After seven years of marriage...

...this is what our life looks like :) Happy Anniversary Ralphie Bear!

All About Ali

I think it's about time I devoted a post to my beautiful baby girl. Alex just turned 19 months old, and gave me exactly two minutes to take an impromptu photo shoot this morning. She looked so adorable in this outfit that I had to take her out back and take a few pictures. She's wearing my headband (we swap hair accessories all the time!), but wore it for precisely 120 seconds before tossing it to the ground.


If you look below, you'll see that Ali is wearing her big brother's old shoes in this pic! I think little kids in Converse All-Stars are one of the most adorable things ever! I've been scouring the old blog posts trying to find a few pics of Jake at about the same age wearing the same shoes. No luck. I know it's there somewhere, I just can't find it.


I think Alex resembles Ralph more than Jake does, but I still see a lot of me in her. Ali really resembles Ralph's little sister Laura as a baby. But in this picture below, the one on the left, I think she looks identical to me. Well, in the face at least. The last time my legs were that thin was probably 1989!

Jake's First Days of Kindergarten

My little baby boy is all grown up! Jake is having a great time in kindergarten, he enjoys riding the bus with our next door neighbor Gabby, and having lunch and recess every day at school. We are still adjusting to getting up early every morning, but so far it is working out well for everyone.

Binky Mania!

Jake has long since given up on the pacifier, but his sister has picked up the habit. And every once in a while, when there are spare binkies laying around, Jake will pretend to be a baby and pop one in his mouth. Tonight however, he was up to his old tricks again and sported multiple binkies. Alex is mostly allowed to have her binkies ("bee-bee") at naptime and bedtime, but she uses her skinny little arms to reach between the slats of her crib to procure additional binkies as needed. She refers to bedtime as "ah, ah, baybee" and calls her blankets "ahbees".

She is talking quite a bit lately. Today she was wishing Ralphie a "Happy!" (birthday). She says all of our names: Mommy, Daddy, Jake ("DAY!!"), Geedah, Peepa, Danny, Mema, Papa, "Cuh" (Uncle Chris), "Guh" (Uncle Greg), "La" (Aunt Laura), and of course Ru.

She also says hi and bye, love you, thank you, yes and no, dog, up, out, gotta go ("Gaaah GO!"), please, hat, shoes, belly, and many others. She will repeat many words for you if you ask.

Alex is incredibly smart (in my humble non-biased opinion) and has amazing fine motor skills. She is strong and capable and extremely independent and strong-willed. She's a fearless dare devil and an absolute handful. She drives me completely bonkers and I love her like crazy. She is sweet and cuddly and absolutely Mommy's little girl.

Seventeen months have gone by in a flash, and they have been such a joy and a blessing. I love watching my two beautiful babies grow up together.

I wanna be just like my big brother!

Alex does everything she can to be just like her big brother Jake, including wearing his batting gloves.

Ralph in the News!

Ralph was recently interviewed by a reporter who had covered him back when he was playing high school baseball. Sort of a 'Where Are They Now' piece. Jake had a small cameo in the article, I recently photographed Ralph's headshot in our backyard. You can read the article here.

Having Starbucks with my little Movie Star