Crazy Legs

I've been going through some videos and made a little movie that I like to watch because I miss Rhea.
Enjoy

More Summertime Fun!

Well it's official...we seem to have "misplaced" our camera. I can't even bring myself to write the word "lost" (though I fear that might be more accurate) because admitting that is just way too sad. I would like to blame my lack of posting on my lack of camera...but that wouldn't really be fair considering I have access to so many other great pictures taken by our friends and family.

Case in point....these beauties that were taken at the BBQ by Rhea's Nana....





I am still looking back on that BBQ with fond memories...it was just a perfect summer day. Stay posted for updates of our New England adventures!

Sunday BBQ

Just a quick post to show off a great picture Pepe took at his house after a BBQ we had at Gerstle Park.
Enjoy

Papa's Day!

Well I know this post is just a wee bit late....but I figured as long as it happened before the week was up then I was doing pretty good. Lets just say it has been Papa week in these parts!

It is hard to believe a year has passed since Bert's first Papa's day!


We have all changed so much over this past year...growing...physically and emotionally, individually and as a family...you name and it has changed. But perhaps the most rewarding change of all (and one that I have had the pleasure of having a front row seat for) has been the beautiful and ever evolving Papa/Daughter relationship.

I knew before we even decided to get pregnant that Bert would be the most amazing father...he is loving and nurturing, generous and sincere, has an amazing sense of humor and an almost unreal capacity for love. Yet somehow, even knowing all of these things, I was still blown away with the dedication he has brought to this most important of jobs. I was not prepared for the magnitude of love I would feel when Rhea went bounding into his arms or the joy that the two of them laughing together could bring me. Rhea truly loves her Papa...and not only does she love him, but she trusts him wholeheartedly. She knows her Papa is going to be there for her lovingly, consistently and predictably...which is quite frankly the most important thing you can do for your child.

I decided to compile and share some of my favorite moments from the past year...capturing a picture from each month. This is somewhat of a lengthy post...but given all of the pictures it is pretty light reading :)

June 07...Papa and Rhea lying on the bed in the spare room endlessly blowing the mobile hanging above them. This is a job that takes patience, perseverance, and a good set of lungs.


July 07: This photo was taken by Bert on his cell phone and captures the oh so precious moment that occurs right after he arrives home from work. You can see how tickled they both are to be together again.


August 07: Rhea and her Papa during a visit to Eddie's Mom Janene. It was a beautiful and special day in which Bert was able to share his love of being a parent with another parent that had been so important to him growing up.


September 07: While this looks like a beautiful warm day the sunshine is a bit deceptive...Rhea has inherited a tolerance for cold water that will serve her well when she finally gets old enough to get out on a surf board.

October 07: Here they are playing at that crazy lil' pumpkin patch (where we actually just celebrated Milo's 4th birthday...more pictures to come of that adventure when I get my hands on some)! Rhea was just starting to really toddle around and required lots of hands on to keep her from careening off of various mini structures such as school buses and log cabins.


November 07: I just love this shot...I think Bert looks so handsome. Maybe this is just a gratuitous hot Papa shot. Hubba Hubba.

December 07: This one was taken at Rhea's first birthday party....this is Rhea running (and you have to remember running at this point involved lots and lots of effort on her part) down the hall to give her Papa a hug. I honestly get a little teary when I see how much love is on Bert's face.

January 08: This one speaks for itself...


February 08: I could put together an entire album of these types of pictures...the ones where Bert is holding the camera in front of the two of them. I'm sure this was taken on one of the early morning weekends when Papa was letting this tired ol' Mama catch some extra Z's.

March 08: Papa and Rhea on the beach in Pescadero. This girl is so fearless when it comes to water and has no problem getting sandy, dirty and freezing cold all in her pursuit of the ocean. She makes her Papa proud and her Mama very diligent!

April 08: Now I know this one is not a Papa/Daughter shot...but this is Rhea at the farmers market an early Saturday morning outing she takes with her Papa. There is something so "Papa" about this as you see this tiny little girl weaving in and out of the crowd happy as a clam.

May 08: This is Papa and Rhea with the exact same expression, same gesture, and same longing for a salami sandwich. This was the house we stayed in while vacationing in Santa Cruz with Josie and Alex...what fun that was!


June 08: Lastly the girl and her Papa at a Fathers Day baseball game! It was a picture perfect day enjoyed by all and Rhea weathered her first (of many I'm sure) game with excitement and good humor. She has a mouth full of strawberries in this shot which is why she looks a bit crazy. I love that Bert has his glove on in this shot...and that he really hoped he would be "bringing home a ball" for his girl that day.

All this reminiscing reminds me to give thanks for the life we have together and the love we share. I look forward to the year ahead and can only imagine the adventures we will find there...

