Wesley Wrote His Name!

Tonight Wesley was doodling with these huge one foot long pencils he got in a gift bag at a Christmas party last night. He said, "I'm going to write my name." And he did! He did the "W" and the "E" without any help and then he used my example to do the rest. We were amazed! (Granted, he did spell it Wesely…) That's a candy cane on the bottom left. :)

Curtis is ONE!

Here's the birthday boy before getting extremely chocolatey.

Laughing with Granddad.

We had a Very Hungry Caterpillar party since Target had cute cups/plates/napkins that kept grabbing my attention every time I would go in the store.

All of our food was things the caterpillar ate through in the book. We opted out of pickles (pretty sure they wouldn't get eaten), salami and cherry pie, but had everything else!

Mom brought in her artistic talent to provide the butterfly and she did the cool dots on the bottom of the cake board.

The cupcake cake! It made me pretty happy. (I got the idea online.)

Singing to Curtis. He seemed to really like that part. :)

…and this part:

Once he got cleaned up, he opened presents.

I love this little face. He was playing with the tissue paper.

After I cleaned everything up, I just had to round my little pom-pom caterpillars up for one more picture.

Here's Wesley enjoying the rocking chair the next morning before heading out for church.

Another successful birthday party! We loved having some family be able to come.

We love you Curtis T! We can't believe you're ONE!!

Other October Memories

Curtis likes to keep Wesley company during his swims in the tub.

Curtis really was pushing Wesley around in this little wagon. The wagon goes a little faster for Curtis' tastes for now, but adding a good 34 pounds of cargo helps to slow it down to almost perfect speed! Not sure about the face Wesley is making.

Wesley is enjoying being a helper. Well, until he gets bored.

John Mark calls this "tailgating." Yes, that is a George Foreman grill. It stinks up the house for a few days if you use it inside...

Spiderman (sort of) and Curtis T., M.D.

It kind of bothered John Mark at first that Wesley was going to be Spiderman this year because his Spiderman costume had a cape. He quickly got over that when he saw how much Wesley enjoyed wearing it this year. My Dad and sister had brought this cape back from Mexico last year. Wesley liked wearing it then, but he didn't want to keep it on long. This year he was ready. He wore it during the whole trick-or-treating experience without a complaint! I think the picture above is quite a heroic pose. :)

And then we had Dr. Curtis. Yes, we recycled Wesley's scrub pants from his second Halloween and added a little stethoscope shirt and hat (that I made last night!). Here are a few shots of the hat that I was pretty proud of. The beeper made an appearance again this year as well.

Wesley got the hang of the procedure before too long and was quick to point out which houses had their porch lights on as we walked down the streets.
Curtis T. chilled in the stroller without a peep.

We joined some church friends in their neighborhood for trick-or-treating. It was fun to watch all of the little ones run around together. A very fun time indeed.

Reminder to Vote

"House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr. , R-Norwalk, pictured standing, far right, speaks while colleagues Rep. Barbara Lambert, D-Milford and Rep. Jack F. Hennessy, D-Bridgeport, play solitaire Monday evening as the House convened to vote on a new budget. (AP)"

The guy sitting in the row in front of these two appears to be on Facebook, and the guy behind Hennessy is checking out the baseball scores.

Update: This picture is from the Connecticut House, not the US House.

New Wheels

These first two are of Wesley on his actual birthday. John Mark assembled his new tricycle from Golly and Granddad, and Wesley was thrilled to take it for a ride around the block. I think it was quite a workout for his little body!

Here's Curtis getting ready for an adventure to the mailbox.

Sweet Wesley

(Status post haircut!)

Curtis' 10-month shots

I can't seem to resist taking pictures of him when he's in a plain white onesie, as seen in this post. :)

Are First & Second Kings historically reliable?

Kenneth A. Kitchen:

It cannot well be the free creation of some much later writer's imagination that just happens (miraculously!) to coincide almost throughout with the data then preserved only in documents buried inaccessibly in the ruin mounds of Assyrian cities long since abandoned and largely lost to view. (On the Reliability of the Old Testament p. 29, 32)

Wesley's 3rd Birthday!

Wesley has been pretty excited about Thomas the Train the last few months, and when I asked him about three months ago what kind of cake he would want for his third birthday, he assuredly told me he would want a Thomas cake. His passion for Thomas seems to have waned just a bit the last few weeks as he has taken notice of things like Cars, Berenstain Bears and Pooh and Tigger, but I kept reminding him how exciting it was going to be to have a Thomas cake. It paid off. His face when he saw his cake was worth it all! Lela helped me carry out my mission and it was mostly a success.

My Mimi's birthday is August 30th and Wesley's is the 31st, so we had a double celebration...Mimi turned 89 and Wesley 3. They both seemed to have a ball!

We had quite a turn out. The party was at my parents' house so we had Misha, Gin-Gin, Lela (from California!), Mimi, Aunt Debbie, Eric, Audra, and John Mark's parents, Golly and Granddad, in attendance.

Curtis enjoyed snuggling with Audra :)

The gift that was the biggest hit was probably a tricycle from Golly and Granddad. He said, "Well, look at that!" when he realized what it was. I wonder who he's been watching open gifts to generate such a reaction!