Beach fun with the Mastersons

We had a really nice afternoon at the beach with our new bffs, the Mastersons. George is the guy that got Raph his new job (though he denies this it's true.) They have three boys, who remind Raph of the Cesere brothers, who we lived with in Hawaii. They also recently bought my dreamhouse. They're pretty cool.

These Two

I'm pretty glad Makili is a good sleeper and has yet to wake up because of Remick's screaming. I'm pretty glad Remick came into this world not minding Makili's aggressive love, because Makili wants to kiss him and hug him and smother him with hugs all the time, especially when I'm holding him. When Remick was born, I had a terribly difficult time watching Makili adjust to Remick's new presence. It absolutely broke my heart to think about hurting him and in fact, the day of my sudden C-section, I HAD to drive home (and ended up being late) to hug Makili before it happened. I cried the whole way home about how I hadn't read to him the night before. And afterward, Makili did pretty well, but he did lose some of his normal joy for a while and it absolutely crushed me to watch and endure and not be able to fix. Thinking about it now makes me cry.
But we've come around the other side of that corner and I am so excited to watch these two grow up together, as brothers. My aunt Suzanne once told me that she was excited to raise sisters, and I now know how she felt. There does seem to be some magical bond between brothers (or sisters) that is exciting to watch unfold. It will be a joy of my life to watch how these two souls who are quite different already share this early part of their lives. And then I can hope it lasts.
They are different. Makili was an INTENSE baby, crying pretty much all the time until he was few months old, and then being fairly predictable and dare I say "easy?" He slept well from the moment he came home, never napped well, always ate well. He didn't seem very affected by noise or sound ever. As an infant he never seemed to care for me of anyone else in particular, except that I had the milk bags. Remick, on the other hand, came out mellow but has turned out to be a baby of extremes. He is either smiling and cooing endlessly or screaming his bloody head off! He is an unpredictable sleeper, though he has gotten a little better with the swing (last night sucked A LOT though). He loves me over anyone else and Raph frequently complains that he will do the exact same thing as me and get screams and I get smiles. He is far more sensitive to sound, looking for me as soon as he hears my voice, and loving music. Both these guys loved to be one the move, and swaddled. There were both so aware and alert very early. But I daresay from the getgo I feel their personalities are so different. I can't wait to see if my hunches are right...

So BUSY

I can barely find the time to update this blog any more. Though I am on the computer frequently, I'm usually nursing, and it is hard to type a post one handed. I have a lot to say too. My babies are growing and changing so fast, Raph started a new job, a new season is upon us and we've been on the move a lot. So much going on. Above are a few shots from summer with some of the people that we've been blessed to spend time with. Summer is winding down. I'm wearing fleece and sock and Raph is lighting the wood stove for the first time. Remick is wrapped in fleece too and sleeping sweetly while Makili runs his little wooden dump truck over his body. We sat on the beach this afternoon with friends, eating pizza as the sun went down. Good times.

My big little guy.

This kid is growing so fast.
He's already
working
so hard trying to get his little hands
onto objects that he sees. It is fun
to watch
his knitted brow
concentrate
on an object as his little fingers
spastically grab.

He learned to get those little fists into his mouth.
He love
things in his mouth.
My arm. My hand.
His hand.
And to rub his eyes when he's tired.

He smiles so BIG and fully.
I am the center of his universe. Scary, huh.
For so long. He smiles at me for so long.
Big and full and sweeping
that smile.

He likes to be swaddled for sleep.
In the swing.
He grunts
and fidgets, but most nights sleeps pretty well.

He's getting hair!
A soft fur.

He likes it when you tickle his cheek.
Sing songs.
Walk around.
Rock.
This kid likes to move.
We should have know when we chose a name with the initials
RPM.

I'm smitten.

Life With a Two-Year-Old

Makili has been quite a little pistol lately. While language abilities continue to skyrocket, apparently so has his level of mischief. For example, I walked outside the other day and he says to me with a smile, "Mom, I pick all pears!" I look at our little pear tree and sure enough he had picked every pear he could reach, which was most of them.

Raph left him alone in the bath for like two minutes and he squeezed out the entire bulk quantity of baby soap into the tub.

While he goes outside by himself all the time and knows clearly where he's allowed to go (like not in the road), he's been testing those boundaries too. We obviously don't leave him outside alone for too long, but if we're gathering things together to put into the car or whatever, he frequently goes outside for a little while as he waits. Anyway, twice in the last week, a woman (separate women, sadly) has stopped her car and come to the door to tell us that Makili was near the road. "Parent of the year!" So now we have a Makili-can't go-outside0-without-an-adult rule.

He has also taken EVERY book off the book shelf a few times lately.

He's also gotten tall enough to climb up and get those Annie's bunnies off the shelf and come close to eating a whole box when I'm not looking.

So I can't wait to see what boundary he pushes this week.

Chuck the chunk

So I have been determined! Determined I tell you to get to a healthier body weight following Remick's birth. I had just started running a good distance when the morning sickness hit and I didn't want to get out of bed, and I was actually disappointed to put off my "training" at that time. But Remick is here and plenty healthy and fat (in the 90th percentile for weight! and 77th for length!) so I've started exercising in earnest. I started playing soccer again a month after he was born and when I got the go ahead from the doctor (soccer doesn't count right?) at six weeks, I started running. I now aspire to some day (many days away from now) run a half marathon!