I love you Papa and Rhea, Mama

Underwater world....

I have been meaning to post these pictures of the trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium we took when Josie and Alex were visiting. I love the somewhat "otherworldly" quality of these photos and hope you all will too.





The one with the shark is particularly cool...and I love the silhouette with Rhea and Alex. It was such a special time spent as a family and I find it difficult to describe how touched and grateful I am for the love "the kids" have for our little girl. It's as though things have come full circle in the most magical of ways.

And the beat goes on.....

We are closing out the first week of June and it is hard not to feel as though time is just slipping away from me. I can clearly remember my Mom commenting as we were growing up at how quickly the time passed and she would warn me that it would only speed up the older I got. Mom if you are keeping track...which I know you are...you can add this to your ever growing list of "Things I Was Right About". Sad but true...I am older and the time goes faster.

Rhea turned 18 months this week and my oh my what changes we have seen. This girl of ours already has a very distinct sense of humor and absolutely LOVES to make us laugh and loves even more to make herself laugh. Just this morning I awoke in a decidedly dicey mood (I think the teething of the past week and the resulting lack of sleep had caught up with me) Rhea took one look at me and threw herself on the floor and started thrashing all about making funny faces. When I started laughing she continued with even more gusto cracking herself the whole while. It was just what I needed to take some stock and realize that just because my body felt slow and tired it didn't mean my mind had to follow suit.

This month has brought an increase in communication...verbal, nonverbal, telekinesis...well maybe not telekinesis but I swear sometimes it feels as though that little bean is actually sending me messages and somehow I am picking them up. In fact the other day as we were in the waiting room at the pediatrician, another mother commented on my skill at deciphering and responding to the steady stream of "uh..uh...uhhhh's!!" that Rhea is constantly expressing. I feel like we are in such a good rhythm together these days which is a very good feeling.

Rhea has very specific preferences for all kinds of things these days...I'll try a little recap to capture some of her all time faves:

Favorite foods...blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, goat cheese, goat milk, goat yogurt, and a puzzling and near fanatical love of capers.

Favorite books...Good Dog Carl...The Wheels on the Bus...anything that features Babies on it. Just this week I received a mailing asking for a donation to an organization that helps repair cleft lips in developing countries. There were several pamphlets included which showed before pictures of babies with very severe cleft lips. Rhea just loved lose pamphlets and carried them around with her pointing and saying "babies...babies". When Bert came home from work I had to warn him not to be surprised when she showed him her "babies" as I didn't want his potential reaction to color the way she saw those pictures. It warms my heart to think that what she saw was the sweetness and "baby-ness" of those pictures instead of the "deformity" they were highlighting.

Favorite activities...going for long walks with her Mama, walking the neighborhood and stopping to smell the flowers, bike rides with her Papa and playing with Auntie Mary's cat Plika who often comes over for "kitty daycare". She loves music and dancing...just yesterday during one of our long walks she started bopping her head in tune with the music coming from someones Ipod who was walking behind us. She has quite an ear. She still loves animals of all kinds and barks at dogs in the park and tries to catch the birds with everything she has. She squeals with delight when the doorbell or the phone rings and is quite a social butterfly.

Things she could do without...hair clips/headbands/any type of contraption aimed at getting that wispy hair out of her eyes. Her reaction makes it seem as though I am actually using tacks to try and tame that hair. Attempts to take a measurement of any kind (on the wall to record her height, her feet at the shoe store, her height and weight at the pediatrician). Washing her hair might top this list. The girl does not like to be "messed with" and has a very distinct sense of personal space. But I will say that she rebounds quite well from all of these affronts and once the offending person/accessory/shampoo is out of her sight she is back to her sweet self.

All in all I continue to be astounded by the amount of wonder and beauty that is present in the minutia of the day to day...and feel honored to have this vibrant little person so enthusiastically pointing it all out for me and making sure I don't miss even the smallest bit of it.

What are we going to do when she is sixteen?

Just a very quick post while the girl is taking her nap. This one is for Papa's benefit as he is away on business until tomorrow night and I know he is missing his baby girl terribly. I have so many pictures to post and stories to tell from when Josie (aka Jos) and Alex were here (I was just looking through the pictures and honestly felt my heart tighten at how much I miss them both). But needed to post this first as I often find that if I try and get everything out in chronological order...I lose my momentum.

What follows is a video of Rhea talking to Grammy and Grandpa on the phone...this is the tail end of the conversation and I missed much of the cute head nodding and babbling..but you will get the gist of how much she enjoys her phone time.

I couldn't stop laughing she was just so ridiculous.

Quick one...

Just a (super) quick post...I should be running around finishing last minute things while Rhea is taking her nap...preparing for the much anticipated arrival of Josie and Alex. Figured we would be busy for the next 10 days and posting will be light at best and most honestly nonexistent.

