Playgrounds

It's another Friday, and another day of amazingly gorgeous weather. There's no better time to hang out at the playground!

We had a playdate/lunch date in Somerville today with a friend and her 3-year-old. And although I believe Annika has been on the swings at daycare, this is the first time that I've seen her on the them. She was in heaven!!

Why is this the first time I've taken her to a playground? I need to find one near our house. But notice the socks? I guess it's time to find Annie a pair of shoes. Socks don't work so well at the playground. :)

Birthday season

I hereby declare birthday season to be over. And now for the recap...

First, we had a party at Dedham Health and Athletic for the babies in my "Next Step" moms' group (the group that I still keep in touch with fairly regularly).

 On Annie's actual birthday, both Jim and I had the day off and we had our own little celebration - cake, ice cream, and a cookout on the grill. Here's Annie with her yummy chocolate cupcake from Fratelli's!

Last weekend was Annie's official birthday party. We had about 35 people (including 12 kids) over for pizza, cake and ice cream. All the neighbors came, and Annie's grandmas and great-aunt came to visit from Buffalo. In the below photo, Annie has her "Sabres Fan" bib on, and the neighbor boys are "helping" her open her presents. Our neighbor, George, is pictured too:

 

Finally, we just got home from the last birthday party. This one was for my Great Beginnings new moms' group. It was the first group I joined, and Annika was 5 weeks old at the beginning of it. All the babies in the group were born within a month of each other, and I hadn't seen any of them (with one exception) since last July. Pretty interesting to see all the babies as 1-year-olds, and to see their moms and dads operating on a whole lot more sleep than last summer!

It's been a fun few weeks. And just when we think we're actually seasoned experts at parenting, it's time for the next round of changes - no more bottle, no more formula, and we're nearing the end of the sleep sack. Whoosh! A year later, and we're back at the bottom of the learning curve! :)

Weekend

What a great weekend! Our weekends seem to be jam-packed these days, and this weekend was no different.

On Saturday morning, we decided to drive up to Freeport, Maine to go to the L.L. Bean store and the outlets up there. We didn't actually buy anything at LLBean this time around, but I did end up at the Oshkosh store. We don't have one near our house, so this was my first time inside. Really adorable stuff, and quite reasonably priced. I got a couple of pairs of summer overalls for Annie, of course. :) I need to go back in the fall, once I know what size she'll be then. I'm sort of a sucker for babies in overalls. :)

Last night, after getting back from Maine, Jim cooked out burgers on the grill, and then we went next door for dessert. They had everyone over, and Annie got to hang with all the neighbor kids.

This morning, we met up with friends for a morning walk in the Arboretum, one of my favorite places in Boston, or really, in the whole world. I love it there. An added bonus was that all the lilacs were in bloom!! Everything is early here this year. Usually, the lilacs don't bloom until around Mother's Day. After a nice walk, we went home and tried to convince Annie to a) eat lunch and b) take a nap. Not much luck on either front, although she finally went down for a nap about 45 minutes before we had to leave for the final birthday party (which I'll talk about in my next post, above). But she actually did fine at the party. She got cake and ice cream and fresh fruit.

Now she's in bed and Jim's writing his paper and I'm going to go read - I just got the new Liz Gilbert book, Committed, and it's quite engaging so far. A nice end to the weekend. Wish they came more often. :)

Just for comparison...

Can you believe it? Here was Annie exactly one year ago today:

She was still in the hospital, and had a feeding tube in her nose, because we couldn't get her to take 30mL (1 ounce) of milk every 3 hours.

And here she is today:

If we've made that much progress in 1 year, what will she be like one year from today??

Will photos always be immortal?

Last night, I finally sent Annie's "first year" picture book to the printers. From the computer screen, it looks beautiful. I hope it'll be as nice when I receive the actual thing.

