Baby Man Turns 1

Baby Daniel about a week old.

It's been a whole year?  He was so little, when he was born, he had big hands, was a little jaundiced and he didn't open his eyes much... quite the surprise coming 2 weeks early on us instead of a week late.  We were so unprepared and then I was tired for the birth, but it was a good one anyway and Grandma and Grandpa were in town to take care of the big brothers and meet him right away.  

We really weren't sure how to celebrate his birthday... Grandma and Grandpa are out of town on their own vacation and the other side of the family is busy getting ready to celebrate Uncle Mike's graduation from University of Phoenix and his 30th birthday.  Naturally we kept putting off deciding what to do, knowing that it makes little difference to a 1 year old how you celebrate his birthday.  

The final verdict- celebrate Clemson style.  We needed to make a trip to Clemson anyway to pick up some licensed merchandise and we weren't going to be able to get the game at home.  The first plan was to find some friends in Clemson and watch the game at someone's house.  Then Friday night we snagged tickets for less than half face value and figured we'd just go to the game :)  

Daddy wanted to know why no one else got chocolate.

Tailgating downtown - boys love their Chic-fil-a.

Happy Birthday Boy during the whole 1st half

 We had a great time in Clemson.  We met up with 2 of Cullen's college roommates, saw the band, made our purchases, and had fun watching the game.  That "most exciting 25 seconds in college football" thing still gets my heart going fast.  Daniel was happy and smiley and thoroughly enjoyed the whole 1st half of the game- then it was nap time and he was tired... I walked him to sleep way up at the top, but my back was killing me, so I couldn't be still enough, long enough for  him.  Cullen took a turn walking him and he survived the 2nd half- thankfully, so did our Tigers!

After the game as we headed out of the stadium Blaise provided quite a bit of entertainment for us.  As Cullen and I were loading the stroller and buckling Daniel and Michael in he stood towards the middle of the walkway and held out his hand for high fives, big grin and all.  I can't resist putting a picture of that here too.

Blaise high-5ing

By the time we got back to our car and out of town and stopped for dinner... we didn't make it home early enough to do cake and presents.  No worries though- we can always have cake for breakfast right?  Cullen's Papa would enthusiastically agree, so that's what we did.  Presents first though, because the big brothers couldn't wait any longer on that one.

Daniel hitting his present.

Michael helped a little and so did Blaise.

Oh look, now everyone is playing with it.  I think I convinced them to let Daniel play with it a couple of times today.

Smiley baby.

 Finally breakfast... they ate their eggs quite quickly.  Wisely, I decided to strip him down to his diaper before giving him his football cake.   Please ignore the boogers.

First tastes...

Yeah, this is good.  

Oh, wait, I don't think I really want it on my hands...

When can I have more of that?

This required a bath, which Daniel couldn't be more thrilled about.

Daniel's other birthday present- his big chair from Grandma and Grandpa came this week.

Mostly pictures today, but that takes less time to read anyway right?  At a year, Daniel is still the happiest most content of our children.  His smile still lights up the room.  He does know how to hold onto things tightly, in order to prevent them being grabbed by someone and he holds his own around his brothers.  He's always ready to get right into whatever they are doing.  I've seen him climb into the pile when they are wrestling and crawl right up and knock down their towers.  

Daniel seems younger than his brothers did at a year... I have a few theories.  #1- he's supposed to be the baby, so he better stay young.  #2- he's not walking yet?!  He cruises and will walk holding onto your hand or a toy.  He stands up, but there too, he still likes to hold on... guesses as to when he'll take his first steps?  #3- he's only had 1 haircut, compared to the 4-6 his brothers had had by their 1st birthdays.  #4- still nursing regularly, where everyone else had weaned or was very close.  It wouldn't be a bad thing if we could keep that up through flu season.

I think he's pretty average sized, around 30 inches and probably just a tiny bit more than 20lbs.  Things he loves and does often/well include being with his brothers, being outside, the bath, the toilet- specifically flushing it to hear the sound, waking up early, eating peas, smiling for the camera, pushing cars, banging on things, playing with blocks... yes, he's a boy.  

We are excited to see his little personality develop more and more over the coming year and are so grateful to God for blessing our family with our smiley Baby Man.  We pray that Daniel would know Jesus intimately at a young age and that God would use him powerfully for the kingdom.

Soccer

Soccer season is officially over, now we can go back to having dinner on Tuesday nights with only the typical amount of chaos.  Closing day was supposed to be October 29th, but got delayed due to weather until yesterday.  Both Scott and Blaise played this fall with Victory Sports Outreach, which is a really great league that I can't say enough good things about. (Check them out at www.victorysportsoutreach.org.)  Teams practice once a week for an hour, with a devotion afterwards, then they play Saturday mornings with a devotion beforehand, going through the colors of the wordless book - Gold stands for God's Glory, Black/Darkness stands for sin, Red stands for Jesus' blood, White stands for Cleansing, and Green stands for GROW- Go to God in Prayer, Read the Bible, Obey, Witness.

