Happy Halloween

Here's Aoife as a mushroom child! I made the little hat for her out of an old pattern that I had. Then, I bought her the tights and she already had the shirt. She looked so cute.Later that night we took Aoife trick-or-treating on Hillegas Street. Every year the neighbors block of the street from traffic and have the kids from surrounding neighborhoods trick-or-treat on it. Aoife was unsure at first about what to do. I gave her a little green paper back to put her treats in. She thought we were visiting people and would proceed to enter peoples home; after awhile, she figured out that people were putting things in her bag and then we would leave. She's still learning to talk but managed to get out a treeotwee...so adorable! Later that night Tim and I ate Aoife's chocolate but don't worry we wrapped up individual crackers in aluminum foilfor her so that she could eat something healthy!

Monterey Bay-Asilomar

last weekend, we went to Asilimar. Tim had an immunology conference, so he invited Aoife and I to come along. We had so much fun. Asilimar is situated right along the southern california coast. Our hotel was a five minute walk from the beach. We had a really big room with a fireplace. I love fireplaces. Aoife and I went to the beach everyday. As well as there beong an immunology conference, there was also a midwifery conference, and I dropped in on a couple of speakers. The midwives were an interesting bunch of women. A lot of them had little babies. I even got a peek at Ina May Gaskin who is the writer of many birthing books which I read while I was pregnant.

On Sunday, we went to Monterey Bay aquarium. It is one of the largest aquariums in California. Aoife LOVED it. She loves fish tanks as it is, but the aquairium really blew her away. She loved watching all the fish, jelly fish, and sea horses. They even had a childrens section. Here is a picture of Aoife playing with a fish in water. I really don't know how long she spent playing here, but it was a very long time.
On our way back, we stopped by Santa Cruz and took a walk on the beach. Aoife was a little afraid of the waves, and was pretty tired by this point, so we headed on home.

New Bed

We got Aoife a new bed!!! It's a toddler bed. We got this amazing bed off of craigslist for $20. She loves it so much. She slept in it all night last night. Yay, maybe now we can get some sleep!

Here are some pictures of our sunday morning. Aoife at her internet cafe/skype center.

Tims chalk drawings of various unidentifiable things.

Can you find the: mama? corn? star? baby? grass (Aoifes contribution) , pumpkin? bunny? giraffe?

Saturday Morning

Tim needs to really focus on writing his thesis so that he can graduate this December. So every weekend, we have started a morning ritual of going to Tumble and Tea which is a cafe/kids indoor play space.

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Harvest Festival

We went to the harvest festival at a turn of the century farm called Ardenwood Historic farm in Fremont. The farm has been restored to its original condition with some additional features added to it. There is a train that transports people around the farm. There were many farm animals including an aviary. There was a free tour of the Victorian house which was absolutely gorgeous. There was a blacksmith shop, a milk house, and a lot of antique farm equipment.Aoife was extremely excited about the pumpkin patch. Here's a picture of her sitting on one of the many pumpkins they grew and sold on the farm.

Here's daddy as a lady....very pretty?

Aoife loved poking her head out of the holes; it was as if she knew she looked funny.


Aoife really enjoyed climbing up and down the hay pyramid and also walking around it. She also enjoyed walking through the corn maze.
After going to the pumpkin patch, we went into the historic part of the farm. We rode the train to the corn field and walked around looking at the animals. Aoife liked the smelly pigs, but especially enjoyed the chickens. The chickens were her favorite to look at. Tim wanted to look at the cider pressing, so we watched a demo of that. We also watched how to make corn husk dolls. Tim and I got hungry and grabbed a pork rib meal. We sat down and listened to some folk music. It was such a wonderful experience. After lunch, we toured the house, and then went to the corn field to pick some popcorn and Indian corn. We had such a great day. We all enjoyed ourselves and on the way home treated ourselves to some ice-cream.

Mushroom Child

This is the halloween costume that I'm thinking about making for Aoife. I have a pattern for the hat. I just need to find a long white gown and make a petal collar for it. It's so cute!

Aoife's favorite book

Aoife loves this book that Gramma Rachel gave her. She loves rhymes and songs. She can actually hum pretty well to the tune of some of these rhymes. Her favorites are: rain rain go away, it's raining it's pouring, baa baa black sheep, humpty dumpty, 1,2 buckle my shoe, ring-a-ring a roses, jack be nimble, mary, mary quite contrary, see-saw margery daw, hot cross buns, and hush a bye baby. She also loves twinkle twinkle little star, and elmo's world song

Fall is here!

Aoife is really starting to fill out. She's getting thick! Also, her hair is coming in. It's very curly at the back, and wavy on top. This week I bought a variety of mini pumpkins and some Indian corn for our fall table display. Aoife really likes the pumpkins. A few weeks ago we went to Green Gulch farm and the pumpkin patch really made an impression on her. I think the little orange balls must have looked pretty exciting sitting amongst all the green plants. Orange isn't a color she has seen much of naturally.

Typical day:
Wake up together
daddy makes breakfast (oatmeal with milk/yogurt/banana)
mom gets dressed
Light a candle (sometimes put on music)
sit as a family for a while while eating/drinking
dad clears table/ get's ready
mom cleans Aoife/ changes diaper/ get's her dressed
Aoife plays/ mom and dad chat for a while
Mom goes to work/ Aoife and dad go to daycare/ dad goes to work

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Mom picks up Aoife
Aoife and mom take a walk in the garden
Aoife waters moms container garden
mom gets Aoife a drink and makes her dinner
Aoife eats dinner (light a candle)
mom and Aoife have play time
mom gets things ready for dinner
dad comes home
dad plays with Aoife while mom cooks
mom and dad have dinner
Aoife joins or plays alone
family time
clean up time
Aoifes bed time
Dad cleans while mom puts Aoife to bed.

little artist Aoife

Aoife is really becoming interested in drawing lately. At first, she didn't like to draw and I was very worried, but now she really enjoys it. She has moved away from just marking the paper with scratch lines and is now doing circular motions. It very funny to watch her draw and suddenly she decides that she is done with a certain picture and gets out a new piece of paper to draw on. She prefers to work with marker, but will also work with fat crayons. She is also starting to paint, but she has only done this at daycare so I'm not sure if she likes it or not.

Here's Aoife playing with Jullian who is the only boy at the daycare. There is one other girl, Silvia, who is a little older than Aoife, and there is a baby whose name I cannot spell. Aoife is very protective over the baby and acts like an older sister to her. It's really sweet to see Aoife being so gentle with her. Aoife has really gotten into taking care of her baby doll which Gramma Rachel got for her. Aoife likes to feed it in the morning, change her diaper, and put her to sleep. She can carry her around for hours. She even sleeps with her baby at night. It's really nice to see her being so gentle to her baby...well, sometimes Aoife gets a little excited and bashes her head against the wall. I'm still not sure what to think of that, but Aoife kisses her babies head to make her feel better.