tap, tap, tapping

recently my parents sent a pair of tap shoes that were mine as a child. i gave them to dottie today to play around in and they were a huge hit. she was tap, tap, tapping all evening. she told me that she learned a song at school about tapping. it's a touch hard to hear but here it is. i have promised to tie the tap shoes tomorrow with pink ribbons! (check out her little feet tapping away as she is singing...).

cutie...

(cute outfit courtesy of sarah and matt!)

dottie's 3rd birthday party!

this past weekend we had a small birthday party for dottie at a little art studio in noe valley called pixie hall studios. dottie is still OBSESSED with ice cream so we went with an ice cream theme (pink and green of course!) and the women who ran it came up with the most adorable ice cream cone art project. the kids had a ball and ended up blowing bubbles with their favors on the sidewalk afterwards because it was so gorgeous out. below is a sampling of pictures but to see even more pictures of the party, click here.

confused children

mom is from pittsburgh, dad is from wisconsin.

laughing

hooray!!!! we have turned a corner with esther and in the past 2 weeks or so, she has become a much more pleasant baby. we don't know it was colic or not but it was certainly not easy from about week 7 to week 14. we now understand just how difficult it has been for other friends of ours who have had fussy babies. there was a lot of crying in the house (not just from the baby!) and now the noises are much more fun. we are also now working with a sleep consultant because we saw a huge correlation in esther's mood and whether or not she had gotten enough sleep during the day. this person has honestly changed our lives and esther is sleeping really well at night with only 1 wake up at around 3:30 a.m. usually and her naps during the day (3 of them usually) are getting there. hooray for happy babies!

here is a little video of esther laughing at her daddy today.

big girl bed!

about 2 weeks ago, we finally moved dottie into her new room and her new big girl bed (or as she likes to call it, her "big sister bed"). the move has actually been pretty painless (yes, i am knocking on wood right now) and dottie seems to be enjoying it. it started out a touch rough on us because after painting the bed and then assembling it into the wee hours of the night one night, dottie woke up the next morning to her new surprise and didn't seems to like it much to our dismay. the teachers are her school suggested calling it a pirate ship and since then, it has been an absolute hit. she says the bed it up top and the pirate ship is below. malcolm and wyatt came over to check it out last weekend and i think they approved as well! yes, and the best news ever is that this means esther is now in dottie's old crib in her own room which is fabulous! we will be making a little cozy space down below with pillows...

FISH

we have had perfectly perfect weather here over the last week or two and we have been taking full advantage of it. we had a very pleasant sunday afternoon the weekend before last with the ricci/godbold's and the oakes' that started at the bay area discovery museum and ended eating fish outside near the docks at the restaurant FISH.

happy 3rd birthday sweet dottie!

you light up our lives in all ways possible.
we love you!



here are a few more pictures from the day and if you would like to see even more, CLICK HERE

waking up to balloons...




lunch with frannie...


cake with friends...


celebrating at school with her buddies...

our big guppy

this week marks the last week dottie attended her swim class with chuck in a parent/child class. next week she starts in a class with 1 teacher and 4 kids total. she is very excited about doing it on her own and i think chuck is a little sad to be losing that time with her. next up, ESTHER!

she has certainly come a long way since she started at 3 1/2 months old. (click here to see pictures from her first swim class)

pins and boards

about a week ago, we had a great sunday afternoon with friends that started with bowling and ended with skateboarding. wyatt parker is looking pretty cool on that skateboard, eh? first step for dottie learning to skateboard: don't wear rainboots next time!

for more pictures, click HERE

babble

we have learned that esther certainly isn't a quiet baby!

we have had a tough couple of months in the murphy/mortimore house that's for sure. if esther isn't crying when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she is "talking" like crazy. imagine her in this video at full volume but for about 45 minutes at 3:04 in the morning. FUN STUFF!! (this is just a snippet of a long babble session she was having with dottie and me. she cut it short at the end...)

esther's 3 month check up

(could those cheeks get any chubbier/cuter?)

esther's 3 month check up today...

head: 40.5 cm. (50th %)
length: 23" (25th %)
weight: 12 lbs 3 oz (45th %)

dottie and chuck gettin' rad

christmas 2010

2 hours of screaming and 4 hours of driving later, we finally arrived at our lovely rental house in tahoe. grampa wayne and kiki had already stocked the cupboards with provisions warmed the house. grandma cam and grandpa bill would subsequently attempt a 4 leg cannonball run style blitz across the country on december 24th. alas mother nature conspired against them and they ended up spending christmas eve in a hotel in lovely salt lake city.

the following morning, we witenessed a christmas miracle when we were able to fend off dottie from opening packages until they arrived later that afternoon. she is already on the good list for next year!

once we were all together, we proceeded to have an absolutely lovely christmas together with both sets of grandparents. dottie and esther were in christmas bliss with so much attention....and pink! (grandma cam had the fun idea of making it a pinkalicious christmas this year and we decorated the fake tree with PINK, PINK, PINK!! santa even knew to go with the theme and wrapped everything in pink!).

we went skating, put together puzzles, played candyland, made a pirate-unicorn-snowman, sledded, baked cookies for santa, ate amazing food cooked by chef wayne, snowboarded, watched toy story 3 (with the cast of toy story 3 in doll form as you can see from the photos), got crafty with grandma cam, relaxed, and watched about 2 + ft. of snow fall all in 7 days.

it was an absolutely perfect christmas!

(p.s. esther screamed 2 hours on the way home too. not sure how soon we will be making that drive again!)

to see more pictures from our christmas, click HERE

snow!

we have been busy, busy, busy and still haven't pulled together our pictures from christmas. we will do that in the next couple of days but in the meantime, 2 pictures from tahoe where we saw quite a bit of snow while we were there