Trick question

Q:When a two year old asks you for spinach - what do you do?

A:High-five yourself for raising such an awesome kid and give it to him (of course).

Thomas Likes Spinach! from Kenta Hood on Vimeo.

Oh, well. I knew that when he asked for it, it was a little too good to be true.



But he actually did ingest some. I swear.

When he is good, he is very, very good, but when he is bad....

I love my boy. He is a cutie pie and super-sweet. But some days - oh, my. Watch out. Now that he is officially two, tantrums have been kicked up a notch. Or ten. Take last Friday for example. Thomas wanted to help me make some bread. Basically he just wanted to lick flour off the counter. He was making a huge mess, but I didn't mind because he was HAPPY!!! When I tried to get a picture of the glorious, floury mess, things started out okay:

Until I asked him to "say cheese!". After that simple request, this was all I got:




*No children were harmed in the documentation of this tantrum

*Sigh*. I wish I could understand what was going on inside his brain a little better. Then maybe our days would be filled with far fewer frustrating moments like this.

Maybe I'm a bad mom for taking pictures of my tantruming child, but honestly - being a few days removed from this event - I can laugh now at just how utterly absurd most of his tantrums are. And maybe some day Thomas can laugh at himself, too.

And I promise next time I write something about Thomas, it will be filled with pictures of a cheerful, compliant child (nevermind that that child will probably be Abby.....)

Today I am grateful....

...that at least one of my children has decided to take a nap.

Please don't ask what the other child decided to do instead. I don't think there is enough room on the internetz to recount all the mischief.

Semi-happy Birthday

A few weeks ago, Thomas celebrated his 2nd birthday. I was really hoping that he would be having one of his "good days" (i.e. a day where he has been sent to timeout less than 10 times),but unfortunately, most of the day ended up being pretty bad. An appropriate way to usher in the "terrible twos", I suppose.

I started a family tradition of taking pictures of the birthday boy/girl first thing in the morning when I see them. Thomas is not a morning person, as was evident in his "good morning" birthday picture on his first birthday


As it turned out, the passage of an entire year did nothing to improve his morning disposition. But I still tried to get some pictures of the birthday boy in all of his "I-just-woke-up-get-that-camera-out-of-my-face" glory.


Did I mention that I can't take one-handed pictures? They are always blurry.

I thought maybe after I got Thomas dressed, he would be feeling a bit more chipper.

Nope. Aaaaand....

..definitely nope. (These were actually two-handed pictures. Credit Thomas's supersonic limb flailing for the blurriness).

The day wasn't entirely bad. There was a happy moment when he ate strawberries and ham (pronounced "HAIM") for breakfast.

Not something we usually eat for breakfast, but it was his birthday, so hey - anything goes.


My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think after breakfast there were a few timeouts and some tantrums. I was really hoping that lunch and a nice long nap would snap him out of it:





Negativo.

Thomas isn't the only one who should be blamed for having a crummy day. Let's not forget how I baked the birthday cake and thought, "Hmmmm, we've had this mix for awhile and saw this:


As my niece pointed out, Thomas's birthday cake was actually older than him. Niiiiiiice. So I debated as to whether or not I should throw the cake away and get a new, unexpired one or just take my chances with the possibly harmful one. But I really didn't want to drag the kids outside to go to the store (I LOATHE going to the grocery store for ONE thing, plus it was pouring down rain all day), so I consulted the internetz, which then had me worried that my family would die from eating the cake because of possible mold spores. So I called my mom, who assured me that she fed us expired stuff all the time and none of us died (that I'm aware of...). So I decided to just feed us the expired cake. I slapped some white buttercream frosting on it and it didn't look a day over 3 months from its expiration date. And we are all still alive. Win.

Anyway...back to the actual birthday day. Kenta came home and things immediately got better. Thomas helped make "happy birthday pizza" and all was right with the world again.




Then it was time for cake and a skype date with Grandma and Grandpa:


Thomas received a much-anticipated birthday gift of TRAINS!!!!!! We didn't take any pictures (just a really long video) of the train opening, but believe me - he was stoked.

So now that Thomas has trains to play with, his life is complete and he has nothing more to complain about and we are living happily ever after. The End.













Hahahahaha!!!! Just kidding. Learning how to mother a toddler is quite an adventure. We have good days and bad days, but even on the worst of days, there is always a good moment or two with Li'l T.

Happy Birthday, little dude - we sure do love you!!

Blessed

Ahhh...I'm sitting here listening to my Ray Lamontagne Pandora station while the kids are both upstairs napping. It's been a nice peaceful time for me to reflect on how truly blessed I am. It's also a time to reflect on Abigail's baby blessing and how that happened over a month ago and I still have not posted anything about it (or any pictures).

She was blessed on a cold Sunday at the end of January. We were nervous about our parents getting into town that week because there were snowstorms like every other day in the month of January. Thankfully, everyone made it into town for the big day:

We were lucky enough to have Jiichan and Baachan

AND Grandma and Grandpa there for the special occasion.

My mom came a week early to help out with the kids and make Abigail's dress. It was beautiful dress for a beautiful day!

I've been scrolling through all the photos and there are some doozies. I guess that's what happens when you try and get two little kids to smile for four cameras after sitting through an hour and a half of church. Here are the best outtakes:
Abigail's had enough of the paparazzi gettin' all up in her face
Don't get too distracted by my laughing face - check out Thomas's expression
Thankfully he was in good spirits...
...unlike his little sister.
He's always loving on her.

A lovely day, made even more memorable by a lovely blessing from Kenta to Abigail. It's pretty amazing to think about all the potential these little people have when they come join us here on earth. Abigail was blessed to accomplish many great things in her life. It was an important reminder to me of what a tremendous responsibility we have as parents to teach our children (as the Primary songs says) to "walk in the light". I sometimes feel like I'm not worthy of such a task, but then I realize that I need my children to teach me important things (patience, selflessness, unconditional love, etc.), just as they need me to teach them. And here I am getting all teared up about it. I blame the Pandora station (and the fact that I love my kids so much, it makes me a little verklempt to talk about how special they are to me).

Here's some up close pictures of Abby in her dress:





Oh, my. Those eyes! I'm so in love.

Two months!

To celebrate Abigail's two months on earth (and to satisfy the demands for "more pictures!!"), I am FINALLY going to post some pictures from our, uh, recent photo shoot. Okay. Fine. The pictures were taken when she was a week old, so they really aren't all that recent. But they are cute. So here they are:






















Thanks to Therese Plant for being our awesome photographer! We so appreciate you letting us come down for a bonus shoot, due to Abby's unwillingness to sleep long enough for us to get sleepy shots the first time around! They turned out great and we are so happy to have this fleeting moment documented in an artistic and professional way.


Interesting and completely unrelated fact: Blogger apparently hates me. Or likes to watch me suffer. It seriously just took an hour to post these pictures, due to some glitch that wouldn't allow me to post more than two (occasionally three) pictures at once. The things I do for Abigail's adoring fans. Now I need some ice cream.