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

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.

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.