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.