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.

clothespins

dottie at mike at and umi's garage sale...
she is certainly a collector of things (just like her mother)!

goggles

dottie doing the monkey walk on the side of the pool in her goggles. what you can't see if that she has flippers on too!!!

barrett comes west

barrett was out here visiting from NY for work this week dottie and i were lucky enough to be able to grab a delicious dinner with him tuesday night (unfortunately chuck had a work dinner). dottie warmed up to him right away even hopped up on his shoulders for the walk home. barrett was a good friend and roommate of mine in college and even though we don't get to see him very often, we love it when we get to catch up!

congratulations are also in order. barrett and his wife anne just welcomed a second son, dashiell, 2 weeks ago!

sarah and matt

last weekend, we were lucky to have sarah and matt came for a visit for their first wedding anniversary! sarah and i have been friends since 4th grade. it's really crazy to me that it's been 25 years! they had fun in the wine country and then came to SF for the weekend. we went out for many tasty eats, introduced them to the infamous indian pizza at zante's (and they loved it!), checked out the ferry building, had some lobster rolls on the coast, walked around china town (and zonked dottie out as you can see in the picture), and really just had a lovely weekend with them. thank you for the visit dear friends!

we are going home for a visit to sewickley next weekend so are looking forward to seeing them again soon!

p.s. sarah and matt...dottie is still loving the VERY loud and VERY repetitive big sister dora doll you gave her!! ;-)

MATCH!

for some reason or another, at least once a week i get dressed and then without thinking, dress dottie and realize that there is a bit of a match going on. last week one of the matching outfits was so matching that i had to change. i can honestly say that this wasn't planned... oy! (chuck was wearing striped too)

the zebra and the cow

last week we got together with our friends the notz's (john, basak, lula, and adele) for a lovely dinner of cheddar/bacon burgers at their house. the girls had a ball playing together, got plunked in the bath and did a good amount of splashing, and then put animal print pj's on and ran around in a stampede. a very fun evening! they are moving to turkey in july and we are going to miss them so much! I met basak at the national stationery show in new york 2 years ago and we discovered that not only did we both work in the stationery business (her business is small square design), we also have girls the same age and we lived near each other in sf. of course, it helped that we got along really well! we got back to sf and realized that we were also signed up for the same music class with our girls! too good to be true...

buddies

no, dottie doesn't seem to want to take the helmet off even when she eating and not scooting...

manners please!

we had a lovely dinner with our (newly married!) friends pooja and ian the other night and dottie got to stay up WAY past her bedtime for all of the fun. during dinner she insisted on using the large serving spoon to eat her rice. where are you manners dottie!!

halfway there!

20 weeks down, 20 weeks to go...

sweet baby ashwin

this past wednesday, dottie, milo, and i went for a lovely walk with mindy, dutch, and 2 1/2 month old ashwin. the dogs got to play a bit which much needed for milo and then they had to wait patiently (see picture below) while dottie got in a little playtime at the park. we went for a delicious lunch which was perfectly perfect because dottie was totally occupied by the new dora the explorer sticker book that mindy gave her. dottie did a little interacting with ashwin, trying to tickle him and make him laugh. he is just adorable and she was pretty excited when she got smiles back from him! he has gotten so alert and smiley since the last time we got to see him.

moss beach

this past sunday we decided to go on an adventure and check out a new place. the weather has been gorgeous lately so we decided the beach was in order. we ended up heading to moss beach which is about 35 minutes south of sf on highway one. we had a lovely drive down, played on the beach, and then headed for lobster rolls and fish and chips afterwards! dottie built a volcano with chuck and ended up going home with a new rock collection (see 3rd photo) that now lives on our front stoop. she inspects in every time we come into the house. we tried a self portrait and it didn't quite work our as you can see in the last shot...

i was told today that if we had gone during low tide, there would have been a bunch of seals on the beach lounging in the sun and starfish everywhere. next time! dottie would have loved it!

thank goodness chuck has milo......

because he is going to be pretty outnumbered in september!

it's a girl!
we are beyond thrilled!!!

watch me color!

fun things about dottie

some fun things about dottie at 2 years and 4 months...

she loves "ice ceam" more than anything else! her very favorite flavor is mint chip. she has an ice cream toy that has 4 scoop flavors to play with on cones. if you ask her for a cone, she will happily give you a triple scoop but it will almost never include the mint chip scoop. she covets it!

she is talking like crazy right now. she strung a record 11 words together today which i was shocked by. she said, "we go across the street and i will hold your hand". typically her longest sentences are usually about 7-8 words long which we are still excited by.

the "pirate song" (over the deep blue sea) from school is as good as it gets. she sings it in her crib when she wakes up in the morning and wants to sing it all day long. we have tried to get it on video but she gets stage fright when we prompt her to sing it.

the other day when we were getting her dressed, she declared "i'm naked!". after we put her diaper on she declared, "i'm mostly naked!". silly girl!

"mino" (milo) is still one of her favorites. she chases him around trying to give him hugs and kisses but has a tough time sharing with him and says, "no mino" whenever she has something that she thinks he wants.

she still loves reading more than pretty much anything. she tries to con her way into at least 5 books before nap and bedtime. after the 2nd book she says, "after this one, i go to bed" then promptly gets very upset after that book is done. favorite books are still anything curious george, madeline, dr. suess, maisy,...

she is FINALLY napping on the big kids cot during naptime at school. up until recently, she had been in a pack and play in a separate room because she was so chatty when they were trying to put everyone down for a nap.

chuck's tickling techniques will no longer work on her. he usually con's her into being tickled by pointing at the ceiling or something else and laughs hysterically when he gets her. she has just figured out that she doesn't have to fall for it anymore though sometimes she plays along just for the giggle i think.

she has pretty tiny feet. i remember hearing that kids go through shoes like crazy at this age. i have a whole adorable line up of shoes ready for the next size she grows into and they have been waiting for about 4 months. she is wearing a size 5/6 and has been since at least last november!!!

she loves her "piggies"! when i try to leave the house without putting her pigtails in, she has a minor fit and then after i put them in, she grabs both of them as if she is counting them to make sure i have put 2 pigtails in. recently i have added a third on the top of her head to change it up and it has blown her mind!

3 piggies ("old piggy" and 2 "new piggies"), 2 monkeys, "hoots" the owl, "baby", "big pig", "penguino" the penguin, and recently added "froggy" join her in her crib every night for bed. she looks for all of them before we leave the room.

malcolm turns 2!

malcolms turns 2 tomorrow and penny and jason threw a party for him on saturday at a local park with friends, cupcakes, pizza, loads of sand toys, and a posse of kids on scooters. dottie is still new with her scoot so was scooting around the park saying, "i'm coming guys" with a huge smile and a lot of determination and they scooted ahead of her. of course her favorite part of the day was singing happy birthday to malcolm and enjoying a cupcake afterwards!

ian and pooja are married!

last weekend, our friend's ian and pooja got married!!! chuck had that pleasure of being the best man at the wedding and of course, we both were thrilled to attend. it was an absolutely gorgeous weekend and every single detail of the wedding was perfect.

dottie had sitters friday and saturday and then had a "slumber party" at sonia and erin's on sunday night, the night of the wedding. she had an absolute ball all weekend (especially with sonia and erin) with all of the attention that now whenever we go out of the house she says in her cute little voice, "we going to sonia and erin's?". the actual wedding was at the ritz carleton just south of san francisco so we stayed over sunday night and i was more than happy to wake up an have waffles there my birthday morning!