I've added the complete zoo pix to the photo site. For now, here are a couple more photos...

Today we packed up the car and headed to the San Francisco Zoo. The drive turned out to be just a bit too long... it' s awfully hard to wait when you have such anticipation and you're three. David napped for most of the drive there, which was great because it gave us more time to play at the zoo. The kids had a good time visiting the animals once we were there.

We first saw the giraffes which turned out to be Isabelle's favorite part. She had some trouble picking out her clothes and wanted my "help" but didn't want to wear anything I chose. So I picked out this cute white shirt with green stripes and a big apple on it and told her that maybe the giraffe would see the apple and come close for a nibble. Well, you know that she never forgets a thing, so as soon as we saw the giraffes, (which turned out to be really close), she unzipped her jacket and was holding out her shirt to make sure they could see it. She wanted to get into the pen with them. Here's our daughter who is usually intimidated by anything much bigger than herself wanting to walk right up to these gi-normous animals. Go figure...


David would have jumped over every fence to run right up to any creature we saw. The boy has no fear of anything. He also really loves birds and flowers and spent the day pointing at the birds and yelling "birdy! birdy!!" and making his best attempt at bird sounds. He also wanted to see and smell and probably tear apart every flower he saw. He was so excited he was wild and didn't know what to do with himself.


They has a terrific time at the petting zoo part. They got to pet sheep and goats and see other farm animals. That was a big hit.


We only got through about a fourth of the zoo. It's really huge. I am not fond of zoos but would actually recommmend this one. It's beautifully landscaped and accessible, and the animals we saw looked happy and in pretty healthy and natural environments. Some of the large birds had been placed at the zoo because they had been injured and couldn't return to the wild. That's not a bad life considering the other options for them...

We also found out that there's camp ground there! We're going to check that out. How cool for pretty good camping to only be a short distance away... we'd have the zoo, the ocean, the city and some really cool places to hike around. I love San Francisco.

David is saying new words and doing better with his talking. he tries to say anything that you say to him if you phrase it," David, can you say..." He can't say Isabelle yet, but calls her "Belle, belle". He can say bubbles, Dadda, flower, blueberries, please, thank you, brown bear, breakfast. I think those are the newest words.

He's in a growth spurt now and getting so big!!

Ever since David fell and hurt his mouth, Isabelle has been in desperate need of attention. This makes sense from a 3 year old's point of view... if I hurt myself or at least pretend that I am critically wounded I will get loads of attention and snuggling... so we give it to her. I have explained how we shouldn't pretend to be hurt when we aren't really hurt and even told the "boy who cried wolf" story. She didn't really get the moral of the story. She just thought it was a good story I made up. So I decided that just telling her that she can ask me to spend time with her when she needs extra mommy time and I can do that.

Tonight I got home in time to read stories and put her to bed. I love these days when she wants me to sleep with her and snuggle and sing forever. So she scoots way over in her bed and says "here mommy, there's room for you," and I get to lay down close. Tonight I asked her if she knows how much I love her and she said "yes, to the moon and back."

Isabelle has taken the role of mother to daycare, and cares for some of the other kids. She is so maternal already! She reads other kids stories, and gets their stuffed animal comfort toy when they fall or are upset about something. She does that for David at home too. She also feeds the other kids, and her new favorite thing to do is hug. She doesn't hug everyone all the time, but she and one of her 'boyfriends' will hug off and on throughout the day. And it seems to come at odd times. For instance, they will be running around the yard at daycare, in their usual crazy circle kinda shape, then one of them will stop, and a hug ensues. Then it's back to running, climbing, hiding, drawing, etc.

Isabelle has also taken to playing 'This little Piggy' with David. Sometimes it just becomes a big gigglefest, and I don't hear anything about piggies, just two very happy children. But then after 15 or 20 minutes of doing something else, the competition comes back, and sharing ends, or someone gets pushed. Oh well.



David had his first major accident. He's never had very good balance and has taken a few nasty tumbles, but this latest one loosened some teeth and caused our daycare provider a minor heart attack. Apparently it was just a regular day of running around giggling when David tripped on some uneven ground and fell mouth first into the concrete. I got the dreaded call at work. Me: "Is everything ok?", Daycare: "um, well, no... David fell." Me: "How bad is it?" Daycare: "Um, well, there looks like a lot of blood, but it's mixed with saliva..." Me: One of us will be right there."



