face after he tasted it:

He seemed a little disgusted …. but he got into it:

Double fisting it.

Then I asked the big brothers to come over for a picture with the birthday boy. In the next picture, guess who’s enjoying the hug more than the other?

Total joy on Liam’s face and total anger on Ray’s. LOL.

 

Ray is one!

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He’s been doing this little “o” face for a week now. Sooooo beautiful.

Ray is one. Wow, that went fast … and slow, at different parts. But what does a one year old do on their birthday you might ask. Well, this is what you do:

You wake up peacefully, in your own room, with the blinds drawn and waves from a sound machine crashing (that sounds nice, right?). Then you start babbling and smacking things, you pretty much do whatever you want and then suddenly your mom shows up at your bedroom door with warm milk for you and sings “happy birthday” to you all soft and happy. While you drink away, she changes your diaper and puts you in cute jeans and a t-shirt (and awesome socks). When you’re done sucking down 8 oz of milk, you fling the cup out of your way and sit up. Today begins!

You eat bananas and bread for breakfast, you get carried into the car and you go to the gym play area. You crawl around, find an awesome and huge tub of large sized legos that only you get to play with. You keep your blanket nearby while at the gym, just for extra support. After the gym, you’re getting tired, so your mom brings you home and snuggles you into your crib with your favorite blanket, she shuts the blinds and turns on your waves. You then drift off to sleep pretty quickly (hey, you had quite a morning!) and take a 3 hour nap. It’s awesome to be one.

We’re not making a huge deal out of Ray’s first birthday, meaning, no huge party, no friends coming over, no presents really. Well, my mom is sending $50 and we’re going to put it in Ray’s savings account – thanks mom and dad!!!! We’re just trying to let Ray do things he likes to do and eat food he likes to eat and then tonight as a family we’ll sing and have him blow out his candle and dive into a carrot cake cupcake. simple. And Ray seems pretty pleased with the day so far.

Here’s the rundown on what he’s up to lately:

– he crawls like a maniac and he’s fast.

– he seems to have absolutely no interest in pulling himself up to his feet and walking. In fact, he seems scared of this. Yesterday, Daniel helped Ray to his feet and then let go to see how long he could balance. It lasted about 1-2 seconds and then Daniel and I applauded his efforts. Ray burst into tears. Daniel tried setting him up on his feet again and Ray was shaky and whimpering. It was sad to watch. So we stopped. No need to develop …. just yet.

– he loves me the most. He cries whenever I walk out of the room, or pass by him. On Sunday, I stood up from the dinner table (Ray was in his highchair) and walked over to the kitchen sink (5 feet away) to wash my hands. Ray burst into tears. He’s a tender soul.

– his happy sounds are this, “sh-sh-sh” or “sss-sss-sss”, with a big grin on his little face.

– he’s not good with change and doesn’t like to try new things, like new foods.

– he’s got a great set of little pinchers and good eyes. He can spot the tiniest piece of hair, fuzzy, piece of paper or string and once he spots it, he turns and plops down in a sitting position and gets out his forefinger and thumb to swipe it up. Once it’s in his hands, he continues to crawl around with his treasure gripped tightly in his palm. I’ll pick him up and open his sweaty little fist to find all sorts of garbage. It makes me think I need to vacuum more.

– he thinks Noah is hilarious.

– he loves his fuzzy, striped blue blanket. We bought it before we had Noah and all three have used it, but none have latched onto it like Ray has. He gets the fuzzy soft side of the blanket and rubs it against his lips.

– he has trust issues and even gives Daniel a sidelong glance if Daniel comes into a room where I am holding Ray. I think he watches Daniel closely to make sure Daniel doesn’t try to take him out of my arms. It’s funny.

– he laughs at big banging sounds.

– he’s not a snuggler and when I hold him in my arms, he has to be facing out. If I try to put him on my hip, he twists his body so that he’s facing out and leans forward. It’s very awkward.

– he has curly lips and an adorable clefted chin.

– interesting note? Ray’s cousin, Devyn Ray (Mina’s little girl), shares the same birthday. June 4th. Both Ray and Devyn Ray were named after our Grandpa Ray.

Here are pictures of Ray on his first birthday – HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAY!

I know a few of these were fuzzy, but they were cute. Had to post them.

Les is leaving

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My good friend, Leslie, is leaving. She’s moving to southern California. And on Sunday, she returned a jar full of some peonies from her backyard (she has the most ridiculously enviable backyard, full of flowers and plants and trees that are usually cultivated over years, but she just inherited them all. Anyway, it’s awesome).

Everyone keeps asking if I’m all bummed out that she’s leaving and to be honest, I just don’t really think about it. I might be terribly sad in 3 weeks, but for now, I keep looking at these gorgeous, fluffy flowers on my aqua table and it brings total bliss to my heart.

quotes

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My Noah … he’s so beautiful right? There are a few quotes that the boys have said recently that have been floating around in my head. Gotta get them written down, here goes:

Noah – Can I have some more bread?

Me – No, you need to finish your soup first.

Noah – awwwwww. But I was going to use it wisely.

While we were at swim lessons last night, Liam looked over at his teacher in a swimsuit, who was getting some papers together before class started. She is not really skinny. And Liam said, “Mommy, look – she must not work out”.

I was talking to Noah after school a few days ago and was asking him about it. He was telling me about recess and this is what he said, “I was trying to play on the slider bar, but this third grader wasn’t playing with it fairly.”

I ask, “So what did you do?”

Noah – “Well, I had to try and work it out. But she didn’t want to work it out and just wanted to go on the slider 3 times in a row! That’s not playing fairly. So I had to go tell a teacher and the third grader had to say sorry for not playing fairly with the slider”.

Noah hears certain phrases and then uses them excessively during a story. It’s funny.

I’m kind of sick right now. Just a summer cold, but annoying and tiring. Our ward had a Relief Society meeting on organization and I couldn’t resist going. I came up with a few things I want to implement into my life, or maybe just new goals now. I’m excited, here they are:

1. The Kids’ Art – I have been putting the boys’ art in sheet protectors and in a 3 rig binder for years now. It’s not easy to access (top of their closet) and the boys never look at their art and some art papers are much bigger than the 8.5×11 sheet protectors I have, so this is what I’m going to do: take pictures of each piece of art and then create a picture book of their art and get it printed in a bound book. That way they can look at it and it takes up less space and any sized art piece will fit :)

2. Clean out under my bed and donate most of it.

3. Church Stuff – I am the Activity Days leader and every other week we have activity nights where I have to bring a bunch of stuff: a binder full of info, paper, stickers, office supplies, our rules and Articles of Faith boards, the articles of faith treasure box of treats thy earn when they memorize one, magazines …. the list goes on, but you can see what I mean. All that stuff has been haphazardly collecting into an old Macy’s bag in the corner of my room and slowly starting to creep into the center of my room. It has been driving me crazy. So! I got an idea of what to do: I got a clear plastic bin that I already had, bought an accordion file folder and got out my label maker. I put all the papers, stickers, binder and magazines in the accordion file folder with labels on each file. Then I put that and all the other items in the plastic bin (in an organized fashion). I am going to keep this box in the back of my car, so it won’t take up space in my house and will always be ready for activity days!

So, that’s what I’ve been working on and thinking about. Now I’ve got to get in the shower (going on day two sans shower) and get dressed so that when Daniel and the boys get home we can run errands as a family to IKEA. I love IKEA. Daniel hates it, but he’s going.

Lazy Monday

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Today is Memorial Day and we are in full napping mode around here …. except for Noah and me of course. This is the way we roll in our Forsyth clan. Daniel and Liam snatch as many naps as they can and Noah and I stay as productive as possible every waking moment. We went to the ward Memorial Day picnic this afternoon and it was pretty fun, despite the uncooperative weather. Truthfully, I am really tired of this May-bi-polar weather. It’ll be in the 40’s and 50’s one day, windy and cloudy and cold, then humid and hot in the 80’s. This week is a case in point. Today it was cold, rainy and in the 50’s all day with chilly wind. Not fun to play baseball in and eat food and chat, but we did it anyway gosh darn it! And tomorrow it’s supposed to be in the 80’s and thunderstorming (which means 100% humidity). How about a happy medium, eh?

Anyway, I realized that with all of the pictures of the Liam party, I never mentioned what’s going on with my new five year old these days. Here’s the run down on my sweet little Liam:

– he is moving out of the sad, mean 2 year old phase that lasted for 3 years and into the more agreeable and fun Liam we are coming to know and love :)

-he is still our biggest and most fun snuggler. Just this morning, Daniel and I were snuggling up on the couch and Liam walked through the front room, spotted us and jumped up on the couch, then wiggled his way right in between us and smiled. What a love.

– he still gives me kisses and hugs before he goes into his preschool class.

– he looooves his Gammie. Liz came to visit this past week and Liam was like putty in her hands.

– to my utter amazement, he knows all of his letters. About halfway through his preschool year I was spending lots of time trying to sit with him and help him write his letters and he hated that and did not respond well (let’s leave it at that). I even talked to his preschool teacher about it, how I would ask him as we were driving around, “hey, what letter is that?” and he would respond, “I don’t want to talk about it”. His teacher said I should try and sneak letter learning into our daily lives, like maybe I should get him some bath crayons and have him write all the letters he knows. ha! Perfect! Mrs. Yessler is a genius, right? So I did just that. Then discovered that our tub is so old, that the porcelain is wearing off and when Liam wrote his letters on the bathtub … it stayed. Sooooo, I spent some time scrubbing the tub and got rid of the crayons. Bottom line, I was worried about Liam learning his letters. But lo and behold, at kindergarten round up a few weeks ago, they tested him on his letters and he knew every single one. I couldn’t believe it. Is that sad? I saw all of his letters circled on the sheet and asked another mom, “are the circled letters the ones he knows or doesn’t know? I either have a really smart kid, or a totally dumb kid”. It’s sad that I didn’t know which one. Anyway, I tested him in the car and yep – he knows them all.

– now that he knows his letters, he’s always spelling things he sees out for me and saying, “what does that say?”

– he loves carbs … and sugar. He will sometimes just ask to eat a piece of bread because I’m feeding bits of bread to Ray, and Liam loves bread. And sugar. I am raising a kid in love with donuts and bread and sugar cereal and candy …. ahhhhh man. The only veggies he really likes and asks for are “carrots and sauce” (ranch dressing). At least its something.

– he’s still very internal. Sometimes he will burst into tears and we don’t know why and he won’t tell us why and we have to wait until the next day or later that day to ask him and hear what the problem was. I blame Daniel for this. I am  huge communicator. Liam, not so much. But you feel so privileged to be a part of his circle of people he trusts when he does speak to you. Sometimes he’ll offer up information about what happened at preschool or at his friend Lucas’ house and I always find myself freezing in place to listen and pay attention. It is rare and special for him to share and I love it when he does. It makes me feel special.

– he does not like to draw or paint really.

– he can be super silly. He has a very animated face sometimes. I have randomly caught it on film and it always cracks me up. His face is so beautiful – round and full lipped with the darkest brown eyes I’ve seen and soft, olive skin. Then to see those full lips squish up to show confusion …. awww, I love it.

I would write more, but it’s way past dinner time and life is moving on and it’s getting late. I love Liam and 5 looks good on him :)