Jake meets Brooklyn!

On Sunday morning we went out to the Marina green to cheer on our friend Dave who was taking part in a triathlon. Jake, of course, couldn't sit still long, and was off running places nearly every minute (I got many a comment from other spectators regarding Jake's speed and how he was already a triathlete in training...we'll see about that!).

Anyways, our friends Kim and Dane brought their beautiful dog Brooklyn (weight= 115 pounds) to watch as well. Jake went right up to her and started petting/hitting her adorable face, and she was wonderful to him! By the end of the morning, Jake was actually crawling on top of her, pretending to get a puppy ride!!! Poor Brooklyn!

Habitot with Riley

On Saturday we met up with our friends Marc and Allie and their daughter Riley at the Habitot museum in Berkeley. It was a great place for little ones just Jake and Riley's age to roam around and play. They had a pretend grocery store with little shopping carts, as well as a little register and pretend cafe. Here Jake and Riley sat at the counter of the cafe and pretended to order hot dogs...very cute!

Cupcakes!

yummmm...for Mother's Day, Tia Lindsay gave me a fantastic cupcake class gift certificate. Well...I finally used it last week. Sur La Table offers fantastic 2.5 hour classes on many different topics. The menu for this class was "Summer Cocktail Cupcakes":

Pina Colada Cupcakes

Lemoncello Cupcakes

Strawberry Daiquiri Cupcakes

Cuba Libre Cupcakes

Mojito Cupcakes

yummmmm...it was great fun, and a wonderful break in such a hard week. Thanks again Linds!

Celebrating with Nana

Here are some pics from our birthday celebration for Nana. It was quite a hectic day with the website launch and some big meetings for Josh, but it ended nicely being able to sit down and toast Nana!

Erica even skyped in help sing Happy Birthday...great to see her face!

For the first time, Jake REALLY wanted to help open the gifts as well...so cute. Christmas is going to be FUN this year!

1st Night away

This past weekend I had my first overnight away from Jake. It was Katie Rendler's bachelorette weekend, and of course I couldn't miss it. We had a wonderfully relaxing night away at Cordevalle resort to celebrate. Josh took Jake down to Grandma Lee and Bill's house so that he wouldn't be alone. The Boys had a great time at the pool and just hanging out.

Peekabo

Jake wants to play peekabo constantly now. It's so funny watching what he will do to "hide" while playing. Here he started playing with us at the dinner table with his empty (thank goodness) bowl:

Cardboard boxes rock

Jake's new Little Man chair/sofa/bed arrived a bit ago in a big cardboard box. Jake noticed the box immediately, and has spent much of his days in the last two weeks playing in this box. At times I'll even crawl in the box with him, which Josh captured below.
Amazing how such simple things really do capture Jake's attention so much more than ALL of the toys he has strewn around the house!

Here Jake was putting on a dance show, while in his favorite box:

Happy Birthday Nana!!!

Today is my fantastic Mom's birthday!!

We hope that you have a WONDERFUL day Nana, and we look forward to celebrating with you tonight!

(Jake couldn't quite get how to hold the sign for Mama to take the picture this time!)

couldn't resist posting the above shot

Sorry for being MIA!

ok, ok, ok...it has been WAYYY too long since I last left a post on this blog, as many of you have pointed out. It has been a very rough two weeks for Josh and I work-wise. Generally, one of us now has to work late, and the other picks up and feeds Jake, and then signs onto work e-mail after the other person gets home and takes over parent duty. It has been very eye opening to see how parenting has to work when BOTH parents have demanding jobs. Thank goodness we have a wonderfully happy son, who is happy with whichever parent he gets to play with at the end of the day. He miraculously has all of a sudden also started sleeping straight through the night, allowing Mom and Dad some much needed sleep after our crazy days.

The good news is, today at 3:20 p.m., the website that I have been working on for the last 5 months went LIVE!! There are definitely a few little bugs that will need to be worked out ASAP, but it's fantastic that I can now start tracking sales and reacting to a brand new business, instead of pulling numbers out of thin air as I'm buying the kids and baby clothes for our website. So, if you've got any friends or family in Canada, send them on over to do some shopping!

Of course I had to bake these tonight to bring to work as Thanks to all of the many, MANY people who made the site launch happen:

Hopefully, this launch means that at least MY work will calm down a bit, bringing some normalcy back to our household.

Xylophones

They had these great xylophones at the Discovery Museum that Jake loved to play with:

Love the museum

We headed over to the Discovery Museum on Sunday. Jake hadn't been back since he can walk, and wow...it's a whole new experience now! He just plows right into whatever activity that he thinks is fun and interesting...very fun to watch.

Exploring SF

While we're still living in the city, we're going to make a point to get out and explore more. In our very backyard there is so much great stuff to see!

Saturday we hiked into the Presidio. Jake got to climb on real cannon balls and a cannon!

The end of our road trip

The video says it all...

Meeting Zoe!

