Here's a few photos of the birthday party, posted by Megan on her birthday 2 days after Eleri's. We had the party on Saturday 10/6 along with a party for Cosmo and one for Samuel in the evening. Lily and Ricardo came to help celebrate along with us and Grandma Anne visiting from WI.

The birthday tiara and dress, in the beginning...

The birthday pie, lemon raspberry with whipped cream, yum! We gave her a quarter of a pie, thinking there was no way she would eat the whole thing. Boy were we wrong...

Sure feels good to smear pie on the belly

smirky
kickin' back -- note the amount of pie left on the tray...

All cleaned up and sporting some new digs. Those fancy shoes and pants came from Susan and Samuel and the top's from Grandma Anne

James teaching Eleri some chords

Here's Eleri and mommy smooching after dinner in Denver

Here's Eleri doing some shopping at Anthropologie in Denver

This picture is from the Cherry Creek in downtown Denver.

Eleri loves to walk up and down stairs and as you can see, she doesn't need to take baby steps either. She's people and she walks up stairs like people.

Here are photos from our labor day wknd trip to LA to visit our friends Tom and Vasilisa and their daughters Katya and Sasha. We had a wonderful time in spite of record heat and power outages.

Here is a classic series of dads and babies, one of whom is too impatient to stay on the couch

Mom and Eleri at the Griffith Observatory in the hills overlooking LA, at sunset

Here's Eleri and Sasha enjoying lunch together. Sasha's trying to get that last bit of banana from in between Eleri's fingers

2 babies at once, a real handful....

Daddy and Eleri being silly with chopsticks at the japanese restaurant for lunch.

In this short video you can see briefly Katya, who is 4, and Vasilisa walking in the background.

demonstrating the new big skill, very entertaining. Our baby girl is officially walking unasissted at 10.5 months, after striving for it for at least 3 months. From about 5-7 months she would stand at every opportunity, and from about 7 months til independence, would walk holding on to fingers and furniture. Suddenly, on the day we left for Wisconsin, she took off on her own, full of confidence.

Eleri enjoyed a generous portion of watermelon for dinner tonite. And I think she enjoyed it...

here's some of eleri's dancin' moves. they're hard to catch -- she's very spontaneous with her artistic expressions. and yes, that is juice in her cup, her very first taste, and half water. no finger-wagging.....

Eleri enjoying a tomato, or two

video footage of Eleri's first hike on her own two feet. she made it up to the top of sandia peak all by herself (after being carried for 2.5 hours)

and here's a shot from on the way down

this one is dark and long, but terribly charming

This one is from the lavender festival today. She's getting confident in her walking and only likes to hold on with one hand. I like this video feature -- very charming.

Here's our experiment in uploading video to the blog site. This feature is not mainstream yet, they're still working out the bugs. It seems like a good thing if it works....

This, we think, is her best video to date, taken on july 4.

sorry about the lag in posting. our camera is in the shop & we are borrowing james' for now.

hanging out with Peter, Lily and Ricardo's dog

Cruising around at Lily's house

here's eleri with lily, her nanny. they have tons of fun all day :-)

those eyes are still big and blue. they may still change color, but aren't showing any sign yet.

Here's some photos from last night's toga party in honor of Susan going off to study Latin. She's leaving today for Berkeley for 10 weeks to cram in 3 semesters of Latin in preparation for starting her PhD studies this fall at UNM. TOGA!!! We only regret not having a toga for Cosmo.....

More Hawaii photos

Eleri catching a wave -- big kahuna!

Hiking in the rainforest

daddy's trying to eat the cup, just like eleri...

at the beach

early morning at Waikiki beach

Eleri's hangin out in the wheelbarrow, after a hard day's work

These next pictures were taken by Lily two days ago, the best out of a fine sequence of photos of life at home.

Here are a few pictures from our recent trip to Salt Lake City and Hawaii - more to come

Eleri really loves the music of the Ragtime Rascals...especially when i play low notes on her belly.

That's a lot of chocolate cake. She was quite fond of the whole affair. Cosmo was the only innocent victim. He wandered too close to an outstretched fist of chocolate and paid the price.