I’m three days late with this post (hey, he’s the second child — he’ll get used to it) but I finally have a chance to write about Brayden’s first birthday. His Kingwell grandparents were here, along with Uncle Dave, so there were lots of people showering attention on him. I think Justin was more plugged into the whole birthday thing than his brother was, but the little guy still seemed to have a good time. The cupcake was probably the highlight of his whole day. Good stuff.

I’m starting to wonder if Brayden will ever consistently sleep through the night. That kid has caused us more sleepless nights in the last six months than Justin has in his entire life. You could argue that he’s teething, or maybe having tummy pains, but that doesn’t make it any easier. The silver lining here is that Justin never seems to hear a thing, so he snoozes soundly all night (but wakes up at 6:00 raring to go…which sucks when we only get Brayden back to sleep at 5:30).

In other news…Brayden is walking fairly well now, so the potential for mischief has increased tenfold. I’m glad he’s growing up, but I kinda wish we could go back to the days when he was immobile. He can escape from his little bouncy chair, he screams bloody murder when you put him in the playpen and I can’t figure out how I’m going to contain him when I need to do things like step outside to barbecue. Sigh. But c’est la vie, I guess.

Apparently the napping era is not quite over yet. Justin went exactly one day without a nap but has zonked out for a couple hours every afternoon since, so all’s well. I don’t take it for granted anymore, though, which I suppose is a good thing. We finally borrowed a trick from a friend of ours and turned Justin’s doorknob around so that it locks from the outside — that way we can confine him to his room at night. He still gets up at odd hours occasionally and we have to go deal with him, but at least we don’t get surprised by him crawling into bed with us at 3 a.m.

In Brayden news: he gave up the bottle this week and switched from formula to milk. He’s already taken his first steps and we expect him to really be walking any day now — yippee. I mean yes, that’s great, but he already gets into trouble every eight seconds or so and I don’t want to imagine what he’ll be into once he’s vertical full time. But at least it’ll mean I won’t have to carry him around everywhere.

I didn’t want to believe it at first, and I tried everything I could think of to keep it from happening, but finally I had to accept it: Justin no longer needs a nap. And if you force him to have one, it will significantly mess with his overnight snooze. For a long time I was blessed because both boys would go down for a nap at the same time, giving me a couple hours to myself in the middle of the day, but that’s all over now. Today was the first time we didn’t try to get him to nap, and he didn’t so much as yawn the entire day, so clearly he doesn’t need a siesta. Too bad I do. We’ll see how things play out.

Our firstborn is three years old today! The birthday party went pretty smoothly yesterday, even though Chris and I were exhausted from a difficult night. Some friends of ours brought their two little boys over to play and the kids all seemed to have a blast running around the backyard. Justin got a soccer net from his Kingwell grandparents, and his method of playing soccer was to pick up the ball, place it inside the net and then give it a little tap with his foot. Then he’d clap and be all proud of himself. OK, so maybe he’s not a future Pele in the making, but he had fun.

He also loves his new bed (especially the drawers underneath — he finds it cool that he can keep his books in there) and Sesame Street comforter, courtesy of Grandma Lee. It took a bit of effort to get him to sleep last night, but he drifted off around 8:30 and we didn’t hear a peep from him again until almost 7:00 this morning, which was AWESOME.

Happy birthday buddy!

I always get annoyed when I hear other moms complain about their kids getting up early and then find out that “early” is 7:30 a.m. These days I’m happy if Justin makes it to 6:00 (which he didn’t this morning…he came into our room at 5:20 wide awake). And it’s not like he goes to bed especially early or makes up for it with a longer afternoon nap. I’m not yet ready to consider making him give up the nap in favor of a longer overnight snooze, but I’m hoping to train him to stay in his room until 6. I seem to recall my own parents telling me I couldn’t get out of bed until the numbers on my clock said 6-3-0, so I’m not the first parent to try this technique. We’ll see how it goes. Of course, if he decides to spend the extra time belting out the alphabet song, we really won’t be any further ahead. Sigh.

Now that the snow is pretty well gone (but not the slush — a crowd of ducks was actually swimming on the local tennis court yesterday), I decided to put away the heavy coats and switch to lighter fare. Justin has a snazzy new spring jacket that comes complete with an inside pocket for a cell phone. I don’t get the apparel industry: maternity clothes don’t need pockets but a three-year-old needs cell phone storage?

