Birthday! Birthday!

Our first joint birthday party! I went up to Artco on Saturday and got some balloons--five pink and one blue. We took some pictures with them that night because I wasn't sure if they would last.



(I didn't want to overwhelm this post with balloon pictures, so I just stuck them all together.)

Sunday morning we let Kate pick one present to open before church. She picked the animal coloring book from Barb and Kyle, because she liked the frog wrapping paper.

After church Andy let us know it was time for his nap, so we had a quick lunch and got things ready while waiting for him to wake up.



Scott came over for the festivities, and brought Kate yet another dinosaur.



We decided to go the slab-of-panettone route again. (We're just not cake people, generally.)



We sang Happy Birthday to Kate first.



It took her a few tries to blow out her candles.



And then we sang Happy Birthday to Andy! (That's Scott's hand.) Kate helped him blow out his candle.

I wasn't really happy with these pictures of Andy, and I realized that I had forgotten the "baby's first birthday" bib, so I re-staged this part the next day. (Mimi says, "Of course, it's the afterfeast of his birthday, totally acceptable!") I had, conveniently, done laundry early, so his clothes were clean again. The light was a bit different, though!








"Ooh, what's this?"

Andy loved the panettone (both times) and just gobbled it up.



Opening presents!



It's Nessie! (Playmobil seamonster, from my parents.) She was so excited about this.



Andy gets some help with his present.



My sister Barb made this ball. I love the colors. And it jingles! Very cool.




Joint present from my parents.



"It's an Elephant and Piggie book!" (Hooray!)



Happy birthday, kids! It's been quite a year. Here's to many more!

Christmas, Christmas time is here....

I remembered to get a picture of Andy with the "Baby's First Christmas" bib. (I completely forgot Thanksgiving, and didn't even think of it till a few days later. Alas!)

The day before Christmas it occurred to me that we should get a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament for Andy, too. Doug and Kate were going out, so I asked them to look for one. Here's what they found:



(When Doug was describing it to me over the phone, I asked, "Is it creepy? It sounds creepy.")



Grandma Mary sent these ornaments that she made for the kids.



We had a big dinosaur Christmas a couple of years ago, and this year was definitely a dinosaur year too. Kate got two dinosaur toys (the Playskool walking triceratops, which she'd been asking for since summer, and the Playmobil brachiosaurus), and for a joint present I found a Scholastic DVD of dinosaur stories.





Kate named her triceratops Blue. (Most of her names tend to be color-related, or descriptive along the lines of Chompy, Toothy, or Beaky.)






Like our matching pajamas? (Especially in front of the Ugly Couch. Yowza!)

It was a pretty low-key kind of day. We had our own little ham dinner and watched The Grinch (the animated one, of course) and Lady and the Tramp (which begins and ends at Christmas). I got a little more done on my scrapping project which I still haven't finished. I wish we lived closer to our families--it would be nice to be able to get together for holidays.

It's Halloween!

I remembered to get a picture of Andy with the "Baby's First Halloween" bib!

We were prepared with candy, but didn't see any trick-or-treaters before we left at 6:00 to go to the Halloween party at the church.



Kate wore her dragon costume again. I kept asking her if she wanted a different costume, but nope, she just wanted to be a dragon.



Doug and I both ended up going the non-costume costume route. I think Doug would have dressed up, but we had a bit of miscommunication about exactly when the party started and we were running late, so he just grabbed his German hat on the way out and said he was a World Traveler. He was already wearing his Welsh T-shirt, so that worked out okay. This is a shirt that he had made at Cafe Press a couple of weeks ago, that says on it, in Welsh: "I went to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio-
gogogoch and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." (Side note: Doug once asked Kate if she could say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogery- chwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, and she said, "No, I'm too sick.")

I went as an MWAC. (Pronounced "em-wack," this stands for "Mom With A Camera.") Oddly enough, no one asked me what I was.



There was trick-or-treating around the (spookily decorated) classrooms, and a few booths with games in the gym. Kate was intrigued by the fishing game.



"I caught a pencil!" (very exciting.)



There was also a chili cook-off. Andy thought that part was pretty exciting.



I was remembering the cute picture of Kate bear-crawling at the Halloween party when she was this age. Andy's getting around all over the place, but I haven't seen him bear-crawling at all. Perhaps he's got better calluses on his knees, or something.



He did seem to enjoy all the costumes and colors.




Kate kept going back to the fishing booth over and over (I don't even know how many times--fifteen? Twenty?) and came home with six pencils, these three little finger puppets, and assorted geegaws.



Larry Golden (who took our six month photo shoots this summer) had a room set up to take photos, with studio lights. When I took Kate in, he put the hot shoe attachment on my camera to trigger the lights, and took one for me. Pretty cool!

More from Easter

Because I have been informed that it's never too late to post cute pictures!



After I posted the first set of photos from Easter, I remembered that we had this Easter bib to take pictures in.



Right after that, Kate started putting things on Andy's head.



"He looks like a bunny!" Kate says.



I hope these two will be good friends as they grow up.

Andy says, "Happy Valentine's Day!"

My sister-in-law Karen sent this set of "Baby's First" bibs, with cute applique pictures for different holidays. There are three bibs, but they're reversible, so there are six different holidays (well, five holidays and birthday). Such a clever idea! They arrived yesterday (good timing) so I thought I'd have Andy model this one for Valentine's Day.




It turns out my camera is fine, but my lens has stopped auto-focusing. (This is the 50mm 1.4 lens.) This means the camera won't fire when the lens is on auto, since it can't achieve a focus lock. It'll work fine on manual. I do have my 100mm lens, too, but it's not very good for indoors, since it requires more light and more room. I'll probably replace the 50mm as soon as I can. For now I guess I'll be practicing my manual focusing skills.