We ended up taking him to the dentist the next morning and things appear to be mostly ok. The x-ray shows that there's no fractures of the root or tooth and they expect that the loose teeth will recover in a couple of weeks. It looks swollen and sore and awful to me, as a Mom and a person who doesn't deal well with tooth problems thanks to a terrible childhood dentist. Anyway. David doesn't really seem to be that bothered by it and is eating and drinking normally. And he is active as ever, giving us all mild heart attacks on a daily basis. He's a such a little trooper and did so well at the dentist. We're so proud of him. He's going to grow up to do wonderful, important things!

Here are some random pictures of the kids...








Nothing much new to report. They are past their cold and we are almost past ours too. I, for one, am so tired of them (especially David) being sick. He always gets it worse than Belle and it hangs on longer. I guess you either have them sick now or keep them out of the petridish called daycare and have them sick constantly when school starts. Please tell me it's not both??!!

Anyway, one new development is that David has begun to fight back against Isabelle's sisterly abuse. He used to just cry a little and them go on his way. Now she sits on him, he pulls her hair. She takes his toy, he pops her in the head. All's fair in love and family. And it's teaching her that hitting others results in being hit back. Good life lesson I think.

They are both learning in their own way and establishing their own unique and lovable traits. David has always been more of a cuddler and a hugger than Belle, but now she is starting to spontaneously hug and kiss and tell us she loves us. It's nice to see... Isabelle is also so creative I think. She listens to music and talks in pictures about it. For instance John has some "house" music that we play in the car sometimes and Isabelle calls one of the songs "the spider song." Something about the music reminnds her of a spider building it's web, and then the music changes and she talks about how then the spider dances. Then at some point the roly-poly bugs do soemthing else. Is this normal for a 3 year old? Even if it is, I think she's amazing.

David is wonderfully "boyish." He's busy and precocious and persistent. He loves to tear things up and get into everything he isn't supposed to. He walks with funny swagger to show off his big buddha belly, doing everything very deliberately and with rare gentleness. He does know what 'gentle touches' mean and sometimes will use them when prompted to. He's got a great sense of humor and a contagious laugh. His way of learning appears to be less about observing and more about conquering and (still) tasting. He has such a joyful spirit.

Love those kiddos... best thing we've every done. Will we ever get more than 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep again?

Well, the little ones are sick again. But enough about that.


Last weekend we traveled down to Pleasanton for a lunch with my family, and a gift exchange for the girls birthdays. We stopped in at a little brew-pub located on main street near the old historic hotel and train station. The place was all done up in Mardi Gras fare, which was very interesting to David. Isabelle didn't really seem too interested in any of it. I think she may have still been recovering from the previous gut flu. She didn't want to talk much that day either. If you ever find yourself out that way, I'd go with the porter or the IPA.

Of course everyone was glad to see the kids, and they always enjoy seeing family.

David found a new little stinker trick of the week. The kids were in the bath tub, and I was still letting water in. I had Isabelle all shampood up, when all of a sudden, I don't hear the water entering the tub anymore. For one of those very long seconds, just before you know something is going to happen which you may not want to happen to you, I glanced over at David to see how he turned off the water. Then, WHOOSH! My head was soaked, and Isabelle was getting all the spray from the shower. Suddenly, it became very clear how David made it all quiet, for a second.

So, what's worse than a baby with the stomach flu? TWO kids with the stomach flu. Oh, lordy, it's been fun. Somehow I don't feel the need to go into much detail. For those of you who have been through it, you already relate. For those that haven't, it's just not that pretty.
I would like to take a minute to highlight one of the many virtues of my perfect husband. He doesn't think twice to get up at two in the morning and deal with the uh... stuff that results from the stomach flu. All those nights I had to be up with the kids when I was nursing are a good trade to have a dad that gets up to deal with sick kids.
Hope all of you are well!!

These kids sure have developed some fun(ny) games or activities. Whenever Isabelle is in the tub by herself, she does what she calls 'swimming.' What this swimming is is when she gets on her belly, and gets as close to one end of the tub with her feet. Then she pushes off as fast as she can, and belly surfs accross the tub, which pushes a big wave of water ahead of her, only to splash back at her when it get to the other end. She then wipes off her face, and laughs, and gets ready to do it again.

