Magnus Glenn is One Year Old!

Another month has come and gone and our little boy is one whole year old…

Magnus is doing so many new things…  he stands up, cruises, will walk along next to you if you hold his hand, and climbs stairs like a demon.  Seriously.  If he sees the gate to the stairs open at all, he makes a bee-line for the staircase…  he just loves to climb.  He’s even been standing alone for short periods of time…  primarily as a result of his burning desire to possess the ornaments hanging from the lower boughs of the Christmas tree.

He’s also a fan of feeding himself.  Going so far as to pluck an unfinished bottle off the table and sit down to drink it right there on the floor.  Magnus loves eggs, all manner of bread, meat, and fish, but unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be too big of a vegetable or fruit fan.  He also seemed to enjoy his birthday cake, but that may have just been because his Auntie Mary Ann was feeding it to him.  Magnus loves, loves, women… especially his aunties.  And his Auntie Janice is responsible for the fact that Magnus thinks all kisses should be open-mouthed.

Magnus is unbelievably vocal, imitating all manner of sounds quite well, and not hesitating to cry when his sister takes something from him that he wants.  Hunter does not appreciate taking time-outs because her brother cries when she’s near him, but, well, being a big sister is her cross to bear.

At 26 pounds, Magnus is in the 90th percentile for weight and is “well above the 98th percentile” for height at 35.25 inches long.  He is a big healthy boy, and at his check-up he protested more about having his ears examined than he did about his shots.

Our little boy isn’t very little anymore, and he’s growing way too fast.  The next thing we know, he’ll be driving…

Funny Grandma

On Monday, I was driving over to my brother-in-law’s house with Hunter and Magnus and their Grandmother in the jeep.  We were pulling up to a red light and I said, “What’s this Hunter?”

“A red light!” she yelled enthusiastically.

“And what does a red light mean?”

“Stop!” she yelled.

But Grandma Gloriann leaned over toward me and said, “Hookers!”

And now I know where her son gets it…  HA!

Birthday Party

Sunday we had a party to celebrate Magnus’s first birthday.  The party was well-attended by family and friends, though Mangus had more interest in the balloons than he had in anything else.  Except for maybe his cake:

He was a little miffed when it disappeared from his tray…

And here he is swinging in the back yard with Audry June sharing the swing behind him:

Of course you can’t really see Audry June because she is eclipsed by our gigantic son.

It was a good day…

Papa’s Sleigh

My husband is a talented man.  In fact, one might go so far as to say that given the time and the resources, he could build anything.  Last week, he randomly brings home a sleigh that he cut from a piece of metal on his plasma cutter.  And I ask you, who does that?

Then over the weekend, he and Hunter went to the hobby shop and picked up some model paint.

Michael painted the sleigh with three coats of red and the runners with three coats of brown.  Then, much to his credit, he allowed his daughter to decorate the sleigh any way she wished.  O’ Happy Christmas!

Funny Hunter

The other night, Hunter dressed up in her Sleeping Beauty dress and climbed into the oven of her her play kitchen.  Picture by Michael:

Princess…  it’s what’s for dinner.

And unrelated:

The other day I came home early from school to find Carrie, our nanny, getting Hunter and Magnus out of the bathtub.  They’d been to the park and Hunter had “fallen” (jumped, more like…) into some mud, so a bath was in order.  I left Carrie to wrestle with Magnus while I took Hunter into her room to get her dressed.

I gave Hunter some clothes and she sat down on the edge of her bed to get dressed.  From behind me, I hear Carrie:

“She can dress herself?”  I turn to see Carrie standing in the doorway, one hand on one hip, eyebrows raised in rueful surprise.

“Yes, she can…”  I said, looking back at Hunter who was smiling sheepishly as she pulled her pants up over one leg, then the other.

“Huh…”

Funny Hunter…  working over her nanny.

Christmas Cookies

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Hunter and I prepared and froze several varieties of cookie dough in preparation for our semi-annual cookie party.  My sister, my niece, and a few friends of mine from school came over last Wednesday and we drank wine, I mean baked cookies.

We baked walnut cream cheese cookies, black pepper chocolate cookies, citrus cornmeal shortbread, Nieman Marcus cookies, and lots and lots of gingerbread.

Five bottles of wine and many, many cookies.  Oh, and Magnus is officially cruising:

Altogether an excellent afternoon!

Trimming the Tree

Momma and Papa and Hunter put ornaments on the tree…

…and Magnus took them off!

O’ Christmas Tree!

Finding the perfect Christmas tree is a difficult task and is something to be taken very seriously.  First one must choose the proper vendor.  A proper vendor will have lots of things to do and plenty of room to run around:

A proper vendor will also have plenty of good places to hide from one’s parents:

And finally, when it begins to rain, a proper vendor will have a place for people to get in out of the elements.

We did not find the proper vendor…  but, well, we still managed to find a nice tree.

Thanksgiving Wrap-up

We spent Thanksgiving Day with my grandparents in San Jacinto.

Grandma made pies and brought bread and Janice and I brought out the rest of the meal.  (F.Y.I.: the smoked turkey was amazing.  Magnus was a huge fan of Grandma Cynthia’s (Janice’s mother-in-law) kitchen sink stuffing:

Magnus ate fistful after fistful of an adult-sized portion of the homemade stuffing laced with onion, celery, olives, and creamed corn.  So far, Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday.

The day after Thanksgiving we headed to Michael’s sister’s house in Arizona where I failed to take a single picture.  The kids handled the car-ride beautifully, even the hour-and-a-half we spent parked on Interstate 10 just east of Coachella Valley.

Of course, traveling with small children is always an adventure, and later that night, Hunter was a little zombie who wanted to stay at Auntie Shannon’s house “all day!” and Magnus was decidedly unhappy about being woken up and transported to the hotel in the middle of the night.  He cried for over an hour… to the delight of the other people staying in the hotel, I’m sure.

The funniest part of the trip was Michael’s determination to take advantage of the spectacular Black Friday sale Wal-Mart was having on giant TVs.  He had planned to get the TV the morning before we left for Arizona…  he did his research, measured the alcove, and made his decision.  Then he realized that the TV he wanted did not go on sale until Saturday.  Reluctantly, he abandoned his plan.

I remembered from Shannon’s directions that we had to pass a Wal-Mart to get to our hotel and Michael began to hatch a new plan… he would buy the TV in Arizona and then transport it back to California.  We would put it in the back seat of the Versa, under the kids’ feet.  (Right…)

So at about 12:30am, in the middle of Magnus’s crying jag, Michael departed the hotel for Wal-Mart.  It was Saturday, after all, the TV should be on sale.  Less than an hour later he returned, giant 42″ TV box in tow, and related a great story about how he couldn’t close the door to the Versa with the TV in the back seat so he drove through the parking lot to the hotel while holding the door closed.

Luckily, Michael’s brother and his  family had room in the mini-van and were willing to transport the purchase across state lines…

Here he is, with his TV:

And the TV is great…  action movies look a lot less stupid on a large screen.  Ha.

File this under…

…WTF:

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