ZumwaltOhana.com

To Kindergarten...and Beyond!

Well, today was Koa's first day of school.  Wasn't he just born!?  How is he already our big kindergartner!?  He's going to Hopkins Elementary School here in Sherwood, which is close enough to ride our bikes from our house.  So we figure we'll ride our bikes back and forth as long as the weather's good, and then when it starts raining for the rest of the year, he can take the bus.  Koa's excited about both.  So for his first day of school we rode our bikes.  This district does half-day kindergarten, and he's in the PM class, so he goes from 11:40 to 2:15.

Koa had Orientation 2 days ago which was an abbreviated day to let him see what Kindergarten is going to be like.  We called it his "Practice Day".  We got his backpack all set and found where to lock up his bike and where his classroom was located in the school.  I (Zak) was actually not there to drop Koa off for Practice Day (I was in school myself), but Kathy reports that Koa was about 30 feet in front leading the way towards his room.  No timidity in that boy!

For the last couple days we've been discussing with him various topics in preparation for Kindergarten, and school life in general.  Most of these things we've been working on for years now, so whenever we broached the subject again this time Koa would say, "I KNOW that already, Dad!"  We think maybe he does.  He knows that not only is he not to be a bully, but that we expect him to defend those who can't defend themselves against bullies.  To stand with the weaker kids.  He knows that bullies aren't bad kids or even intend to be mean, but that they maybe haven't had a good example of how to treat other people.  He needs to be a good example to bullies.  He knows that the only people allowed to pick him up from school are Mom, Dad, and Uncle Wes - if anyone else tries to pick him up, he's to tell a teacher.  And he knows that his pistole is for him alone - no one else is allowed to see it or touch it.  If someone tries he's to, tell a teacher.  I think those were the big things we've been preparing him with.

So, all 5 of us rode our bikes (well, Caz and Arwen rode in the trailer) over to Koa's school to take him to his first day of Kindergarten.  Ms. Thompson's policy is that everyone lines up outside the classroom against the wall and then she'll let them all in together.  So when we got there Koa stood in his line with his new little classmates, and we stood in our line on the opposite wall with the rest of the parents dropping their kids off for the first time.  When Ms. Thompson came out she welcomed everyone, gave the kids some instructions on what they were to do once they got in, and then they all started filing towards the door.  But just as Koa was about to go inside, he looked over at us, stopped, and told Ms. Thompson that he had to give his brother a hug real quick!  She chuckled and said that was fine, so he jumped out of line, ran over to Caz and gave him a big hug, gave me a quick hug, then ran into his classroom!

A few (short) hours later we peddled back over to Koa's school to pick him up.  When we got there, his class was already outside walking towards the queue of buses.  When Koa saw us, he jumped out of line and ran over to leave with us, but was stopped by his teacher's aid.  Apparently the default is to put Koa on his bus; not to have us pick him up.  So now we know that if we're going to pick Koa up on our bikes in the afternoon, we need to send a note in the morning saying as much.  Tomorrow Koa will ride the bus back and forth just to see what that experience is like.  He's pretty excited about it.  Luckily, the bus stops right here at our house!

From what we've been able to get out of Koa, he enjoyed his first day.  He didn't miss us at all, he says.  He made one new friend (Bradley) and had 2 storytimes on the carpet.  They began working on a class picnic basket that when completed (based on their behavior), they will use to go outside on a class picnic.  He learned a new song (something about 8 pigs in a row) and had a fruit snack.  Koa told us that his fruit snack had corn syrup in it, but he decided that if we were there with him, we would have allowed him to choose for himself if he was going to eat it or not.  So he chose to eat it!  Also, the class's "person of the day" taught them the letter of the day (his teacher dressed as a magician and pulled a motorcycle, a mug, and a moose out of her magic hat.  Can you guess what the letter of the day was!?  

You can see the handful of pictures we took today in Koa's photo album.  Now we'll see what Koa's second day of Kindergarten brings...

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Bi-ped!

Happy Birthday, Baby Sister!

