Evan through the years: Birth Day (part 1 and part 2), one, two, three, four, five, six, seven (oops, that one doesn’t exist?), eight

Happy birthday to my firstborn, who is somehow nine years old today even though I could have sworn he was born just last week. Now he’s NINE.

For the last nine years I have made an average of 253 mistakes a day, used my angry voice, yelled, threatened, failed to follow through, was incredibly inconsistent, offer the wrong kind of praise, didn’t enforce bedtimes, let him get away with bad behavior, couldn’t figure out how to make him eat most vegetables and pretended I didn’t notice he was playing on his tablet longer than he was supposed to. And yet somehow, Evan is still a wonderful kid. He’s sensitive and deeply empathetic – he cried during both Coco and Guardians of the Gallaxy Vol 2. He can be hesitant to try new things but he isn’t ashamed to be himself. He wants nothing more than to be treated as a responsible, trustworthy child who is allowed to stay home by himself for 30 minutes at a time. He loves small kids and babies and big kids and adults and everyone in between. He still fully believes in Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny.

There is so much more I am going to do wrong when it comes to raising this child, but let’s hope heaps and heaps of love is enough to balance all those mistakes. This is my first time raising a 9-year-old, it’s pretty scary and wonderful. Happy Birthday Evan!

Caroline is Seven!

Her favorite things are: cheer, dance, fashion, drawing, writing, reading, Wonder Woman, cooking, baking, her brothers, her friends, unicorns, glitter, Hamilton and making videos.

She is very, very smart, a wonderful friend, kind to everyone and makes me coffee in the morning. Caroline plans to have a streak of purple added to her hair over winter vacation. She cannot wait until she is old enough to officially babysit.

Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter.

We actually found out we were having a boy a looooooooooong time ago. I had some extra genetic testing done around 12 weeks because my first tests were “borderline”. That testing includes the option to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. As much as I loved being surprised when Linc was born (I also REALLY loved not having to have the following conversations with a million people: Are you happy it’s a boy? Do you have a name? Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll have a girl next time. Well you can always try again…) I felt strongly that I wanted to find out this time. Partly because I was expecting it to be a girl and I didn’t want to go through my whole pregnancy convinced I was right and have to deal with my feelings when I was already dealing with birth hormones, and partly because if it WAS a boy I could get rid of a TON of girl clothes. Also, I already have 3 kids and I’m pretty busy on a regular basis. I am definitely not spending a ton of time sitting quietly and deeply connecting to the new life I’m growing. Knowing it’s a boy and thinking of him as a HIM has definitely helped me feel more in touch with this baby.

Also, we have NO BOY NAMES, so it’s good we have so much time to think about it. All suggestions welcome.

Please note: Evan is not actually sad it is a boy. After the video, he started laughing and said “I was just kidding. As long as Caroline doesn’t get to be the boss of me.”

More photos from our reveal (plus some fun in the orchard):

p.s. Don’t you love my orchard? It’s FULL of treasures.

I feel like my head might explode with all the things I am trying to remember. Wednesday morning I realized at 7:30 am it was Caroline’s turn to bring snack to school, so we drove to the grocery store for Goldfish crackers and milk, drove home, put Evan on the bus, dropped Caroline off at school, drove down to the beach for a Christmas photo shoot, drove home to meet Evan’s half-day bus (since the LAST half day I totally forgot him – Mother Of The DECADE!!), threw him in the car, drove back to Caroline’s school for pick up, drove to the post office, drove to BJ’s for essentials (Diet Coke, cheese and milk), then finally stopped at Moe’s for lunch. LUNCH. Because all of that was before 12:30 pm.

The rest of this week is also half-days which means more racing around to make it to pick up, plus my parent-teacher conference on Friday. I have two newborn clients I’m just waiting to become outside babies so I can schedule their sessions, a handful of families to do Christmas photos for, a cool press event in NYC on Monday and a husband who is about to go into shift work that will last probably the rest of the year. ALL OF 2013. I’m not sure I’ll survive it with my sanity, let alone with a house that doesn’t look like a tornado hit it, because that’s what it looks like now. Like a storm of boxes and My Little Ponies and couches rained down on my family room. I made the mistake of building Evan a “city” out of empty Amazon boxes and now I can’t throw any of them away or he freaks out. Smooth move, genius. Let’s turn trash into something we have to keep!

Because posts about how I am SO BUSY and don’t have time to blog are boring, I will make it up to you with a video of Caroline from a couple weekends ago. The kids are obsessed with the Cups song and E is pretty proud of himself for knowing how to do it, so this actually happens a lot around here. And don’t try to tell her she’s doing it wrong, she won’t believe you.

I have a very busy and exciting weekend planned – right after I get my upstairs bathroom cleaned for my house guest because YIKES – so today I leave you with vintage video of 8 month old Baby Evan (remember when he was Baby Evan? Awwwww!).

And before you call me a bad person for letting him torture the cat like that, remember she has four perfectly good and working legs and could WALK AWAY at any point. Maybe I should have taught her about wise choices.