Monday, June 28, 2010

Kaia and Emilia

Kaia's best friend is Emilia, our neighbor's daughter. The girls are only 2 months apart and they and their parents have gone through all stages of babyhood together. Here is a video of the girls playing together. Of course Kaia is playing with Emilia's toys and Emilia is playing with Kaia's toys.

I haven't yet managed to record them playing in the sandbox together. Kaia will take shovels of sand and dump them on a chair while Emilia scoops the sand off the chair and takes it back to the sand box. What a team!

Monday, May 3, 2010

Kaia recently had Roseola - a virus all small children seem to get. To help her on the road to recovery I made her her favorite dish - leek and potato soup. That first night she had three bowls! Here's a video of her eating the soup. She wouldn't let go of the spoons!

Friday, March 19, 2010

Hiking with Kaia

When people think of LA usually the phrase "let's go for a hike" does not come to mind; crazy traffic yes, warm weather and beaches yes. But mountains?? There are actually quite a few near by. Pasadena is right at the foothills of the San Gabriel range and there is a lot of quality hiking in the area.

Kaia's first hike was at Griffith Park last May. She seemed to really like the trip and actually fell asleep while Mike was trodding along.

We captured her first jaunt on video.




Once the weather cooled down this Fall we got into the routine of going for hikes nearly every weekend. One nice hike, just north of Pasadena, climbs to the ruins of an old hotel and train station in the San Gabriels called Echo Mountain. Yes, it really does echo up there if you yell.




Another great hike was to Henninger Flats. This is a nice wide trail with great views of the LA basin. Once you reach the Flats there is a large grove of trees, with camping and picnic areas, and more great views.




We've also used the backpack at the ocean. We took a beautiful walk along an ocean trail at Ranchos Palos Verdes with Dave and Rose. Along the way we stopped at an interpretive center and learned way too much about the local geology from a very friendly, very talkative docent. We should have known we were in trouble when she asked if we wanted the 1 hour tour or the 15 min. Turns out the 15 min tour was not the shorter of the two.

From 2009_10


The weather seems to be warming slightly and we're looking forward to a sunny weekend so that we can go hiking again.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Kaia at the park

Kaia loves the park that is near us; especially the slide and the sand.

The first thing she does when we get there is bury her hands in the sand and wave them around so they get good and covered. Next, she walks around the playset, sizing up the place and deciding what to do first. Invariably, she wants to go on the slide.










Just two weeks ago Mike taught her how to go down the slide by herself. This basically entailed teaching her not to take off until she says "bye bye". This serves the purpose of giving us enough time to run down to the bottom. Sometimes we get there before her, sometimes not. But every time she lets out a squeal of laughter that would make Oscar the Grouch smile.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hats and brooms

Kaia loves playing with her new broom. And loves putting things on her head. Here she's combined these two joys.




The result:

From 2010_02

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Two new words

I guess we've been talking a lot about the Rose Bowl because New Years day at breakfast Kaia surprised us by raising her arms above her head and saying "Touchdown"! We were so tickled. She said it repeatedly throughout the day and we were all happy when OSU won. Yep, all of us. I'm a Michigan fan - Mike's the "real" Buckeye fan in the family, but OSU's out there representing all of the Big Ten and we are so happy they won.

The weather's been great so we've been able to take Kaia for walks almost everyday over the holidays. She walks down the block by herself stopping to pick up rocks, leaves, and whatever else she can find with Mike or I gently coaxing her to keep moving and stay out of the neighbors yard. At the end of the block she gets in the stroller and off we go. She must really like our walks because her favorite word this weekend is "outside". We look out the window and she says "outside". We talk about going for a walk and she immediately runs to the top of the stairs and says "outside". We're doing something completely unrelated to going out-of-doors and she says "outside". I think we'll be going on several walks today.