Playmat Montage

This may be a little over the top...but at least I condensed it to one video!

Jacob at the Monument

Here is a cool picture I took of Jacob at the monument across from my mom's house at Thanksgiving. Playing on that thing brings back so many memories that it's really fun to do it with my nephews.

Friendly Boy

My son is quick with a smile - he seems much more gregarious than Cecilia at this age. There is nothing he likes more than for someone to be making eye contact with him, making baby sounds, and smiling.

Pancakes!

 It never dawned on me that in a million years one of my favorite activities would become cooking with my daughter. Pancakes, banana bread and cookies are good because there is lots of mixing and not as much cutting, but she loves to help out in anything we make. Here she is giving a proud (if forced) smile over some of our handiwork.

At school the other week they were making tomato sauce and the teachers gave each kid a plastic knife and a few onion slices, but without any expectation that they would do anything other than play with them. When they turned around Cecilia had chopped her onion into neat little pieces! It's funny the things that make you so proud as a parent.

Big Smile

I was emailing with my friend Stuk in New York and made this video to show him what I was doing in between emails.

Making a Movie with Dad

Cecilia and Phillip on the Couch

Reading to Little Brother

This is a little dated, but hopefully it becomes a regular occurrence.

Reading to Mommy

Audio's not great and you can hear Herc in the background, but still a cute video. It's funny because now every time after I finish reading stories to her she asks if she car read one to me. I say yes and then she proceeds to flip through an entire book without saying a word...I don't call her on it though :)

Cleaning Snow off the Car

She loves to be helpful!

York Animal Kingdom in the summer

Over the summer, we went to York Animal Kingdom and York Beach again because it was SUCH a big hit last year. It was an exhausting, but incredible fun day!

The full photos can be found here.

Here are a few videos from the day.

Feeding the ducks:



Rides at the carnival area:



At York Beach:

Phillip and the Penguin

That funny looking penguin is a one of those Russian matryoshka dolls, with a bunch of smaller penguins in side. Something we bought for Cecilia when she must have been about 1 and a half.

Petting zoo at Reid's birthday

Reid had an animal guy come to his birthday party to show the kids (and adults) all sorts of animals!

Cecilia followed her cousin, Jacob, and was very brave in petting and looking at all the animals.

Swim Class - all by myself!

Over the summer, Cecilia started having swim classes withOUT mommy or daddy! She was so proud to be there by herself. The teacher, Adam, was fantastic. Here is a long video medley of one of the classes:

Fighting with animals

Phillip has really been getting interactive with the stuffed animals - reaching for them, fighting with them, chewing on them, etc. It's so cute!

Part of this video is blurry, but you get the idea:

Tickling

Little Phillip is starting to laugh more and more, especially with his Daddy. He's starting to like being tickled! :)

Easy Chair

This is from when Phillip was only a couple weeks old... if only he could use Grandma as an easy chair forever!

Rolling over

The little guy has learned to roll over!

Happy baby

Laughing with Daddy

Reading books with Daddy

Cecilia now likes Daddy to read to books to both her AND Phillip every night.

Umbrella

I took this on the way to her friend Zeke's birthday party, and thought she looked cute in her party outfit and new umbrella.

French Toast

Here are Cecilia and mommy making French toast yesterday. The bonus audio is Phillip next to the microphone on the iPad.

Snow White

Yesterday we had movie night with Cecilia, and she watched Snow White for the first time. This is what she said about the evil queen (who had transformed into the old hag) when she was holding the poison apple:

"She needs to cut her fingernails! But we don't want to get too close to her because she might kill us."

Chicago in the Summer

While we were in Chicago for Uncle Bruce's wedding, we enjoyed the many things the city had to offer - we had no idea that Chicago could be that much fun!

We stayed near Bruce's apartment, at a place called Ray's Bucktown Bed & Breakfast. This place was very homey and ecclectically decorated, with a fantastic breakfast made to order. Grandma and Grandpa were even able to join us for free for a few mornings! Of course, the first night we were there, we had pushed Cecilia's bed up against a wall so she couldn't fall out of it, and the best thing to her was jumping from bed to bed. She kept that up for an hour.



