I've truly been remiss in my updates for the last few months but taking care of two little guys, running and try to grow a company, and rehabbing a basement has pretty well removed any concept of freetime from my life. Thankfully, the basement is pretty much done so that should make things more manageable now.

The boys are both doing great. Gavin continues to be such an easy going and fun baby. He's quick to smile back when smiled at and is figuring out his hands and feet more and more everyday. Declan is very much a two year old. He's working hard to differentiate his identity from that of his parents. Basically, that means he's saying "No" a lot and doing the opposite of what we tell him. He's still wonderful and well behaved overall, but there are certainly times where he strains your patience a bit. It is so fun watching him grow up.

Yesterday, we were watching TV. Declan hopped off the couch. Walked into the kitchen. We heard him open the fridge.. a few things were shuffled... close the fridge. Then he came back into the room with his sippy-cup and a smile. He took a few chugs off the sippy cup, climbed back up on the couch and continued watching TV. And Jen and I knew he had just reached the next level.

That was a truly rare case where Declan said nothing. Most of the time at home, he's extremely vocal. His pronunciation is excellent. He can say almost anything though 3 syllable words still tend to throw him... Banana is "Baanna". Repition is the standard. Often you can see the gears turning as he tries to make sure he's phrasing, emphasising, pronunciating, or describing things right. Sometimes though, it's just to get what he wants. "Dekan needs his binkie, Dekan needs his binkie, Dekan needs his binkie, ...."

To be continued...

Through the many months of pregnancy and even before that, we've done a lot of thinking and talking about, "what's it going to be like to be a family of four?" Declan can be quite a handful now as he's being a proper toddler and "asserting his independence" and "defining himself separate from his parents." When we thought back on when Declan was an infant and how he somehow managed to keep us quite busy despite the fact that he didn't do much besides eat, sleep, and poo.

So far, it's been pretty much a cakewalk. Jen still doesn't have complete mobility, but then we're used to that  as she's pretty much the same as the last few months of pregnancy. Gavin truly does sleep 23 hours a day like they say, and during the day he's generally fine with sleeping whereever we put him. Sometimes he wants to be carried but he's so light that's no big deal. And we no longer have illusions about infants being particularly fragile so we can shift our hold on him as needed to accomplish whatever it is we need to do...

Welp, we've gone an' done it again. Mini-us-#2 is on the way. I'm quite a bit late in announcing this one here on the blog (seems the other one keeps me quite busy) but we're due in late February. And as I'm sure you can't quite clearly tell the gender from the attached photo, no need to reveal that.

Declan's 2nd Halloween. Funny how much he liked all the scary stuff around the house. He really enjoyed the ghoul hanging from the foyer light along with our graveyard and the pumpkins.

This was his first year really trick or treating. At first he seemed confused by it all but then he started getting the hang of it. He seemed to prefer getting to climb people's stairs over getting candy. Once he got going he didn't like it when the routine was interupted: go up sidewalk, climb stairs, ring doorbell, stare at candy bowl until candy is placed in plastic pumpkin, say bye, go down stairs, repeat. There were a couple houses he just wanted to stay and climb the stairs over and over. Both had boys slightly older than him who wanted to give him candy every time he came up. There were a couple times he worked up the nerve to grab the candy himself but then he didn't seem to get the "only a couple pieces" concept.

Zoe joined us for the last couple houses and then we went back to our house and gave out candy with Grandma and Grandpa Capstick and Brian.

Used to be, Declan would wake up around 5 or 6 AM every morning, I'd go get him, bring him to our bed and Jen would feed him and we'd all go back to sleep until 7:30 or so... Not sure whether it's because it's getting light so much earlier or that he's just older, but he's stopped going back to sleep now. And so the last couple mornings, Declan and I have been getting up early... and it's the best thing I've done in a long time.

Yesterday, we went for a bike ride around Forest Park, which I haven't done in a surprisingly long time. Today, we went hiking in the amazing Oak Savanna in Forest Park and then went to the Market in the Loop and stocked up on fresh fruit. Declan eats an amazing amount of fruit. We go through a cantalope, a pineapple, a big bag of grapes, and lots more every 4 days or so.

Walking through the savanna this morning reminded me of my mornings when I used to work at Miniwanca and how much I miss it. I just feel so much more connected and balanced when I'm there; spending all day every day outdoors, exercising constantly, interacting with and leading groups of open-minded folks who question everything, discussing philosophy and spirituality and the true meat of life. To be able to spend two months a year in that world was such a blessing. It grounded me and gave me a chance to see my life from another perspective and examine my path.

Slaving away at the office

Eric Berger was foolish enough to sign on as employee number two at my Web Development company, Efficion Consulting. Eric's been friends with Jen and me for years which is great since he's working out of Efficion's world headquarters (aka, the middle bedroom). In addition to administering regular footrubs to the other Efficion employee's (that's me), Eric will be doing HTML/CSS, PHP, DotNetNuke, ASP.NET, and lots of other things that probably won't mean much to most people but result in great websites.

Jen and I have really enjoyed letting Declan's hair pretty much determine it's own path. Even during the times where his hair seemed to be an imperfect combination of a mullet, a Donald Trump-esce comb-over, and the oh-so-flattering rat-tail, he still managed to be exceedingly cute.

We came to the realization that it might just be time to impose our structures upon nature's whim when folks, upon first meeting Declan, referred to him as a her. And while he brushed it off like it didn't even phase him, it was the final cue indicating that perhaps, the time had arrived.

We had just gotten him to take a couple steps between Jen and me two Sundays ago and then, this Sunday, Declan just started walking all over the place. And now he's unstoppable. Course he still can't stand up by himself (unless sitting on a big step). But once he's standing he's quite good unless he catches a foot on something, guess we'll have a lot more scrapes and bruises in the coming weeks.

It's a lot more work to keep up with him now and he can get himself into trouble but at least if we put him on his back, he's stuck there... hasn't seemed to connect the fact that he can role from his back to his tummy and get up from there... but that goes back to hating being on his tummy.

So it's not that I've been working too much lately to write up a new entry on Declan's various exploits, he just hasn't been producing... he hasn't done one cute thing since December.

Well, okay maybe one or two things, ... I don't even think he was scooting properly last time I wrote and he's been doing that forever. He's quite a hit with his preferred choice of mobility... you see, Declan hates "tummy-time" where he's supposed to happily play on his stomach and in the process, develop key muscles and learn to crawl. When we put Declan on his stomach, he usually bursts out crying immediately. After several minutes of this, when he determines that were not going to "save him", he usually lies his head on the ground, fusses, and waits for it to be over, and pretty much refuses to try crawling, playing, rolling over, or anything else productive.

But Declan's very curious and loves to explore and so he figured out how to get around without all that ridiculous crawling stuff, instead he sticks his leg out, digs his heal in, and pulls with his leg, switches legs and repeats... (see a scooting video)

Lots of new pics up on my Picasa Web Album.