The secret to getting Ada to open up is to turn the phone’s camera forward-facing and let her see and talk to herself. Also notice (1) her rad Syracuse merchandise courtesy of Uncle Alberto on our recent visit and (2) Elmo’s short photo bomb at the beginning. Ha!

Well, we don’t know what to call this, but we think it’s the result of our attempting to teach Ada how to sniff flowers. Enjoy!

If there’s anything more fun than having a one-year-old, I don’t know what it is.

We’ve mostly been admiring the blizzard from the cozy perch of home, but we took an afternoon stroll to see the foot of snow. Ada slept most of the time cocooned in her snow suit, pumpkin patch hat and grandma Nikki scarf. By the time we got to the park in the afternoon, there were snow people everywhere and the stretches of flat ground looked like a choppy snow ocean. So pretty!

We were so thrilled to get footage of Ada taking a handful of steps last week. So much progress! we thought. Not to be outdone, Ada just kept on going. And going. And going.

This video was taken on Wednesday, a scant 6 days after taking a few tentative steps. Eric kept on filming until she stopped walking.

And today? Good heavens. She was doing laps between the living room and the master bathroom.

Seeing her pop up to her feet and run off (yes, run) still makes us do a double-take. Who thinks we are in T-R-O-U-B-L-E?

We do.

We’re a few days late in writing about it, but this weekend we celebrated Ada’s first birthday. She was born on February 2nd (Groundhog’s Day!) at 12:31am after a perfectly normal, 24-hour, wonderful and hard labor.

On her birth day. You know, the real one.

In celebration of her first year, we decided to throw a tea party. We initially imagined something casual, easy to pull off, unassuming. We were guessing, of course, that we’d have to be the only ones making it happen, and at the moment we don’t have the bandwidth or time to throw big shindigs. What actually happened, though, was something much lovelier than we expected. With the help of The Grandmas, we had more of an afternoon High Tea – complete with more food than anyone could eat, a spread of desserts and a melee of wonderful friends.

Ada with our friends Margot and Griffin, who is almost 2. (His was Ada’s first-attended birthday party when she was just 8 weeks old.)

Our friends Sam (17 months) and Miller (14 months)

Adults plus one baby on the way having lunch together under the watchful gaze of Elmo the Overseer. Only a little bit creepy.

It turns out that what you need is a highly-experienced and highly-motivated party planner to pull it off. Grandma Nikki flew in for the week and helped with all of the preparations. She spent days shopping, planning, and preparing for a feast. Finger foods?, she said. We can do that!  Grandma Barb was the dessert procurement specialist, bringing in sweets, treats, and breakfast burritos all the way from our beloved Virginia Wegmans. (Mmm, Wegmans.)

The lovely setup, before even more food came out of the kitchen. “No more food!” Eric hollered.

Adorable cupcakes! Thanks to Uncle Alberto for being our cupcake color consultant.

In the end, we had a party fit for a princess. Decorations, balloons, white and pink roses throughout the house, toys everywhere for Ada and her friends, and of course a hot tea bar. (What kind of a tea party would it be without tea?) The menu included mini quiches, curried meatballs with hummus, chicken salad, brie on crackers, fruit, vegetables, lox and cream cheese, cucumber sandwiches, caprese bites, petit fours, butter cookies, mini cupcakes, and a red velvet/cream cheese cake that was made by the bakery that made our wedding cake. No one went hungry. We also had mimosas for the adults and food pouches and snacks for the babies.

Sam’s daddy Geb blows bubbles for everyone.

At one point we had 13 adults in our space and 4 kids under 2. If you’ve been in our space, you’ll know that that’s no mean feat. We had so much fun with everyone – playing, blowing bubbles, banging on toys, sharing (and not sharing) cars and push-toy walkers. By the end Ada was so excited/overstimulated that she had to retire to the office for a bit to rest. I peeked in to check on her, and found this: Ada sitting on the futon, the laptop with Pocoyo playing in front of her, and a Grandma on either side doting on her and making sure she was happy and had everything she could want. That’s rough.

Living the L-I-F-E with The Grandmas at the Baby Spa.

We all made it through the first year, surviving and thriving!

What not to do? Allow your one-year-old to grab a lit candle. Awesome.

Someone likes cake. No surprises here.

The best thing in the world is grandparents. The second best thing? Noses!

Ada also was the lucky recipient of a number of really cool and generous gifts from near and far. Here are just a few…

Opening her presents and reading her cards later that evening.

Jaymie & the Zurburgs painted a beautiful step-stool for Ada!

Aunt Jess & Uncle Will sent some sweet duds for the springtime.

Great-Grammy and Grampa sent a baby doll that she loves to kiss and cuddle.

Erin, Josh and Nora Barkan sent a cool ball and xylophone set! She’s discovered a newfound love of hammering… everything.

Mama received this baby rocker from her grandparents on her first birthday. To continue the tradition, Grandma Barb got it refinished and refurbished just for Ada.

It’s been an incredible year for all three of us, and we’re often reminded how lucky we are to be surrounded by friends and family who love us and Ada. We’re also really proud of our Ada, who at every turn keeps growing smarter, funnier, more curious and more loving.

Who wouldn’t want to kiss this face?

A few weeks ago, Eric looked at Ada happily playing and laughing in the living room and said, “It’s times like this that I know we’ve done everything right.” Admittedly we still have a lot of time to make mistakes and learn from them, but for now we’re just grateful and happy. That’s more than enough.

Last weekend we had another family travel adventure. This time we went back to our old college stomping grounds: Syracuse! It had been at least 5 or 6 years since either of us had been back there and suffice it to say that neither of us imagined that this next trip would see us return with a baby in arms.

It was a long-anticipated return for the purpose of Daddy defending his masters project, the Illuminated Ink tattoo book. We were all so thrilled for him and hoped that it would be an easy defense with a quick “you passed!” result.

Are we there yet?

Uncle Alberto has been instrumental in getting the book designed, laid out, and printed. He’s also one of Daddy’s closest and most trusted professional confidantes, so we couldn’t imagine being there without him.  True to his reputation as a true friend, Alberto dropped everything to fly from Puerto Rico and make the 5 hour road trip with a baby in the car to Syracuse, only then to turn around and make the 5+ hour drive back again. (I’m getting ahead of ourselves. The long and short of it: Alberto rules.)

We’ve arrived and Syracuse is… cold. No surprises here.

Daddy getting the presentation ready to go for the morning. Are the blacks black enough?

Ada helped by making sure that the screen was good enough for her Daddy’s work. Yum.

That’s a wrap! You’ll be great tomorrow, Daddy! Now is it time for Dino BBQ?

Once Team Support-Eric-Getting-His-Masters had worked out all the technical kinks, paid a visit to the bookstore for a missing cable, tweaked and finessed the language on his slides, and taste-tested all the moving parts of Daddy’s equipment, it was time to call it a night. We had a delightful dinner at Dino BBQ and retired to our hotel to catch some sleep before a very early morning.

On Monday we rolled into Newhouse armed with coffee and doughnuts (a la make the judging panel as happy and comfortable as possible), and Daddy got to work! In the end he had an audience eager to hear about his professional work in Manhattan and very appreciative of all the time he puts into retouching his images. (Up to 40 hours of Photoshop for a single image!) It was a quick verdict…

HE PASSED! We didn’t ask any questions; we said thank you so much, can we please get all the paperwork squared away. There was time for a brief celebration and then a long trip back. (We did have a wonderful celebratory dinner with Seth and Carly when we returned, complete with champagne. But alas, no photos.)

CONGRATS, DADDY! We love you and are so proud.

Daddy & Ada look on as Tony fills out the paperwork to make it all official: Daddy is a master of communications photography!

So proud!

For the last week or so, Ada has been doing a little two-step shuffle for one or two paces and then plopping down on her bum. Today, though…

Shortly thereafter, Mama cried like a baby. We’re so proud.

PS: A year ago today, Mama went into labor for Ada’s birth. We couldn’t imagine that a year later we’d be watching our baby start to walk for the first time! Sniff, sniff.

In just the last few weeks since we returned from Virginia, we’ve been amazed to see Ada go through a developmental growth spurt. Yes, she’s had the corresponding sleep disruptions that go along with growth spurts (sleepy groan, grumble grumble) but watching her sprout new ideas and skills and talents has been worth every sleepless moment. I haven’t been able to capture them all on video, but here’s just a few.

Baby sign language :: We are getting ready to start her second semester of this class, and she’s hit a signing stride just in time. The first sign that she regularly and intentionally used? Fan. Yep, the ceiling fan. The teacher told us a long time ago that the signs kids pick up first are words that they have no other way to communicate. We suppose that fits the bill. Like every other baby on the planet, Ada enjoys watching the ceiling fan, and now loves to point it out to us and ask us to turn it on for her. Second in line was the sign for lights; lights off, lights on. She moved from there to the signs for all done, for milk, for book. Now we’re working on duck, help please, and thank you.

Identifying things :: It seems that each day I’ll ask Ada, “where is your [insert thing here]?,” and she’ll look around, find the new thing I’ve named, and bring it over to me. It started with food, then toys and stuffed animals. I knew we’d hit a milestone when we were in the kitchen, I said “where is mommy’s phone?” and she proceeded to crawl into the living room, find my phone, crawl back into the kitchen and hand it to me.

She’s also become adept at identifying her nose, head, ears, eyes, toes, and belly button. Sometimes she’ll mistake her nose for mommy or daddy’s nose, but these things all come in time. (Note: if you watch the video, you’ll never believe that nose is her favorite. But it is. Pointing to her nose, pointing to our noses, picking her nose… it’s all gravy, baby.)

Moreover, the realization that she understands much of what we’re talking about landed with a thud. What else is she understanding? Time to check our colorful language, perhaps.

Moving and grooving :: Ada surprised us all by pulling up to cruise at 7 months. We figured that by 9 or 10 months she’d be walking, if she followed a standard development curve. However, this kid was born to defy growth charts and development curves and she’s still taking her careful time to make the step to independent walking. Give her those walking toys though, and she’s a mad little baby. She races up and down our hallways and has also mastered turning herself around with the cars, which helps Mama and Daddy quite a bit!

Oh – and she also likes to put herself into a baby headstand (seriously, we’ll get a photo) and she’s starting to BLOW KISSES. Yep, it’s adorable.

Lastly, this isn’t related to her growth spurt, but we are celebrating all of our friends’ first birthdays. Today we went to Benito’s party and Ada looked just too cute not to share.