Santa Cruz Visit - Sept '10

Before we take you on a photo journey of our trip to Santa Cruz last month, how cute is this photo of Alex looking at his blog online with me? He now says his name which makes it extra cute when he points at photos of himself and says "alex". Adorable. (Although it's not so adorable that he is in a very possesive stage. Everything is "mine" or "alex" or "alex's turn".)
But now on to Santa Cruz. We took Alex to Roaring Camp, the park just down the street from the house I grew up in. It has a steam engine train that runs through the Redwoods to the ocean. Alex was enthralled.

Looking for ducks in the lake....

"Look, Papa, a choo choo"

My boys.

Aren't they handsome?!

Watching the train pull into the station...

"Choo choo"

And once at the beach, Alex took a ride on the carousel with Aunt Ruthie. He wasn't so excited about it at first...

But then he had a great time.

He now says "Ruthie" and "Uncle Seth". It's uber cute.

Later that weekend we got a special visit from Cousin Emma, Micheal and my adorable godsons Patrick and Andrew who were visiting from Pennsylvania. Here we are taking a ride on the Giant Dipper at the Boardwalk.

On our way home from Santa Cruz we stopped for a little wine tasting and Papa took advantage of an opportunity to teach Alex how to play one of his favorite old video games. He also just bought a Wii, which makes for three video game consoles that we now have. My poor child is going to grow up addicted to these games. Sigh.

Back at home, we headed out for a walk to the park recently. This is how our walks go these days...Alex would rather push his stroller than sit in it. Which is great, but our walks take fooooooorrreeevvvvvvveeerrrrr.

King of the mountain...

We went to the local sports shop last weekend to buy Alex a tricycle. While we were there we ran into our neighbors who offered us their son's old Superman bike with training wheels. It's still too big for Alex but he LOVES it.

Alex turns 2

Hi friends and family! Our little Alex turned two on July 30th (let's pretend it hasn't taken me 3 months to get photos up). We celebrated at KidSpace in Pasadena where Alex got to make music in the music class...

And ride the tricycles....

And play in the water fountain.

We also went to Travel Town at Griffith Park to ride the choo-choo train which is Alex's favorite thing to do in the whole wide world

"But I don't wan't to get off the choo-choo Uncle Seth"

We even had Mama Martha in town from Mexico to celebrate with us

And yes, we all wore Super Hero shirts....

Alex went on a walk with Grandpa and his new Buzz Lightyear backpack from Grammy

Alex got lots of cuddles on his birthday

And a cupcake...

And new Buzz and Woody dolls

It was a great birthday. We've loved every minute of our first two years with this little pumpkin!

Seth and Pop - these are for you!

Pop - how cute does Alex look in this little shirt you bought him?! He loves it. I put it on him and he kept spinning around in circles trying to see Lightning McQueen on the back. It was so funny!

Seth, here is your video. For anyone else watching...you should know that Alejandro despises the LA Lakers. So Uncle Seth snuck into the house on Game 1 of the NBA finals and dressed Alex all in Lakers gear. The video captures Alejandro's reaction.

Almost Two...

Alex is almost two and already taller than a fire hydrant. He is madly obsessed with Buzz Lightyear and Woody, hence the matching Toy Story Tshirt and Crocs (yes, I bought my child a pair of Crocs - embarassing, I know).

Here he is in his little bike helmet helping Papa pump up the bike tires. He was SO excited to go biking, that is until we actually got to the beach and got on the bikes. Five minutes into the ride he was over it. The only thing that kept him happy was that Disney has littered the beaches with Buzz and Woody trash cans. Random, right? So w'ere riding along and Alex was busy counting the Buzz trash cans.

My boys sharing a chocolate croissant. Yum.

Alex's other new fascination right now is with trains. We went to the train park for little Simon Cohen's birthday and ever since Alex has been all about choo-choos.

We even got to ride the little train. Alex could barely contain himself, he was so excited.

Here he is with the birthday boy. Don't they look cute together? You would never guess that they were totaly ignoring each other and just happened to be sitting together looking angelic.

And playing trains together...

Happy birthday, little Simon! Thanks for introducing us to trains!

We had a playdate recently with little Owen at his new house. He has a YARD! A yard, people! I didn't realize how deprived condo living in LA has made us until we spent an afternoon in Owen's yard. Ahhhh....

The boys took turns mowing the lawn in between drags of their sippy cups.

Bubbles!

"You can't catch me!"

Life is good. Happy summer, friends and family! We are eagerly awaiting Mama Martha's visit. She comes in next week and will be with us for three weeks! On July 30th we celebrate two whole years of Alex. It's been an amazing (and super quick) two years. We had our annual Father's Day photo shoot last month and should be getting the photos soon. Check back in another couple of weeks. Love to all!

Alex at 21 Months

Hi friends! Our little man is almost two years old and a ton of fun! Here he is selling lemonade with the neighbor kids (although he did more spilling than helping)

We spend lots of weekend time at playgrounds. Alex loves sand, loves slides, loves climbing.... and generally loves being outdoors.

And it's so nice to enjoy a little sliver of nature in our very urban neighborhood.

Why can I never seem to capture him smiling on camera?

We finally had a play date with little Grace Ayala! It was the first time she and Alex had met. Her mommy Mikaela is my dear friend from Santa Cruz and my college roommate. They live in Southern CA but just far enough away that we had never been able to coordinate a visit. We met one Saturday afternoon at KidSpace in Pasadena (I'll omit the details about Alex throwing up in the car on the way there). We had a really nice visit and it was so cute to see them playing together!

Elmo! Our little friend Sara had Elmo at her 2nd birthday party. It was such a great idea and so much fun for everyone....except Alex! He was terrified. He finally worked up the courage to ask Elmo for a balloon animal and we were so proud. Papa even bought him a Tickle Me Elmo and Alex will have nothing to do with it!

Playing with his little friend Simon! This was our first glimpse of Alex not sharing quite so well. I'm afraid he's about to hit those terrible twos and my sweet little boy will disappear. I know establishing independence is a necessary part of his development, but I can't help not looking forward to it.

Swimming with Tia Shassel! Alex loves the water and has a blast in the pool!

After 8 fun months with us, Tia Shassel moved back to Mexico. We had lots of fun with her and were sad to see her go. She was amazingly helpful watching Alex and really helped me transition back to working full time, knowing that my little boy was in such good hands.

Of course Alex didn't understand what it meant that Tia Shas was leaving, so he was all giggles. In fact it wasn't until he saw her on Skype a few days later that he seemed to be confused.

Alex is now going to a small, home day care near our house. There are only 9 kids there all under 3 years old. The first couple of days he was curious and happy to be at day care. Then he seemed to realize that I was leaving him when we got to day care and he was really clingy. But by the third week he was fully transitioned and now jumps out of the car and runs into day care. I'm lucky if I even get him to blow me a kiss before I leave.

Playing with Alex's best friend, Bacon...

Counting my favorite Alex things lately...

1) Every night when I get home from work he wants to go out for a walk. He grabs his beany and says "hat, hat" and heads to the door!

2) On our walks he picks flowers and gives them to me! ( I know, I know, I melt every time!)

3) He now says shoes, socks, head, star, chi chi, moooo (for cows)

4) At bedtime we climb into bed, turn on the reading lamp and read stories cuddling while he drinks his bottle (it's my favorite part of the day!)

5) He LOVES his Papa! And he knows his Papa will buy him whatever he wants. When we're out shopping and he finds something he wants he ignores me entirely and howls "Pa-pa!" at the top of his lungs. Then goes running to find Papa.

Sigh. So cute, this little boy!