From Cousin Kate with Love

Kate Wollan, Hannah is very lucky to have you for an older cousin, and she cant wait for you to come visit her in San Francisco. She loves her beautiful and thoughtful art work that you made for her! You are very sweet and Hannah sends you hugs and blows you kisses and thank yous. She might have to come visit you in Chicago around Christmas-time, because she doesn't know if she can wait for you to come to California!

Happy Birthday Memaw!

Thanks for coming out to visit during your birthday - we had a blast, and hope you did too! We miss you already..!

Nothing Personal, New Zealand...

You gotta be kidding me. This is a Kiwi? Gimme a break... You act like it's gonna taste like a Kobe Beef fillet and a glass of Chateau La Nerthe: LET's GO PEOPLE, stop jerking me around. Add insult to injury by cutting this fruit up so small my mits can only stir it around on my tray like I'm some Jackson Pollack and then YOU wonder why I am yelling? HEY! Pa! Ma! PAAAAH! Get your face out of that farking "baby signs" book and look at me. Look into my eyes. They are saying "THIS ISN'T ART CLASS AND I DO NOT WANT KIWI."

Yogurt Smiles for Grandma Lacey

Eating dinner with Grandma is so much FUN! Wait 'till she gets to check my diaper!

Sea & Ski SPF4

Like mother like daughter.... Back in the day, when Sea&Ski SPF4 was all a baby needed (and a ski hat apparently!), Kristina got her first reluctant taste of the ocean in Sarasota, Florida. At about the same age as her Mama above, Hannah first got her toes wet in Manhattan Beach, although just like her Ma, she fought it for a while.

Success!! It's not so scary after all...thanks Dad!

9 Month Stats

At nine months, Hannah is ferociously crawling and cruising all around our home. She rarely sits still, unless absorbed in some good "reading" (she really enjoyed the latest Business Week)...

But she is generally more interested in climbing up on anything she can find, particularly if it involves a mirror. She also continues to "talk" up a storm and has really been working on her vocal range and vocabulary. Of course, outside of mamamama, dadadada, and babababa (not sure WHO this last person is...), we're still in the dark as to what she may be talking about. But the books say she is starting to understand what we are saying, despite her inability to communicate back in any intelligible, verbal way. (Our egos are getting inflated with her constant laughing at our jokes and goofy faces - we are obviously the funniest people alive!)

At her nine month appt, she weighed in at 19 lbs 12 oz., and was 28.5 inches tall with a 45.25 cm hat size. Still right around the 75th percentile, give or take, depending on the stat. As you can see, she was pretty happy about that!

Lofty Ladies

Sacajawea, who guided the Lewis and Clark expedition. Gudridur Thorbjarnadottir from Iceland, who explored the New World 500 years before Colombus. Ida Pfeiffer of Vienna (1797-1858), she travelled alone to: Holy Land, Egypt, Iceland, Amazon rainforest, China, India, Middle East, Russia, Indonesia, the Andes and Madagascar. Marie-anne Lagimodiere (1780-1875), the 1st European woman to travel to western Canada. Meet Hannah. She just climbed our stairs.

The play-by-play from an admittedly biased, completely subjective fatherly perspective: Hannah's successful completion of her first big staircase occurred earlier today, on her second attempt. Upon her first try, a rather weak and undecided effort, she fell from the lowest step. She "pancake splatted" and sprawled out on her back in wide-eyed, unblinking shock. She stared upwards in startled, rigid silence for a long moment and then decided to cry. Yes, her head did flop back on the carpet and yes, she took a little thump, but Hannah's cries seemed mostly cries of frustration. It was a 4 inch fall onto carpet. Don't go calling social services just yet, folks... After being cuddled for a few brief moments she was fine. A minute later she was back at the foot of the staircase, apparently unfazed. Her second effort was impressive. Hannah charged up the first set of stairs, looking once or twice to her right through the banister poles as if to acknowledge her changing elevation. She stopped to cheerily investigate the first landing. After a little lap around the landing and some wall banging with her hands, she quickly got back down to re-focus her energies on the second leg of stairs. She expressed mild frustration midway up, but with a little encouragement she was able to reach the second landing, where she again took some time to look around and take in the view from her new heights. The third leg was the shortest, but seemed her biggest test: Hannah fussed worriedly for a while at the foot of the last 4 steps of her ascent. Her whining seemed to be an audible gauge of her internal engines revving, a determination-meter rather than a sign of any real capitulation. After a minute she must have recharged, because although her cries turned louder, she suddenly propelled herself up the last four steps. Her half-cries turned into happy murmurs, and she turned around and, as if to stake her explorer's flag on her new territory - she burst forth with a BIG, bright, beaming grin!

Ode to Our Kitchen Sink

Hannah has taken almost all of her baths in our kitchen sink, but alas, the relaxing days of her kitchen spa sessions are likely to end soon, as our "little" Rivercat is swiftly outgrowing her inaugural tub. Our sink has been awesome, and it has happily watched as Hannah has grown into the tsunami churning wave-machine that she is today... Here are two photos -- the first photo taken when Hannah was one month old, and the second taken last week right around her nine month birthday. Kitchen sink, I just want you to know that you rock, and Hannah loves her bath routine with you. She finds ritual peace, relaxation and a soothing space to bond with her parents, she has had her first encounters with the magical medium of water, some of her widest smiles and deepest concentrations have come at discoveries within your sides, and she has come to love bathing thanks in no small part to your dependable porcelain guidance. Thanks Sink!