getting things started

before i begin digging into the archives (all the way back to halloween!), it's probably worth giving everyone an update as to what kepler's doing. so, here it goes:
- she walks! a lot! and even runs at times.
- she talks! a lot! she says a lot of things and has even strung two words together to make a sentence.
- she does a lot of signing to communicate what she needs and is thinking.
- she definitely knows what she wants and isn't afraid of letting you know too.
- she feeds herself some of the time but mostly just makes messes.
- she's so happy and loves to giggle and laugh.
- she loves to dance and listen to music and even asks us to put music on all the time.
- she kicks her ball all around the house.
- she loves climbing on things and sitting in chairs.
- she's traveled to washington dc, atlanta, switzerland and mexico (and loved every minute of it).

it's amazing how fast time is going for us. she's already 14 and a half months old. every day is new for her and she just has the most radiant and happy personality.

the plan:

we'll be working on catching up over the next few days, weeks, etc. so keep checking back!

two very good reasons why we're so behind on posting...

1. we bought a house!

and


2. Charmaine is pregnant!

LOTS of photos from the Switzerland trip are now on Flickr, and the majority of them are of this cute girl.

To see them, click on the photo or this link: http://www.flickr.com/gp/51269688@N00/W3A7E0

Family on a Sled!

and a frozen Kepler sandwich!

Nana on a Sled!

in a snow storm! ;)

Kepler's (early) Birthday Party

LuiBomba gave her a great present!

(BTW, sorry about the black vertical bars sandwiching the videos; I stupidly rotated the camera when filming these ;p )

Kepler in Switzerland #1

Kepler borrowed the cute Brio dachshund of the kids whose house we were staying in and tried to pull it around....

Kepler in Switzerland #2

Kepler plays with her new pink Brio car on "xmas morning".

Kepler in Switzerland #3

Thanks to Nati she learns to ride a Swiss horsey down to town, except apparently the song is a good bit more morbid than that one.

kepler makes motor noises and proceeds to break my heart

hi. it's very important that you turn off all the other noises that you have around you and turn up your speakers. kepler has learned how to make vroom noises as you push her along on her little car. it makes me cry.

kepler is a spatial genius.

well, okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration. however, watching her carefully place things back into what she just pulled them out of is pretty impressive. and she's cute to boot!

out

in

and here she is rearranging the fruit bowl...

kepler, the race car driver.

it's important that you watch these in order...

1)

2)

3)

4)

Kepler sees Santa for the first time

the pictures pretty much speak for themselves...

kepler takes a big step! (well, okay, a few big steps...)

Kepler visits Nana in Atlanta

Kepler visited Atlanta for the engagement party of her godparents. Of course, she upstaged everyone else. Here she is having breakfast before the party preparations got underway.she's giving us an etiquette lecture... and, here she is holding court with her primary subjects...

and here she is scooting along...

well, it's been a while but hopefully it's been worth it for this video!

sweetie pie in her summer dress!

Congratulations on your engagement, Godparents Jane and Darko... now, down to business. Should I wear this dress with the orange bow?

Or should I wear this dress? With these bunny ears - since it will be Spring time and all...

We love you Ebi. Good night and sweet dreams little furry love.

kepler's laugh captured (part 2)

kepler's laugh captured (part 1)

this is the most infectious and joyful noise i've ever heard.

kepler v. piano (more video goodness)

we were enjoying a wonderful foggy san francisco saturday afternoon, eating cheeseburgers and veggie burgers at houston's when charmaine and baby bear discovered the piano!

the first video on kepler's blog!

baby bear and genevieve

here are long overdue photos of kepler and genevieve (red hair) and kepler and sondra. genevieve's wonderfulness actually makes it almost easy to go to work every day. almost.

Honestly, these were NOT staged. She simply is THIS adorable. These post bath shots are for her dad who is missing her right now...

Kepler just wanted to let her daddy know that she hopes he can enjoy sleeping through the night, and that she didn't mean to have a fever from her immunization shots and keep him up the night before his red eye flight to the East coast. And that she loves and misses him (and so does her mama).

