Happy Birthday Baby D!

He sure looks happy, doesn't he?
David was less than thrilled to wake up from his nap on a seemingly ordinary Sunday afternoon, only to find his house full of strange people singing a loudly off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday" while staring at him. I'd probably cry, too.
After calming down a little, he was grudgingly willing to taste a little piece of cake.
Hey now, this isn't too bad.
Not bad at all.
Me likey cakey. When's my next birthday?
David demonstrated a similarly aloof demeanor when it came time to open his presents. Overall, he was unimpressed with the whole party experience. It's all right kid, past a certain age, nobody like birthdays anyhow.

Davy Donuts

We have decided that if we ever decide to become a Mafia family, this will be D's mob hit man name. I think it sounds pretty tough.
After watching David stuff donuts into his mouth two at a time, I have no further doubt that this is, indeed, my child.
He did pretty well with spaghetti, too. We are working with him on a better way to let us know when he is finished eating or otherwise unhappy with his food, as he still insists on throwing the offending items across the kitchen. The dog has been happy to clean up most of what he throws, and has even begun napping under D's high chair during meal times so as not to miss out on any choice offerings. She has taken a few high-velocity sippy cups to the head (hard enough to make her yelp), but has decided it's a risk worth taking for the chance at grabbing a flying hot dog.

Playing catch up

Once again, we here at Becker Bunch HQ have been busy busy busy. I'll try to catch you all up over the next few postings!

Does this look like a familiar sight? We recently had our year's supply of fire wood dumped off in our driveway. On first inspection, this year's load looked a little smaller than last year's. Trust me, it wasn't.
The Becker Bunch Heavy Lifting Crew did a bang-up job of getting all the wood sorted and stacked. The gang all worked together to get the job done in record time. As the wood pile dwindled and it looked like they were going to be able to finish the whole job before Daddy got home from work, they really kicked it into action.
They raced against the clock and the rain clouds, and finished sweeping off the driveway just before Matt got home from work. The kids had set aside one last large piece of wood that they ceremoniously lifted together to carry across the yard and stack on the pile together, their own sort of "golden spike".
They were rewarded with a trip to Friendly's for ice cream after dinner, and a sound night of sleep.

After & Before

In an attempt to pump some life into our newly-painted but hideously bland living space, I tried painting an "accent wall". I was afraid it would look about ten years out of date (accent walls are soooo early 2000's), but I was desperate for some color. Well, I was right again. It looked ten years out of date. It was just one wall, so I painted it back to the color I had just finished painting it a few weeks ago. Boooooooring.
It looks a little livelier with the addition of the "gallery wall", which is a very up-to-date decorating trend. Looking at all those baby pictures sorta reminds me of the bulletin boards outside hospital nurseries that have pictures of all the babies born there during the last year. In this case, all the babies were born by me personally over the last twelve years. What I won't do to follow a trend...
In other news, today we played everyone's favorite post-windstorm game of running through our neighbors' yards to retrieve all the junk that blew away. Lawn chairs, outdoor storage totes, the roof to the girls' playhouse, that sort of stuff. Elena here, wearing hip waders, is standing on one of the several temporary bridges that the children have put up to cross the moat that has formed around our yard. We could use some dry weather.
David has become a virtual rolling accident-mobile. He's gotten quite fast, and leaves a wake of destruction behind him wherever he goes. He has been very busy with things like pulling stuff down off tables onto his head and getting his fingers stuck in places he should not be putting them in the first place. Even with seven of us looking out for him, he manages to smack his head with alarming frequency.
He is awfully cute. Here's hoping that good judgement and better balance are in his future.
Occasionally, he tires of his duties as solo destructive force. Here he is chillaxin' in one of his favorite spots, prepared just for him courtesy of the Society of Older Sisters for the Protection of Their American Girl Dolls.

Movin' on up

After nearly two months of motoring around backwards, baby D has finally achieved forward motion. This is providential, as we could not afford to replace his transmission. He is now capable of getting into all kinds of new and wonderful trouble. Our circa-1960's house has a funky step-down living room, which until now has provided a measure of containment for the baby. Watch as he climbs up and out! We're going to be in a whole lot of trouble until he learns to master going up and down the stairs.

Whistle while you work

What you would be hearing, if you could be here with me live, is the gleeful sound of children who were offered a substantial (to them) sum of money to do a menial (to me) but necessary chore. It's amazing how the salve of cold, hard cash applied across a number of children eases the pain of hard labor.
What they are doing is removing many hundreds of nails from a big pile of salvaged oak floor boards. I had put a wanted ad on craigslist a while back looking for some old strip oak flooring to match the existing floors in our house, to put in the new addition. Amazingly, a guy contacted me who was ripping out some of the exact stuff I was looking for. We were more than happy to take it off his hands. The huge pile of nail-y wood has been taking up precious space in the garage for a few months now, while Matt and I scratched our heads over what would be the most effective way of pulling out all those nails to get the boards ready to be re-installed in our house. It turns out all we had to do was dangle a few twenty dollar bills in front of the children. They had the whole job done in a few hours!
We are now employing the same strategy to wipe out a whole bunch more big jobs around the homestead. No sooner had the children dropped their hammers, I sent them out to the back yard (aka "The Becker Mudflats") to start picking rocks out of the rough-graded muck from last fall's construction. We have a pretty bad track record when it comes to growing grass. As it stands right now, we have almost no grass at all in the back, so we're gonna have to do something. Green spray paint is starting to sound like a reasonable idea. We'll keep you posted, because there's nothing more exciting than reading about growing grass except for maybe actually watching grass grow.
David, as always, is enjoying watching other people work. He's got a great crawl-up view of the back yard from the sliding glass door.

Child's play

This plastic tub was bought to store all of Baby D's toys. So far, it has spent more time storing Renee.
D isn't particularly interested in any of his toys anyhow. He'd rather play with Daddy's cell phone and the dog's icky tennis balls and the newspaper we have stacked up to start the fire with.
I love the jeans Elena is wearing. Let's take a close look...
These pants have lived a very hard life. The knee on the right has already been patched over once, and a new hole has been worn through the patch. I'm not sure if it's worth patching these again, even though we still have one more little girl in line to wear them. By the time the kids' clothes have been outgrown by all potential wearers in the house, there's not much left holding them together but a dirt and a few threads.