The Ides of March

Camping in Grand Marais

How befitting that such a historical figure as Julius Caesar died on the same day as our beloved and irreplaceable "first daughter", Sidney Poop. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of her passing, and she continues to be missed every single day of our lives. Alessandra has been an amazing diversion and we love her in that special way that you can only love the fruit of your loins, but, much the same as you love two of your children each equally but in different ways from each other, we now realize that we loved our dog in an equal, but different (reserved for pets) kind of a way. There is definitely a gaping hole in our lives where another puppy will eventually have to fill, but until we upgrade and get a nice big backyard for that future puppy, said hole will remain gaping.

Eating in Grand Marais

How lucky for us then, that Alessandra is SO our child. We just learned this past weekend that she adores dogs as much as we do! Grandma Jean was in town from DC and we thus attended the Crewson Saturday night dinner. Nowell brought Mia with him who happens to be a very "kissy" kind of a dog. For a very terrifying second as Ali sat on my lap, Mia approached more quickly than I could stop her and engulfed Ali's face with huge laps of love. From Ali's little mouth came the highest pitched squeal of glee and the hugest smile! Mia continued to ensure that Alessandra was still her best friend all night by repeatedly visiting to lick her little hands (we tried to be careful not to get so much direct face to face contact, but sometimes it was unavoidable). We have never heard such delighted giggles come from this child of ours before, so one thing we can say for sure is that she LOVES dogs!

Mia loving on Ali

Grandma Jean holding Ali and Keegan

Alessandra continues to shine as the pretty darn near perfect child. She is so much fun and the takeaway comment that we hear the most frequent from strangers and friends alike are that they just can't get over what a happy and smiley baby she is! Her six month appointment has her tapering off with her height and weight so she is currently right around the 50th percentile for both. However, she has a tiny head at just 21st percentile which is fine with us since little girls aren't supposed to have big heads anyway. :)

The latest developments are activity, activity, and MORE activity! We have now entered the stage of never taking our eyes off of her for even one minute. She has been rolling over from back to front and props up on all fours and prefers this position most of the time. (A huge change from a couple of months ago when her dislike for tummy time prompted her to roll over from front to back!) Now I find her on all fours in the middle of the night just rocking, rocking, rocking. I can't change her stinkin' diaper without her rolling around like a torpedo and we can forget about leaving her sit on the couch to run and grab a bottle or anything else of the sort for even a minute. Those days are OVER! We are days away from having to child proof the house since she is VERY CLOSE to getting her crawl on. She's got the motion and the mechanics down, she just has to figure out how to use it all together to locomote. Sitting up and continuing to babble are also some of her favorite things to do. She is one wild child!

Miss Sassy Pants in her swing

SO close to crawling

Toto saying his goodbyes before his month-long trip to Thailand

Rockin' out in Nowell's fedora

Always checking some things out

Eating some grub with daddy

Alessandra unfortunately didn't move on to Round 2 in the "Cutest Baby" contest, but thank you so much for all of your votes! Pshaw, now we know that the Star Tribune rigs THEIR contests! ;) No really, if you check out the results, she truly did have some stiff competition, but we know in our hearts who the cutest baby really is. :)

As usual, I upload new photos to Snapfish as often as I upload them onto this blog, so don't forget to check out that website for more pics!

Hugs to all,

Danielle, Ricardo, and Alessandra