Spring is here, the family’s healthy and I have somehow managed to get out of baby duty for the past couple nights (I have an awesome husband), so life is good. We’re busy planning for Justin’s birthday — it’s hard to believe he’s almost three! Everything I read says that a three-year-old will be tuned into his birthday and will want to invite his friends to a party, but Justin is a kid who really prefers to play with adults, so that makes things a little tricky. He’s stoked about having cake and ice cream, though, so I guess that’s something.

Since Brayden never stops moving, I thought he might walk sooner than his brother did, but that doesn’t look like it’ll be the case: he can cruise around holding on to furniture, but he generally prefers to crawl cause it’s faster. He might be content for months on all fours. And actually, “content” is a pretty good word for him. The guy is just always happy. Even Chris, who complains endlessly about having to get up in the middle of the night to find Brayden’s soother for him, came back to bed the other night smiling cause Brayden gave him a huge grin. I tell ya, the little guy is lucky he’s cute.

Of course I know spring will eventually come, and to be honest we’ve actually had a few days of fairly warm weather lately, but I’m getting mighty sick of the snow and the clouds and the constant dreary greyness that is winter in the Okanagan. My cabin fever isn’t as bad this year as it has been in the past (for two of the last three Februarys I was heavily pregnant) but I’m still longing for the time when we don’t need coats and boots and gloves and so on every time we leave the house. Sigh.

My winter blahs were not helped recently when both boys came down with some sort of stomach bug. Justin bounced back after a day or two, but it took Brayden a week to get his appetite back (miraculously, he never fussed or cried or even looked uncomfortable, even when he threw up — kids are weird). But everyone seems to be healthy now, just in time for the free swim at the rec centre tonight, so that’s good. For a while there I thought I was coming down with something too, and it made me realize that as much as you worry about your kids when they’re sick, life is actually a lot harder when you’re sick and they’re not. But that’s all behind us now.

We’re looking forward to (yet another) visit from my parents this week. We actually just had a round of company: my grandma and my aunt were here for a few days to play with the boys right before they got sick. Justin seems to have forgotten that he was ever shy and now befriends anyone who’s willing to throw a ball around with him. Brayden doesn’t seem to care who’s around so long as they don’t get in the way of his crawling and climbing and exploring…that boy is trouble. But he’s forever smiling and happy, so that sometimes makes up for the fact that you have to pull him away from danger every 15 seconds. He just started making “da da da da” sounds — too cute.

So how long until spring?

Things didn’t work out quite the way they were supposed to for my birthday this past weekend, but it ended up being fun nonetheless. Most of my friends bailed on the celebrations due to lack of babysitters, which was tough, but we had a good dinner with the one person who did show up (you rock Teri!) We ended up back at the house playing ‘80s trivia with her and our own babysitter once the kids were in bed. (Apparently Chris spent the better part of the ‘80s watching TV…how else could he know so many pop culture answers?) A good night overall.

Justin is so engrossed with the alphabet that he spells out every sign he sees, which was cute the first few times but is increasingly becoming annoying. He also seems to have an impressive memory – we read him a short book two or three times and he can then recite it back to us. He can count up to 40, he knows all his colors and shapes…and it makes me wonder if he’ll be bored in preschool or kindergarten. (Not that he’s heading for preschool anytime soon, as we are exactly nowhere with potty training, but still.) In the last few weeks he’s become a lot more social with the kids in his play group, which is good to see, and he rarely plays shy with new people for long anymore. Our baby is growing up!

Our other baby is doing well too. He’s amazing us with his ability to feed himself with a spoon. I put some food on the spoon and put the spoon on Brayden’s tray, and he picks it up and uses it exactly the way it’s supposed to be used. I just can’t get over that. Brayden’s had some challenging nights lately, where he wakes up at 2 or 3 a.m. and has to be rocked back to sleep, but hey: this too shall pass, right?

The neat freak in me is completely opposed to letting my kids make a mess, but I know it’s important for Brayden to learn to feed himself, so I’ve been handing him a spoon and letting him do what he will. He’s actually not too bad about getting the food into his mouth, and he’s just so darn proud of himself when he can do it all on his own. For me, it’s painful but strangely liberating to sit back and watch him learn. (This didn’t happen with His Highness Prince Justin, who even now is totally content to have someone else do the work for him.) At age eight months, Brayden can even drink from a cup independently, which amazes us because Justin absolutely refused to hold his own cup until he was about 14 months old. To each his own, I guess.