Happy Halloween!

We thought the Phoebe-zilla costume would be a little unwieldy to wear all day at daycare, so Phoebe is going to school as a black kitty today.  Happy Halloween from both of our little black kitties!!

PS Sorry, my work computer rotated the image for me, I will rotate it back tonight at home.

Saturday, October 29 (day 121/365)

Today we had another busy day!  Lori and I had to run 8 miles and after that we felt like we deserved a treat, so we had the husbands and the babies meet us at a restaurant by the end of our run for lunch.   It was a ton of fun!  Later in the day we ran some errands, hung out a bit with the neighbors and then we carved our pumpkins!  We got a big pumpkin for Jeremy to carve and a tiny pumpkin for Phoebe.  Here she inspects the pumpkin insides and is a tad underwhelmed.

Really, I was trying to enjoy a snack here people!?!

Friday, October 28 (day 120/365)

Phoebe-zilla's reign of terror begins!

Halloween sing-a-long with Daddy.

Bouncey house!!!!

The little vampire is Phoebe's friend Andrew from school.  Both sets of parents took a ton of pictures and this was the best of the lot.  It turns out that while getting a good picture of one baby is hard, getting a good picture of two babies at the same time is pretty much impossible

Phoebe got to ride in the fire truck!  Sadly, she was much more excited about getting a bottle of water.

Thursday, October 27 (day 119/365)

The best part about being a walker is how much more quickly the baby can get into trouble ... and all without dropping her favorite ball!

Wednesday, October 26 (day 118/365)

Kitty dilemma.  The highchair is full of chicken

The highchair is also full of baby

What's a kitty to do?

Tuesday, October 25 (day 117/365)

PEEK-A-BOO!!!

Monday, October 24 (day 116/365)

Sunday, October 23 (day 115/365)

Today was another day of not-a-lot-of-sleep and ongoing baby tragicness.  So, rather than a coherent story, there is just a random mix of pictures.

All morning, Phoebe insisted on using both of her push-toys AT THE SAME TIME.  As you can imagine, this led to no end of baby breakdowns when she would get stuck or run over herself.  Of course, she couldn't give up and just play with one toy at a time.  THAT WOULD BE CRAZY!

Baby really needs some caffeine, it is so hard to get a good night's sleep in this joint.

The baby was being pretty loud downstairs, so Danger sought refuge the only quiet place he could find ... the changing table. 

Jeremy left his wallet and phone out in a baby accessible locale.  It looks like I caught her in the middle of ordering one of everything from Toys R Us.

Not only did Phoebe find Daddy's phone, she also got the remote.  It was pretty much like baby Christmas!

SNUGGLES!!!!!!  One of these two is WAY more excited about snuggle time than the other.

Towards the end of the day we played a little Rock Band thinking the singing would help cheer the munchkin up.

Phoebe says she could get used to the rock star lifestyle!

Saturday, October 22 (day 114/365)

Today we had a big day!  In the morning Phoebe and Daddy had swimming, and I went for a run.  When we were all done with our athletic endeavors, we ran errands.  Phoebe was super excited because we went to Costco - she loves a trip to Costco.  In the evening we went to an engagement party at Sathya's house for our friends Leslie and Scott!  I don't know if I've mentioned it lately, but we have the best friends ever.  The engagement party started at 4:30 in the afternoon and was at a house rather than a bar, specifically so that Miss Phoebe could attend.  Our friends are all so great with Phoebe!  And she, in turn, eats up the attention - she was all smiles and giggles and high fives (despite the preceding weeks of poor sleep and baby tragicness).  At the party she also officially became a walker - she was toddling all over the place.  For the last month or so Phoebe's been surfing along walls and taking a few steps here or there, but at the party she stood up and motored across the room ... multiple times.  That is one thing about our little munchkin, she knows how to work an audience.  The one "person" Phoebe took a while to warm up to was Sathya's dog Darwin.  Darwin is very good with Phoebe (other than occasionally getting a little over-zealous with the kisses) and is actually very gentle for a big dog.  At the beginning of the night, Phoebe wasn't too sure about dog, but by the end of the night they were buddies. 

Friday, October 21 (day 113/365)

Today Munchkin and I got up early and made Daddy some homemade whole wheat, banana, blueberry muffins for breakfast.  I mean, if you are up at 5:30 on a week day anyway, why not bake?  Phoebe loves hanging out in the kitchen, especially now that she has learned how to open cabinets and drawers.  We originally only latched cabinets with dangerous stuff in them, but we are clearly going to have to do a second round of baby-proofing.  Either that, or every piece of kitchen equipment we own will be coated in a film of baby drool.  I actually like having Phoebe in the kitchen with me - we have a lot of fun - even if she does hoard all the measuring cups!

Don't look now mom, I am making you a surprise ...

You keep using this phrase "not for babies" ... I don't understand ...

Oooo, look at all this stuff.  You were wrong mom, this is DEFINITELY for babies!

