Another month of constant motion

July was BUSY. We went up to Shelter Island for July 4th, Claire played at the beach a bit. She is now the proud owner of big fat crayons and loooooves drawing with them. We went to a water park out in the 'burbs - she had a great time splashing around. .....and she kept growing. And growing....and growing! Her car is newly accessorized with a Springhill Motor Co. sticker, and Rosa decided to see what all the fuss is about with that Pooh chair.

Two missing videos

The two car videos showed up on the left, but two others came and went mysteriously. So here they are: DiaperCam and "Chair" .

Happy (almost) Father's Day!

Claire got her first car today! Ok, it is really a car-on-a-stick, but she loves it. She's been borrowing (er, carjacking) one at the park that another kid has, so we trekked out to Wal-Mart and found her one this morning. Huuuuuge hit with the little girl! There's two videos of her in it on the left here, along with 2 other new ones.

The one where she's typing is kind of funny - and she says "chair"! The one where she's on the changing table shows nothing but a little thigh, but is her first video as camera-person, and a little weird but funny.

Also, today she said "bub-bub" a lot - I was blowing bubbles in the car for her on the way back from Wal-mart.

Mid-June, just another day or two in the life

Claire's latest discovery of really fun things to do involves the laundry baskets. The other night she got her blankets in there with her and sat there while we read stories. I think she'd sleep in there if she could.

Anyone remember the infant rocker on the stand that she spent the first 5 months of her life in? Well, we remembered that it comes off the stand and is a toddler rocker -- which she loves(despite the sour expression on her face here)! So, yay, more furniture that's Claire-sized!

Jean and Harmon gave us some dresses from a friend of theirs, and they have come in handy in the last couple of days of 100000000 degree heat. The ladybug and the pink gingham from the 16-month picture are two of them. Love them!

16 months old today!

After breaksfast Claire and Ray went to the park. Julia and Rosa went running and met them at the park for awhile. Claire's napping right now and later on cousin Richard's coming over to eat dinner! If Rosa's in the moood we may hit the dog park later, I doubt Julia's lame run wore her out.

Ready for the park!

First MLB Game! (Nats v. Marlins)

Claire, Ray and I went to our first National's game - and Claire's first-of-hopefully-many MLB games for Mother's Day! It was a little chilly and drizzly, but not too bad. The new stadium is beautiful! We got free hats with pink W's on them. We had a great time.

Oddly enough, you can go to a Nats game and not pay for parking - which was weird to us after paying through the nose for parking at the few Red Sox games we went to in Boston! We can park at RFK and the Nats have a ton of tour busses waiting to shuttle people over to the Nats stadium. Works out really well.

We have tickets for 2 more games this summer - both are also Sunday afternoon games, to try to work with Claire's schedule, of course. Today worked out pretty well, we were able to get Claire down for a nap a little early. We made it to the top of the 9th, at which time the Nats were down 1 run (thanks to a relief pitcher who blew their lead in the 8th inning), it was starting to rain for real and Claire was on the edge of Melt-down-town. Pretty clear our karma was turning on us and it was time to call it a day.

Trip to NC - zoo, grandparents!

We went down to Raleigh the weekend of April 26 to see the grandparents and go to the zoo in Asheboro. The zoo was great - but lots of walking and a pretty hot day. Claire got to see elephants swimming, and a lion sleeping, giraffes and ostrich. And that was pretty much it - did I mention it's a lot of walking at this zoo, with hills?