Merry Christmas!

Things in the casa de Saunders have been in typical "holiday-whirlwind" mode :) Crossroads is running the AWAITED show this year, get there. it. is. awesome. And Mae has a cameo in it with a FAN-FREEKING-TASTIC song that she wrote. And there are holiday parties, baby's first christmas, decorating, baking, wrapping, shopping, and general merry-making a plenty. We got our family pictures taken a couple of weeks ago, at Jon Willis' as part of the simple portrait project. We were pretty jazzed about the results:

Hard to believe that in less than one week our Holiday travelling begins. We'll be with the Klinglers on Christmas Eve, and then at our house with Grace's family on Christmas day. We did this last year, and it was great, so we're looking forward to "hosting" again, with our big brunch in the morning, and plenty of time to play with baby on her first Christmas... how the heck is that here already?!?! Then the day after we head to Boston for a week to hang with Ben's family, which will be great too. We're planning on betting on races between Ruby, her cousin Sydney, and the Roomba :)

Hope you're having a great holiday season too!

Ruby the Houdini

Ruby had a little boo-boo on her toe last night, so we put a tiny band-aid on it, and then her Pajamas on, so that she couldn't get at it. When we woke her up this morning, somehow she had removed the band-aid from on her toe inside her pajamas and discarded it in the crib. houdini

This is late...

but, better late than never. A few weekends ago we had a blast celebrating fall, and i only NOW have time to share :)

we went to the pumpkin patch with friends, and saw some farm animals, picked our own pumpkin, and went on a hayride. The highlight was petting baby chicks though.

meet "Pork Chop"

I made an apple crisp, and this is what happens when i make apple crisp from a recipe on the internet: i end up with 3 LARGE pans of it. Apparently the recipe i stumbled upon must have been made for a family of giants.

We carved pumpkins at our annual carving party! SO much fun

Someone got her first pair of shoes. I think they've actually been on her feet for all of about 7 minutes since we got them :)

Ben was out of town last week for work so it was just "Aunt Mae" and i and Ruby. Us girls managed to keep ourselves out of trouble, for the most part... but we SURE DID have fun!! But, ofcourse we were glad when Ben finally got back home. The munchkin gifted him with a GIANT grin when he walked in.

the laughter button...

we finally found it! and boy have we been pressing it. we didn't each much halloween candy this weekend, because this was sweet enough!!! this was the total highlight of our weekend. enjoy!

the laughter button from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.

a collective work of art...

Mae's halloween costume!

why is the weekend always SO short?

we had a great weekend, and ended up getting to spend some time with Grams and Gramps, so Ruby had a great time (minus trying to remove her hat). It finally got chilly here, so we had fun digging out all the hats we got for Ruby. Since we discovered the swing it's been a weekend staple. This weekend we even tried out the slide, it was even better than i remembered ;) Here are some pictures from the weekend. Hope yours was great!

Sunday afternoon

at the park! enjoying the first of the fall weather, and the swings of course.





apparently we weren't the only ones who thought it was a good idea. We passed about 5 other couples/families with photographers on our way out. i guess it was pretty much a perfect day for it :)

crawling and pulling up. all for the remote

Ruby started to crawl! from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.

here she is crawling. like i said, hilarious!! and she's starting to want to pull up on things too. And, yes.. the reward? the remote control. she loves that thing :) we have no idea why.

live vicariously much?

Tonite we bought Ruby these pajamas that we found when we were out, that sport her name on them. Growing up i always wanted to find items that were pre-fabricated with MY NAME, but.. they didn't exist. And every time i'd see some cheesy display of name magnets, name t-shirts, name mugs.. you name it, i'd look for my name. But, nobody was selling pre-fab stuff with my name at that time. So, when i saw these pajamas, i immediately thought of that. And, we had to get them. Also, they're ridiculous-cute, and make her look even more like a kiddo, and less of a baby. Which, i can't decide if i'm alright with or not. ANyway, here they are.



this one is Ruby in the middle of an arm-flapping explosion of happiness:


Work has been a bit overwhelming since we got back into town, so i haven't made much time to update the blog. But, things are good. Ruby continues to grow like a weed. Her biggest recent milestone is that she's crawling now. It's hilarious, and makes me crack up almost every time she does it. It's like watching someone who has limbs with minds of their own attached to them, and they can't figure out really how they work, but they're SO glad that they DO work. We have some video that we'll get up here soon. So, she wants to crawl around and explore everything now, of course. Especially dog toys, and the actual dog. Those two are fast becoming best buddies. Here she's decided to crawl over my leg to get to.. SOMEthing.

it's unclear...

