HH Halloween party

All the daycare friends loved Sebastian's school bus costume. Steve made improvements to it this year: the stop sign on the side, the picture of Seb driving, windshield wipers, headlights...  It looked amazing and everyone wanted to drive it.

Meanwhile, our little dragon was raring to go, as always. She loves to climb those stairs and come down the slide.

The kids parade around the building and then in theory all sit here on the front stoop for a photo. You can see the crowd of parents reflected in the glass.

At the end of the night, our boy contemplates his candy haul. Yum yum.

Liesl's birthday party/Halloween party

We spent Saturday at Mary and Joe's house, celebrating Liesl's first birthday and Halloween. The whole family got together and it was great to see everyone. Here's our dainty birthday girl.

With Grandpa, who she likes to feed bits of her food.

Birthday cakes! Mary made the chocolate graveyard; we bought the chocolate spider.

Trish and cousin Hana.

The pumpkin apple cake I made for Liesl is in front, with a candle. The usual terrible family photo. :)

Seb and cousin Rio, dressed up as Gem (a cartoon character).

Happy birthday, baby

Happy first birthday to our happy, curious, feisty, strong-willed, fearless little munchkin. The wrecker, as Sebastian calls her. What an amazing year it's been.

Liesl's first birthday

Our girl was born almost a year ago today, on a beautifully sunny day. The leaves were red and orange and yellow, the sky was a clear blue, and the air felt crisp: a perfect encapsulation of autumn in the northeast. She was born at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow; the road to the hospital is lined with grand old trees which were gorgeously bright yellow, and the maternity rooms overlook part of Rockefeller Park and the Hudson River. She was born at 6 am and I remember lying in the bed that afternoon, in a ray of sunshine, holding her, looking out on the river and feeling happy and relieved and grateful.

On Saturday we went up to Rockefeller Park to celebrate Liesl's birthday by remembering her birth day. It was sweet to be there, to remember pulling into the emergency room at 5 am, for Steve to remember doing that beautiful drive under the trees to see us during the day, to look out over the water, and to watch her clambering around everywhere. Amazing how much they learn in a year. More pictures in picasa.

From October 2011

From October 2011

letters and things

Sebastian has been doing a lot more writing and drawing since moving up to the Pre-K room at daycare. Both his fine motor skills and his creative imagination seem to have rapidly developed simultaneously, so he is both more capable of drawing and more interested in drawing actual things (as opposed to just making lines and colors). So he will finally say to us, "This is a bus/person/tree/train".  One of the skills that the Pre-K room emphasizes is learning to write your own name, which for Seb is a bit of an ordeal. But he knows the letters and was able to put together his "whole big name" on our fridge using letter magnets. And he's getting better at writing his name too. He wrote "bus", in the picture below, and then wrote "Alex" (one of his friends at daycare), and then tried to sign it (he got as far as Sebas before running out of paper room and steam).

This is just a random video of Seb dancing. I think he has a future with Riverdance.

daredevil

We discovered that our little daredevil loves ride-on toys. She loves to be pushed around on them.

So for her first birthday, we bought her a big car. :)  She loves it.

When not trying to hitch a ride, she climbs everything. She climbs on chairs, tables, ottomans, beds, stairs, playground equipment, random boxes... 

But then, every once in a while, she calms down and sits down. She has two favorite books, both by Eric Carle - Brown Bear, and The Busy Little Spider.  Here we are reading both. Interestingly, I didn't notice until watching the video that she clearly had a thought about sheep while reading the spider book and wanted to get the bear book in order to show me that there was a sheep in there too.  Amazing.