Thanks, Grandma Val (and Santa)!

So bummed that Skype failed us! We love all of our gifts. Thank you so much!

The xylophone and mallet are equally entertaining.


The baby was taken on a tour of the house.


Jingle bells on the move! This kid is getting fast.


And there she goes. Trying to get into the toilet, no doubt. We're so proud.

Merry Christmas! Thanks, mom.

100th Post!

Yes, loyal followers, this is our 100th blog post!

Things at our house have been blissfully quiet lately. Following a crazy November, we've been living up the relative calm of December. Jonie is making slow but steady progress on the walking front. Her record so far is six unaided steps in a row. A few days ago she made the treacherous journey from the coffee table to the love seat. Harrowing. But she does love to walk.


We are getting ready to head to Michigan to celebrate Christmas with Anne's family. I have started my coping-with-a-one-year-old-on-a-five-hour-flight skills already. Jonie is a really happy kid, for the most part, but she is squirmy. And she is not sure about the bonnet look.


One thing she really does enjoy is blue-green swim goggles. She gives them to me, I put them on, and she cruises around the house checking everything out in its new color scheme. At one point she wore them for about fifteen minutes. So funny.

Relaxing at the end of a long day of playing. A kid's got to unwind.

Ever since her first birthday a few weeks ago, it seems like Joine is turning into a kid. She's developed a fake cry (and a hilarious 'mad' face to go along with it) and really wants to play. We were in the toy section at Target the other day shopping for niece and nephews, and Jonie wanted to touch everything. And then she cried when we left the section. This is a big change from just a few weeks ago when she was interested but largely indifferent to such things. Look out.

Steps!

I'll let the video speak for itself.

It's Good To Be #1

Photos of Jonie's first birthday extravaganza are long overdue! Yes, our girl turned one on November 7. Hard to believe, no?

Anne worked her magic on Jonie's cake(s): a family of porcupines. Anne decided to make porcupines because Jonie loves them. At least we say she does. When you ask her what a porcupine says, she says "Ouch!" Here are the stars of the show.


We had 45 people in our home for the party. That's right: 45. It was a bit insane, but great to have so many people celebrate the day with us.

Jonie handled the crushing crowd very well. But she wasn't quite sure what to do when she came face to face with that baby porcupine cake.


Later on she managed to get a good face full.


The days leading up to her birthday were bittersweet as we remembered the amazing experience of her birth, and the terribly scary 10 days that followed. But look at her now. Look at all of us. What a year.

Happy first birthday, Jonie Tunes. You have changed our lives in ways we never imagined possible. You are such unabashed joy and wonder, waving to everyone we pass on the street and laughing all day long. May all your years be filled with such thrill.

Fearsome

Have you ever seen a more terrifying giraffe. Ever?


About a month ago, Anne and I had big plans to make a fabulous costume from scratch. You know, totally homemade. The kind that demonstrates just how much we love our kid, and just how committed we are to bucking corporations in favor of good old handicrafts. This is our kid's first Halloween, after all. If we couldn't get it together this year, what would that say about us? What would that mean for Jonie's costumes going forward?


And then on the morning before Halloween, we found ourselves at Babies R Us, grabbing the very last thing on the rack that would fit our kid. It worked out alright. Jonie's cuteness far outweighs our feelings of inadequacy. We do have that going for us.


Soak it in, people.

Bathing Beauty

Thanks for the robe, Auntie Megan and Uncle Jonathan.

Go Giants!

Jonie and I watched the opening innings of Game One and cheered for the hometown team. Anne has been traveling for the past few days and we're excited that she's coming home tomorrow.

Fancy Haircut

We took Jonie out to the kid salon to have her first haircut with a 'stylist.' The place was great. She got to sit in a little car and watch Sesame Street. (Come to think of it, she'd probably rather live there than at our house where there are no little cars and no tvs.)

We (and by we I mean Anne) decided to go with a wedge bob and extra short bangs. She is the height of fashion.

Heat Wave

We are rounding out a very warm stretch down here in Oakland. Even though we're going on our fifth year living here, we just can't get used to October as the hottest month of the year. Jonie is taking it all in stride. As usual. (don't you love the frog posing in the background)



Most of our play time consists of her handing me book after book. Sometimes patiently, sometimes not so much. (now the frog is being tricky)

We've been trying to beat the evening heat by cooling off with a pre-bedtime bath. She has become a pro splasher and no longer minds when she splashes herself in the face. Ah, the good times.

Just Try to Stop Me

Jonie is an unstoppable force of movement. This very food oriented kid has even lost interest in eating because she doesn't want to sit in her high chair when she could be trucking around the house—gripping furniture, flinging clothes out of the laundry basket and foraging the floors of our apartment that I used to think were pretty clean.

As for Anne and I, things have been very hectic. I have applied to three jobs (yes, full time faculty positions) and one postdoc in the past few weeks. Anne has been working like crazy on proposals and client deliverables. Tonight we dropped Jonie at a friend's house for a few hours so that we could enjoy a meal together. It was wonderful, but over too soon. I have to put together two syllabi for another job application (a fun but time consuming task). And, as I type, Anne is sitting across from me reading a large stack of stapled office papers. Jonah is resisting sleep. We're debating whether and when to go back into her room to soothe her and help her lay down--she is no doubt standing in her crib, gripping the rails like the bars on a jail cell. What a trouble maker. An absolutely joyful, ingenious, indefatigable trouble maker.

And... we're back!

Our girl is on the prowl.


She is pulling to stand on anything she can get her hands on. The bench, the table, the wall....

Look out.

Just to Tide You Over

We're experiencing a bit of a backlog of photos. I'm going to try to deal with it tonight, but here are some photos in the meantime. (You're welcome, Mom.)
Jonie and I enjoying the beautiful weather at Samish.

Ha!

Jonie spends a lot of her day laughing. And she is becoming quite the mimic.

Black Beans

Looking Back

I just came across some photos that our friend Megan took at Jonah's first Thanksgiving. She was about three weeks old. It is hard to believe how little she was, and how long ago that all seems.

Haircut!

Jonie got her first haircut yesterday. It is true that most babies don't have their hair cut until they're quite a bit older, but Jonie has much more hair than the average baby. In addition to the overall mullet shape (the long strands in the back made it to the middle of her shoulder blades) she was having trouble seeing through the curtain of hair over her eyes. Now that she's becoming an efficient crawler, it is kind of important that she be able to see where she's going. Is it a coincidence that she ended up with a deconstructed bob much like Anne's? You decide.

Auntie Abby working on the back while dad did some distracting.


And, some afters.