Now that the holidays are over, it's time to update some of our photo collection from the busy last few months. By the end of the year Rachel had hit 20 months of age and her early speech has begun. She says more words than we can count, but her repetitive favorites are Mommy, Daddy, 'Is (for "Sis"), 'Lilah (for her friend Delilah), Papa (Paul's father), cat, dog, baby (refers to any child she sees under the age of two) bubble, wa-wa (water), more, and robot to name a few. The vast majority of her conversations include one or more of the above. To our chagrin, she learned how to climb out of her crib in November and to this day still has not mastered the art of consistently taking long -- or even medium length -- naps. She is sweet and funny at times, happy and playful, or stubborn and mischievous.

Madeleine loves the holiday season as she is quite the liturgically-minded child. She asked if we could celebrate Hanukkah again (we did, with dreidel play every day), and Advent was another hit. She loves the ritual of the nightly Advent candles. This year’s Advent had the added excitement of preparation for her inaugural appearance with the children's choir at St. Columba's Christmas Eve mass. She was the youngest and the shyest during rehearsals, either refusing to open her mouth or just mouthing the words silently, but she surprised us by singing out proudly and confidently on Christmas Eve. Although we had never practiced it with her, she even sang along when the 12 year old soloist sang her "solo" verses during one song.  She just turned 4 1/2 and insisted for the second year in a row on a mini-celebration complete with a cake and 4.5 candles. January brought longer preschool hours for her: from 9:00-3:00 on M,W,F. Both she and Ann are thrilled at the addition. The new schedule enables the two of them to make the 1.25 mile commute home by bike, sometimes with the trail-a-bike, sometimes with Madeleine on her own two wheels pumping furiously while Ann pedals slowly behind her.

In other news, we do indeed have six new hens now, bought as day-old chicks in October. After much deliberation in the naming process we've settled on: Goldilocks, Fuzzy, Blackie, Roughpowder (a long story behind that one), Leafy-Leaf, and Buster Posey. We hope the last doesn’t turn out to be a rooster, but we just had to name one in honor of the World Series champs since they were hatched during the post-season that Ann and Paul so enjoyed watching with neighbors this year.

 

A couple of months ago Lori Eanes, a professional photographer in San Francisco who has done photography for Utne Reader, The New York Times, Sunset Magazine, and Parenting Magazine, just to name a few, contacted us to see if she could photograph our family and garden for a project she's currently doing. 

She came out at the end of July and photographed us for two hours, snapping away as we planted seeds for our fall garden, harvested squash, pumpkins, beans, strawberries, and plums, and the girls tended to the chickens. She came up with some incredible shots. We were struck looking at them by how lush and fruitful our small (only 750 square feet) and not-so-perfect garden came off looking. It really is amazing how much food you can grow in a tiny space.

We just got the photos today, which you can view in the slideshow below (or click on it to see the photos larger).

You can see some of the other photos from Lori's in-progress "Backyard Project" on her website under Portfolio > Projects.  We hope to see her collection of urban farmer photos in a local publication sometime soon!

Rachel's first year went so quickly for us and on Earth Day, April 22, we marked the official end of her infancy. We are glad the trials of the first year are through, even as she provides us with different challenges with every new thing she learns.

She is quite a physical little girl: little because she remains solidly in the 10% for weight, and physical because she is a climber, if anything. The smart - and strong - little kiddo has learned to push chairs to places where she wants to reach things and she feels free to climb right up into danger zones. We also have to be vigilant lest she unroll all the toilet paper in the house or try to stir the toilet water.

Now she wants to participate in everything we do and the desire to imitate her older sister is coming on strong. If she had it her way, she would get to stay at preschool with Madeleine. She is quite shy and reserved with anyone outside of her immediate family and she makes people work to earn her smiles and affection. Luckily for Mommy, Daddy, and Madeleine, she graces us with a lot of the both.

We've posted new photos here:

February 2010:

March 2010:

April 2010:

Our girls are growing up! Madeleine now vigorously corrects people when they assume she is three years old by telling them, "No, I'm three and a half!" She has definitely become a pre-schooler in terms of social maturity and independence, which is fun for her and a relief to us.

Madeleine often still asks us, "I forget, how old is Rachel again?"  It's hard for all of us to keep track when we count in months and they are flying by, but Rachel is almost 10 months old now. The two sisters are best of friends and it is beautiful to watch their interactions with each other. The more Rachel develops and learns new things, the more Madeleine roots her on and celebrates her. We love watching her develop too, although the early crawling (at 7 1/2 months) and standing up and now "cruising" have made our lives more complicated.

In January we took a trip to South Bend, Indiana to visit Ann's parents and introduce the girls to snow. Madeleine had some memorable quotes. On a day when the high temperature was 12 degrees she asked "Why are there clouds coming out of my mouth?" She spent about 4 minutes on the outdoor ice skating rink before calling it quits ("I'm getting cold and this is very hard") but she wanted to go back the next day. Making a snowman/snowpyramid was a big hit, as was Grandma's hot chocolate when she came inside.

Back in Alameda, we've welcomed three new chickens into our flock. Madeleine chose all the names: Scramble (named after the one who died last fall), Pancake and Waffle, now bring our flock up to six. We are enjoying glimpses of spring, time to work in the garden, and the prospect of Rachel's first birthday soon to come.

We've posted new photos here:

October 2009:

November 2009:

December 2009:

January 2010:

Rachel is already five months old. Her newborn infancy has come and gone, and now our girl is wanting to grow up and PLAY! She does full-body wriggles when excited, and she flaps her arms and legs when she watches her big sister Madeleine run, jump, dance, etc.

She seems eager to eat solid food (she positively panted and drooled over our pesto pasta the other night), but in the meantime she sucks on her big toes a lot. A couple weeks ago she began rolling over and she's never looked back.  She loves to practice making new sounds, and we swear sometimes she vocalizes "just to hear herself talk." We are still yearning for the time when she will begin sleeping through the night and taking more than 30 minute naps.

Now that Madeleine has started pre-school two mornings a week, Rachel gets some special one-on-one time with mom, which we hope makes up for all the time she gets set down so we can get something done around the house. In the last month, Rachel's Grandpa Naffziger got to hold her quite a bit during his two week-long visits. Look at just a few of the newest photos and you'll see why we call her our "little Pauline girl."

We've posted new photos here:

Month 4:

Month 5: