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This month we celebrated two birthdays!

Lily, just turned ONE!  I can’t even believe it’s been a whole year since she was in my belly. Just blows my mind how fast time goes by these days. Last year Lily’s due date was Maddox’s 2nd birthday. So of course this year we had two birthdays to celebrate back to back. They each had their own day with special activities and gifts, then we had one big party on the weekend in between their special days. Maddox is now a 3 year old! Wow.

Rainbow cakes and rainbow parties have been kind of big in the world of the internet this past year.  So of course we had to up the ante and make not one 6 layer rainbow cake, but rather two 12 layer rainbow cakes! This of course was the feat of the year for this dear old mom. Baking 24 different colored layers, while planning a party, tending to out-of-country house guests, and caring for 2 children took a bit of work. But I did it!  Of course I couldn’t have done it without the help of some very special people (you know who you are!), thank you!

So to the best part… Cake photos!

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Finally I have some downtime, and of course the first thing I do is look at photos of the kids. Crazy that. Anyway, I found tons of photos that deserve a blog posting, so I’ll do that when I can. In the meantime here are some cute photos of Maddox holding Lily when she was 5 1/2 months old.

Larva of the White-lined sphinx moth, Hyles lineate

[photos by John Kashuba]

This is Maddox’s “smile”.

If you ask him to “smile” when taking his picture, this is what you get.  nice eh?!

[Fort Funston - Dog Beach]

Maddox loves helping me in the kitchen. Whenever I go in to cook he says “help”, and “up” (because he wants up on the counter). I’ve been NOT buying a learning tower or similar kid platform product. People say its totally amazing and I should get one, but I just can’t get over the idea of a big ladder type furniture thing living in my kitchen 24/7. Enough of the house has already been taken over by kid products, not my kitchen too!

I usually just plop him on the counter and we get to cookin’. For apple pie makin’, we brought in his little blue table.  It worked out pretty well and he stayed a bit cleaner.

In this photo he is taking the stickers off the apples.  It bothers me that some apples have stickers – even these organic ones.  Yuck to stickers on fruit.

Honestly Maddox made a great deal of the pie himself (with much guidance).  He is getting better at measuring (scooping), not spilling wet ingredients, not eating too much of the ingredients as they go in the bowl, stirring, and opening packages. To prepare the apples we have a handy gadget that peels, cores, and slices all by cranking a handle – so Maddox is able to help with this step too.

For a year now, I’ve had a ‘Stash of Stashes’ in our side table drawer. They were from The Pretty Little Things Club. The other day Maddox pulled them out and decided it was time to for the family to wear moustaches. We were instantly on board – who doesn’t love an impromptu moustache party??

Next time Lily will have to get in on the moustache action! Because she was only a 2 weeks old, we decided to let it slide this time.

The theme for Maddox’s 2nd Birthday Party was generally monkey, banana, yellow. As with many parties, the crafting before hand is the most fun part. I love the idea of little party goers having some prize or special gift to take home with them to remember the day. For two year olds, crayons and coloring seemed the best idea.

I made monkey shaped crayons and each kid was given 2 different colors wrapped in a little celo bag with yellow Japanese paper tape. For the crayons I melted down Crayola brand crayons (I heard other brands are no good for this sort of thing), and used a Monkey shaped plastic chocolate mold. I knew I wanted to make shaped crayons for about a year now so I’ve been scouring Craigslist and hounding parents for their used crayons.  This search method was a big fail. Back to school time at Target was the real key. I found Crayola 24 count boxed crayons for 25¢ each.  What a deal.  So to keep things easy I bought 24 boxes.  Then I sorted them all by color into each of the 24 boxes.

Maddox helped me to peel the paper off the crayons and break them into small pieces (his favorite part). Strangely, he hasn’t taken it upon himself to break up all of his crayons since this project. We did lose a few in the early days, but he knows the difference now between craft project and coloring.

I melted the crayon pieces in baby food jars partially submerged in a pot of boiling water, then poured the melted wax into the molds and popped them in the freezer. The only cracking problems I had were when I used pieces from the “found” Crayola crayons. So my advice is to stick with brand new crayons and don’t mix.

The coloring books I made using a lightweight yellow card stock. Using our printer, I added the image of the Monkey from a quick internet search for Monkey Coloring Pages or something like that. The inside paper I cut to size, then sewed together with the cover using my sewing machine. (I didn’t want the little kids to have access to staples, and the sewing worked really well.) I then rounded the corners of all the pages and the covers and smacked on a strip of brown book binding tape. Voila! Toss in some monkey stickers and cup shaped like a monkey head and you’ve got yourself a little monkey party loot!

Last weekend we were up in Grass Valley, CA for the wedding of Jake & Kristin – Wahoo! Very exciting indeed. If ever two were meant to be together… The family and friends were fantastic, the ceremony was beautiful, and the food was delicious. I love that the entire event was held outdoors. When the sun went down and the music went up, the night became electric. The joy in the air was tangible. Oh how I adore weddings!

[Maddox's wedding outfit]

[Eating a pretzel]

[During the ceremony with a fan]

Maddox had a blast at the wedding. He enjoyed playing with all of the kids, watching fish in the pond, gathering flowers and sticks, playing with toy princesses, staying up late enough to see the moon, experiencing his first night rain. He even picked out a special flower for his friend Riley. He is turning into quite the little gentleman.

[Getting ready to deliver a special flower]

After much deliberation, Maddox picked out the perfect flower for Riley.  He had one flower in each pocket, one for her and one for him.  It was so cute!  Though even his tantrums these days are pretty cute. What is that?  Maybe its my hormones, but I can’t help but to think he is the greatest thing in the entire universe.

This is pretty great stuff too:

Congratulations you guys!