Lest you think Bauer has gotten tired of building, here is another impressive creation of his. This is Big Time now (note the tarp and the seed spreader).
He’s also good at building little houses indoors with his new Lincoln Logs. (These are more my style.)
This is the kind of stuff Bauer is up to lately. It’s about to drive me bonkers. Especially when he builds his “houses” on or around my flower chair where I like to sit and read in the evenings. But it’s the most fun thing Bauer can come up with to do around here, both inside and outside.
This is Bauer’s scary dragon face to go with his scary dragon Halloween costume, which you see is part of the house he built last night.
I don’t mind the outside ones as much, except when I want a chair to sit in and it is caught by the broom, bat, or hockey net.
I’m reading some good books lately: The Help by Kathryn Stockett which my mom recommended, and The Coconut Oil Miracle by Bruce Fife which my dad recommended.
We’ve decided on giving Cash a combination of coconut milk, almond milk, and rice milk, as opposed to the goat’s milk/rice milk combo we did for Bauer. I am still nursing Cash two times a day, but will probably drop that to once a day in the next month or so. I may keep up with the morning feeding through the end of the year depending on Cash’s interest.
Two new things I’m making in the kitchen lately are almond milk using my Vitamix, and ice cream using my juicer. TJ says he likes the almond milk better than the Almond Breeze Unsweetened we’ve been buying and the homemade version is way cheaper ($1.12 a quart vs. $2.69) and probably healthier since the only two ingredients are almonds and filtered water.
The ice cream, or “rice cream” as Bauer calls it, is to die for, and just as healthy. So far, I‘ve made just plain banana and banana/peach. I plan to try strawberry and blueberry sometime soon too. The only ingredients are the frozen fruit, and you really wouldn’t believe how smooth, creamy, and sweet the ice cream turns out. Ask my friend Brandy. I bet she’d write me a testimony if I asked her, but really all I’m doing is pushing the bananas into the juicer so the juicer gets all the credit. Bauer and TJ should get some credit for peeling and freezing close to 100 bananas for me. We were fortunate enough to end up with a whole box of bananas for free, so that’s a lot of free ice cream. We’ve even been having ice cream for breakfast instead of our usual smoothies.
“I love rice cream, and rice cream for breakfast is even better.”
Gigi came for a visit last weekend to help us celebrate Bauer’s birthday. On Friday night, we got dinner from Chipotle and had a special birthday dinner at home with Bauer. He wore his birthday crown that he got from Parents Day Out and he picked the juice box he wanted from the fridge to go along with his taco from Chipotle. After dinner, we let Bauer open his bigger gifts, a couple from us and the rest from my mom and a few other relatives who had sent gifts in the mail. His big gift from us was the Playmobil airplane, which he loved at first sight several months ago when we saw it in a store, and which he still loves 9 days later.
One of my favorite memories from her time here was on Saturday night when we sat by the fire pit in our backyard, made s’mores, and told stories we made up about dragons.
Bauer still loves dragons, always talking about how they come out at night and such. We go along with it for the most part and had hoped to get him a new SIGG water bottle with a dragon on it. We got a robot instead because that is what Whole Foods had in stock. After reading about the possible problems with the lining in the older SIGG bottles, TJ decided to trade ours in for some new ones at Whole Foods (they are being really great about doing the trade there even if you didn’t buy them there). Now TJ plans to sell the new ones so we can buy the Klean Kanteen bottles instead and just try out a different brand and style of bottle. I am all for it because I’m going to get a bigger bottle than my SIGG was!
One exciting development this past week is that Bauer is now part of an Awana club. Awana is a fun club-based program for young kids that focuses on Scripture memory. I have had an interest in Awana for some time, maybe ever since TJ worked on a video about an Awana program a few years ago. I just learned from my friend Lisa about a program at a nearby church, so Bauer will now be attending one evening a week and learning a verse a week (hopefully). We have been working on the Cubbies motto: Jesus Loves Me, and Bauer has that down pat.
Another exciting development from just today is that Cash is starting to walk, for real! He gets so happy with himself that he lays down on the floor and laughs. He also thought it was so funny last night when I brushed his teeth for the first time before he went to bed. He just laid on his back in his crib and laughed and laughed.
I have been kind of torn about the blog lately, wanting to write and not wanting to write at the same time. I have thought about doing more on Facebook and less on the blog, but I haven’t come to a conclusion yet. One thing I think I have realized and made peace with is that I am not one of those mom-bloggers that I hear so much about and once in a while have time to read. I do enjoy writing, though, about things I like and things I’m into. Which is obviously what this post has been. Maybe no one cares, but I bet my sister does.
It may not really matter to the world at large, thought Isabel, that I should feel happy rather than sad, but it matters to me, and the fact that it matters matters. (The Right Attitude to Rain, by Alexander McCall Smith)
My friend John scored me two tickets to the BMW Championship this past weekend at Cog Hill Golf Club in nearby Lemont, IL. So Bauer and I went on Friday and had a great time. It was all about seeing Tiger! On the driving range, on the chipping green, on the putting green and on the course. As Tiger was walking down the fairway on hole three after just hitting his drive, Bauer yelled out, “Let’s go Tiger!” A lot of people yell things to/at him and he seldom looks. But since this time the voice obviously came from a little boy it caught his attention and he looked over and smiled at Bauer. Pretty cool. We ended up leaving with two golf balls (an older man who worked at the tournament came up to Bauer and gave him a range ball – brand new Titleist ProV1 – and the other was between holes four and five when a player, Jason Dufner, tossed his ball to Bauer – pays to have a kid along!), one long tree limb as tall as Bauer, four acorns and some good memories. Along with this picture…
I have been wanting to get this video up since Cash’s First Birthday, but alas it is just now happening. After the crazy experience of delivering Cash in the car on the way to the hospital I wanted to make sure I remembered everything that happened. So I recorded this video in the hospital room the next day, recounting the events that took place. It has just been sitting on our computer until now, so I thought it would be fun to go back in time and relive the experience.
Cash’s Birth Story from friesencold on Vimeo.
Here are some more pictures of our last weekend of fun….also Holly’s husband Dwight is in some of these as I realized he didn’t make his debut in any of the previous pictures (probably because he was taking a good many of them).
Cashie up in the air in front of the ferris wheel.
And now getting a ride on dad's back.
And now being as curious and cute as ever.
Cash just roamin' free at the party.
Waiting for our friends to arrive.
Bauer leading the way.
At the 2nd Annual Birthday Bash 
One more family picture before the day is done.
Later that night, it was finally time to open presents!
Wow, thanks everyone!
(Ironically) from yesterday’s Frederick Buechner reading, a thought about Today:
If you were aware of how precious it is, you could hardly live through it.
God, help me be aware.
