happy turkey day!

happy thanksgiving! this year we hosted thanksgiving at our house. we actually ended up ordering the staples from whole foods which ended up being delicious! we made a side and then our guests brought some as well. sonia, erin, allie, and kate joined us so chuck was certainly surrounded by women this year. sonia and dottie named the turkey millhouse. it was a lovely day!

tea for two

dear santa...

dottie is putting together her christmas list already and she is pretty sure about what she wants.



it's a little hard to hear so here is a translation:

1. little tiny pink rocks (or "wocks" as she likes to say) in a bottle **her cousin sadie grey got these at the field museum in chicago
2. sparkly pink shoes with purple velcro **converse sneakers that she saw me pull up on the computer
3. woody and buzz with wings and jesse....on a horse **all little figures from toy story 3

and in response to my question about santa: "you....have.....to......be......a....good......girl". we are definitely using this to our advantage already. she is VERY worried that is she is naughty, santa won't come! :-)

chicago 2010 claire & scott's wedding

claire and scott made an adorable bride and groom and got all of the details of the wedding just perfect! we all danced our hearts out into the night (especially dottie and ellis who started dancing even before dancing even started. who know our little girl had so many moves?) and with the time change working to our benefit, dottie finally hit a wall at 11:30 or so.

to see more pictures from the wedding, click HERE

chicago 2010 rehearsal dinner

we had a lovely time running around chicago with everyone but we had the most fun at claire and scott's wedding festivities. friday evening, scott's family hosted a really terrific rehearsal dinner at a restaurant right downtown where we feasted! the food was delicious and dottie got to try her first shirley temple (and for sure not her last for the weekend!).

click HERE to see more pictures from the rehearsal dinner



claire and scott




my aunt marsha with me

chicago 2010 (family)

we were so excited to go to chicago to celebrate with claire and scott at their wedding! along with seeing claire and scott, we were thrilled that so many other family members would be there as well. dottie was over the moon that she got to see her kiki and grandpa and also tom tom, aunt julie, ellis, and sadie grey. to add to all of those people, my aunt marsha and cousin jack and his fiance katie were even more of a bonus! so many people so little time!!! sadie grey is about 14 months older than dottie and the older they both get, the more fun they seem to have with each other. they were running around hugging and holding hands like two peas in a pod. it was adorable to watch and ellis was a great older brother and cousin and got silly with them too! a funny thing about these pictures was that at one point, we met up and sadie and dottie matched. i promise, it was not planned but it certainly looked cute! we checked out the bean at millenium park one day and the field museum on another rainy day...

to see more pictures from this set, click HERE

chicago 2010 (friends)

as many of you know, before moving to san francisco, chuck and i lived in chicago for 2 years. for this reason (and many more of course), it's always nice to go back to chicago and visit with old friends. it had actually been quite awhile since our last visit so we had several babies/kids to meet and some serious catching up to do. here are some pictures from our visits with friends. we had so much fun we honestly wish we lived closer!

to see more pictures from our visits, CLICK HERE

a visit with andy, kerry, evangeline, and jack
we happened to visit on evangeline's 2nd birthday so had some yummy cupcakes with her to celebrate and met jack henry who was born just 4 days after esther



and dinner with good friends jim and albert



and a lovely breakfast in oak park at josh, laura, jacob, and leo's house along with suzanne, andres, and joaquin

the midwest!!! (milwaukee)

about 2 weeks ago, we all went back to milwaukee and chicago for a visit with family and my cousin claire's wedding. esther did a great job on her first plane trip and slept the whole way there (and back for that matter!). we packed a ton into 6 days and took so many pictures that we are still weeding through them. we decided to break the photos up into different parts because there were honestly over 700 photos. this first part is of our visit to milwaukee to chuck's parents house. we were so happy that on top of seeing his parents and ellen (a close family friend), our friends, dave, julie, lily, and andrew linden made a trek from rochester, minnesota to spend some time with us and meet esther. dave and his family go way, way back with the mortimore's and dave was the best man at our wedding. dottie had so much fun with lily and andrew that she is still talking about them. we only wish we lived closer so we were able to see them more!! dottie was also over the moon that after having spent time with grandma cam and grandpa bill in mexico the week before, she got the see them yet again!!! we also got a chance to have thanksgiving with everyone 2 weeks early. nothing like starting the feasting early!

click here to see more pictures from our trip to milwaukee

yo gabba gabba live!!!

a little father/daughter bonding at the yo gabba gabba show last evening...

mamas and kiddies

sunday morning, i was invited over to berkeley to aleishall, and her daughter, toscana's, house to get together with a bunch of moms and kiddies to hang out. several of them i had met before before it was nice to meet new moms too! it is a group of people i have met through my friend marie (mom to siena and rocca) and it was a lovely time. as i have written previously, esther has been a bit of a handful lately with fussiness so i decided to head over just with dottie which was very nice. since the arrival of esther, we haven't had too much time together alone so it was really nice. we ate a yummy breakfast and chatted while the mobile kids ran around...