...and that she loves her blue no. 3, and her binky, of course.

Kepler's first solid food meal, June 26, 2007. Huge success...kinda

Kepler was so excited about her food that she immediately began trying to suck her bowl. I was howling! Too cute!

This is wonderful

Kate's bachlorette weekend comes to a close at Calistoga

Kepler bookmarked Kate's bachlorette weekend in the bay area (well, we also snuck in a morning feed on Saturday), which meant Kepler and her dad got to enjoy some alone time Friday night to Sunday morning while mom got to be with three of her longest-time (not old) friends, Kate and 'Talie and Megan. Congrats and cheers to Kate and Joel's engagement!

Kate's bachlorette weekend

...and finally, a date alone for Kepler's mom and dad.

Upon arriving at Calistoga's restaurant, we were handed Kepler's favorite book which we had left behind at the pool. Rather classy we thought. So, that is how the book made it to our date night. Yum. Yum.

just cute shots of our little gnocco (Itlalian dumpling)

precious moments... Kepler falls asleep with Nampa

the real purpose of bocce ball in the valley

bocce ball fans - not so entertained by the game

bocce ball war

Kepler's first love... or at least Luke's - Kepler's not sure what to expect

will he hit me or hug me?
Luke gently adored Kepler with hugs and kisses. When he hugs her, he says "ahhh," in a sweet and soothing way. It is too precious

poolside

And here we are sitting by the pool, maxing and relaxing. This is technically Kepler's first time in a pool and, as you can see, she was, well, she was a tad indifferent. Whatever. We had a great time!

Momma got a new computer...

...and, on it, there was this random application called Comic Life. Poppa got a hold of it late one night and could not resist making a completely useless comic. This is the result of that effort.

a chilly morning trip to Tartine

What do you mean there are no more Morning Buns?!

a little air time in point reyes, on the cowgirl creamery lawn

ebi!

here is the other baby of the house (we actually have three if you count mies) lounging in the afternoon sun.

kepler puts that opposable thumb to good use!

here's a whole series of photos of kepler playing with one of her toys. she's really learning how to reach and grab for things...

the family visits cousin zach's gallery/home

these pictures were taken inside of zach's new gallery/home. he just finished getting this new show up. it's an amazing length of canvas that runs the entirey of the space. three artists worked their magic post-installation of the canvas.

in the second picture (the one where lee hall is holding kepler) kepler is wearing a sweater the lee hall knitted. so cute!

and here she is sitting in a chair.

i mean how silly can the subject of one post be? however, the subject does not begin to describe how wonderful these photos are. charmaine took them one recent afternoon when the sun was through the windows in kepler's room. light like this reminds you why you live in california.

kepler plays in the sun.

mat time for kepler

and then we were back.

sigh. but here's a cute picture of charmaine feeding the baby bear!

and last but not least (from hawaii)

three shots of kepler taken during one of the sunsets.

kepler, plant. plant, kepler.

we played a decent amount of hearts over the two weeks...

...and ingi won.

kepler seemed to enjoy her time there too.

kepler and me.

going back through these photos makes me realize how much i enjoyed our time there. we're going to attempt to make it a yearly trip. it's so close and so beautiful.

play time for baby bear

family portrait - hawaii, april 2007

two of the sunsets

these were taken out by the pool of the house and we have about seventy other shots somewhat like these. the sunsets were all beautiful...

kepler spends some time on the beach

we spent some time on the beach seven or so of the thirteen days we were on the island. we would either rent an umbrella and some chairs or find a nice shady spot under a large tree and camp out. we both even managed to get some snorkeling in (usually while the other one watched kepler but once we both got to go out while ingi and robert played babysitter).

again, kepler was pretty calm about the whole thing. she would sleep. she would eat. she would play. and then we would repeat that until it was time to go.

the house

this was the house we stayed in. it's in kapalua just off the plantation course (where the mercedes championship is held each january).

the house belongs to a friend of ingrid's and if you look closely in the first picture, you can see robert doing his best tony soprano impersonation...which was totally appropriate for this place.

