Carmen and Ella, Painting, etc

Here are a handful of recent pics. Those are Justin Boyan and Amy Greenwald's girls Carmen and Ella, down from Providence. Alice LOVES them. I love the one with kenny where she looks like the guy from the Onion.

Easter Egg hunt

On Friday, Colleen, Kathy and Dottie (and Mima) organized an awesome early easter party for Alice.

Norwalk Aquarium

Alice and I just came from the Norwalk Aquarium - a favorite new stop in our monday rotation. Monday is the only day of the week we dont have a scheduled activity, so we do something just the two of us - peabody (dinosour museum), deja brew cafe, etc, and sometimes we just chill all day at home - but not often. leads to crankiness, for both of us.

Highlights - Alice loves to watch the seals get fed. one of them is named Ariel and we play Ariel and the Aquarium Lady all the time at home. Alice also loves the 'cafe upstairs' - which is jsut a cafeteria with greasy food that is over priced and makes me feel funny. Everytime I know I should get a salad but get the burger and fries instead and end up feeling weird. She loves the jellyfish and always tells the kids we have a jelly fish at home (wishful thinking) she also told the woman at the desk today that she wears big girl pants all the time (wishful thinking? transferred wishful thinking from my brain?). She loves the touch tank and the giant turtle too. the big excitement today was that we were stroller free- and she did great. She's really getting to be a big, big girl. last thing - when we got to the otter tank all the other kids were really enjoying the otters and laughing with them. Alice climbed up and shouted 'oh no, yuck! go to WORK! yuck, oh no! go to work!' and pushed on the glass for emphasis. I wondered if this was something I said to Kenny when he annoyed me but couldn't ever remember doing it. I finally had to carry her off. it was really funny.

better late than never

I thought I'd post a couple photos from holiday time since those are the most recent on the computer. eventually Ill catch up.

the Lacey, WA children's musuem

Alice and Kenny at the airport at christmas

Mima's office

My mom is the dean of the nursing school at the College of New Rochelle. A big job, but all work stops when Alice comes for lunch. Mima lets her eat only french fries and her best friend Colleen always has a little something for her.

Arlo and Jorgi

The big news here is that we are buying a house. we are really excited, but this does mean we will be tearing Alice away from Arlo and Jorgie, her heroes, who live upstairs. Jorgie and Arlo are very generous and are always giving Alice the toys they outgrow. This Catsuit is from Jorgi's impressive dress up collection. Alice wears it alot, just hanging around the house, I think becuase she would like to be Jorgie. And a cat.

2009?

Resolution 1 - revive Alice's blog and update it more than once every two years.

Apologies to any family and friends who thought I might have gotten it together to post some photos/video/cute stories/etc about Alice some time during the last two years. I meant to. But the blog stops dead in Dec 2006, when my maternity leave was over. In August (2008!) Kenny and I landed in New Haven, where I am gloriously unemployed. Plenty of time to do things like update this page and attend to my other resolutions too - stop hitting things with the car, stop talking to myself when I'm doing dishes, send thank you notes in a timely manner and floss.

Ill add some photos next, but I will NOT try to cover he whole missing two years. That will have to be filled in gradually. I will just pick up as if I wrote here every few days for the past two plus years. Starting now

After a week in Lacey WA with the cousins (and a quick overnight to see the Pashkowski-Martins in Wenatchee) we had an uneventful new year's eve at home, glad not to have to go anywhere in the snow and cold. Kenny and I met on New Year's Eve 10 years ago at the legendary Kastnelson NYE bash in Boston. Alla and Dima - thank you! Alice seems to have potty-trained herself - more or less - in Washington so we had an exciting new year's day trip to Target to buy theDora potty, Dora pull-ups and Princess undies (there were no Dora undies). Then we had Pizza at Pepe's - a perfect Dora Day for Boots and Diego and Dora.