photos from the beach

Silly siblings Daniel with Great-Grandma
The happy couple
Pensive Ashley
What a good-looking crew!
Aunt Lissy and Daniel
My handsome (little) brother
Daniel with Grandma

birthday at the beach

Daniel celebrated on his actual birthday with a trip to the beach! He did great on the flight to Florida - he slept almost the whole way, so he was ready for a birthday party that evening.

Opening presents! He got lots of fun things, including a puppy dog pull-toy and a dog xylophone.




And finally some cake, which apparently tastes better if you eat it straight off the table!

first ice cream!

For an ice cream lover like myself, Daniel's first ice cream is a milestone worth commemorating! Unfortunately he's allergic to milk and can't have the real stuff, so he got the soy version instead. (It's actually not too bad, I sampled it to be sure!)

Mmmm... tasty!

Spoons are just not worth the trouble!

There's just nothing like a handful of ice cream.

What do you mean it's all gone?!?

happy birthday!!!

one year ago today

Daniel's due date was one year ago today - August 1, 2007. I was still at work, since Daniel hadn't made any attempts to leave his comfy home yet. Mike and I decided to meet up for lunch, under the pretense of celebrating Daniel's "hypothetical" birthday. We met at a little Asian restaurant a couple of blocks from my office, and sat down to a nice lunch of Thai food. About halfway through my Chicken Masaman, I felt something. Something warm and wet. Yes, that's right, my water broke as I sat there eating my lunch.

I must have gotten a pretty funny look on my face, because Mike immediately said, "what is it? Are you okay?" I replied, "I think my water just broke" and we realized that we were about to have a baby! Luckily, there was no embarrassing gush when I stood up - I don't think anyone in the restaurant realized what had happened. We left our meals half-eaten, and Mike ran the two blocks to my office to get the car, while I sat on a bench outside and waited (I wasn't about to walk that far). Apparently, Daniel had realized the party was for him and decided to try to make an appearance. We thought for awhile that he might actually arrive on his due date, but he ended up missing it by an hour and 52 minutes.

So, jumping back to the present from that little trip down memory lane, we decided to commemorate the anniversary of his almost-birthday with a trip back to the same restaurant for lunch. Boy, was it different this year! We did manage to sit at the same table, but this time we needed a highchair for the amazing little boy who's grown so much in a year I can hardly believe it.

Here are a few photos. As you can see, Daniel really wanted to eat with chopsticks. Daddy tried to help him, and that satisifed him for a little while.
But he really wanted to try it himself. He made a valiant attempt, but I don't think his hand-eye coordination is quite up to the task of chopsticks yet.
We also re-visited the bench where I waited for Mike to get the car. Hard to believe that Daniel fit inside me a year ago!