And I’m nerdily testing blog software on the iPhone while Alec clicks away on his laptop. (whoa, that was a lot of thumbing)

Anyway, I’m thrilled to report meeting and holding all of my nieces and nephew since my last post.

Dalia is the eldest and a pixie. Next is Maya, delightfully opinionated. Katie is a brilliant 5.5 months and makes terrific monkey sounds (despite British accent). Casey is a flirty one with mad skills for bird calls. And the youngest one, Shai, is the biggest of all the babies with cheeks just made for smooching.

I do wish we all lived close enough for more regular visits.

I start a new job next week so maybe, just maybe, that will force me to catch up with my photo sharing.

In the meantime, here are H&M at the zoo today.

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.

Some days, I swear it feels like all we do is sit on the couch exhausted after a day of working and parenting. Lame, right?

But when I look back at a year’s worth of pictures, I can see we’ve gone places (Hawaii, DC, parties) and done some things (trapeze, triathlon, remodel). Is that a good excuse for getting a year behind in my picture-posting: so I could appreciate my life more from a 30,000 foot view?

I would love it if Alec can find the time (but I don’t know where he would) to edit the great documentary of Holden’s first foray into Halloween candy.

You see, we live in Berkeley… so candy of any kind is not a given. And we’re kinda mean… so we eat all the candy after the boys go to bed. And furthermore, despite the fact that we’ve obtained one or more cute Halloween costumes each year, 2008 marked the very first time that Holden (and his lucky kid brother Milo) has ever been trick-or-treating.

Since he was pushing four and already pretty brilliant, we let him keep a fair amount of candy before we snuck it away for our own enjoyment. Here’s some preview footage of him indulging in a sloppy Snickers bar:

I just posted some pictures from August and September 2008 so I offer a brief reflection.

We enjoyed a family adventure vacation out to the Adirondacks and Cleveland for Monica’s wedding(s) and the boys started up their second year at APS/preschool. Milo moved to the Toddler program and Holden moved on to becoming a Giraffe.

I changed jobs from working at TasteBook to working at a small design studio in SF called Sequence. Hazing at my new job included participating in the dodgeball tournament.

Next up… fabulous vacation to Hawaii in October and awesome trip to DC in November. Stay tuned for another few blasts from the past.

In the past week, Holden has improved his small toy grabbing; started lifting his head up while laying on his stomach; and started testing his vocal cords with “oooooooooooh” and “ahhhhhh” and “hoooooo” (etc.) in addition to some decent screams. He’s also slept some pretty good stretches.

As for me, I’m learning to think of myself as a mom and readjusting my expectations about everything. This time last year, we were island hopping in Croatia on our way to Africa and Asia. Tonight, I picked up an Asian salad in Oakland because making dinner is still a challenge. We’re still hiking and swimming and laughing though…

Even though we’re off on another adventure, updates are fairly unlikely given that we’ll be staying in shady motels and trying to cover about 500 miles a day!

• Johannesburg to Lesotho
• Coffee Bay to Cape Town

And in Asia, we posted pictures from our 4 days in Singapore.