In Chicago, we also discovered the Chicago Zoo and Lincoln Park. We went to the zoo with Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Pattie, Uncle Rochester, Uncle Dick, and cousin Ethan. Here is a video composite of the zoo trip:



Cecilia had a fantastic time, and spent some quality time with Grandma and Grandpa:

Lincoln Park was pretty amazing, and we went back a second time later in the week. Immediately adjacent to the park, or perhaps part of it, is a really great beach, perfect for little kids as it is very shallow and has mild waves. Cecilia has never been one to turn down a beach.

New York Grandma went with us the second time, and we also went to a museum just outside of Lincoln Park, which had an awesome butterfly room.

 
That same week, we also visited the famous Millenium Park in Chicago. It was way to big to fully explore, but we spent quite a lot of time at the water fountains.

There is also a "Kids Fair" that goes on during the summer there, and there were tons of activities inside a big tent, including music and shows, hula hoops, building blocks, art projects, etc. Cecilia really enjoyed the blocks.



There are also lots of fantastic sculptures, etc in the park, including this huge reflecting sculpture. There are a lot of weird surfaces and curves as part of this sculpture, and you can stare at yourself from various angles.

And finally, we passed by one of the large jet fountains on our way back to the car. Cecilia was running in her flip flops toward this fountain and fell and scraped her knees pretty badly. But she was a trooper and still smiled and posed for the camera for this great shot of the family. What a good girl.

One of the last days we were there, we visited Uncle Dick, Auntie Sarah, and Ethan at their new house in Evanston. It was truly an impressive house, and Cecilia had a great time playing with Ethan's toys and the other adults. Quite a lot of time was spent chasing Grandma around!



And finally, here is a random video of Cecilia singing with Grandma:



We like Chicago so much, that it's made our short list of top 5 places to live. Of course, we only saw the summer... :)  The full set of pictures can be found here.

Uncle Bruce's Wedding

In July we all traveled to Chicago for Uncle Bruce's wedding! On Friday, we had the "rehearsal dinner", which was a fantastic Chinese banquet, followed by some dancing. Cecilia chose to wear her best blue dress, which she says makes her look like Cinderella.

 

Mom and Dad gave a nice toast, as did Uncle Richard, and Dick was a fantastic emcee.

  

 The food was fantastic and everyone had a really good time.

 We got some good pictures too of a lot of families with the happy couple.

Cecilia particularly enjoyed the dancing! The young ones all broke the ice and began the dancing. Cecilia loves dancing with Daddy!



Cecilia actually outlasted a lot of the grownups, and closed the dance floor down at 11pm.

 

The next day was the actual wedding, which was a very low-key and beautiful ceremony. 

Cecilia was so proud - she and Ethan had the honor of being the ring bearers!

Mazel Tov to Eileen and Bruce!!! We were all so happy to celebrate with them. :)
The full set of pictures can be found here.

He really loves this thing.

Story Time with Big Sister

DeCordova Museum

One beautiful day in July, we went with Grandma and the Lubrettsky's to the DeCordova Museum. This museum has a lot of large outside art/sculptures, and was set among some fantastic landscaping. We went on a small walk to see some of these although it seems like there were many more acres we didn't have time to explore. Here are a few examples:

The kids also had fun looking for ants and letting them crawl all over them (ew!). Luckily they didn't find too many. I'm pretty sure Cecilia would have passed on this particular activity if it weren't for her cousins. :)

The whole set of pictures can be found here.

Tummy Time!

The Greenway

Cecilia had a great time with Abby, Olivia, Aaron and Jacob on the Greenway one day this summer. They all enjoyed running in the sprinklers:

 

 

There were also these cool blue blocks set out for kids to play with:

Harbor Islands Trip

We had our annual trip to the Harbor Islands in July with the Lubrettsky's, and also with Melanie, Nils, and Astrid. We did the same thing we did last year - we went to Georges Island to walk around the fort, then we took the ferry to Spectacle Island to go to the beach for a short time.

The kids really enjoyed the ferry rides:

A little golf cart was a big hit in the fort:

Some pics from the beach at Spectacle Island. This year, Cecilia did not sleep through the beach portion of the trip. (She also did not fall asleep in her stroller - we didn't bring it - and even better, she didn't pee while asleep in her stroller.)

