Upon my return, it was a flurry of birthday month activity. Holden turned the big 0-4 and there were also many adult birthday parties to keep us busy and social. We also had time to nerd out at the Maker Faire (you know, drive around cupcakes, see a functioning lego village, and watch a life-size mouse trap game).

Milo, Holden, Scarlett, Julian

This great June picture captures a moment in time. We all met up for dinner at Ryan and Whitney’s to celebrate some random Friday when none of us had a babysitter. You can see Milo with finger paint smeared all over his forehead; sometimes he comes home like that. Holden is happy. Scarlett is happy. Julian has a bandaid over his eyebrow from a self-inflicted incident. Getting them to turn around at the same time was quite a feat.

Other highlights in June:
My niece, baby Kate, was borne to Kristyn and Paul in faraway Leeds. We hope to meet them soon (and to get permission to share a baby pic). Holden and Milo now have a third girl cousin.

Whitney and I traveled to NYC to be part of a satellite media tour promoting The Rookie Mom’s Handbook. Makes a great gift… keep some on hand.

Alec had a birthday and Father’s Day and is/was certainly gearing up for our five year wedding anniversary!

Enjoy the pictures from May and June.

Ok so for anyone keeping score, I will pat myself on the back and agree (with myself) that I’ve done an amazing job playing catch-up with these pictures.

We’re almost current here! In the past two weeks, I’ve uploaded photos for August ‘08 through June ‘09 and redesigned the site.

Funny thing is that he just had his own little baby yesterday, so I don’t know when he’ll find the time to check in on us. But I’m committed to catching up and I’ve made another good run at it.

Here are some highlights:

1. Current header picture. As of Father’s Day 2009, that’s what the boys look like!
2. No more top navigation. Looking for the gallery? Check in the right hand side bar at the top. It’s still there. For now.
3. More pictures! Yep, I’ve now posted photos from August, September, October, November, December, February, March, April, and our recent remodel. Giddyup. What happened to January? We’re still looking for it.
4. More stories!

More of that bloggy goodness of hearing stories from our lives. Along with the October pictures, I shared a mini-documentary of Holden with his candy. Earlier this week, I shared a modern-day story from preschool: robot skeletons. Also if you only come here when there’s an email blast, you might have missed our very Berkeley Christmas. It’s not your fault. We realize this site has been dormant for a while.

5. Snazzy side bar. As an experiment we added the facebook fan page feed for Rookie Moms in the side bar. Cool, yes?

Did we accidentally remove anything that you loved? Let us know and we’ll try to fix it.

Milo feeds celery to the chicken. Or tries to.

Three of us on a holiday carousel; I'm a little bit frazzled in this pic

Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas. Santa brought our family Rock Band.
Happy Hannukah! We held our annual Pot Latke celebration — I think its the Sixth Annual but don’t quote me on it.

Enjoy the photos >

Speaking of blogging, I am doing this crazy random project, NaBloPoMo to blog every day for this month of August in the hopes that I will improve my skills and have some fun. Perhaps as part of that challenge, I will update the pathetic flibbs photo archive, which is now one year outdated. Rest assured the kids are still cute and still aging.

Speaking of work, I’m back to looking for some. Let me know if you need anyone who is one part project manager, one part marketing diva, one part user experience advocate, and all parts awesome! Talk to you soon… and next time with pictures of the children.

I figured that I should probably start with pictures… but I think I have at least six months to catch up on so, that’s unlikely.

So, I’m just dabbling. Putting one single toe in the water.

What are we all up to?
I’m home from work right now while Holden naps. He has a fever (about 100 to 102 depending on when we check) and its been this way for a few days. Milo is no doubt being a charmer at his preschool/daycare and Alec is at work.

More specifically, I’ve been working for a small consulting company since about October on a freelance, parttime-that-feels-like-fulltime basis. The people are great, the work can be pretty fun, and sitting in traffic drives me bonkers. Except for all the NPR I’ve been listening to… that is actually making me quite smart!