On our drive back up to SF from Pasadena, we stopped and visited our good friends Julie and Francis in gorgeous Santa Barbara. They had a daughter about three months after Jake was born, and we finally got to meet Zoe on Sunday!! It was great watching Jake and Zoe together, as they are nearly the same size and age and they started playing together right away, just as if they saw each other every day! Zoe is such a doll!

It was wonderful to see Julie and Francis as well, even though our visit was short. We miss them, but promise to visit for REAL soon!

Josh and his buddies with their sons...

It was incredibly cute seeing Josh with two of his great college buddies, Reed and Scott, as they ALL have sons within 6 months of age. Scott, Candice and Bradley live in Atlanta, so we rarely get to see them. Reed, Aleena and Hunter live in SF, yet we don't nearly see them enough either!

I wish that I got pictures of Jake on the dance floor, but I didn't. So, you'll just have to envision this tiny little Man, walking right into the middle of the dark, loud dance floor and "dancing" (when you ask Jake to dance, he grins and starts stomping his feet). It was definitely one of the most hilarious parts of the weekend, as all of the dancing ladies just parted, and circled around him clapping!! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Josh with Charlie, the groom, either but...we had a wonderful time at your wedding Charlie!!!

More wedding pictures

While Jake and I unfortunately missed the wedding ceremony, Josh said that it was beautiful and that it was great watching Charlie make his wedding vows. The reception was held at a gorgeous outdoor venue with lots of grass and running area for the boys to play on. It was a GREAT place for Jake to walk around and let out some energy. (as you can see below, he was not such a happy camper initially. He finally took a nap through dinner, and was ready to party for the evening time).
More pics coming tomorrow....

The wedding...

Saturday morning Jake actually let us sleep in until 7:15, which was a real treat (so sad, we know). To prevent all around us from waking up with Jake's loud babbling, we headed down to breakfast first thing. Big lesson learned: when staying at a super nice, beautiful hotel, do NOT bother going to the hotel restaurant for breakfast when you have an antsy 1 year old. We put Jake in the highchair, and within 2 minutes, he was VERY upset, and was letting all in the place know it. No amount of blueberries seemed to calm him down, so Josh and I had to literally swallow down a $$$$ breakfast of 2 buttermilk pancakes for Josh and bowl of yogurt for myself, in 5 minutes flat and get the heck out of there as fast as possible!

We did go to the pool that afternoon, and Jake had a great time in the water with Josh. We need to get him swim lessons ASAP!

So...the wedding. We got all dressed up and headed over to the wedding ceremony in the early afternoon. Thankfully, we had two other good friends with little baby boys who were also attending the wedding. Within the first 10 minutes of the ceremony, all three of us Moms were closed off in the bridal suite with our loud babies, trying not to disturb the service more than we already had with our exit. The Boys LOVED playing together though! Little Bradley is exactly 5 days younger than Jake, but lives in Atlanta, GA, so it was wonderful to finally introduce them to each other. Baby Hunter Moulds is 6 months younger than Jake and Bradley, but just now crawling around, and was definitely keeping up with the Big Boys!

Here are the Moms and I (Aleena and Candice) with the boys:

Josh and Jake after the ceremony:

more pics from the wedding coming tomorrow....

Road trip weekend

Well..we've just returned from a great weekend road trip. Josh's good buddy Charlie got married in Pasadena this past weekend, and we decided to make a family road trip out of the event. It was once again, a weekend of firsts for our Little Man Jake. Here were just a few of the firsts:

1. First car ride over 4 hours longs...going down took us about 7.5 hours and coming back took us more like 9. It was pretty rough for all parties in the car, as our little wiggle worm got VERY antsy after the first 3 hours both ways.

2. Jake visited his first hotel. In hindsight, we would not have chosen the gorgeous one that we did as his first experience, as his loud vocals, insistence to walk, early wake up time and general dislike of eating in nice restaurants did not make the Lingham a great fit for our family.

3. Jake hit the dance floor for the first time. More on that later, but he was QUITE a hit!

4. Jake's first wedding ceremony....he made it through the bride walking down the aisle, and then decided that he wanted to talk loudly and comment on things, and was quickly removed from the service by Mom.

5. Jake met LOTS of new baby friends, all of whom are going to be great friends to grow up with!!!

So...I'm spreading the weekend updates out, as there are so many pics and funny stories. But, to start, we headed down to Pasadena on Friday morning, bright and early. The first half of the ride went well, but man, that drive is lonngggg for a little one! We met up with Josh's wonderful friend from growing up, John Maynard and his fantastic wife Amy and 2 year old daughter Finley for dinner. Some how, Jake actually managed to sit through dinner at a restaurant relatively calmly. It was great to catch up with the Maynard family, and we're so excited for them to welcome Baby #2 in November. (I forgot to get pics of everyone...so sad!).

Here is Jake upon arrival at our wonderful hotel in San Marino...he had never experienced such a large, soft bed before, and wanted to play on it all afternoon long: