Sunday in the Park with Dad

B'more

We went on our first official family vacation: Baltimore for the first week of July! We survived our first plane ride, Chloe met lots of new friends and family members, we celebrated the 4th of July, and spent plenty of time in Milly and Gundor's beautiful garden. It was a very relaxing and fun holiday! Click here to see more photos of everyone in Baltimore!

Big Foot

Here's Panda with her dad in the morning before work on Tuesday. She got a taste of what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes for a day. More pictures of Panda and Mark from that day!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

To celebrate our first Father's Day we had our friends Alan, Jill, and Simon and my parents and Sasha over for brunch. We had a Bloody Mary Station, as well as mimosas, fresh fruit, mushroom and sausage strata, an arugula salad and fleur de sel brownies. YUM! Click here to view more pictures of the event.

Fish Taco Fiesta

Sasha is officially off Coumadin! To celebrate Mom got adventurous in the kitchen with a new recipe. Friends gathered to eat (homemade chips, guacamole, plantains, rice, beans, beet salad and, of course, delicious fish tacos), drink (the most incredible margaritas) celebrate with Sasha and play with Panda. Salud!

High Chair!

Chloe's not big enough to sit in her high chair without a little support, but she had a go at it last night and seemed to enjoy herself quite a bit. Someday soon she'll be able to sit in there all by herself!

Daddy Gives Panda a Bottle

Panda's used to getting her milk fresh from the source, but for a change of pace here's Dad taking on a night feeding for the first time.

Daddy and Panda

There was some good father-daughter bonding going on over the long Good Friday-Easter weekend including, but not limited to, tummy time, napping, diaper changes, story time (The Cat in the Hat, and ArtForum), sun bathing, bouncing, rocking, singing and late night cuddling.

Mark's Pulley

My brilliant husband devised the perfect solution for our hanging mobile: a pulley system for raising and lowering it! We were confused about how high to hang it as it's recommended to be close up for newborns, who can't see very far, and then farther away as they grow bigger and learn to stand and could become tangled in it. It was a vexing and perplexing problem...so I just left it for Mark to figure out. I am so pleased with the result!

Babymoon: A Photo Journal

We have returned to the arctic tundra known as Chicago from our glorious babymoon. We had a lovely time and hope to go back to Naples some day. We had great weather, great food, a surprisingly huge hotel room and a pool to ourselves everyday! It was fab!

A last minute change of plans forced us to drive across the Florida peninsula from Ft. Lauderale Airport to Naples via the desolate highway 75, A.K.A. "Alligator Alley." Little did we know, the journey would be one of the highlights of the trip!


Things got off to a great start when Mark splurged on a convertible to indulge me. It made our trip across Alligator Alley a real adventure. Plus, a white Sebring....how FL is that?


At night we saw stars...how romantic!
And there was a fire pit at the hotel to keep us toasty warm after the sun went down.
There were always lots of hot bodies on the beach

But we tended to hang out by the pool. This is the lap pool at the hotel which was basically right outside our room. I guess everyone else preferred the main pool, so we pretty much had this one all to ourselves, which was perfectly fine with us! It takes a lot of guts to rock a bikini in the seventh month of pregnancy...but not so much if no one's looking.MAIN POOL...




Every night around 6pm we saw a spectacular sunset! It is quite the thing to do in Naples!
Relishing our coupledom before our family officially becomes a threesome...er, a trio? Yeah that sounds better.
PROOF THAT WE SAW ALLIGATORS!!!!
We stopped by Everglades National Park on the way back to the Airport to witness some wildlife...It was WILD!
Then we saw our last sunset and it was time to "hit the road."

The End!

P.S. I will post some of Mark's photography (including pregnant bikini..shudder) when he gets a chance to upload his roll. He is a much better cameraman that I am, so you'll get the artsy vacation shots. He also tends to take a lot of pictures of me...so if you're curious to see my sun burn, my chlorine hair and/or my bulging belly please check back soon!

First Sunburn of '09

Mark got burned during the drive from the airport to the hotel...oops! 

But the ride was a fantastic adventure! We saw tons of beautiful birds and about a hundred alligators!!  I had never seen one before today and I screamed each time I saw one and pointed and went crazy!  I tried to get pictures but the speed limit in FL is 70 so they were whipping by too quickly.  Fun fun fun! OMG alligators!

Pool time!!!!!!

Soul Searching

A father-to-be gazes pensively into the roaring fireplace.

Accent Wall!!

I'm not sure if you can tell in these pics how freakishly awesome this asphalt gray is on our accent wall, but I'm standing here looking at it and I think it looks dope. Mark heartily agrees, and praise generally means more coming from him because I'm fairly easy to please. ;-) It even makes me feel okay with our super white cabinets!

Flint from Benjamin Moore, satin finish