The Rookie Mom’s Handbook came out about a year ago. If you know anyone at all who is pregnant or in their first year of parenthood, do everyone a favor and buy it. Buy it now. To round out other rookie moms business, the site is still going strong. And Whitney and I are both writing for a different blog too: SafetyAtHome.

Holden is FOUR now. He’s brilliant and handsome. He’s social and articulate. His favorite birthday gift was a garbage truck (that he’s been asking for since he was two). More about Holden here in this little love letter to him.

Milo is TWO now. He’s sensitive and funny. He’s silly and red-headed. He’s also brilliant. He likes to play with puzzles and animals. The boys get along pretty well, for now, and I think its because they’re so different. Here’s a little love letter to Milo for his birthday.

Alec is pushing 35 but you wouldn’t know it to see him. He cycles 2-3 mornings a week in the Berkeley Hills with some guys he met through my last job. He runs most of the other mornings. He’s still working in the city for a mid-size startup. I’ll let him tell you more if I can remind him how to use this thing.

And more pictures to follow. And I’ll get better about posting them. Is it too late for a New Year’s Resolution?

What have I been up to? Here are a few things:

• Transitioning two little guys into daycare and preschool. Associated hanging out at school, leaving and returning quickly, pumping, and dealing with two little guys who didn’t nap nearly enough.
• Reading the latest Harry Potter. With all the waiting in the cafe across from the preschool and nervously sitting by the phone at home, I busted out a 700+ page book in one week.
• Editing the Rookie Moms Handbook with Whitney. Yep, it just happened to be all in this same couple weeks that we got a hard copy proof to review with lots of major and minor tweaks waiting to be discovered. I think it’s coming along nicely and we can hardly wait to see it for reals.
• Biking hard with Olivia. Yesterday, we did 35-mile Tour d’Organics while Alec drove Holden and Milo from organic farm to organic farm to play and wait for us to pedal our sorry butts up and down the rolling hills. It was his first time taking them both on an outing and it was a biggie.
• Starting a new job. Today was my first day at a Berkeley Internet start-up. I’d like to say more but I’m so darn superstitious after my last couple forays into working that I’d like to see how this plays out a little before sharing more. Suffice it to say that I’m trying to be professional during the hours between screaming tearful drop-offs.

During — This is what we came home to after Thanksgiving in NYC (from the same corner):

The construction guys have made really good progress so far, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for “After” pictures. Everything is down and out, plumbing and electrical are in (inspections passed), walls up, mud/stucco is up, Alec primed the walls and ceiling, Alec started painting the ceiling, the dude is patching our wood floor as I type, and the cabinets should arrive today. Wheee.

In the meantime, we’re all scrunched up in the back of the house, enduring the official beginning of both the Terrible Twos and the Icky Third Trimester. Enjoy our photos of November fun.

When we looked for houses in Berkeley, again we added “dishwasher” to the must-list — it’s such a great appliance and can prevent so many messes and subsequent squabbles. When shopping for houses, most had dishwashers or at least hook-ups; we didn’t think we’d have to compromise again. Ahh, but again, we found a cute little bungalow in the more affordable part of town that didn’t have a dishwasher. Instead of cheerfully doing dishes together, we had a baby and made up a schedule. Alec does the odd days and I do the even days. That also means that about 5 times a year, Alec does dishes two nights in a row.

But yippeeeeeeee, it’s coming this afternoon!

At 5:00, our family hit the Home Depot Expo as a big outing in order to find out if we had strong feelings about sinks or dishwashers. It turns out that we do. At 11:00pm, we had ordered a dishwasher. This morning, Alec started bidding on ebay sinks… and we’re off!

We’re just going to have to see how it goes, but I’ll tell you this: I am obsessed with having a dishwasher in our kitchen before the new baby comes in February. So, that’s that!

At least we’ll have something besides babies to talk about… ha ha ha!