milo got stickered!

poor milo. right about now, he is wondering when things will go back to his wonderful pre-dottie life as a single child. little does he know what september will bring! dottie has loved him since the beginning but in the past few months their relationship has taken on a whole new life. she makes tea for him, plays hide and go seek with him, sneaks him food, lets him watch her "friends" (piggies and monkeys and such) while she is at school, and of course, shares her stickers with him! look closely at his paws and you will see that both of his front paws have been stickered!

(in all honesty, milo loves dottie more than anything. when he hears her wake in the morning or after her nap, he whimpers until we go down to get her and is only happy after she is out of her crib and has given him some attention. surely he doesn't really dream about life before dottie!)

the fire station

this week dottie's school went to visit a nearby fire station. it was on a day that dottie doesn't attend but everyone was invited and we jumped at the chance to check it out. as i have written about before, dottie have loved her "chief" hat for the last year or so and often wears it on outings and around the house. she of course wore it on the visit! the fire fighters were so great with the kids. they let them go in the fire truck, hold the hose while the water was squirting out, slid down the fire pole for them, got dresses up in their gear, etc. dottie was absolutely taken with the whole thing and has been talking about it nonstop since the visit!

lake temescal

we have been pretty busy lately so it has been hard to keep up with posting pictures...
these we taken during a heat wave we experience the weekend before last. it was in the 80's here in the city and way hotter in the east bay where we were crazy enough to venture to! we have certainly gotten a little whimpy when it comes to heat living in sf. if the weather gets above the 70's, people melt.

we decided to check out a beach at lake temescal in oakland which was as pleasant as can be. nice and shallow for dottie to play and she even got to check out a family of ducks passing by. afterwards we went for a bite to eat and a little shopping (hooray!) in rockridge! we picked up a very cute little doll for dottie that we will have to take a picture of. it looked the most like her of the doll selection and when she woke up from her stroller nap, she found it cuddled up next to her. we told her that is looked like her and asked her what she wanted to name it. she responded, "me". of course, we thought she meant she wanted to name the doll, "dottie", but oh no, she has referred to it as "me" since that day!

bay area discovery museum

last week at the suggestion of my friend anne, we headed across the golden gate bridge for a morning at the bay area discovery museum. i honestly can't believe we had never been before. i was awesome as you can hopefully see from the pictures! anne and sam met us there and because it was such a beautiful day, we spent the whole time at the outdoor exhibits and then had lunch outside. in the picture where dottie is climbing on the ropes, she had just looked up and said, "look mommy, there's the golden gate bridge!". we have a book that we've been reading called larry gets lost in san francisco and it's honestly still a shock to me sometimes just much she is taking in and processing.

ring around da' rosie

as noted before, dottie has been very sing songy lately. she sings songs she knows or makes them up about whatever. a major favorite right now is "ring around the rosie" or as she likes to say, "ring around da' rosie". she sings it twirling around laughing hysterically because she gets so dizzy. when we were home last week, dottie and sadie grey must have sung it together at least 20 times falling over and laughing hysterically at the end in delight. below are two quick video's. one of dottie singing solo and one with her cousin sadie grey...

sewickley

last week, dottie and i traveled on monday and chuck following on thursday for a lovely week with my parents, "kiki & grandpa" at their home in sewickley . they are in the process of building a new house on their property so this is probably the last visit we will have in the home i grew up in (from age 10 on). my brother tom and his family came as well and it was really special for us all to get together. dottie absolutely LOVED seeing her cousins, ellis (6) and sadie grey (3) and her aunt julie and uncle tom tom and of course she couldn't get enough of her kiki and grandpa!!! the weather was a touch spotty but we managed to have lots of fun and even ended up at the pool the last day we were there. to see more pictures, click HERE.

the pictures of us in white are from a photo shoot that we got for my parents for their 40th wedding anniversary. the photos honestly couldn't have turned out better. you can check some of them out HERE at the photographers website. (scroll down when you click on the page). the ones i have posted in the slideshow on flickr are ones we just took.

i was also very happy to have enough time while i was there to get together with old friends and some of their kiddies....kate & jordan, anne & ellie, sarah, mrs. pickard... we got to see heather, hutch, and bj but failed to get pictures unfortunately.

dottie had a little lamb

dottie has been very into humming and singing as of late. currently she loves singing the "pirate song", "I'm a little teapot", "ring around the rosie", "mary had a little lamb", and a number of other songs she has learned at school or here at home. tonight at dinner she gave us a very monotone version of "mary had a little lamb"...

pizza, pizza, and a bbq

we are a little backed up with posting pictures as of late because of travel and just being busy. wanted to post some pics of dinners we enjoyed before our travels back to pittsburgh. it has been so much fun getting together with people lately because dottie and her friends just keep busy with each other playing and eating at the kids table so the adults can really enjoy good conversation and such. surely life is going to get a little more complicated in sept/oct but for now we are really enjoying being parents of a much more independent toddler.