Sweet Grandbaby!

Here are a few precious moments with Grandma and Grandpa!

I'm a BIG kid!

At Grandma's house, Elizabeth enjoyed the freedom of exploring each new room! She would crawl around the living room, kitchen, entry hall, hallway, and dining room...all while Mom and Grandma were chatting nearby.





Here, we caught her pulling up on a dining room chair and discovering a little one-handed independence!








We think it won't be long before she is standing on her own!

Baby in a Basket!

This is Elizabeth's response to "Baby in a Pot!" (Meghan, I can almost hear Kai shouting out now!) I don't know what makes it so ding-dang cute to put a little baby where babies ought not go--but Elizabeth seemed to like it, and we took some adorable pictures! See?...

Conquering Fears

It's a brave new world for Elizabeth Katherine! Until last week, anytime I'd try to introduce her to the wonders of tunnel play, she would peek inside and then turn around and hightail it out of there! There was just NO WAY she was venturing down that long, enclosed path all by herself! But, suddenly, last week at the Gymboree in Austin, she had a "tunnel breakthrough" and decided that she was all about it! The pictures speak for themselves here!

M, E, and E

Elizabeth and I just returned from a visit to Austin! We had a great time, and I'll be posting some pics and videos from our trip throughout the week. Here is a cute picture of Elizabeth with her cousins, Matt (10) and Erin (6). Elizabeth is very fascinated by kids who are a little bit older than she...and they were really sweet with her. Elizabeth thought that Matt was especially funny--as she kept giggling every time he put his face near hers.

I speak whale!

Here is the world famous linguist Grammy attempting to communicate with Purp in whale. Oh, sorry, I've just been informed that it's dolphin. Which, as you all know, is a dialect of porpoise. I still have no idea what they're talking about, however. And by the look of her pounding out signals, it could be that Purp is also trying to get across something in elephant. If I may translate (I minored in elephant in college): "I want a double-double animal style, no tomatoes, fries, and a chocolate shake from In-n-Out." Like father, like daughter!

A movie about nothing

Sometimes, the lights come up, the camera rolls, and the leading lady forgets her lines. Or, in this case, does absolutely nothing of interest. But she's still a cutie so I couldn't resist posting "a movie about nothing."

Awww...

Elizabeth is looking up at Daddy and giving him the big puppy-dog eyes! Somewhere deep down I guess she must know that we are about to go off for a whole WEEK and leave him all alone! That's right...tomorrow morning, Elizabeth and I are traveling to Austin for a little visit with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Jennifer, Uncle Mike, and Cousins Matt and Erin! Of course, we will miss Daddy (and we hope he will miss us, too!) but we also know that this will give him a HUGE opportunity to get lots of work done without distraction! Right, Daddy??? ;-) So, faithful readers...we hope you will have a great week and we will return soon!

Tête-à-tête, Purple-style

Purple has a new friend! And in a neat twist of existential discovery, it's her! (And just for Auntie P, "Whaaa?") Mommy sat down with Purple to watch her greatest hits and Purple found herself as cute and lovable as we do. Just so Purple didn't hurt her own feelings, however, we re-assured her that she was laughing near herself, not at herself. And then it got weird...

In all honesty, I'm not sure whether Purple recognized herself. Although it will be terribly embarrassing in a few years when we show her the video of her laughing at her video of her screeching like a banshee in the door jumper and she says "Oh, dear, I thought I was laughing at that odd little Brunhilda girl down the street." Course, if she says that in a few years, I'm gonna wonder who replaced my kid with Angela Lansbury. But, without further tangents, here's Purple on Purple:

All in a day's work...

This video just cracks me up. Mainly because it looks exactly like what I do all day, everyday...except without the purple inner tube. Man, that's sweet, I gotta get one of those.

Anyway, the video really captures everything about my job (well, except for the whiny B+ students): the typing, the howling, the fidgeting, the sitting around "thinking", the hacking, the staring off into space, the tedium, the sudden fits of insanity, err, inspiration. I guess we're raising an academic!

Proud Papa!

Peter is quite the Proud Papa in this photo...and I think it perfectly illustrates just the kind of doting dad he is turning out to be!

Last week, Elizabeth went to Free Play at Gymboree! (For those not in the know...once your little one becomes a "crawler" you can take her to Gymboree Free Play for all kinds of unstructured exploration. So far, however, Elizabeth is mostly just interested in observing intently while the bigger kids do the exploring.) Anyway, since Free Play is late on Friday afternoons, Daddy was able to join us!

Here, Elizabeth leads Daddy on a chase after a whiffle ball that she had spotted from across the room--it seems one of those "big kids" (a wee one of about 3 years of age) was collecting a bouquet of them in all different colors, and E was fixated on following him around until she could get her hands on one! You go, girl!