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year...what a whirlwind year it has been!! And what a joy getting to know our sweet Arwen! She is an incredible little person! Her smiles can light up a room and they come easily and often. She loves hanging out with her big brothers and is just now trying to say their names. Sometimes she just defaults to "browa", though. It is so delightful to hear the three of them laughing together! Of course, sometimes they are too rough and there are tears instead, but for the most part they are pretty, well sort of, careful.  But she is pretty tough so they usually get by just fine.

Zak was in Great Lakes, IL for three weeks playing Navy and missed Arwen's actual birthday by three days, so we decided not to celebrate until he returned. On the day of her birthday we just celebrated by watching the video from the day of her birth when the boys first got to meet her. That was so fun to see their reactions again and to see just how much they have changed in this year. When Zak returned we spent one evening celebrating as a family and opening gifts together (you can see her sweet little vintage rocking horse which she loves in the picture above!), then the next Sunday we invited friends to join us for Sunday Parkways immediately followed by her party at a playground. There were a few mishaps and disasters along the way, but it turned out to be a great party with friends both new and old from Sherwood and Portland! We enjoyed ice cream cones together and sang "Happy Birthday" as well as her favorite song, "Skinnamarinkado". She loved the coconut ice cream and had a ball playing on the playground. She even climbed up the slide and turned around and came back down all by herself for the first time! And she was delighted by it!

Afterward we all rode our bikes around the park a bit more (well, Arwen rode in the trailer) and then we went to our favorite wings place (Fire on the Mountain).  Usually Arwen loves chewing on the chicken bones, but on this occasion she was crashed out the entire time! I guess we wore her out!

You can see pictures of Arwen's first birthday in her photo album.

ZumwaltOhana - The Suburban Years

So it turns out we had to move!  When the Navy moved us into our Multnomah University campus house in the Summer of 2008, we hoped that the Navy would move us out a couple years later after I (Zak) finished my degree and went back into active duty.  It was a long shot, but a possibility, that we wouldn't have to pay or go through the hassle of moving ourselves during the time that I was out of the military.  Unfortunately that's not going to happen since we received notice at the end of May that we had to be moved out of our house by July 1st!

When we had our meeting with the university's housing office, they informed us that they would be demolishing our house, as well as 5 other houses on our street, so they could begin construction on new campus townhouses due to be open next year.  As compensation for being inconvenienced on such short notice (5 weeks), they offered us a 3 bedroom unit in their existing campus townhouses.  However, it is smaller than our 4 bedroom house, does not have a yard or garage, does not have washer/dryer hook-ups (there's a community laundry room), and most importantly, is part of a claustrophobic Christian commune with no non-Christian interaction.  And the rent is higher!  So we said "no thanks" and began looking for a place to live off-campus.

Leaving has proven to be difficult for us.  Kathy had just planted her garden a couple weeks before we found out we had to leave.  We had become really good friends with some of our neighbors on the other side of the street.  Our house has been a food co-op drop for the past 2 years.  We've thrown 2 block parties on our street and for a while even discussed starting a community garden!  We had already toured the local school, talked with the principle and Koa's kindergarten teachers, and registered him for the Fall.  We're close to our doctor/mid-wife, Wes & Jessi, and other long-time friends.  So it's not easy to be leaving even though we've only been here for 3 years.  More than the house, we'll miss the relationships we've intentionally been developing in that part of Portland.

What we discovered as soon as we began looking for a new place to live was that our rent would be doubling, regardless of whether we stayed somewhere in Portland or moved down to Sherwood to be a part of our church's community.  If we stayed in Portland our new house would have to be within a 10 minute bike-ride of the campus so we wouldn't have to drive to both school and Sherwood throughout the week.  If we moved to Sherwood we wanted to be within walking distance of a park/playground since there's no way we could afford a single-family home with a yard down there.  So the search was on for a new place!

I think we looked at a total of 10-12 houses, evenly divided between Portland and Sherwood.  Generally the places in Portland were single-family homes with yards, but were just as old/inefficient as our campus house (80 years) and in less than desirable neighborhoods with less than desirable schools.  The places down in Sherwood were mostly townhouses, but newer/efficient and in well-groomed suburbia with spectacular schools.  We had our likes and dislikes in both cities, but weren't going to submit an application anywhere until God told us where to go.  So we filled out multiple applications and then waited to see which one to submit.

Our closest friends know the amount of anguish that Kathy and I experienced trying to decide where to move.  We spent 3 weeks not waiting for a house per se, but waiting for God to tell us whether to stay in Portland or move to Sherwood.  The house would come later; of greatest importance was where God was sending us.  Why might we be getting removed from our house at this particular time?  What opportunities does God have laid out for us that we shouldn't miss?  Where can we take the greatest step of faith?  Are we willing to make the hard decision of living where we don't really want to live?  How can we be of greatest impact for God?  So we prayed and waited.  Waited and prayed.  Prayed and waited.  Until we only had 2 weeks to move and the newer listings began to not be available until after July 1st.  Our deadline had arrived.  And no booming voice from above.

It was frustrating not being directly told where to live by God.  Abraham was told where to go.  Paul was told where to go.  Where was our direction?  We've no doubt God spoke to us through our friends' counsel, but we would have preferred a neon arrow floating in the sky!   So our conclusion was that God didn't really care which city we ended up living in - both were equally in need of His presence.  He was giving us the freedom to do His work in whatever city we preferred to live.

We picked Sherwood.  Honestly, we would have preferred to stay in Portland (who would pass up an opportunity to live in Portland!?), but ultimately felt that it is too important to be a member of the community that you're trying to reach.  Scripture is full of men and women, who in an effort to be a light to a people, actually become one of them, culminating obviously in God Himself coming down and becoming one of us so that He could perfectly relate to us.   It was unauthentic for Kathy and I to intentionally meet and develop personal relationships with people down in Sherwood, but then each evening drive back up to Portland!  The closer we got to people, the harder it became to develop those relationships long distance.  So we submitted one of the applications we had already filled out for a townhouse in Sherwood, and began concluding the urban chapter of our lives.  Now we're suburban-ites!

We officially had the house on Saturday, June 26th, but we didn't move in until Monday the 28th.  That way we had a couple days overlap to carry down some of our fragile stuff in our car instead of loading them on the huge truck.  We were also able to take some measurements (OK, all measurements!) of the new house and make a plan for where everything was going to go on moving day.  The nice thing about Multnomah tearing down our campus house was that we didn't have to clean up after ourselves, so moving out and doing the final walk-through was (relatively) easy, and our security deposit is guaranteed.  I rented the biggest truck U-Haul had - a 26 footer I think - at 7:00am on Monday and it had to be back by 7:00pm that evening, so we had to hustle.  Thankfully we have wonderful friends who, like everyone else in Portland, don't actually work, thus were free to help us move out on Monday!  Later in the evening when our friends in Sherwood (who actually do work) got home, they also came over and helped us unpack the truck.  About halfway through unloading in Sherwood it became apparent that we were not going to get the truck back in time, so we frantically unloaded the rest into the garage and Wes and I raced off to get the truck back in time.  We had to get through rush-hour traffic, and refill the truck with gas, but we made it with a whole 15 minutes to spare!  

Our new (as-yet-to-be-named) place is a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1500 square feet, 1 car garage townhouse in the middle of Sherwood.  It's biggest selling point for us was that it's squeezed into a small townhouse neighborhood, so it'll be easy to get to know our neighbors.  We also love how open the kitchen/living room is - it'll be great for having guests over.  The place is within walking distance of a park (Stella Olsen Memorial Park), and if we're serious, walking distance to Koa's elementary school (Hopkins Elementary School).  On Mondays and Tuesdays when I have classes at Multnomah, I can take an express bus that runs between Pioneer Square in Portland and a Park-n-Ride here in Sherwood, then take the MAX from downtown out to 82nd where the school is located.  It looks like my commute will take a little over an hour each way, but that'll give me time to do some school work and get to know my fellow Sherwood commuters.  Not only is taking public transportation cheaper, but this way Kathy and the kiddos won't be without the car all day.

