My favorite picture

Our dear friend Jen took this photo of Dalia and me last weekend. It makes me cry. It's been a tough couple of weeks with teething and sleep stuff and my bat-crazy worrisome self and this photo just seems to make it all better. Thanks Jen. Your art heals.

fall weather brings out the mud

Just when I thought we might be out of the messiest stage of eating, Dalia found the outdoors in fall, after the rains came. We're working on our letting go skills. Messy baby means happy baby. Yes, she was eating mud when I decided it was time to come inside.

pumpkins

Last weekend we went to a pumpkin patch (our first ever). Dalia had fun walking around and even chose her very own pumpkin. Listen closely, she says the equivalent of "my pumpkin". "ma ma" is what she says when she wants something (ha ha very funny, yes is is very close to mama).

After we visited the pumpkin patch we went down to visit one of Uncle Jimmy's good friends, Jim and his wife Sarah who just moved to a farm from SF to make cheese.

a busy week

Since I haven't been great about posting these days, I thought I'd do a montage of the past week. Walking is the favorite item of the week. If you were close enough to Dalia you'd see she has the bruises to show for it. She is so brave, but still a little unsteady and falls frequently (including on her face and chin). But after a good cry she's up and out all over again.



The other thing she is enjoying is wearing sunglasses. Today she actually kept them on for a few minutes, eating her snack and looking quite cool.



We had a visit with Neva and her parents and went to the park in their neighborhood. Dalia loves the slide now. So does Neva, though she's always Josephine Cool when we take her picture.


Dalia has also figured out that she can swing from Mom and Dad's fingers (every kid loves that, hu?)
And the best part of the whole week was helping celebrate Archer turning one! What a year it has been! I don't know what I would have done without Amy the past two years. We only got a couple of photos from the party. Here he is with his Pop blowing out his b-day candle. We love you, dude.


more to come of our pumpkin patch adventures. . .

Walkin'

Since this video was taken yesterday, Dalia is walking EVERYWHERE! You can see her resist crawling now. She was so tired tonight, but wanted to keep on and she was truly a "drunken sailor". Don't worry, she didn't hurt herself in the making of this video. Somehow she can fall over like a tree in the forest and get right back up without noticing (thankfully, we got rid of our coffee table last week). She is, by the way, extremely proud of herself.

seattle

Juli and Dalia went to visit the family in Seattle to help out and bring some smiles while Robin is healing (her scar is gnarly, BTW). We got to take Connor and pick him up from school, which somehow Dalia thought was so cool. She got so excited to see all the kids, and, of course, Connor (who taught her how to head bang to his new favorite music, metal). She's in love with her uncle Scott and loved riding around in Robin's arms on her knee scooter. Thanks for a wonderful visit! Oh, yeah, she also was a champ on the drives. She slept most of the way and when she was awake she laughed and "talked" with me, looked out the window, read her books and played with her stuffed IKEA kitty (which has replaced her bear for now). Oh, yeah, she also ate a HUGE plate of beans at the restaurant. We all lived to tell about it.

little violet

We had the rare pleasure of babysitting Violet while her folks went out to dinner the other night. While it was a rough start - Dalia can be a little overbearing - once we established some distance and activity for them, Violet really came out of her shell. The best part of the evening was when she would walk into the kitchen and demand food and then make a B-line to the piano to play a little tune. She did this like 10 times. What a great little lady she is!

pets are good

So, some of you know that poor Casey, our lowest on the totem pole cat, almost didn't make the cut last year when we were at the height of being overwhelmed with new baby. Well, we're so glad he's stuck around. Turns out he is the kid pet. He loves Dalia, which means he's okay being pulled and whacked and played with. She's even learning how to snuggle Casey. The other night Mark was playing with Casey and a string. I dare say our child has never seen us play with the cats - how sad for them. In any case, Dalia thought it was hilarious watching Casey stand up on his back paws to catch the string.