Jump!

Purple has been all about the door jumper recently. She's happy as a clam in it and wants the whole world to know. As it goes, I think she's quickly closing in on the women's indoor high jump world record for the 0-1 age bracket. Kajsa Bergqvist, eat your heart out!




PS-Because I know my mom is wondering, yes, Kajsa Bergqvist is the women's indoor high jump world record holder. And no, I didn't know this before I started...there are some useless bits of trivia that actually do escape my notice!

Where's the Mousey?

Elizabeth got these little Taggies nesting buckets from our LA friends, Duncan and Kristine. They came with a little pink beanbag mouse that tucks inside the smallest bucket. So Mommy made up a little game called "Where's the Mousey?"
Brilliant in its simplicity, the game is played exactly as the name implies: Mommy sits right in front of Elizabeth and drops the mouse into one of the buckets for her to "find" (Yes...I'm aware that she is watching as I do it! But she's only 10 months old! She's not exactly solving complex equations!) Apparently, Mommy has not done such a bangup job of sufficiently explaining the "rules" of the game, because, as you will see, Elizabeth often continues to peer into the buckets to search for the mouse even after she is already holding it in her hand! Ah, well...bless her little heart for trying!

Before and After

Well, I thought about trying to fool you into thinking that the "before" picture was the one with Elizabeth sitting down, but you can probably tell that her feet aren't positioned correctly in the sitting down picture in order for her to pull up from there!


So, I will confess that the BEFORE picture is the one where she is standing up holding onto the bars.











But the AFTER picture is just as impressive to me--as she was able to very carefully and gently lower herself to the sitting position. These pictures were taken on September 16...which was the first day that we actually saw Elizabeth pulling up to standing! Since then, she spends almost all her waking hours pulling up and sitting down, pulling up and sitting down! It never gets old!


And this picture I just had to include because I just want
to grab her and eat her all up when I look at it! Awww...

I SEE You!

Elizabeth is discovering new things EVERY day! On Tuesday, she discovered the mirror on the exersaucer, and she and Mommy played "I SEE you!" for about 10 minutes before she was interested in something else.




Here's how it's played (in case you were wanting to play along at home): Mommy sits on the floor next to the exersaucer and leans down and looks into the mirror until I make eye contact with Elizabeth in the mirror and I singsong, "I SEE you!"


And then Elizabeth leans forward with her mouth wide open to look down into the mirror to see what's there! So cute! She just kept doing it over and over again...and each time she still continued to look curious and pleasantly surprised by what she found!

Purp climbs in, Purp climbs out

Miss Purple Ruffle-Tukus has a new favorite "toy": her purple tube. I don't think this video needs much introduction, I'll leave it to the little monkey to demonstrate her new trick...

Flying...

One of Elizabeth 's favorite "Daddy Time" activities is flying around the house high above his head! Daddy stops her in front of every mirror--we seem to have a LOT of them around this place!--and asks "Who's that baby?!"
Elizabeth giggles and squeals the whole time. Right now, she seems to think it's very cool to be as tall as Daddy--but I'll let you know how she feels about it at age 15.

Precious Moments

Yesterday morning Elizabeth was having a wonderful time in the Exersaucer playing with and talking to her dolly. I took a few of these pictures as she played. And I thought they turned out pretty well. Then I took her dolly and held it up by the camera in hopes that I might get her to look up and smile. I was right about that part, but I did not predict that she would first spontaneously tuck her little hands into her lap resulting in this adorable moment!

For Pete's sake...could she be any sweeter?!...Mommy thinks NOT!

Hitting the bottle

Before the bottle...

...Mommy and EK were out running around today (apparently met up with Lindsay and Beckett at their place and the four of them took off with strollers and hiked it all the way to Century City Mall and back) and got home hot, tired, and rather disheveled. EK was wired, though, and as this video indicates, was more than happy to giggle and play with Mommy while they were reading bedtime stories and getting ready to catch the Sleepy Town Express.





After the bottle...

...only fifteen minutes later, Purp was passed out.

Splashing in the Tub!

Over Fruit Loops this morning, many of you probably puzzled over the following question:

Does Elizabeth still enjoy bathing and splashing in the tub?

I know, it keeps me awake at night as well. Well, that, and the thought of college tuition...oh, and have you ever wondered how they get that big ol' ship in such a little tiny bottle? I mean, dude, the mouth of the bottle is way too small for that ship...

But never fear, there is a simple way to answer your question...the one about Purp and the bath, that is. Through the magic of YouTube, I give you: Purple Still Enjoying the Bath!