So we've now been living here for a week.  Until 2 days ago there were still piles of boxes all over the house.  Now there's just piles and piles and stuff out of boxes everywhere!  We're hoping to be settled in by the end of this week, but i'm sure that's wishful thinking!  You can see pictures of our new house, and how our unpacking is coming along, in the Sherwood Townhouse photo album, or go on a video tour of the place before we moved in.  We're also taking suggestions for the name for our new house!

Bring on the Bacon!

She's got teeth! She really had to work at it more than either of the boys did. Both boys just suddenly had teeth one day. Arwen has had these little bulges in her gums for about a month and they would get bigger and then recede, and bigger, and recede... They also seemed pretty uncomfortable. One day she threw a little fit and bonked her mouth and it bled for a bit, but in the end, the tooth poked out! I hope all of her teeth are not that difficult! But we did reward her with a piece of bacon which she thoroughly enjoyed!

I published a few new pictures of our sweet girl here tonight.

First Time Up the Stairs and First Shiner in the Same Day

Coincidence? Not likely! Fortunately she had only climbed up one stair at the time, but she tried to come back down and she hadn't mastered that skill just yet. She took it all in stride though. She fussed for about 30 seconds and then was back to business.  Last Friday she crawled all the way to the top of the stairs by herself (Well, with our friend, Katie, following behind her!)

Miss Arwen is quite the little go-getter. While she is the most content baby we have ever had the pleasure of parenting, she is also very determined to get to the next milestone! It's a very funny combination. She started scooching forward on March 15. Five days later she started crawling and five days after that she was pulling up to stand and cruising furniture. Now she pushes her little cart through the grass when she gets a chance or just wanders around the house from one piece of furniture to the next. It's amazing to watch her determination. For instance, when she realized that pulling up to stand was an option, she tried to pull up on our coffee table, but didn't quite have the strength, yet she pulled with her arms and pushed with her legs with all her might for at least a full minute--never letting up. When she finally stopped she was so exhausted she was shaking! It was crazy to watch. Zak and I just looked at each other like, "What are we in for?"

However, just a couple of days ago when we had our first real day of sun, we all burst out of the house to the yard to soak up our vitamin D! We set Arwen in the grass and gave her a spoon. She sat there with that spoon for no less than an hour and a half just as pleased as she could be. She would look up at us and smile and laugh and just keep playing with her spoon. Maybe she was studying the design and pondering how the spoon could be improved...

She LOVES chasing after her brothers. I let her keep her nails long so she can defend herself and they get along quite well. She loves to pull Caspian's hair and he just laughs about it. Of course if she does that to Koa she is met with shrieks and squeals. They really get along quite well. The boys really look out for her, especially Koa, and they both love to make her laugh. Caspian gets a little ornery sometimes they are in the car seats and he is getting bored. He'll steal her toys or blankets and make her cry sometimes just to entertain himself.

Arwen and Caspian both had their well-child check ups recently and passed with flying colors. We also had Caspian's blood drawn to check his lead levels since we live in an old house. We figured we would check his since he is the middle child (as well as the best patient) and if there was a problem we would check the others. The test came back with the lowest possible result. That was a relief. He was AMAZING for the blood draw, too. He barely even flinched and sat so still for the whole thing.

We feel very blessed to have healthy, happy children!

Celebrating Koa!

This year for Koa's 5th birthday we celebrated by going to OMSI for the day. He's been really interested in dinosaurs lately so we thought we would take him to see the giant dinosaur skeleton that they have on display at OMSI.  Turns out that in this instance they had taken down the giant dinosaur skeleton and replaced it with a fake camel.  Fortunately Koa wasn't too disappointed.  They had some small fossils of shells and things for him to look at and he got to ride the fake camel with his friend, Amelia, just long enough to take a picture! (That's Caspian doing a thorough oral exam of the camel.)  After that we played for quite a while in the science play ground until the kids were pau.  Then we went home for lunch and naps and had some friends over for cake and ice cream after dinner.

The only thing Koa even wanted for his birthday was chocolate cake.  So, I made my version of my mom's chocolate cake with chocolate icing recipe and we bought the chocolate peanut butter ice cream this year. He said the icing was too sugary, but that was okay because Caspian was happy to eat his icing and Koa filled up on the cake and ice cream!

The Zumwalt Ohana Kidlets

It's been a while since I did an update on any of the kiddos, so I thought in honor of Regina's birthday I would actually update!  Happy Birthday, Tutu!

Koa is our big soon-to-be-5-year-old!  I can't even believe he's such a big kid.  I can't help but feel like "Oh no!  His formative years are almost over.  Did we do a decent job?"  He is becoming quite the responsible and protective big brother though he and Caspian still bicker quite a bit.  He has come through his argumentative stage and is more agreeable (with us, not Caspian) now most of the time. 

He is signed up for tee-ball which will start in April.  We are all pretty excited about that!  He has become more and more interested in writing and drawing in the past few months!  His first word that he wrote independently was "fly".  He figured it out because to sign "fly" you finger spell it, so he knew the letters and just wrote them down.  I thought it was pretty cool when he made the connection!  A couple of weeks ago we all got the flu which was pretty miserable, but we were very thankful for our Netflix subscription.  All we did for a few days was try to stay warm, drink chicken broth and stream PBS shows.  We discovered a couple of shows that Koa loves!  One of them is Word World.  Now he is really into spelling and has picked up a lot of new information.  He also likes to make books.  He will ask Zak and me to spell whole sentences out for him and he will write them and then draw in pictures and staple all the pages together.  He also likes to build letters and words out of crayons or lincoln logs or whatever is handy.  It's so fun to see him be so creative with his new interest. 

Caspian is entertainment on feet.  He loves to sing and dance.  His dance is a little like Elaine on Seinfeld and he looks completely serious when he does it but knows full well that it is hilarious and he enjoys making everyone laugh.  He is also in a very angsty stage right now that drives us a little crazy, but luckily he is cute the rest of the time.  He has an amazing ability to break things and has even managed to break plastic dishes that we have had since Zak and I got married!  I don't even know how he does it! 

He adores his baby sister and that is who he looks for immediately upon waking most days.  "Where's baby Arwen?" and then he smothers her in kisses when he finds her.  If not Arwen, then Koa but on the mornings when he awakes before anyone else (he is our early riser!) he does enjoy the time by himself with Mama or playing alone.  He's starting to like to draw as he watches Koa.  He only draws circles and he always says it is a horse.

His vocabulary has really expanded a lot lately and he's starting to learn his numbers and letters and loves to sing his ABC's and count to 10.  I remember being startled when Koa had learned his ABC's without us realizing it and Caspian has a lot more exposure to that type of thing than Koa ever did, so I shouldn't be surprised this time, but I still am.  The other day we sat down at a coffee shop and he pulled out a game that had letter tiles and I asked him a few of them individually and he knew about half of them.  It's fun to see what little sponges they are right now.

Arwen, is a little go-getter just like her brothers!  She has been rolling over consistently since she was two weeks old and has just kept moving from there.  Now she is working on sitting up by herself and on scooching whenever she is lying down.  She gets up on all fours and occasionally lunges towards objects, but no crawling just yet (thank goodness!)  She loves to play in her bouncy chair (johnny jump up?) and especially loves to sit with Daddy any time she gets a chance!

She's about the happiest baby on the planet.  She is very mellow and smiles all the time!  She's starting to recognize names--her own and Mama and Daddy, at least.  She's just started playing little games like peek-a-boo which the boys love.  She's very rewarding to be around because she flashes you the biggest smiles with very little effort!  She's quite a talker which comes as no surprise and is extremely social! 

They wear us out most days, but we are so thankful for our little blessings!  And soon they will not be Stimple and Tutu's only grandkids.  We patiently await the arrival of their cousin who should be here very soon!!

Wrapping Up 2010

Apparently I have taken to just writing quarterly posts.  Certainly it is to the chagrin of the grandmothers among us, but perhaps it is more efficient....?...maybe?  

