Happy Birthday, Evan!

It's hard to believe that my first born is already four! After witnessing his friends' birthdays and Caleb's birthday (and having some memory of his own birthday a year ago), Evan was so excited for his birthday. I even got it together enough to throw him a birthday party, the first one I've done for any of the kids. My parents and in-laws were coming into town for Asher's baby blessing the weekend of Halloween, so I thought I'd kill three birds with one stone and have Evan's party be a Halloween party the day before Halloween. At Evan's request, I made a train cake.

(I made it a haunted train cake to go with the Halloween theme).

He also begged to have a pinata for his birthday. He was so cute about it and I have such fond memories of always having pinatas at my birthday parties growing up, that I just couldn't say no. I missed out on the Halloween pinatas, but I was able to find a dinosaur one at Target that went well enough with the Halloween spirit.

We invited all the kids from Evan's Primary class and they all had a great time hitting the pinata. Ultimately, though, Scott had to do the honors to actually get any candy out. Here are Evan and Caleb going at it with my fondant rolling pin:





And here's Asher enjoying the party with Grandma.

And a slideshow of photos:


Evan had a great time at his party and is already talking about next year's birthday. A week after we had his party was his real birthday, and he got a balloon, cake (much less elaborate than for his party) and presents, all of which he was really excited about.

Cake
Presents
Riding his new bike.

Evan really is quite the kid. Most of the time he's happy and helpful. The rest of the time he's doing everything within his power to drive us out of our minds. He's always full of energy and is endlessly curious and inquisitive. He talks nonstop. He loves to tease and be teased. He loves trains (still), garbage trucks, and excavators. He loves wrestling with his daddy. Evan is such a good big brother and loves to play with Caleb and to pat Asher on the head. If Asher is crying, Evan often tries to help him feel better. I really can't believe what a big boy he is. (Big enough that Scott and I can no longer say things around him if we don't want him to hear and internalize everything we say.) We think he's pretty great! He brings great happiness, joy, and excitement to our family. Happy birthday!

Caleb Turns 2!

Hard as it is for me to believe, Caleb turned two today! We celebrated by playing at the playground this morning, getting balloons, and then ordering pizza for dinner, followed by cake and present opening. Unfortunately, between taking care of Evan and Caleb and nursing Asher a good fifteen times today, we didn't quite get to the cake and presents until a little late.

And I didn't have time to work on the cake as much as I wanted, so of course I was unhappy with it, but at least Caleb's an easy boy to please when it comes to cake.

He didn't much like us singing to him, though. He was all smiles until we started to sing and then he got this look on his face:

He was pretty excited about all his presents, though not as excited as Evan (who is also nearly beside himself with excitement for his own birthday in a couple of weeks). I found a fabulous deal on a wagon at a Mothers of Multiples sale that was one of Caleb's presents tonight, and he refused to go to bed until he got a ride in it.

Caleb is such a vibrant, happy boy. He calls himself Ca-bub and always wants to do anything Evan is doing. He's incredibly cute and sweet with his baby brother. He loves throwing and kicking balls, swinging at the playground, his blankie and (sadly) paci, Curious George, trains, playing in water, and giving big hugs. He hates getting dressed, not getting to do things himself ("doing it" he says whenever he wants to do something by himself), and not getting his way. He's also getting to be quite the chatter-box. Caleb brings such joy to our home and we love him so much!

Asher!

After only 4 1/2 weeks, we are thrilled to announce the arrival of Asher Alfred McEuen (Alfred after my both my grandfathers) on September 9, 2009 at 8:01am. (He was due a week-and-a-half before that, but we think he just wanted to wait for a cool birth date -- 9/9/9!) He weighed in at 8lbs, 7oz and was 21" long.

I've been meaning to write this post for the last 4 1/2 weeks, but I wanted to include the birth story with it (since I'm sure all of you are dying to read it), but I've come to the conclusion that if I wait for the birth story to be written, I might not get this post up until Asher is six months old. So for now, long story short, I was pretty convinced that Asher was never going to be born and I was going to be pregnant forever. He was later than both my other two had been. On Tuesday September 8th I went in for a non-stress test since Asher was more than a week past his EDD (estimated due date). Everything looked great, though, and I asked the midwife to strip my membranes to see it that would jump start labor. It did, almost immediately. After about thirteen hours of labor (definitely my most difficult so far) Asher was born in water. I was the first one to touch him. It was awesome! And the water was amazing.

Asher's healthy and (mostly) happy. He sleeps pretty well and is starting to smile now, which is so fun to see.

His big brothers have been wonderful with him and show lots of love and concern
for him.

I'm doing well also. This is the easiest recovery I've had, though adjusting to three is difficult at times. Still, we wouldn't change it!

