May at a Glance

Pictures now...explanations...now...

I had a conference in Chicago and we stayed with my good friend, Julie. We were also able to catch up with our friends John and Maura and to meet their new baby girl, Maeve. Graham was also in Chicago and thankfully his wife and our good friend Ashley and Sydney's good friend Eden visited us in Indiana just after the conference. We had a bbq at our place and welcomed friends of ours and friends of Graham and Ashley's who were excited to see them upon their triumphant return to West Lafayette.

Here's the group in Chicago at John and Maura's.

John and Maeve.

The happy family. I love this picture, it's so sweet with the sleeping Maeve.

Julie was gracious enough to host us and hang out with Sydney during our stay in Chicago.

Julie sharing her love of books with Sydney as they read Sydney's favorite book. She likes it because she likes to say the "Pop" in "Hop on Pop."

Back at home with a bbq for some local and non-local visitors.

Our attempt to get a picture of Lance and Maren's sons, Spencer and Josh, and Sydney and Eden. Trust me, this is the best shot of the bunch.

Eden loves the camera as much as Sydney does.

Ashley and Eden.


Sydney, Eden, and our friends Elizabeth and Mark's baby girl, Grace.

Sydney was delighted to get a pool in the mail courtesy of Nana and has enjoyed it almost every day since then.



Firefighter in training?

Fun to Be One

Sydney turned 1 on May 7th. There will be future posts showing how thoroughly she is enjoying her gifts from family and friends but for now...here are some videos and pictures from her birthday dinner - waffles, blueberries, strawberries, and Redi Whip!!

Here is the set-up.

The best part of this video happens about 22 seconds in...it was only a matter of time.

How does it taste?

Teaching Sydney the essentials...like eating out of the container and making a Redi Whip beard.

Not messy enough? Easy fix for that.

Race Day

Last Saturday, Joshua ran a mini-marathon (a half marathon) and Bo, Catherine and I did the 5K. Joshua and I were pleasantly surprised by our times and our ability to run all of our respective races with limited time to train (granted - he did do 10 more miles than me). Joshua finished in 2:03:33 and I finished in 30:02. Sydney was a very good sport despite us getting her out of bed at 4:45 am. Here are some pictures from the day. Although Joshua ran the farthest...MVP of the day goes to our friend Megan who got up early and came with us to hang out with Sydney while the rest of us were running. Thanks, Megan!

Here is the "Before"

Joshua's race started first so the rest of us walked by the capitol building to wait for the start of the 5K. Here are Bo and Catherine with the capitol building in Indy.


The starting line for the 500 Festival Mini-Marathon.

Here is the other "race" that was going on at the same time.

People starting the mini.

Sydney enjoyed the medal and I enjoyed being done!

Joshua's impression of his performance.

The "After" shot.

Catherine congratulated Sydney on some well done waiting.

The future's so bright...

We still managed to have enough energy to play in the yard. Sydney couldn't understand why we would consider doing anything else.

MVP!

Why walk when you can run?

We alluded to this but Sydney has really gotten her feet under her in the past week or so. As Joshua and I teamed up to capture some footage, we had to walk back and forth across the room 3 times because that is how many times she moved back and forth in the amount of time it took us to get the camera ready to shoot the second video. Crazy.

Tulips

We can tell Sydney is pushing a year because the tulips from our yard that we brought with us to the hospital last year when she was born are back in full force. Here are the ones from a year ago.

Here are some tulips and daffodils with Sydney. Notice her festive frog moccasin first shoes.

She was trying to play peakaboo and was fairly amused that she could do it without the hat actually coming off. I thought she might get frustrated, but I was wrong.

I had her stand up to get a close up of some of the tulips in our side yard. I like how in this photo it looks like she is pointing at the purple tulip as if I just asked her "Which one of these does not belong?"

Here are a bunch of pictures I managed to take but neglected to post in the last week or so...
Sydney sported her Red Sox outfit when they had won 11 in a row.

Sydney wore the outfit John and Maura gave her to honor the birth of their daughter, Maeve and because it finally got warm enough for her to wear it!

She has three teeth with two on the bottom and one on the top left...you get a nice view of them when she hams it up for the camera.

Don't worry, she hasn't fully grown out of being a messy eater.

Here's her cuddle bunny t-shirt from Nana.

Now we get to the video portion. The first one is of her mastering the IKEA ring stacker from Grandma and Grandpa.

Here is Sydney blowing bubbles in the bath for the first time. Joshua has been working on this trick for a while.

I tried to take pictures of Sydney wearing this outfit but she wouldn't really stand still long enough for me to take them (as in, I would lean her against the recliner and she would let go of it and start chasing after me and the camera!) I had to enlist Joshua's help for the photo shoot and I realized that the days of still pictures are now behind us. This video was taken at the beginning of the week and she is now walking all over the place and really getting her feet underneath her. We'll try to capture the extent of it this weekend.