David has a game he like to play around the house. He goes into one of the bedrooms, and gets behind the door. Then he peeks his head around the door to see who's looking at him, and says, "Bye Bye." Then he closes the door, which he can't really open up again, then yells, "Mama!" Then we go open the door for him, he pops out with a big smile on his face, and he wants to do it again.

The other thing we've noticed with David is that he seems to have no fear. At least I hope thats what it is. Either that or no sense. Today we were at the playground, and he just climbs right up as high as he can get on the jungle gym. Then he thinks he can step off any edge like it were a stair. But it's 5 ft. up! Then he was going to walk right down a big slide! He's been climbing up slides for a while, and he likes to go down them on his belly too. Recently he has started to go down slides in a more traditional sitting pose. But today he went down a few times on his belly, then a few sitting runs, but then he just started to try to walk right down it! Fortunately, I was standing right next to the slide and caught him before he went end over. What's he doing? Trying to give us heart attacks?!?

Isabelle occasionally gets a little maternal or nurturing with her little brother. Sometimes its funny and a little inapproprtiate, like when she tells him "No, stay there and take a nap!" at 8 in the morning, and she just happened to cover him up with a blanket. But other times, most times, it's very cute, and she's giving him a bit of her food, or offering him a drink. Sometimes when we redirect him or tell him he can't clinb on top of the TV, and he starts to cry, she will get a toy or stuffed animal and bring it over to try to comfort him. She's so sweet!

Isabelle is three!! We decided to have a big party for her this year, since for the past two there have been reasons that we haven't done much for her birthday. She also has a little more of an idea about what birthdays are and what goes along with them... like presents. But mostly she likes the cake!!

Those of you who are diligent about reading the blog may remember that we went to a birthday party in the summer at a "bounce-house." Isabelle had such fun that we decided back then that we'd have her party there too. For those of you who don't know about these, they are basically a big room with several giant inflated bounce tents, slides of various heights, little obstacle courses in some... you get the idea. It gives new meaning to kids bouncing off the walls. Anyway, we invited a handful of her friends, family and some of our friends who are particularly fond of the kids. There was an hour of bouncing and then an hour in the party room for pizza presents and cake.

We had a super fun time!!

I love that the kids are starting to appreciate each other more as they get older, and I hope they are close for ever and ever...

They seemed to really bond closer during the holiday break, maybe because they didn't have any other kids to play with? Anyway we also tried to wean David off of his a.m. nap. He still sort of needs it, but when we let him nap in the morning he doesn't want to nap in the afternoon until 2 or 3pm. This presents a problem at daycare, as all of the other kids pretty much nap that the same time.

Sooooo... after the break the kids go back to daycare and routines resume. The first day back, David is pretty worn out by naptime. Noah brings out the napping mats that the bigger kids use and David runs to Isabelle's and plops down on it. Since he sometimes takes a bit longer to get to nap than others, Noah goes about taking care of the other kids and by the time he returns David is fast asleep. "Isabelle, " he says, "David is sleeping on your mat... what should we do?' Isabelle had a simple solution. She went over and laid down next to him, put her arm around him and went to sleep too!"

Welcome to Hollywood!!



Dahling, you look Mahvalous!!



I love you Sissy. I love you too buddy, even though your poop makes me choke




She really loves me a super duper lot

David has started to try to say more words. He's pretty clear with "Mamma" and "bye" and "Hi". Now he tries to say breakfast, big red bus and Truck!!!

He loves to wave and say bye to John when he leaves for work in the morning, and climbs up to the window to watch him drive away. That window is also a great place to watch all kinds of very interesting things like cars being towed away, the maintenance workers and the "green" tractor and truck that come weekly to get the grass trimmings from the curb.

Later this month he has his last developmental assessment. I hope they tell us he's all caught up. He seeems to be!!

Here are some fun pictures of him being adorable! And of he and John playing with the giant tiger that Unle Matt and Auntie Joan got us for Christmas. The thing is bigger than David and is a little bit reminiscent of the giant cow balloon!!!