The Long Walk

She set out with great enthusiasm and determination, but that long look down to the face of the pool was a little too intimidating; 'And how in the world does one get out to the edge of the board?'

With her instructor waiting for her in the water, and a little help from another, she splashed in, and popped up with the combined look of proud confusion.

The Girls

We practically have to draw numbers to see who gets to hold our new Laila while my sister and Jason take naps. The weather is so balmy out and with her dressed so lightly, we can easily take quick peeks at her tiny round shoulders, hands, feet and ears. And a few days ago we got to take her out for her first stroll around the neighborhood. We're pretty fond of this one.

Welcome Laila Ingrid

At 12:44 this afternoon my new darling niece Laila, at 7.6 pounds and 19 inches long with dark curly hair came into this world; hungry and very alert. We all eventually got in our squeezes and were able to watch her take her first bath then get her tiny long toes printed.

10 in 10 on 10 - July

One to the Other

Pirate Translator

With the Seafair Pirates about town, you may need this!

Bite the Bullet

Well, I did it. I marched across the street and finally and officially introduced ourselves to the family with 2 sweet little girls (one that turned up in E's soccer camp). This may not seem like a daunting task to many of you, but it's been nagging at me for years, (yes, I said years). I am pretty much a homebody and reaching out of my comfort zone paralyzes me. I've hated talking on the phone for as long as I can remember, and making new friends is so painful for me. I am comfortable with the handful of friends that I have, and only until recently really didn't see the point of adding an extra ball to juggle.

Don't get me wrong, we've been 'neighborly,' we wave at one another when we pass each other on the street, and I've made small talk with their (newly divorced) mom at the mailbox once or twice. But summoning the courage and admitting to myself that E and I probably needed them to be a part of our lives and vice versa was hard. One of the little girls, Kate, is just a few months older than E and last week it hit me that she could very well have her best friend in the whole wide world living across the street and we didn't even know it yet. E has a lot of friends, but the reality is that all of them just so happen to be boys or are a handful of years older than her. They are all dearly loved, dare I say viewed as part of our family, but as she's getting older (almost 4, can you believe it?) and without siblings I think we're all sensing that she's in need of someone to run around with.

So I did it, and wouldn't ya know it, they're great. We met up with them at the beach yesterday afternoon and had a great time. Jeannie, their mom and I talked effortlessly (this is huge folks!) while the kids ran around collecting shells, wadding into the water, and built sandcastles. They had such a good time, in fact, that a few minutes after we all had arrived back to our respective houses there was a knock on our front door with the girls asking if they could continue to play with E! They played on the swing set, colored, played dress-up for 2 more hours!

Finally.

Maybe we just needed to right set of circumstances, but now I feel like I'm part of the neighborhood. And not as worried about our little girl.

Food, Family, and Fireworks on the Fourth

(pink pop-it?)

(yellorange smoke bomb)

(sparklers)

We missed our town's 101st Fourth of July parade this afternoon. We had my family over for a late breakfast of scones, bacon & eggs, fruit and coffee. It was a lovely, warm, and lazy morning. After our guests made their way home we meandered down to our local grocery store parking lot to buy a few token smoke bombs, sparklers, and pop-it's (They're not illegal in our county). When we got home we let her open her pop-it's and D lit off her colorful smoke bombs. Then we pretty much futzed around at home. D's been in 'musicland' working on the new record so E and I were on our own to keep ourselves occupied in the backyard; I hung up a few loads of laundry to dry, E spent nearly and hour on the swing set, I pulled a few weeds, filled our bird feeders, gave her a few pointers on the fine art of photography, we laid in the grass and took pictures, then went over for a BBQ at the folks house. Asking kids E's age to stay up until 10pm when fireworks are really exciting is just too much (especially when a certain someone didn't get in a nap), but she had fun with the little stuff we did.

(wow)

(roman candle - always remind me of Bottle Rocket)

80's Tees dot com

This site was really fun to click around on, especially love the children's book section (we've collected the majority of the Mr. Men and Little Miss book series').