Christmas Presents

Alice got a box of big Legos for Christmas. They were very tasty.

One of Alice's Christmas presents is a wine-crate buggy made by Grandpa Ted. She loves pushing Dolly around in it, or holding on tight to Dolly and riding around in it herself.

Busy Day!

While Kirke worked today, Alice and Sarah maximized their toy experience with help from our Yoga friends. Alice made sure that she maximized her living room toy distribution, while Sarah acquired a new toy to document the fun!

Eating the sheet music

As I say, I'm not sure that's how the composer intended his work to be used.

Missing teeth

While visiting with the cousins, we discovered that Alice might have August's missing teeth. Left unanswered is just how August lost those teeth.

No ride for you!

Grandma Ann made the Dolly as a wonderful present for Alice, but so far Alice seems to think that Dolly is just another competitor for toys. :(

It gets her where she's going

We keep thinking that Alice will eventually learn to crawl in a more traditional fashion, but she seems content (and relatively efficient) with her unconventional 3-legged gimp technique. Should we be worrying about long-term hip problems?!

10months and not holding still

We're not sure Alice really appreciates being a part of these "Monthly Progress" blog posts. Or maybe she's just shy about having her age publicly broadcasted.

Don't grow up to be cowboys...

Grandma Ann says that Kirke, when a baby, really loved dancing to slow, sad Willie Nelson songs. Now that's another thing Alice shares with her daddy!

More behind the scenes...

Sarah worried that some people might think Alice is going to get addicted to the tv. While Alice loves to celebrate touchdowns, we'll admit that she still needs some coaching to get her to do it for a picture during a Packers game:

No one warned us about daylight savings time and babies

How 'bout 'dem Packers, eh? With the switch to daylight savings time over the weekend, we felt we needed to keep Alice up late to help her adjust (and make sure that we would actually get to enjoy that extra hour of sleep). Fortunately, Daddy just happened to find a way to keep her entertained on Sunday night. Unfortunately, at 5am Monday morning, it became clear that Alice had not yet adjusted.

Grandma made the sweet customized jersey.

Behind the scenes...

Just in case anyone thought we hadn't been trying hard enough to get decent pictures of the cousins in their costumes.

Could the kids be any less interested?

Farming, Part 2

We're again babysitting our neighbor's Guinnea Pig. Alice is a little more stable since the last time she tried helping feed the piggy...

Happy Mornings

Alice has been exceptionally happy in the mornings lately. We find her gleefully chatting away with her dolls and stuffed animals when we come to get her out of bed in the morning. We're not sure what important things she has to say, but it sounds a lot like, "arrghh blah blargh blah gaga ghaaaaaaaaa ... eek!"

Halloween

Know what's even more unlikely than getting lions to lay with sheep? Getting a lion, a monkey, and a home-made dragon to all sit still long enough for just one freakin' picture!

9 months

Alice is 9 months old! New tricks include waving "goodbye" (she doesn't do "hello," though), showing how big she is when asked, and signaling "touchdown!" during Packers games. She doesn't always do the "touchdown" sign at the right times, but Daddy thinks it's cute enough that he'll excitedly shout "touchdown!" with her, even if it was the loathsome Vikings that scored.

Yard work

Alice helped us plant our spring bulbs this weekend. She sampled the soil by tasting it, sang to us, and helped pull extra bulbs out of the box. She still needs to learn which plants are weeds and which ones we want to keep in the garden, though!

Touchdown

Autumn means two of Kirke's favorite things: football and leaf piles! He introduced Alice to both this week. She liked playing tackle in the leaves, but had an interesting touchdown celebration - she tried to eat the football. We're sure that would draw a fine in the NFL.

More piano girl

This is probably our longest video ever, but it features a nice piano duet with Alice taking over for some solo riffs - on keyboard, voice, and razzberry spittles! Hopefully Alice inherits Aunt Ginny's musical gene, and not Daddy's...

Bike riding!

This past weekend was absolutely gorgeous. Probably the last warm weekend of the year. We spent it doing one of our favorite activities that had been sort of on hold since the arrival of Alice - bike touring. Kirke, on his day off, bought a very fancy trailer for Alice to ride in. We were a little worried that she wouldn't like riding in it for long periods, but she loves it. She talked to her giraffe Sofie the whole time, and squealed with delight when we got going fast on the downhills.

We started short and biked to a little village with an icecream shop outside the city - about 25 miles roundtrip - and then on Sunday went out with Grandma & Grandpa on a similar, but slightly longer trip. Good times all around!

Peek-A-Boo

Alice is getting to the stage where she really likes playing Peek-A-Boo ... and these days she wants to be the one to do the hiding and reappearing. She usually plays this game under the bed covers or with her special blanket, but this weekend she discovered a big rock table that was just perfect for standing up at and then peeking under. She was pretty happy with this game, but she laughed the most when Daddy tried playing too and then bumped his head on the rock and accidentally used some salty language. Luckily that wasn't caught on camera.

Junior MD

Doctor Alice displays a pretty poor bedside manner - laughing at her patient's illness and then rudely changing her mind about whether to share a relevant page from the latest issue of the NEJM. It's like she almost enjoys seeing her mommy have the sneezums!

Sharing?!?

Sharing with friends is clearly an advanced concept that Alice has yet to grasp; however, she has mastered grasping her friends' toys. I guess a baby has to start somewhere. Here is the evidence from our most recent play date with the yoga babies--our very talented friend Anne took all the pictures!

Piano girl

All that time hanging out with her Aunt Virginia has clearly had an effect on Alice. They share a couple of things in common: blonde hair, an inability to do math, and a love of music. Alice serendipitously discovered the piano with its top open the other day, and now she frequently crawls out there to stand up and play on it when mom & dad are busy doing work. It's very cute, and sometimes Kirke will come out to join her for a round of "Chopsticks."

Cooks in the kitchen

Sarah bought Alice a fancy new kitchen set so she can help out at dinnertime: there are always more pots that need banging! Alice seems to like the playset a lot, but that may just be because she can usually find a few old Cheerios or Puffs in the cabinet or on the floor around it.