Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

We started the week off with a fat lip. Not me, not Wayne, and not Star cat. Poor Paela did something (we still aren't sure what, though we have theories) to her mouth within five seconds of us both turning the other way.  read more »

Rebecca was sent this website by a friend which documents some terrible tragedies of cake decoration, sadly most of it done professionally. While this example only grabs your attention -- did they just mis-hear "congratulations on your TWIN pregnancy" -- some of the other cake travesties are much worse. Hit the link to read more hilarity.

Read more here. My personal favorite? "We will Miss" you.

After last week, we decided to get together more for lunches this week. It was a nice treat and we have learned to enjoy how close Rebecca works to home [like that was hard to do...]. Including that we found a new park around the corner from both her work and our apartment, we can make a trip of visiting Rebecca and swinging on the swing.

Paela survived her first day of church without a nap. Lucky for us it was only 2 hours long and she crashed on the trip home, but she managed to be a playful little baby with no fussing -- naps at church are increasingly difficult to obtain.  read more »

Just some pictures of Paela at 9 months.

Open a door? Get a baby running to make her exit. Every time she hears the door open -- even from across the apartment -- she goes running for the chance to play outside. And as luck would have it, we have a nice set of stairs right next to our door. And up, up, up she goes!

Paela will get her pacifier "lost" under her blanket when she's trying to fall asleep. We decided we wanted to make a game out of teaching her to find things in her blanket. Here's a short clip of her looking for things hidden under the blankie.

Paela likes to ride on her car. So she goes zoom zoom zoom. Then, she shows how she likes to share things, as well.

It's been a busy week at work. We're coming out of beta use this week for our product, so there was lots of to-dos on my agenda every day. You would think we wouldn't be adding/changing functionality heavily right before going into general use...but we are. It has kept me busy in the evenings when Wayne would head off to campus to try and make a little progress on his projects.

We took a much needed break twice during the week. The first was for National Cheesecake day on Wednesday. We made a chocolate cheesecake and enticed Karl and Angela and Thomas to come over during the lunch hour. We decided we should have planned time for naps, and that we should play hookey like that in the middle of the day every day.  read more »

It was our anniversary on Saturday. Our fifth.

In the morning, we drove up to Berkeley so I coud talk strategy with a colleague for my thesis projects. Paela and Rebecca came along for moral support -- and to get out of the house, I suppose. On our way back, we stopped at the mall to look for a video game (which we didn't find) and get pedicures. Paela was well-natured throughout the pampering process and I was just scared, but for my first pedicure, it was fun.  read more »

Paela had her 9-month checkup today. Yay for a visit without shots! She enjoyed meeting the doctor and not having to sleep all day long to recover.

We're pretty sure they measured her height wrong -- we saw the measuring thing angled and her head not flush with the top of the table. But they marked her at whopping 29.75 inches (97th percentile) -- that would be a huge growth from her usual 75th percentile. The weight and head circumference are steadily growing: 19 pounds (50th percentile) and 45 cm circumference (75th percentile). Solid foods are doing her just as good as milk alone, I guess. She does love her avocado!