Blaise played in the 4K league for the Flames- the red team.  Blaise had a blast. His whole team was such a great group of good natured little boys.  They really had fun playing and enjoyed themselves.  Blaise liked playing goalie and was pretty good at it too.  He did a fair job running up the field and chasing the ball as well.  Cullen got to be the assistant coach, whenever he wasn't traveling for work.

The Flames

Blaise

Blaise in action, running with the ball.

Scott's 5K team was the Chargers and they were the green team- which was perfect for Scott.  His favorite color is green, in case you didn't know that.  Scott had a fun season.  His team only had 5 players, so they all got to play for the entire duration of every game.  They started the season pretty strong... although one player was missing for the first game and then one other player had butterflies and refused to play at all.  I filled in for the coach that day, since he was out of town, and told the team they would just have to play without a goalie and keep the ball at the other end of the field.  They were pretty excited about that idea and did a really great job.  I whispered to Scott that if the other team did get away with the ball, he would have to outrun them and be the goalie- he was thrilled.  He ran so hard that game- refusing to even stop for a water break.   For the record he had at least 4 saves during that game.  Scott seems to be a defender, or at least he understands a few things about defense: if the ball gets near your own goal, kick it out of bounds quickly.  He's really come a long way with soccer this fall and is willing to get in there and play.  Most importantly, he's come a long way with sportsmanship.  He really hates to lose.  The Chargers won their first 4 games this season, then lost the last 3.  He refused to talk about the first loss at all.  During the 2nd loss, he got knocked down (it was a pretty rough team they were playing) and he didn't want to go back in the game because they were losing and he knew it.  Yesterday, at the closer, they were losing and he still had a smile on his face and was having a good time.  One thing I found entertaining... soccer in the mind of a 5 year old is really about food.  There was one Saturday when no one brought snack for the team (do the math, there are 5 players and 7 games), Scott was not the only one who had a minor melt-down after the game, when the kids realized there was no snack.  Again, yesterday, as we were going to the game Scott says from the backseat, "This is a really fun soccer day, do you know why?"  We have a few guesses, which are all wrong.  He finally tells us, "Today we get to eat lunch at soccer!"

The Chargers

Scott

Scott going for a goal.

 The fan section... was a little more limited this season.  Closing day was rained out and postponed, but that was the game that all the grandparents were going to be able to come to.  Nana and Papa still made it to one game early on and of course, the brothers and I were always on the sideline cheering them on.  Michael can't wait for his turn to play.  I have no idea what we're going to do next year, when he is still too young to play.

Getting ready to watch Blaise's game... which hasn't started because the players are all at the devotion in the back of the picture, so I have no idea what they are actually watching at this point.

Scott's games were during nap time... Daniel FINALLY learned to sleep in a carrier!

Now for some thoughts regarding children's sports...  I've been thinking about why we sign our kids up for sports.  I love sports- just in case you didn't already know that about me.  That might be reason number 1.  Other reasons include: the kids are interested in playing, either asking to play or saying yes when asked if they would like to, for our family to be involved in the community, making friends, to learn sportsmanship, to have fun, to try something new or learn more about the particular sport...  For us, it has really very little to do with how good they are at a particular sport.  Thinking about this I realize that maybe this applies to other areas of life as well.

As a kid I was never very musically gifted... okay, even now I'm not musically gifted.  My mom made me take piano lessons in 1st and 2nd grade.  Later I wanted to play saxophone (I don't remember exactly why, but I remember it was somehow trendy and probably a stupid reason) and I was told I had no ear for music and it was a waste of everyone's time to even let me try.  This was 5th grade.  Fast forward to 8th grade.  My sister started clarinet.  I still wanted to try saxophone, so my mom got me private lessons- outside of school, because they still thought I couldn't play.  In less than 3 months I was playing in the 7th grade band.  Those piano lessons from 1st grade helped a lot, I already knew how to read music.  No, I never did much with it- played in the school band for 3 years and continued private lessons for another year beyond that.  Yes, I still play occasionally, mostly hymns and Christmas music (although I did download music for Tiger Rag and the Clemson Alma Mater this fall) and only for my kids.

Back to sports... play for fun and the other positive things you'll get out of it rather than the pride.

Football.  Did you know that I played Pop Warner Football when I was in the 7th grade.  Full pads football with the boys.  I was a lineman, on both sides of the ball.  Played linebacker at least once too.  I don't have daughters, and I'm not judging my parents, but I would NEVER allow my daughter to play organized tackle football like that- looking back and weighing the positive things about it, I'm drawing a blank and I'm pretty sure I just wanted to play for prideful reasons.

Scott's been talking about playing football and he can't wait til he can play flag football.  Now that it's my son that's talking about playing football.... the very physical and dangerous nature of it has become much more real.  I noticed that there were a fair number of girls on the flag football team that practiced after our soccer team and I wondered where I would draw the line.  Most of the concerns I would have with tackle football are not relevant to flag football in the early grades.

Next book... Happy 1st Birthday Daniel- coming to a blog near you,  hopefully on Saturday, unless I'm too busy celebrating with him :)