I know some of you who know me well are at this point saying, "Blayne? Run more than a block? Ha! She hates to run! Like a LOT!" And you people are very right, but at some point last year I decided that I didn't have a lot of options in terms of what I could do for exercise on a regular basis with small children. I love soccer, but once a week isn't enough exercise. I love to swim, but don't want to pay for a Y membership and don't really want to be covered in chlorine daily or freezing cold in a 7mm wetsuit swimming in the ocean. (We do have a local guy who swims in Chauncey Creek nearby EVERY day of the year. May I remind you all that I live in Maine! I'm not that committed!) So I turned to running.

When I broke through the psychological barrier of running more than say a half mile, I found I could run a good distance. No half marathon yet, but I can run for at least 40 minutes at a time so far (I haven't actually tried more). I don't run fast or with good form, but I can do it. And it is helping considerably with the Chuck the Chunk campaign (thanks Laurie Good for introducing me to the title of the campaign). My goal is to hit my pre-Makili weight. I won't scare anyone with actual numbers, but I am already only 8 pounds away. (I was more like 17 pounds away a month ago!) And though I'm losing weight I have already had to come to term with the fact that there has been some major redistribution and even when I hit my goal, I won't look like I did pre-Makili. Which is okay. I'm at the moment just excited about running, which is fun.

Big So Fast

Reunion

We recently attended a "family reunion" for the Tobey side of Raph's family which would be his paternal grandmother's side of the family. They are the family members who have inhabited Kittery Maine (our town) since 1640's, but because Raph's grandmother died fairly young and was one of 10 children we don't actually know many of the local relatives, which turns out to be half the town. In fact we showed up to the reunion and the first people we saw were people I knew from Music Together! So pretty much the rule is that Makili and Remick aren't allowed to date anyone until they move away from Maine!

Meeting the people was really cool, but even cooler to me was the location. The reunion was held at an old barn a few miles from our house. It is owned by a woman who was a friend and then a caretaker for Raymond Pritchard, the last of a family of farmers who owned the land. Makili's great great great grandfather, Skylar Tobey, worked on the farm and eventually became a caretaker himself. He lived in a small shack on the land, which the owner cleaned out. She left it almost exactly as she thinks it was left when he died, complete with the petrified milk and jam (still good) on the table. His old books are in there and tools and various other things. It was super cool. And then she has also cleaned out the huge barn which belonged to the Pritchard family. There are before pictures which show what a complete dump the place used to be, but you'd never guess that now. It was so cool. Full of interesting antiques that she had found inside and with a great sense of history just swallowing you up. I loved it. Here are a few pictures of a few of the people, and a few of the things inside...

I'm 31

My mom will be wierded out probably when she reads this, but my whole life I never thought I'd be thirty. I have no idea why, but I thought I'd die before I hit 30. When I made it to 30, I decided maybe it was getting out of 30 that was the problem. As of today, I made it. I'm officially 31. I got to dig potatoes with Makili, play soccer with Raph in the Sant Bani alumni soccer game, and eat dinner at Ann's house. I got to pick flowers from my garden and run my 2.5 mile loop this morning and I'm hoping a for a little dip in the lake before the day is done. Maybe even under moonlight with my sweetheart. Could definitely be worse.

Bounty

Not only have we been getting great bounty from the garden of late (Makili is a great potato digger and no he hasn't been picking any tomatoes cause there are none to pick!) but we've been getting a good share of hilarious two-year old language lately. I love listening to him learn to speak our language. Today I heard him use a pronoun for his nasty doll, Dirty Wanda (a story for another day.) So what if he called her "he." Everyone else in the house is a boy, so I wasn't surprised he said, "he in here!" instead of she. He will also tell me "I'm nursing" when he sits on the couch with Dirty Wanda face down in his lap. And yes it probably is wrong of me to laugh inside about how it looks like Dirty Wanda is going down on him rather than nursing, but I can't help but laughing about it, especially since her name is Dirty Wanda. God, I love hearing him say Dirty Wanda - it is so cute.

I backed our Jeep into our new Saab last week (the new Saab that we had just paid over $300 to fix right after we bought it). There is really no excuse for my stupidity except to say that well I was trying to hold a pacifier in Remick's mouth, and looking for Makili so I didn't hit him, and the car was full of stinking trash, and the mirror wasn't adjusted because Raph had driven last, but anyway I sort of slammed into the Saab, costing yet more money since Saab parts are made of gold apparently. I of course immediately started crying, and Makili ran over yelling "I fix it, mommy, I fix it!"

The other day he broke my necklace just as I was explaining to him not to pull on it because it would break. Damn two year olds do exactly what you tell them not to do! I was mad and pouted and told him I was sad. He said "fix it mommy." When I told him I couldn't fix it, he said matter-of-factly, "buy a new one." I told him I didn't have any money and asked him if he had any money. He said no, and quickly added "Grammy has money. Grammy buy new one."

Gosh there have been so many lately. I've got to write them down sooner so I don't forget them, like I am right now!

Some of our favorite places/people, PART II

The Fourth Annual Blackpoint Chowder Fest in Rhode Island. Another breath-taking beautiful place with great weather and terrific friends that I don't get to see enough. Boy I miss them.