Rue Plumet

Charis has four manger scenes that we set out at Christmas (we seem to add at least one more each year). She asked me to play manger with her the other morning, and the picture below is what we came up with. She wanted to get all of the figurines from two complete manger sets all onto one small cardboard stable. She kept rearranging everything for about five minutes in an attempt to get everyone on the board. Near the end of her arranging, she said, “This chicken needs to be next to the tiny baby Jesus,” and then moved Joseph away to make room for the chicken. When she was finally finished, she looked over her work and said, “Dad, this manger is really, really crowded.” And I guess she was right.

When we celebrated my birthday a few days ago (32!) Charis was pretty excited about everything. She and Joy baked me a cake, which Charis chose to decorate with blue icing and lots of dinosaur sprinkles, because she figured daddy would definitely like dinosaurs. When it was time to open presents, Charis asked if she could help me open them. While she was tearing off the paper she said “This is fun!”, and then once we had all the paper removed and the box was revealed, she excitedly said, “Oh, dad, I think you got a package!” After I opened the box she asked, “Can I get in it?”, because for some reason the crazy kid really likes to stand or sit in boxes. Who can explain it. So considering how excited Charis was to open someone else’s presents, I think she’ll have a pretty good time on Christmas. :-)

After several months of putting it off, we finally decided it was time for Charis to move from her crib to a big girl bed. We’ve been talking to her about it for several weeks, and I’ve been reassuring her that even in a big girl bed she can still keep her three stuffed animals and three blankets that she loves. And this past week her new bed was delivered and we took down the crib. I was a bit worried about how things would go when we tried to put her to sleep for the first time in her new bed, but it actually went really well. For most of the day she said she didn’t want to go to sleep in her new bed, but when the time finally came, her sleepiness (and perhaps the Disney princess sheets on her new bed) won out, and we tucked her into bed without any complaining at all. It was a sweet gift from the Lord that she handled it so well!

I came home from work the other day and Charis greeted me at the door as usual, which is always a nice thing to come home to. Cai was in his bouncy seat in the kitchen and Charis pointed to him and said “Dad, this is Cai. You remember Cai, don’t you, Dad?”

I was thinking he looked kind of familiar…

Since Joy didn’t post this on her blog, I feel like I have a duty to share. We were driving in the car over the weekend and we were about two blocks away from a certain craft store that my wife goes to fairly often. All of a sudden from the back seat I hear Charis say, “No go to JoAnn’s, mama!” I thought that was just too funny. Even my inquisitive loves-to-go-shopping daughter can only take so much of roaming up and down the fabric aisles. :-)

So Joy was out taking dinner to some friends this evening and I was home with the kids. Cai guy was really fussy but I finally got him settled down and got him to keep his pacifier in his mouth instead of blahing it out. And things were peaceful for a few minutes and Charis and I were playing, and then Charis went over and yanked the pacifier out of Cai’s mouth and said, “He doesn’t want his passey, dada, he just wants to sing!”

Running errands, yes, but it’s not what you think. Charis was running around downstairs this morning (our rooms downstairs make a circle and Charis loves to run around and around) and she was yelling out “I running errands, dada! I running errands, mama!” quite loudly. I just thought that was too cute!

I think having a second kid (at least so far) is both easier and harder than the first. It’s easier because we have a much better idea of what we are doing with Cai. I remember with Charis I was worried about everything, but we’re much more go with the flow with Cai. And aren’t infants always pretty manageable for fathers? After all, we are not the primary food source!

On the other hand, taking care of a newborn is much harder with a two year old running around. At the end of the day, we are definitely worn out. So far I think that the easier time with Cai being number two is pretty much balanced out by the extra work of keeping track of Charis. But once Joy has recovered from her c-section and we get into a good routine with Cai, I think we’ll be in pretty good shape.

Although I know we’ve got a lot going on with Cai these days, I don’t want to leave Charis out. I found this awesome picture that Joy took of Charis when I was cleaning off the memory card from her camera the night before Cai was born. I love this picture! I’m going to get a print for my desk at work.

Carrie sent me an email pointing out that Charis and Cai look remarkably similar in some of their first pictures. Check out the first comparison she sent me, which is a picture of each of them from the recovery room after surgery:

Do you know who is who? This next one is a little easier, but they still look pretty similar. This is each of them under the warmer shortly after they were born: