More cousin fun...

Many of you may remember our giant fail of a Halloween picture where five of us desperately tried to get August, Leo and Alice to look in the same direction at the same time.......After a weekend trip to grandma's, we are pleased to report a somewhat more successful cousin, costumed picture attempt....

bath fun doesn't equal pool fun!

After seeing all the fun that Alice was having at bath time, we figured that she'd LOVE swimming in a real pool with daddy! We found a place that offers parent-baby swimming lessons after working hours in a 90 degree pool and signed Alice up. Unfortunately, swimming wasn't love at first dip for Alice. She screamed through 90% of her first lesson and started clutching desperately onto mom the moment she saw the pool for the second time (on the bright side, she only cried through ~15% of that lesson). Hopefully, third swim's the charm.

Splashing Daddy

Remember when Alice used to hate baths? Now she loves them. She especially loves splashing daddy!

Taking care of baby....

Alice enjoys exploring the nooks, crannies, and open drawers of the house.....we found this particular exploration especially endearing: it's fun that she has started engaging in imaginative play with found objects.....

Alice is one year old!!!!

Alice is officially one year old--we now have the pictures to prove it! Isn't it amazing how much she has grown in the last year?

Her current tricks include "walking" and effective baby sign language communication of "all done", "more", "milk", "touchdown" and "frog" (just the essentials in our house). Her interests include sorting, the "bear in a square book", and climbing into things. She also really likes pointing at things and saying "eee-it" or waving at you from across the table and saying "hi". We are clearly biased, but we do find her to be quite a delight!

cousins!

Over MLK weekend, Alice had lots of fun playing with cousins Leo and August in Winona. There were many very sweet moments and a lot of "hey baby alice"'s from Leo!

Happy Birthday to Alice.....

We started the celebration for Alice's first birthday last week with much help from Grandmas and Grandpas who made sure that Alice had plenty of cake to refuse to eat! Given that Alice hasn't mastered blowing out candles yet, she got a lot of help from her friends. It is hard to believe that it's already been a year! Time really does fly.....