Halloween 2009

Kaia's Halloween outfit this year was inspired by her first steps. The way she walked during that first month of new-found mobility reminded us of a certain Stars Wars character. Small, green, and hobble-y, I give you...Yoda.

From Halloween 2009

From Halloween 2009

Yoda's pretty good with a lightsaber.

Parker and Kaia

While we were home this pastsummer we had pictures taken of cousins Kaia and Parker Rose. Grandma Ursem got them matching dresses and on the morning of July 4th, we were off to the photo shoot. Can I tell you how adorable these two were? Both girls were really hamming it up for the camera. We will always cherish these pictures.

Labor Day 2009

The week before Labor Day Tami spent at a conference in San Jose, leaving Mike and Kaia alone in the southland. That week was the first true test of dad's solo-parenting abilities - and also a test of mom's 'Oh my gosh I am so wooried about my family in Pasadena' fears. Luckily, all survived with but a few new gray hairs.

As part of a way to celebrate the success of survival, Mike and Kaia hopped a plane to San Jose the following weekend for a little family getaway. We got to spend the weekend with friends Dmitri and Anya at Half Moon Bay, and with Karri and Joanne at the really cool San Francisco Academy of Science.

It was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoy the slideshow!

Slide Show of the weekend

Polka's Restaurant

We love Polish food. Being an Ursem how can you not! We've found this great little polish place in LA and it's becoming a tradition that we go there after we visit the LA Zoo. Kaia thought the food looked so good she wanted to eat the pictures on the menu, but settled for her food container lid instead.

From Sept7,2009 Upload

Look at all this food! Mmmmm cabbage rolls.

From Sept7,2009 Upload

Admitting defeat

As you may have noticed, we haven't posted anything in a while (Yikes! has it really been since June!). Sorry.

Our bottleneck seems to be the downloading and organization of pictures. Is this a common problem? All I can say is that we're working on it. Discussions about file naming conventions, metadata, and file folder structure have taken up an inordinate amount of our time. I can confidently say that we finally have a plan (i.e. after much discussion in which I didn't badger Mike at all - ahem - we've reached a workable compromise). Mike would probably like to have me join a 10 step program for being slightly OCD about this. But we have a PLAN!

More posts, and importantly pictures of the grandchild - most likely posted in no logical order whatsoever - will be forthcoming.


PS. I finally fixed that video of Kaia's first crawl.

Army Crawl

Kaia's tribute to Memorial day was to learn to crawl - army crawl. I managed to capture her first crawl on video.



She is showing signs of getting onto all fours, and when she does that, we are in trouble. We're busy putting up gates and baby proofing as I write this.

Meal time

Kaia's been eating solid food for about 3 1/2 months now. We started with rice cereal, then oatmeal, then on to the vegetables (peas, carrots, zucchini, etc.). We just started with fruits, and while she seems to be a fan of bananas, she is not a fan of apples. We have yet to capture it on film, but you should see the sour faces. I call them her pirate faces (one eye closed, head cocked to the side and jerked back, mouth agape or lips pursed). Hilarious!

Here are some great messy face photos that only a parent (or Grandparent) could love:




At the same time she started eating solid foods we also started introducing her to drinking out of a cup. She's gotten pretty good at it by now. Just two weeks ago she started getting it to her mouth and tipping it up all by herself. Now we just need to work on recognizing when there's still liquid in the cup and not fling it about.