James and Ale's wedding

Dottie and I recently ventured down to Mexico to be a part of my cousin James' wedding. Despite some early travel mishaps, we eventually made it and had an amazing time with the family. Here are a few choice pictures. Congrats James and Ale!

Click here for a VERY LONG slidshow









Click here for a VERY LONG slidshow

esther's (kinda) first trip to the dentist

dottie went for her 2 1/2 year check up at the dentist yesterday and was a champ. no peeps at all and walked she away smiling with a new pink plastic watch. all day long, i asked her what time it was and she would reply, "it's dottie time" or "it's snack time" or "it's esther time" as she glanced at her watch. the dentist commented about how easy she was compared to most kiddies her age. 2 tv screens and dora the explorer does the trick for sure (as you can tell in the picture, she can't even smile at me because she was watching the tv). she was happy to show esther how it's done...

esther at 6 weeks (for the record)

this blog is fun to let people know what is going on in our lives but we have also realized that it functions as a baby book for the kiddies down the road. esther went in for her 6 week check up today and all is good with her health. on our last visit, the dr. said she had a click in her right hip that might be hip dysplasia. after an ultrasound 2 weeks ago, we were told that everything was okay which we are thrilled about! below is a picture at her check up today on the scale before a massive freak out caused by shots and another silly one from our trip to chicago this past week.

at 6 weeks, esther is now smiling lots and and interacting much more with us! we have hit a little bump in the road in fussiness in the past 2 weeks or so which we hope has been caused by the travel. she is doing a great job sleeping at night and usually goes down for bed at around 9:30, wakes to eat at 5:00/5:30, and then back down again until 8:00 or 9:00. her sleep habits during the day are a little less predictable. we are trying to figure things out in that area! :-)

her stats at 6 weeks...
weight: 9 lbs. 14.5 ounces (50th percentile)
height: 22" long (75th percentile)
head: 38 cm. (50th percentile)

2 here and 2 there

chuck and dottie have been gone since thursday on a trip to mexico for his cousin james' wedding. it sounds like they have been having a fabulous time soaking up the sun and living it up with the family. esther and i have been having a really lovely time as well taking long walks, doing a little retail therapy (chuck, disregard this part), sleeping in a little, lunch with our friend katie who's visiting from l.a., dinner with friends, just plain taking it easy. life is a lot more slow paced with one and not two. they get back tomorrow and we head to milwaukee and chicago the next morning for 5 days. we shall see how that goes as it is the first time we will be traveling with 2 kids and not 1.

this evening esther and i had francois, hannah, allie, anna, and erene over to hang out with us and have dinner. we had a really lovely time and i am sad to say that i didn't get many good pictures. here are 2 of esther with hannah and francois.

friends

esther (4 weeks in this picture) and i had lovely brunch at marie's house with marie and rocco (5 months) and eriko and her new baby isla (2 months). eriko is a friend i met a little over 9 years ago in a year long letterpress class i took. it's was really fun to reconnect with our kiddies after so long. the kiddies are so cute together aren't they?

princess dottie

i picked dottie up at school the other day and this is who i found...

maira kalman

a few weekends back on a rainy sunday, we ended up going downtown to the maira kalman exhibit at the contemporary jewsish museum. the whole thing was really cool and dottie got into it because of the children's books she has illustrated. there were lots of paintings of dogs which was a hit! after we checked out the exhibit, they had a special program set up for the day that encouraged people to take an animal and paint it how it represents them. dottie painted a ladybug as you can obviously tell in the photo! :-)

a pirate and her parrot...

happy halloween 1 day late!

dottie was in all of her glory as a pirate this year for halloween to go along with her pirate obsession and she LOVED that esther was her trusty parrot (she also had one perched on her shoulder!). she made sure that everyone knew that she was a good pirate!

we had a fun night of festivities and trick or treating in bernal. more pictures will be posted in a set tomorrow...