...whether Ben is trying to impart his fashion sense to Ruby here, or just to begin teaching her about which teams she ought to root for. either way it is stinking adorable :)

6 months ago today...

it seems impossible that we were less than 24 hours into our parenthood adventure :) and still getting used to the idea that our "peanut" was actually a baby girl. (not to mention marveling at how much hair the child was born with) Not to get too "gooshy" but, having Ruby and being parents really is the most amazing thing ever. Trying to fathom that we ARE her mom and dad.. and that one day she'll call us that, ... still difficult sometimes. I think we're learning that being parents is full of those "i can't believe (fill in the blank)" moments. Like, we still can't believe all the things Ruby can do now, as opposed to when she was 18 hours old (like she was exactly 6 months ago, this moment). She can smile, and has the most adorable sense of humor. She has all KINDS of different cries and other noises, all meaning very different things, from "i'm FREEKIN' HUNGRY, hurry up the mashing of my homemade baby food people!!!", to "I NEED my pink bunny to snuggle if i'm EVER going to fall asleep", to the sweet, sweet coos she makes to say good morning when we walk in to get her after she wakes up, like "i am SO happy to see you! I missed you while i was asleep!". She KNOWS what she wants, that's for sure :) it's awesome. that's pretty much it. and we're amazed by her every. single. day.
(and by her hair)

...Cause a Ruby Saunders Party Don't Stop.

This is a picture of Ruby from our most recent trip to Babies 'R Us. Aside from the fact that she is riding in a shopping cart, please note that she has both hands on toys despite being asleep.

all sorts of adventures

So, first, our culinary adventures. this weekend we decided to take the plunge with Ruby, and become her personal chefs. Since she's ready for the new adventures of veggies and fruit, we decided to make her baby food ourselves. It should be a fun adventure. I spent most of the afternoon making Ruby sweet potatoes for the first half of the week, and apples for the second half. We tried out the sweet potatoes for dinner tonite. She gobbled them up :)


We also had aquatic adventures this weekend. We tried out the pool with Ruby for the first time, and we invited some friends along to play with us. the Armstrongs came over and really livened up the pool party. We were thrilled that Ruby loved the water so much, since we'll have lots of access to water next month at the beach with Ben's family :) we took some video we'll post soon.

and, ofcourse, it wouldn't be the weekend around here without a little photo shoot action!
hope you had a great weekend too!

our growing gal

Here are some new photos of our growing little gal. She is changing SO much! She actually scooted herself backwards on the changing table today. Pretty soon she'll be moon-walking. (ben demonstrated how it works for her today).

What happens when Auntie Mae babysits...

Aunt Mae babysat for Ruby last night, so that we could go on a legitimate date. Out to an awesome dinner, and some fireworks by the river, and a walk. The weather was GREAT, and it was beautiful outside.
We returned home to a little surprise Mae had cooked up for us. You can see for yourself here. Though, it wasn't that surprising, considering what happened before we left for the evening...




she was posing for an impromptu photo shoot with a belt she found in my room.

Ruby loves her cereal!

Ruby loves her cereal! from Grace Saunders on Vimeo.

our little cereal eater!

Dinner time just got interesting

In the last week or so Ruby has started not just eating rice cereal for dinner, but demanding it. Here's the proof:







Video forthcoming...

a guest blog. By Mae Klingler. Photography by Grace E. Saunders

The four of us (Ben, Grace, Ruby and Mae) went to Pergola, the new place on the square in Fort Thomas. We wanted to like it. We really did. That's why we gave it a second chance after the Father's Day debacle (when we went and waited to be seated only to be told they were closed. At 1:30. And they were supposed to be until 2:00. It's cool. Panera always satisfies. Especially Ben.)

We felt pretty forgiving and optimistic when we decided to try it again after the screening of our entry for the 48 Hour Film Festival. We sat down and, strike one, the waiter didn't laugh when Mae tried to tell a joke. Dude. Lesson one in servery: laugh at the blond chick...even when the joke isn't funny.

Then...flat Coke. No biggie. But the best part of the evening (at least my favorite part) was when they brought the dinners. Personal size pizzas were on the menu so Grace and I split one and Ben got one for his dinner. When the waiter brought them out, some of the toppings were mixed up. No problem. We're pretty forgiving people. But when he came back and told us that The Kitchen said there was no mix-up: "They said the roasted garlic is underneath the cheese. And they've chopped it up REALLY small."

Okay.

Sure.

So small we can't see it.

Or taste it.

Right.

All of this can be overlooked. But when we got the bill and were charged for the flat Cokes that were returned after one sip AND the invisible toppings, Pergola was dead to us.

So our diagnosis: Sure, try it. We dare you. But only for the pizza (carry-out, for your sake). And make sure they don't use any of those "invisible" toppings.


comments: (1)

-Yeah, Tell 'em you're only paying for the toppings you can SEE.