cape wedding

on saturday, we went to the wedding of some dear friends. bebe put on her party dress and was ready to celebrate!

the ceremony took place right on the beach in wellfleet. bebe and daddy went for a walk -- no way was our busy toddler going to stand still just to watch her aunties get hitched!

it was lovely.

after the wedding, we went to stay with some family. on sunday morning bebe got to play with her cousin sara.

then we all went to the beach.

the water was much warmer than at the beach we usually go to, so bebe spent lots of time playing with daddy.

a great time was had by all!

_

smoothies: tasty, and very cold

this afternoon, bebe and i shared a pineapple-banana-mango smoothie from fresh city. she loved it, though at times she was a bit overwhelmed by how cold it was. luckily she avoided a brain freeze.

{edited to add: immediately after posting this, i realized that today bebe is 13 months old. though the counting of the months seems slightly less momentous now that she's one, i couldn't let the 14th slip by without mentioning it at all!}

_

where's bebe?

peekaboo!

_

sleeping bee

bebe "counts"

we have this book called "baby 1 2 3". it has photographs of babies doing simple activities on each page. one baby clapping, two babies reading, three babies wearing hats, all the way to ten babies playing with toys. (as my friend jessie -- morrie's mom -- said the other day, "where's the plot???") it's bebe's current favorite book and she requests that i read it to her many times a day. sometimes she'll pick it up and read it to herself -- she points at the page over and over, going "hm, hm, hm, hm, hm." she hasn't quite figured out the numbers part yet.

this kid loves to swing!

moving toward toddlerhood

bebe has recently dropped her morning nap. this two-naps-to-one transition is a big one in the life of a little person, playing a major part in marking the change from baby to toddler, and i can't say it's gone entirely smoothly. while she is apparently no longer capable of taking two naps, she's also not quite ready to get by on less sleep. so, she's had more cranky moments over the past week or so while we try to figure out the best way to meet her needs. one benefit of dropping the first nap, though, has been that we have so much more time to do stuff! our days have just been packed with fun. part of this is because if i don't keep bebe busy and distracted all morning, she has a total meltdown -- but whatever the reason, it's been really fun getting to spend more time together.

on friday, she started off the day playing with one of her favorite birthday gifts.

to go with these, we need a picture of her playing with my wallet and credit cards -- her current obsession.

bebe, you know that whole "girls love to shop" thing is a gendered stereotype, right? not to mention that the history of the relationship between women and consumption is a long and twisted one... when you're a little bit older, i'll tell it to you for a bedtime story.

don't look so excited. jeez.

then we headed downtown to meet some family visiting from out of town. first we stopped at the library so i could pick up some parenting books (now that bebe is a toddler, i feel like i need to be more conscious about my parenting decisions).

she didn't seem that impressed with playful parenting.

unfortunately, i completely forgot to take my camera out while we were having bagels and coffee with my cousin chris and his wife laura, who we see all too infrequently on account of how they live in texas. we had a great time visiting with them.

then, in the evening, we met up with an old friend of mine and his wife and three-year-old daughter. we tried to take some pictures of bebe and ella together and, well... see for yourself. it's not easy to take any posed pictures of little miss neverstopsmoving anymore!

hot time, summer in the city

it has been hot here recently. bebe has been spending most of her time in nothing but a diaper, and when we're not escaping to the beach we can usually be found in one of two places:

out on our back porch, hoping to catch a faint breeze while we watch for dogs and trucks, play with clothespins, and practice climbing up and down the stair between the porch and back hall

or in the kiddie pool in our backyard, with bebe's buddy euan and his pregnant mama.

saturday beach day: mama's take

hey bebe, did you remember the chompers?

oh, good.

daddy and bebe.

he cracks her up.

"i love this guy!"

"now lemme give you a huggle."


hard at work.

after a while, daddy joined in.

a nice sand castle city...

quickly destroyed by beebzilla!

josh and i were talking the other day about how whenever we look back on this summer, it will be "the summer of the orange hat."

bebe's newest word

as we were leaving bebe's doctor's appointment the other day, literally as we were all walking out of the exam room, dr. bastian said over his shoulder as he disappeared down the hall, "i'm glad about her language. it makes me really happy."

first of all, isn't it cute that he cares that much? secondly, and more important, it makes me really happy too. her little voice is so cute and it seems like almost every day now she says something she hasn't said before. one of the newest, and my current favorite, is "mermaid" (muhr-MAY). which, you know, is a really useful word when you're one! she has learned it because before nap or bed, we say goodnight to all sorts of different things in her room, and there are mermaids on her clock and one of her quilts.

recently we visited a high school friend of mine, who has two daughters, both older than bebe, and they gave us (among tons of other awesome hand-me-downs), a perfectly bebe-sized costume. a mermaid costume. bebe loves wearing it -- she points at her sparkly belly and walks around our apartment with a big smile on her face.

just for the record, here's a list of bebe's vocabulary at 12.5 months:
mama
daddy
dog
cat
truck
banana (nana)
eye
hi
mermaid
more
nurse
euan (well, she says nnnnnn!)
no
that
lambie
blueberry (boo-bree)

she makes animal sounds for:
cat
horse
cow
bee
fish
pig
bunny
sheep

and she signs for:
eat
more
nurse
music

there might be more, but that's all i can remember right now. she gets so happy when she can make us understand her, and i love to watch her take pride in herself!

_

excuses, excuses

my computer has been in the shop, i've been trying to actually get some writing done, and i can no longer use my computer at all when bebe is awake because she wants to play with it. which i used to let her do, until she drooled on the trackpad, rendering it nonfunctioning and necessitating the aforementioned trip to the apple store. where, by the way, the dude bringing my repaired laptop out to me said "oh, no, i don't need to see your ID. i recognize you" and another employee looked at me, looked at bebe, and said "wow, she's getting big!"

yeah, we spend TOO MUCH TIME at the apple store.

i have a bunch of photos to post, hopefully later today. sorry to leave you in the lurch for so long... it's probably been hard getting through your days without images of bebe marie to brighten them. luckily, josh has been posting over at a little wave -- check out our most recent beach adventure.