I wonder how digital photography will withstand the test of time. It's such a different medium than anything we've had before. The big difference is that people aren't printing their photos very much anymore. Jim and I have a goal of printing out a "yearbook" every year - a bound book with all our photos from the year. It should be a much more efficient way to print out our photos. But I wonder how that will be later. What if we want to pull out one photo from an album to show someone? What if there's one photo that I take a liking to later, and want to print out a copy, or even an enlargement to frame? I guess I'm in luck if I can still find the digital file. But will we still keep all our digital files for years and years?

Think about it. How many old photo negatives do you have? (I actually have quite a few, including some from about 100 years ago, but that's another story). I worry that it will be burdensome to save all the files over time, because it's a technology, not a photograph that you can hold in your hand. Technology gets old. Will these files stand the test of time, or will we have to keep transferring them into the next technology, sort of like those old films and videos from our childhood? I keep meaning to get our wedding video transferred onto DVD, but it's such a hassle. Will that be the same for our digital photos?

I have photos from 130 years ago. They have lasted this long. Some of them are printed on tin and are thus pretty scratched. Most are faded, and I don't know who everyone is in all of them. But they made it. Sure, I've scanned in all those photos so they'll "survive" in the new medium too. It's much easier to share them that way too. But I wonder if in the end, those hard copy photos will outlast digital too. They've outlasted slides and video and every other technology.

I guess the answer is to be sure to print out those photos, even if it's just in book form. Embrace the new technology, but be a little wary of it too. And I'll probably keep a little photo album of a few hard-copy photos too, just my favorite ones, so that maybe someone else will be looking at them in 130 years.

Highlights of the party

1) There was a lot of pizza and cake. We still have a lot of pizza and cake leftover. Annie likes pizza and cake.  And whole milk - lots of it.

2) One of the neighborhood kids, who I didn't know before today, crashed our party. It was kind of funny. He just played with the other kids. Including him, I believe we had 12 kids total.

3) I'm glad we waited to buy Annie toys and clothes for the spring until after the party. :)

4) We live in this awesome neighborhood where everyone looks after everyone else. Our whole neighborhood was here today. They are just wonderful. Click here for a very short video from when we were opening gifts.

5) I didn't take a lot of photos. Too much going on, and I was holding Annie for a large part of the party. But other people took photos, and they'll share with me soon.

6) Annie is a whole year older! She has made so much progress, especially over the last month! I can't wait to see what's next.

Party To-Do List

April showers bring May flowers, so based on our weather today, we should have some pretty nice May flowers! Yes, it is party day and it is raining. And there will be 12 kids and their parents at our house this afternoon. And the kids can't go outside to play. Ack. Actually, this is almost the same as our Halloween party, and it went great.

On our "to-do" list is to take inventory of our paper products. Several years ago, we got about a zillion paper plates as a wedding anniversary present, because that was the anniversary in which you're supposed to receive "paper." We never used up all the plates, and now here we are, probably 7 or 8 years later, with the same plates in our pantry. So, if they're not already used up, I think we'll use them today.

We also need to pick up the cake from Fratelli's. We got a half-and-half cake, half chocolate, half vanilla, with chocolate frosting. We could order a cake that served 20-25 people, or that served 40-50 people. We got the larger cake, but we'll probably have a lot of leftovers. But, in the past, leftover cake has frozen well.

We also (finally) need to buy a baby gate for the stairs. On Thursday, I put Annika in her room to play while I showered. When I finished showering, I opened the bathroom door, and she was sitting right outside the door. About a foot from the stairs too. It looks like there are about a hundred different types of gates you can get. I just want one that I don't have to keep putting up and taking down all the time. I've seen ones that stay in place, and then there's a little door that you use to enter and exit the room. We need some of those.

As I write, Annika is scooting around on the floor, carrying around a wine bottle cork that she found in the recycling bag. It's very counter-intuitive what will keep her interested and happy!

And to end, I'll leave you with a photo from her birthday:

We can tell that she already likes the "cake" part of having a birthday!