Yes, I am still alive

and yes, I do still intend to have a blog. One that gets updated more often than every four months. So, very briefly (or at least as brief as I am capable of being), here's what's been going on with us:
-- Baby boy McEuen #3 is locked, loaded, and ready to make his appearance some time in the next 2 1/2 weeks or so (He's due two weeks from yesterday). No name as of yet. We'll decide after he's born.
-- In May, Scott and I went to Paris and Spain sans children and had a wonderful time.
-- I will officially be a stay-at-home-mom as of August 31st.
-- Scott has been working this summer on his PhD project, a needleless injection system (think Star Trek), and will be starting up with classes and TA-ing next month. We don't expect to see him a whole lot.
-- Evan is 3.75 years old, very excited about his birthday, turning into quite the big boy, and starting part-time preschool next month.
-- Caleb will be 2 in October, is getting pretty talkative, is easily frustrated, loves to run around after his big brother, loves Curious George, is quite the mama's boy, and will most likely not be a fan of his little brother when he does finally make his appearance.
-- For the 4th of July we were able to go to the Boston Pops rehearsal concert (Neil Diamond was the guest performer -- so cool to hear him sing Sweet Caroline in Boston to a bunch of Red Sox fans), and it was a really fun, if exhausting, experience.
-- Later in July the boys and I spent a week visiting McEuen family in Utah and a week visiting Mangum family in San Diego (Kara and her boys flew in, but unfortunately we didn't get to see Michelle, who was bumming around Europe). We had a great time (except for the flights), and the boys absolutley loved playing with their cousins. We also got to see the lovely Morgan and her boys in Vegas, which was so much fun! (See pictures below.)
-- Our camera died a few months ago. Right around the 4th of July we finally bought a new one. Last week, I wore it into the lake. (You know that voice in your head that says, "Hey stupid, you're on your way to go swimming. Don't put the camera in your pocket."? You should really listen to it.) So the camera issues are part of the reason the blog hasn't been updated more.
-- I'm sure there's more, but that's all for now....

Evan, Caleb, and cousin Hunter at the beach (Hunter came with Aunt Shelly to help watch the boys while we were in Europe).

Scott and me in Paris

Evan and Andrew.

Morgan's boys and my boys, each set born w/in a few months of each other at most (our uteruses have a psychic connection....)

Evan and Caleb playing doctor with daddy.

With the McEuen cousins (Caleb not so happy)

Evan playing baseball w/Uncle Bryce. Loved it.

At the 4th of July rehearsal concert.

Evan at the 4th of July rehearsal conert.

Bringing Balance to the Force

As many of you know, I grew up in a family of all girls. My mom is from a family of all girls and, well, my dad is the only male in a family otherwise made up of girls. That's 10 girls to 1 boy in the last two generations. Until along came Evan and, shortly thereafter, Andrew. Score: 10 girls, 3 boys in 3 generations. Next came Caleb and Grant. Score: 10 girls, 5 boys. Scott says we're restoring balance to the force.

We had an ultra-sound on Wednesday and had the opportunity to find out the gender of the next player of Mangum gender roulette. Scott had been thinking girl, while I was doing my best not to think about it at all, since whatever I guess inevitably turns out to be wrong. We (or really, just I) had thought about not finding out the gender this time, but in the end we decided to go ahead and ask the doctor to tell us. Score: 10 girls, 6 boys. We are, of course, very excited. But as we were leaving the ultra-sound I also told Scott that the likelihood of us having four kids just increased significantly.

Evan is very excited. He asks every night to feel the baby. Here he is with his BFF Colby in the most adorable picture ever! (Courtesy of Julie, since the last time I uploaded photos to my computer was after Christmas.)

Caleb is confused and can't figure out why I keep pointing to my tummy and saying something about a baby, especially when he lifts my shirt up but doesn't see any baby. Now he sometimes points to his tummy and says baby. Here's a fairly recent picture of him as well, again courtesy of Julie.

I've Noticed an Interesting Phenomenon*

I know a lot of people about our age who began the odyssey of parenthood about the same time as us, or even a little before. Some of these friends live near us in Boston; many are people I keep in touch with on-line (mostly through blog reading). Some are even people I don't know personally at all but who are friends of friends or family of friends. But almost all of them share something in common: they have two kids. Not one, not three. Two. Even people who had their first two pretty close together seem to have stopped (or stopped to take a breather) at two.

Once I noticed this pattern, I decided to observe it more closely. I decided to watch to see whether, at some point, there would be a massive burst of gestation. While recognizing that some members of this "Two's Company" group doubtless planned to become permanent members (and others, sadly, might be being forced into membership by circumstances), I felt certain that many were just resting for a bit before making the next jump. And so I waited. I waited to see who would take the plunge and tell the rest of us that the water was fine and the jump wasn't as far as it seemed. (Or that we should run far, far away from the ledge and wait awhile before approaching it again.)

Well, my friends, very few have yet to jump. But when they're ready to, we'll be there to tell them the water is fine and the fall was fun. Or maybe, come the beginning of September, we'll tell them to run.

*Disclaimer: I hope that anyone reading this blog would know me well enough to know that I do not mean any of this as a judgment about when other people should be having kids or how many they should have, but in case you don't, let me reiterate that point. I have enough trouble figuring out for us when we should have our kids and how many we should have, without trying to decide that for anyone else!

Cakes

I don't feel like working. I'm tired but it's not quite late enough to go to bed. So I am blogging instead. And probably not about anything any of you care to read. Over the last few years I've gotten into baking, and more recently cake baking and somewhat sporadic attempts at cake decorating. I'm really excited because I have a very sweet husband who got me private cake decorating lessons for Christmas. Now that Scott is done with Quals I should actually have time to take the class. So here are my before pictures of cakes I've made recently, and then after my class I'll post pictures of what my cakes look like after.

Baby shower cake.

Scott's birthday cake (yummier than it looks).

Caleb's birthday cake (this is what happens when the buttercream frosting under the fondant is too soft)

Caleb's birthday cake again.


Another baby shower cake.