our wonderful vacation partners

we spent two amazing weeks on maui with robert and ingrid. ingi is 8 months pregnant although it's hard to tell that from these photos!

and we're off for hawaii!

here's a picture from kepler's first plane ride. she was such a champion on both flights. she cried a little but nothing too major. we even managed to forget her swaddle blanket on the return trip. i mean, really, how can you do that? how can you forget the one thing that matters? whatever. we wound up using the airplane blanket (don't worry, it was wrapped in plastic) and it worked shockingly well.

kepler does seem to have some strange sort of skin rash but i'm sure it's not related (this is a joke).

jane and darko leave a gift for kepler

before they left, jane and darko stopped by the puma store to pick up some wonderful shoes for kepler. here she is rocking her first pair of nice shoes. they're patent leather. and white. and she looks so bored by all of us in this photo...

kepler by candlelight

jane and darko come visit!

jane and darko came out to visit us in early march. they were here for about seven days and i think they played golf six of those days (i got to play twice! (and i may have partially fixed my slice!!)). in between those rounds, they got to spend time with their new god daughter. here are some pictures from a particularly humorous feeding session:

you can almost hear darko saying: 'hey, uh, does she need this or something...'


here jane gets the hang of it. and i do believe she likes it (ahem, darko). it was wonderful to see jane feeding her. we can all only hope that one day kepler has a cousin (ahem, darko).


(ahem, darko)


and here kepler searches for darko's nipple.


back to the bottle and back to looking so fucking cute. (can i say fucking on my daughter's blog? why not.)

momma reads to kepler

kepler is really starting to respond to being read to. she follows the images. she seems interested. she laughs (well, okay, she laughs at random times but whatever).

please note the extra cute (although somewhat boy-ish) outfit in the first pic. they actually make jeans for infants. and we actually own a pair. please don't notice the lack of pants in the second pic. i would hate for dubya to come get me for posting illegal pictures to the interweb.

more general cuteness

matching head shapes.

some people see some similarity in the shapes of our heads. well, fine. i do have to admit to seeing it as well. fortunately for kepler, however, she does not seem to share head size. that would be dreadful.

i wonder how many folds i have?

let's see: 1, 2, 3...


...4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8! i have 8 folds!

this one pretty much speaks for itself...

i do believe this picture now resides on both of our desktops. it's from early march so she's changed quite a bit.

a long awaited (and much needed) update

hi everyone.
well we've finally carved out an evening where we can sit around, edit photos, write stories and generally do all of the things that one does while posting to your daughter's blog.

kepler is doing wonderfully. she's sitting up (with help). she's grabbing for things. she's making cute (i mean really cute) noises that certainly mean something to her. she's smiling. she's giggling. she can bear weight on her legs when held. and she's pretty much the cutest thing.

this update is going to go a bit back in time. it'll start with some random photos of the cutest baby ever from early march. it will then jump into jane and darko's visit from mid-march. we'll then head to hawaii for kepler's first plane flight, first trip to hawaii, first time staying in $8 million dollar house and so on. we'll finish up with some more general cuteness.

and to update everyone on how the rest of us are doing: charmaine is doing well. she's had some pregnancy related back and wrist issues that have made her life a bit hellish. however, they're nothing a few smiles and coos seemingly can't make her forget about. she's off to los angeles for jane darlymple's bachelorette party this weekend...leaving me and kepler to fend for ourselves (that should be interesting). she goes back to work next week for three days which will make it the first week for janeen to come down from napa on monday and the first time kepler spends the day with her new nanny, genivive(sp?).

i'm doing wonderfully as well. kepler has had a few rough nights which have made work a little more difficult than usual. she has slept from 1030p to 6a a few evenings...but then she's had a few more evenings where she wakes up at 3a, 4a, 6a, etc. we tried to let her cry through it last night. we even partially succeeded. she cried from 4a to 5a and then slept until 6a. she woke up then for 20 minutes and then back to sleep. because of this, i went through today in a bit of daze.

alright, that's all. time for the update. nana comes into town next week so expect lots more pictures soon.

madison.