I have so many stories to tell and pictures to share but I will leave you all with these shots of Rhea. I thought it tied in well to the last post in which I was waxing poetic about how difficult it was to get her to eat. Here she is sitting in the park in Fairfax eating her burrito from the Good Earth with gusto and all on her own. I really don't have the words for how heartwarming it was to see my little girl just chilling on the grass eating her burrito.


The next one is a shot of her after she drank from my almond milk spirilina shake...I think she was a little surprised by that one....

And here she is making friends with a sweet little girl with bubbles...it was a beautiful day.


See you all soon..I'm sure with even more stories to share....

Nourishing the girl....

I think it would be safe to say that food/feeding/nutrition occupies much of my time these days...whether it be planning what to feed the girl, trying to get her to eat, worrying about all manners of food safety from the containers we store her food in to the utensils and cups she uses, trying to get her to eat, learning that BPA is found in the lining of virtually every canned good on the supermarket shelves whether organic or not, trying to get her to eat, talking with fellow Mama's about my concerns about her eating and having to weather their incredulous looks when faced with my very healthy looking chunk of a girl (of course all while trying to get her to eat).

This morning at breakfast when I was looking down at her multiple little dishes filled with delicious bits of food arranged in a way I was hoping would seem enticing to her...I thought it might be fun to have some photographic evidence of the hoops I jump through (most likely hoops I myself have engineered...but hey...they are hoops nonetheless). Lets start with breakfast:

Here we have a black quinoa porridge, steel cut oatmeal with maple syrup (usually this would have some yogurt and blueberries but we are trying no dairy just to add some fun to this whole ridiculous endeavor and she is just plain sick of blueberries), some strawberries from our Community Supported Agriculture box we get weekly (fancy way of saying local organic produce), and her little mug of water she insists on as it compliments the mug of coffee I'm always clutching. She actually did pretty well with this breakfast but didn't really catch on to how amazing those strawberries are. Mid morning we have a snack:

Applesauce...which I always forget to try to give her and one of the things she actually really ate with gusto today....go figure. Then lunch:

Here we have brown rice cooked down with beef stock (that Bert made from scratch) and peas, steamed carrots also from our box, and roasted chicken. Those carrots were unbelievably tasty and sweet...Rhea humored me with a "no thank you bite" but was pretty much unimpressed. Mid afternoon we had another snack:

Oranges from that glorious box (she ate these as if I hadn't given her anything else the whole day and actually picked up the bowl to drink the juice afterwards) and Cinnamon raisin Mochi also eaten with much enthusiasm. I resurrected some of her leftover lunch and to my great relief she ate quite a bit of chicken. Last but not least...Supper:

Here you can see some delicious beef, the carrots and quinoa brought back for a repeat performance (one of the theories in getting your baby to like a number of things is repeated exposure to those things) and her favorite...a pile of peas.

Now you might wonder what it is she is doing during all this food preparation time...well naturally she is right beside me "cooking" herself:

Sifting through her rice and meticulously sorting her dried beans into various containers. She is shirtless because today she insisted on full access to her belly button at all times so that nothing would impede her ability to master the word belly button which apparently can only be uttered while she is pointing to it with one of her hands.

So yes...food/feeding/nutrition and belly buttons. All in a days work.

The mystery of sleep(lessness)

Rhea must be on the verge of something great. I tell myself this to explain her difficulty sleeping these past few nights...trying, as always, to create some sense of reason and predictability in the otherwise lawless land of babydom.

Of course all the trouble began Thursday night...the same Thursday night that I went to see Shannon after the girl was asleep to hang out without the babies, drink wine and inevitably talk all about our babies (to be fair we also talked about many things besides our babies and were relived to know that despite all the time we spend together, we can still find meaningful and interesting things to say to each other). Anyway...I had spent the evening talking about how great a sleeper Rhea was these days...how predictable her schedule had become (I swear I didn't realize those random thunderclaps overhead were directed in my direction) and discussing the next chapter in her sleep story...namely a toddler bed and learning to fall asleep without the nursing crutch.

After a brisk power walk home at the unheard of hour of 10:35 (!!) I sat down to unwind and check out my email when low and behold who came running down the hall sleepsack and all???? I will spare you all the gory details but sleep of all manner has involved lots of tossing and turning, crying, and downright sheer exhaustion ever since.

As usual her Papa and I are racking our brains to try and figure out what the heck is going on. A few ideas tossed around...

Teething? Hot stuffy weather? Increased awareness of the world around her? Teetering on the verge of breaking out into full sentences? Caffeine (from god knows what because I barely have ANY)? Stubborn pain in the ass?? Well that sentiment is reserved for when we are feeling very tired.