Thursday, October 20 day :(

Sadly, we do not have a photo for today.  We made it over 100 days, but then we forgot!  It was just sort of the perfect storm of events: Phoebe had us up all night, she was completely tragic all day, I had a late meeting at work so I wasn't home until after bedtime ... Long story short, I didn't get a picture.  It was pretty crushing to realize that after managing to get a picture of SOMETHING for so long, I had forgotten!!!!!  Boo!!!!! I wasn't sure how to handle it.  I guess, if I was a purist, I would start over at day 1.  But I am more of a realist.  We have a baby.  An active, sometimes cranky, attention-demanding baby.  We both work full time.  We try to keep our house moderately clean (or at least this-side of an episode of hoarders), cook healthy meals (almost) every day, and to spend time with our friends and neighbors.  In the scheme of things it is just one picture.  I am disappointed that I missed a day, but I am going to forge ahead. 

Wednesday, October 19 (day 112/365)

Hide and seek in the wee hours (Phoebe is easily distracted during hide and seek)

Danger reminds us that he is HAPPY to sleep through the night.  Or he would be if we didn't keep jumping out of bed to tend to the baby, disturbing him in the process.  Poor kitty.  He is down to like 18 hours of sleep a day.  A kitty can't be expected to live like this.

Tuesday, October 18 (day 111/365)

Phoebe is very into magazines and junk mail right now.  She had one particular solicitation card from Carleton College that she carried around for three days.  She was probably thinking the same thing as us - maybe if they didn't spend so much cash printing fancy, glossy brochures, they wouldn't have to hit us up for cash so often.  Anyway, I digress. 

A parenting magazine - thank god!  These people need all the help they can get!

Hmm, only $12 a year, maybe if I leave this card laying around they'll get the hint a buy a subscription!

Hey mom, have you read this one?  It has some great advice, not that I'm saying you need advice, but I'm just going to go ahead and mark the article for you ...

Monday, October 17 (day 110/365)

This month Phoebe went through a phase of horrible sleep.  And when I say that, I mean horrible even for her.  She would take forever to fall asleep, would wake up multiple times throughout the night and then she'd want to get up for good at ridiculous o'clock in the morning.  If I was a glass-half-full kind of gal, I'd say that I got to spend a lot of quality time with my baby before I left for work in the morning.  Frankly, it is very hard to maintain a glass-half-full perspective when you are exhausted.  To make matters worse, since Phoebe wasn't getting enough sleep, she was grumpy most of the time too.  It was a rough few weeks around here!  This particular morning, I was actually trying to get a video of Phoebe throwing a fit (one of many) in an attempt to garner some web-sympathy.  However, as soon as she saw the camera, Phoebe perked up and pulled herself together.  On a whim, I took one of those arm-length self-portraits of the two of us (where you hold the camera out and take a picture) and the munchkin went nuts - she thought it was the funniest thing ever!  Needless to say, we took a lot of self-portraits this morning.  Phoebe is absolutely adorable in all of them.  I just look ... exhausted.

I see you are trying to capture a video of me screaming and throwing my bottle around the living room.  I can't have footage like that getting out there.  What will the fans think?  Allow me to turn on the baby charm.

Look at how adorable I am!  Do I look like a baby who would throw a fit??  Who are you going to believe?  A cute bundle of adorableness or that lady?  Yeah, I thought so.

Sunday, October 16 (day 109/365)

This week I wasn't able to meet my friend Lori to run on Saturday, so I had to make up a long (7 mile!) run on my own.  I wasn't looking forward to it, but I mapped out a route from our house through campus and I finished the whole thing!  (I wouldn't necessarily say that a lot of it looked like running, but I went 7 miles and that is what counts).  After actual running, we went to go run some errands including lunch at Chipotle.  Phoebe loves Chipotle just like her parents!  We always hope there will be left-over kids meal quesadilla for Mom and Dad, but the munchkin can pack it away.  She usually eats at least half a cheese quesadilla and a healthy serving of black beans!

I see you eyeing my quesadilla old man ... don't even think about it.

After lunch, someone was a little grumpy, so we threw her in the Ergo and took a long walk downtown.  Eventually Phoebe fell asleep, so we just wandered around until she woke up.  We spent a while watching an adorable otter playing in the ocean - Phoebe missed the whole thing!

Most Sunday afternoons/evenings we hang out at home and relax before the next week starts up.  Here are Phoebe and Jeremy playing one of their favorite games - KABOOM!

Happy Birthday!

Today is Phoebe's Great Grandma Rita's birthday (Jeremy's grandma).  Happy birthday Great Grandma!!  Jeremy and Phoebe Skyped with her this morning while I went for a run.  They had to set up an appointment in advance because Great Grandma's social calendar fills up fast!  Every time we try to call her she is out having fun with her friends.  The other day I said "I hope we have as active a social life when we're in our 90s!" and Jeremy replied "we don't even have as active a social life NOW!".  Very true. 

Saturday, October 15 (day 108/365)

Today was the open house at school, so Jeremy took Phoebe to swimming by himself and then they stopped by campus to say hi to everyone.  In the afternoon we tried take two at the pumpkin patch (a different one) and this time everyone seemed a little happier.  We even picked out a great pumpkin to carve for the front porch.  After pumpkin picking, we went out for Chinese in downtown Monterey.  This was probably one of the first (if not the first) place that we have taken Phoebe that wasn't (a) the deli around the corner (b) Chipotle or (c) pizza.  We had a great family dinner (Phoebe got the tofu-broccoli) and an all around nice family day.