This past quarter has certainly been one full of change for the Zumwalt Ohana.  We welcomed Zak home from Officer Development School and Chaplain School on August 8.  We welcomed Miss Arwen to the family on August 23.  Zak started back to classes on August 30.  On September 1 Zak was fired from his job/internship at Agape.  A couple of weeks later we found out that Tri-Care (our insurance) would pay nothing for my pregnancy and Arwen's birth (they had earlier agreed to cover over half of the bill for the entire pre-natal, birth and post partum care), and then we had a rather sizable snafu with our car and had to have it repaired.  To say the least, we had an eventful couple of weeks.  We have spent the next few months healing, recovering and learning from all of that.  While we wouldn't wish it on anybody, we are grateful for the growth that has come out of it. 

First and foremost, we have been so grateful for the peace that surpasses all understanding.  One of the phrases that Zak and I have used a lot since we moved here (most often in relation to finances) is "God did not bring us here to abandon us".  The impossible series of events that lead to us being here in the first place have given us much peace in knowing that we are not the ones orchestrating this crazy plan!  

I will give more details to the aforementioned big events starting with the separation from our church family at Agape.  Ron was unhappy specifically with the state of the Recovery Ministry while Zak was away for the summer at ODS and Chaplain School, and more generally, the poor communication between us and them leading up to the summer.  While we are disappointed with how he chose to handle the situation, we agree that we made some mistakes and could have done things better.

We thank God for everything we learned at Agape, all the experiences He has given us there, and all the people He brought into our lives who shaped us into who we are now.  We also thank God for how He’s been working in our lives these past months since this happened.  We are definitely better people and better prepared to serve in the military because of Ron and Lori, the Recovery Ministry, the Agape family, and now this trying experience.  While we were initially very sad to leave, and the process was very painful, we now recognize in hindsight that the separation was good for us, though we likely would not have been able or willing to initiate that separation ourselves.  We are very glad that God is now providing us with a chance to go learn and experience something else.

We were also grateful for God's encouragement in the midst of it all.  Zak was almost immediately offered a few different ministry opportunities--very enticing ones.  We were also well supported by people all around us.  One such person was another church planter who was totally un-related to the situation.  He provided some very wise counsel because he recognized right away that we had way too much going on as a family and that Zak really had too much on his plate.  Among other things he recommended was that we take some time off and prioritize things before we started again.  So, we did.  We took the entire semester to catch our breath.  We shed some excess responsibilities.  We visited different churches (13 different ones!).  Arwen and I got to take a seminary class.  We got to spend a lot of time hanging out as a family.  Zak was able to really help around the house as I was recovering from the delivery and we were all getting used to having another little mess-maker.  It was actually pretty telling to have something so significant as a job removed from our lives and see how busy we still were!  We are thankful for the opportunity to have seen that.

Almost immediately after Arwen was born we started receiving meals from the parenting community/food buying club that we have been a part of for the past two years.  Caspian and I have very strong food sensitivities - we really have to avoid wheat and processed food.   Since a lot of the people in this group are careful about what they eat for different reasons they were able to provide really great food that we could eat without being concerned.  That was such an amazing blessing while I was recovering from the birth!

One of the obvious examples of God's plan for us continuing to unfold during this time concerns a Christian counseling organization called Portland Fellowship.  Our neighbor works for this non-profit group which helps people who struggle with unwanted same sex attraction (SSA).  They were just getting ready to start their annual leadership training when Zak was fired and, knowing our background with recovery, he invited Zak to come along.  So, for four weeks Zak did that...and then they invited him to be one of their group leaders!  And even though he hasn't struggled with SSA, he has found his group to be a great place of personal healing and learning.  We don't think it is any coincidence that just last month "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed and that military chaplains will be on the front lines in dealing with service-members struggling with SSA.  See how God let us learn about addiction and abuse for a while, and now He's letting us learn about homosexuality--all in preparation for chaplaincy?  What an amazing opportunity God has given us to learn how to empathize with, comfort, and counsel those men and women!  

In December Zak also had the opportunity to perform his first wedding ceremony!  Our neighbors who live across the street from us (and whom we became friends with at our last neighborhood block party) asked him to officiate their beautiful ceremony out at the McMenamins Edgefield.  Everyone sat is a big circle with the groom's family on one side and the bride's family on the other.  Zak, Josh, and Katherine stood in the middle, and Zak walked around and faced both sides as he spoke.  It was very unique and we felt very blessed to be a part of it.