I will say that Rhea is changing so much right now...probably more so than at any other point to date. She just seems to be growing up...she clearly understands more and does her best to communicate that understanding...she loves to cuddle and give kisses and will initiate these tender moments all on her own out of the blue...she knows what she wants and will stop at nothing (and I mean nothing) to get it.

I will leave you with a video taken Friday morning (so if you look closely you can see some bags under her eyes) of Rhea "reading". At one point you can hear her barking and while she seems to be pointing at the rabbit that is actually her word for Dog which in her defense is right beside the rabbit on the page.

This video reminds me not to miss the "great" while waiting for the "great" that she is possibly on the verge of...that the sound of her voice so excitedly sharing her story with me will inevitably and rightfully continue to change and grow. What will remain the same however is the perfection of each and every fleeting moment.

Keeping it clean...

This video is just priceless....I'll give you the back story...I had just sat down with my cup of coffee and a bran muffin that Bert had so thoughtfully surprised me with after an early morning run to Peets. I had miraculously managed to take a morning shower and was sporting some new jeans and was feeling quite happy with the state of things (tasty muffin...hot coffee...clean hair...new jeans). When Rhea came bounding over to sit in my lap (most likely sensing my good will towards the world) and bumped into my arm holding the coffee..which promptly soaked my muffin, the jeans and the floor.

After a moment of pure dismay I pulled myself together and got up to rinse out the jeans and wring out my muffin. While I was gone Bert shot this video.

I have so many favorite things about this video I don't even know where to start...how about that outfit??? Her P.J.'s/bib/slipper ensemble is extra special. Then the fact that she gets up mid clean and runs over to the coffee cup to give a blow by blow of what had happened. Her renewed focus on cleaning when her Papa asks for help (and the oh so subtle way she conveniently "cleaned" the water bottle right over). And her final exclamation when it was all said and done....

And that fleeting moment of pure dismay? Yet another memory that I will cherish forever.

Belly Butt-ton

I kid you not...our girl very clearly said Belly Butt-ton in the tub just a moment ago. Of course though extremely proud of herself and seemingly pleased with our over the top reaction to it all, she refused to say it again despite our desperate pleas and a constant refrain of "Rhea...where's your Belly Button? Can you say Belly Button???"

I did manage to get some shots of her pointing to said Belly Button however..and trying to blow some bubbles with soapy water.

Though it seems as though it shouldn't surprise me anymore, I am always slightly taken aback by how thrilling each new accomplishment is. When I heard her say Belly Butt-ton I literally had a physical reaction...my stomach lurched (in a good way), I whipped my head around to Bert and, with a voice that I'm sure was octaves higher than usual, exclaimed "Did you hear that??? Did you hear that???" I think Rhea was momentarily unsure if saying Belly Butt-ton had actually been a smart move on her part. Though any doubts she may have had were quickly squelched by the two beaming and proud faces of her lovestruck Mama and Papa...and we found ourselves rewarded with some very excited squealing and splashing and the accompanying shower of water.

It's hard to believe that in a few short months Rhea will actually be talking...really talking. And though I'm sure these words will come back to haunt me at some point in my mothering...I can hardly wait.

Riding around the lake

Every Sunday I take Rhea for a ride in Golden Gate Park. We see all kinds of wildlife; Hawks, Coyotes, squirrels, ducks, geese and lots of dogs. Rhea just loves animals and it is really nice that she can see so many of them.
Lately we have been riding around Stow Lake and we see lots of dogs.
Here is a video and some pictures of one of our latest adventures.

I think she is saying " I love you Papa"

Come here and give me some kisses!!!

Check back next week for pictures of our next adventure!

Catching up...

One of the major changes in Rhea's everyday has been her increasing desire to get out and about as much as possible...she literally will walk up to the baby gate at the top of the stairs and pull on it to let me know she is ready for a walk. It has been so nice to watch her interacting with new people and children as well as giving her the opportunity to experience the natural beauty that surrounds us here in Northern California. In reviewing the last few months of our photos it is clear she has been keeping us busy!  Rhea is happiest when picking through blades of grass or sifting through sand...she is fearless when it comes to trying new things especially if those things involve animals of any sort.  

Here are a few pictures from a day trip to Pescadero we took in February.  We visited Harley Farms then finished off the day with a picnic on the beach.  Harley Farms is an amazing goat farm that produces delicious cheeses (my girl is a great fan of goat cheese).  We arrived soon after a batch of baby goats had been born and Rhea was simply in love.  Unfortunately it was difficult to capture her sheer joy at being able to roll around with these goats due to extremely poor light...so I will post one picture that was taken with a flash. Though it won't win any photography awards it does convey how happy she was doesn't it?



The picnic on the beach was the exact opposite...glorious late afternoon light and a big empty expanse of sand...







Let the adventures continue!