Just a nice pic:

NYC with the Johnsons

In July, we took the Johnsons with us to New York City. One thing we did was take a kid-friendly cruise around the Statue of Liberty! They had a lot of kid activities on board, such as animal balloons, magicians and a pirate that walked around, etc.

I think Jasper was not interested in taking a picture that day, and I don't know why Bronwyn and Cecilia both have such funny expressions on their faces... But everyone had a great time.

To this day, Cecilia can still recognize the Statue of Liberty, which is pretty cool.

Another Smile

They come quite often these days, but here is another one from last week for the grandparents:

Bouncy Bed Dance

July 4th

We joined the Lubrettsky's for a July 4th parade in Sudbury this year. They had a very sweet (and not too crowded) old-fashioned parade with old cars, high school marching bands, local businesses, etc. And many of the paraders threw out candy for the onlookers, which of course was a favorite with Aaron, Jacob and Cecilia.



Cecilia got a little US flag from Jen, and was told that by waving the flag at the paraders, they threw candy for you, so she was a maniac with the flag waving for almost the entire parade.

Later that afternoon, we went to the Chris and Lisa Brookin's house for a fantastic barbecue. It turned out to be a huge party for the kids. I brought balloon animals and face paint (for Jen to paint faces), and another parent brought a portable bouncy house, which was a huge hit with all the kids.

Here are a couple representative faces. Aaron wanted to be a lion, just like Cecilia, so that he could be her brother (or dad or something). Very cute.

And finally, here are some shenanigans with the bouncy house, which was overrun with too many kids:

Stage Fort Park

One Sunday in July, we planned to go to Wingaersheek Beach but didn't get moving quite early enough, and so couldn't get a parking spot there. Instead, we went to Stage Fort State Park in Gloucester, which is only 10 minutes away. It's a really nice park with a big playground, baseball diamond, and several beaches with shallow calm water. One beach is nice and sandy and can get a little crowded on nice days. The other beaches are pretty rocky, but tend to be pretty empty, so that's where we usually go. Cecilia doesn't seem to mind and has a ton of fun no matter what.

As expected, this day was spent playing with the sand and the water. And of course, a little rock-climbing.

Camping in Wompatuck State Park

In June, we went camping in Wompatuck State Park with the Lubrettsky's.

We brought this huge "10-man" tent, which is really not as big as it sounds. We also brought a big queen-size blow-up mattress that we all slept on, so "camping" is sort of a loose term. Cecilia, Aaron and Jacob had a ton of fun jumping on our mattress and hiding in our tent, which had 2 rooms!




The full set of pictures can be found here.

Dancing with Aaron

Cecilia will do anything if her cousins are doing it. In this case, it was line dancing, which was super cute. And a little impressive...

A Smile

Phillip is starting to smile every once in a while, mostly when I make disgusting silly baby noises and coo at him. Here's a rare video of one. You have to watch until the end to see it. :)

Wingaersheek Beach in June

This was one of the first beach days of the summer for us - we went to an old faithful, Wingaersheek Beach, about 45 minutes north of Boston. As usual, Cecilia had a blast there.

The first half of the trip was spent finding hermit crabs and building them a home. Then Cecilia climbed some huge rocks with Daddy. Then she chased us around with a water gun. Here is a composite video:



Yay for the beach!

Cecilia with Rachel and Isabel in NYC

From Rachel Wagman:

Memorial Day Weekend in Philly

This is from a while ago, but in May, we had a reunion with my old medical school friends over Memorial Day weekend in Philadelphia. We stayed with Annemarie, who was amazing. With a 3.5 year old and a 6 month old, she cooked dinner for all of us, ranging from 8-14 people, for 3 nights!

Here are some highlights of the trip.

Meeting Sidney Swami for the first time:

Going to the Please Touch museum with Tony, Siu, and their two children, Allison and Andrew:



By the end of the weekend, Allison and Cecilia were playing really well together:



And the finale of the weekend, which was a big Memorial Day barbecue. Here's a pic of all the kids together, minus Sidney, who can't sit up yet:

The full set of pictures can be found here.

Game Day

Of all the things my children have to be thankful for, I think the most important is that they were born fans of the New York football Giants.