Mid-Summer Update

I know, I know. It's more like a late-summer update. Sorry about that. It's been a crazy couple of months. Isabel started standing, which quickly led to walking. She took her first steps on 7/9/08 (at 11 months and 1 week).



Now she's flying around at warp speeds and I'm just trying to keep up. She's so adorable, and so tough. She falls, bumps her head, and gets right back up. The only things that make this girl cry are hunger and taking away her toys (ahem, my car keys in particular.) She's so happy, so curious, and so beautiful I want to squeeze her til she pops.



So we just celebrated her 1st birthday on Saturday, which was great. It was SO SO hot here, but the kids played in the back yard on our slip-n-slide and had a great time. I'm including a few pictures for everyone to see. The highlight of the party was Isabel devouring her birthday cake. Literally, devouring. Remember the T-Rex from Jurassic Park? That dude has NOTHING on Isabel when it comes to swiping food in a hurry.



Take care, everyone. More updates soon.



Squeezes and smacks,

LaSon

Smiling Isabel around 9am on her 1st birthday!

Isabel playing on the slip-n-slide

Isabel dancing (Ok, so she wasn't really dancing. It looks like it though, right??)

That cake was finger lickin' good!

And you thought I was kidding when I said she devoured it. That cake was gone in under 5 minutes. That's MY GIRL!

Blogging Rhymes with Jogging

Once upon a time in a faraway place, there was a Mama of two monkeys. She spent her days at her Marketing job and her nights as a zookeeper at the Esparza Family Zoo. An old friend invited her to check out her blog on Blogspot, and... well, here we are. Ok, so once upon a time wasn't too far into the distant past. Good marketing is sometimes misleading. What are you gonna do?

So here I am, wondering if this will be a project I start and then never return to. Sounds cool now, but turns into a lot of work for a woman without much free time on her hands. I guess we'll just have to wait it out and see if my life is actually interesting enough for my friends to check in and read about it. (That will also be a test of whether or not my friends' lives are interesting enough to keep them too busy to have time to ready about my (possibly) interesting life.)

Still with me? Yes answers are a good sign...

So today is Saturday. Nicholas turns 4 in 4 days. Try explaining this to an (almost) 4 year old. Yesterday it was 5 days, so naturally my (almost) 4 year old spent the morning arguing with me that his birthday is in 5 days, not 4. Of course this is the same child who will tell you that his sister was in my tummy 2 weeks (ahem, 7 months) ago. If I had his sense of time, my boss would have fired me 2 weeks (uh, 2 years) ago.

Isabel is growing like a weed. I hear that's a common symptom of most infants. To be so small, the kid can put away some food. And I'm starting to realize we pay as much for her food as we do for our own. Quite disproportionate, really.

Easter is tomorrow. We have no significant plans made. My mother is not doing her traditional Easter dinner, so the kids and I are just hanging around the house. Carlos has to work, but that's no surprise. I bought a small pack of plastic eggs to fill with coins and hide around the back yard. I think Melissa might come over to watch him find them. Maybe I can convince her to go out for a late lunch/early dinner with us.

Ok, here's my question for the day - in your family, is it custom to fill the eggs with candy, money, or both?

Ta-ta for now!