Finally, in December we visited the Sherwood Community Church of Christ for the first time.  And after about four weeks we all started talking about the possibility of us working on their staff.  There will be more to come about that later...

Celebrating Caspian!

This week we got to celebrate our youngest son as he turned two years old!  (Where has the time gone?)  We dragged the celebration out over a few days by going to a new park, eating pizza, moving into his bunk bed, skyping with grandparents, going to the zoo, opening gifts and having triple berry crisp and ice cream with friends.  All in all it was a busy and fun week for all of us. 

Over the past few months it has been so much fun to watch him grow and change.  His language is getting more complex every day and he has really taken an interest in sign language lately (he will actually sit still through an entire viewing of Signing Time: Leah's Farm).  His default sign is "chicken".  If we ask him to sign something that he doesn't know he will always just sign chicken and then immediately start making chicken sounds.  It's fitting because he loves farm animals right now.  We visited the pumpkin patch in October and they have a little barn with some animals to visit which was easily Caspian's favorite part of the whole day.  He still talks about it and thanks God for each animal individually every time we pray.  His favorite was the cock-a-doo (rooster) that scared him and Koa when he crowed as soon as they walked in the barn.  He also loves to tell about the "train" they rode made of barrels painted like cows and led by a tractor--complete with sound effects.  It goes something like this, "Cow train.  Bu-mpy. Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh." as he bounces up and down.  I wish I could somehow portray his intonation and adorable little smile (with his self-inflicted dimple) in this post because he is just so much fun to watch!

Also adorable and hilarious is the fact that he sounds like he is speaking German half the time because his "sh" and "ch" sounds end in the back of his throat in a strange guttural noise.  For instance "fish" sounds like (if I can spell this...) "figcks" and "sandwich" is "fanigchk".  It's often a good thing we have Koa around to translate or we would never get anything accomplished.  How does Koa know what in the world he is saying?  Do they both speak German?

Caz is starting to get the concept of counting and for several months has counted everything like this "1-2-4-8-4-8-4-8..." and usually stops on 4.  But when you ask him how many of something there is he would always says 2.  Now he has started adding in the other numbers and will usually fill in the correct number in the sequence when we stop but when he jumps off of something he sticks to 2-4-8 [jump].  He also likes to try his ABCs but will usually only fill in a letter when we stop rather than trying to do the whole alphabet by himself.

He is still just as daring as ever, but maybe slightly less impulsive, so he's not quite as scary as he used to be.  That's nice.  I'm not as terrified to let him out of my sight in the house any more.  He's always the first one to the top of any playground and will climb things Koa is still afraid to climb, and if he falls it doesn't really slow him down.  He may still be crying as he gets up and starts right back up the structure to be conquered!  He loves a good slide and the fact that he can climb in and swing in the big kid swing all by himself now.  He can dribble a soccer ball and is working on figuring out how to use a baseball bat.  And I think he jumps remarkably well for a two year old...but then again, I am the mom.

He and Koa have really started playing together more especially since Arwen was born.  I have been amazed at his transition to being a big brother.  He has been very welcoming to little Arwen and he and Koa have started playing together more and more just since she has been here.  Although it has taken them a little while to figure out how to iron out their differences, they are getting better at it every day and take less refereeing than they did initially.  He has learned the word, "'nough!" and Koa is learning to listen and heed the word "'nough". 

We call him our little chef because he loves to be in the kitchen and be in the middle of anything we are creating!  He also loves to taste everything as we go.  Every single herb and spice I pull out of the cupboard must become subject to his scrutiny and he always has some reaction to it.  "Mmm.  Goot!" and "Oooh, has a kick." are common phrases as he tests each one.  If I do let him out of my sight now he generally heads right to the kitchen and starts creating something of his own.  If I'm not careful I will have flour and rice poured into any receptacle he can find.  My turmeric and cayenne pepper have both been sacrificed to his experiments and fortunately with no terrible results!