Video update: Party tricks with the Keddie kiddies!

Just a few snippets of the fun and funny things Joshua and Sophia are doing these days!

Some video footage of the hide and seek game they were playing during Sophia's 12-month photos:


Sophia demonstrating her ability to say "yes" in response to her very favorite question:


Sophia just chilling, standing like a boss:


Cascading giggles in the car.  I just wish I could have reached around to get a glimpse of Sophia's face!


A longer video, of Joshua "reading" one of his favorite books, "Flap Your Wings":


Reading together.  Or at least, next to each other.


Joshua, my assistant videographer, narrating a video of his baby sister:


And a short one, showing off Sophia's latest trick -- "how big is Sophia?"

A golden evening

Friday was an absolutely beautiful day out here in central Jersey -- 75 degrees, perfectly sunny, balmy breezes, just gorgeous.  This being New Jersey, we knew that there was a non-trivial chance that we would get snow and ice the next day... So we went out for a pre-dinner family excursion to bask in the beautiful golden evening!


We decided to head down to the battlefield to go for a walk, and to re-introduce Joshua to the great outdoors.  The last time he played outside, he wasn't really crawling yet... How quickly they change and grow!  So this was Joshua's first experience walking outside!


It's really fascinating viewing the world through his inexperienced eyes.  We set him down on the little paved path that runs along Mercer Road, expecting him to take off running as he always does indoors.  Instead, he stared at us quizzically, peered at the ground, and took very, very halting steps forward.  Every single little variation in the ground posed a puzzle -- is it low enough to step over?  Does it require getting down on hands and knees to crawl over it?  Is that a hole?  Is it shallow enough to walk over it?  Is it small enough to walk around it?  HOLD ON, is that a strip of GRASS running through the asphalt?


It took him a little while to warm up to the idea of walking along the sidewalk.  But our little guy was so brave -- helped in part, I think, by the blocks he clutched in each hand the entire time.  I like to think they provided a degree of normalcy and comfort to him, being talismans of the comfortable world of indoor play...  :)  But after a few minutes, he was running ahead of us gleefully.  And by the time we reached the end of the sidewalk, he did NOT want to turn around to walk back!


What a gloriously beautiful evening!  And what a perfect way to spend time together as a family!

Photo session with Deborah Cull Photography!!

And a brief break from the Christmas blogging...

We had a wonderful professional photo session with our dear friends Deb and Matt Cull -- Deb was Princeton '03, and is an absolutely amazing photographer.  They live in Florida, but were up here to photograph Andrew and Miriam's wedding back in October, so we jumped on the opportunity to get some family photos while they were in town!

And oh my goodness, did we get some absolutely breathtaking photos...

I'm only posting about them now because we just got our prints from that session hung up on our walls.  It was SO hard picking just a few to print -- if only we had unlimited funds and wall space and could get ginormous canvas prints of all of them!  :)

So here's our new photo wall display!





The first side (going along the wall towards our kitchen) has my canvas of Joshua (still one of my favorite photos I've taken of Joshua to date).  But the rest are all the work of Deb and Matt.

David had the idea of doing a "faces" and "places" theme for our display, as a hat tip to iPhoto.   :)  So side one is our "faces" wall -- the Joshua canvas, a photo each of one of us with Joshua, and a sweet family photo to tie it all together.  And side two is our "places" wall -- the large canvas was taken on the bench in the garden where David proposed, the vertical photo with that beautiful stand of trees is on the Princeton Battlefield, where we used to go on long rambles back when we were dating, and then a photo of us in a little library at the Grad College (where we spent some of our first dates) and one on the little bridge on the golf course that we crossed right after David proposed.

We love, love, love our photo display.   :)  And because my photos of the prints don't even begin to do them justice, here are the images we chose!









Deb and Matt, thank you once again for such a fun session and such amazingly beautiful images!  We treasure each one of these prints!

Baby BOOM! (video)

Just some baby laughter video fun to brighten up your Friday afternoon!

Joshie-Wan Kenobi

We interrupt this run of "catch-up" posts for an incredible dose of cuteness: our little J-man right after a bath, in his wee hooded towel!  He's totally rocking the Obi-Wan look -- the cutest little Jedi we've ever seen!


Snuggling up to both Daddy and Mommy

'Sup, yo?

So cute so cute so cute!!

Back to your regularly-scheduled blog reading.  :)  Coming soon: our visit with Iain and Erin, Joshua's first bottles from Daddy, the next installment of Joshua Watch, and Princeton Reunions!!

Catch-up post: What Joshua has been up to

Since I restrained myself from posting too many Joshua photos in my other catch-up posts today, I figure I can reward myself by giving him a post all to himself.  :)

So what has our little guy been up to this last month?  We'll have a developmental rundown in the Joshua Watch post to come sometime later this week (can you believe he's almost four months old already??), but here are some photos of the fun we've been having with our J-man!

A playdate with Lucy and Nora D!  We finally got to meet the twin daughters of our friends Harmony and David -- they were born just a couple weeks after Joshua was, and the D family lives just a couple sections over in our development, but what with the craziness of caring for newborns (plus, Lucy and Nora have an almost-two-year-old older brother!), we weren't able to get together until just a few weeks ago.  These little girls are so sweet -- I'd like to think our three kiddos had fun playing together.  :)  And it was certainly good to see Harmony again!  We definitely need to put together another playdate sometime soon!



Making friends at small group!  We've been taking Joshua to our small group Bible studies since he was about two weeks old, but it's only recently that he's been okay with being held by others.  Rest assured, I've busted out the camera pretty much every time he's played well with someone else.  :)



Smiling -- and laughing!  Joshua is smiling more regularly now, and in response to specific things that we do.  He loves it when we rub his belly, or when we make fools of ourselves saying things like "Yaaaaaay!" to him in high-pitched voices.  :)  He's also started to laugh -- real, sweet belly laughs!  The first time he laughed was when I had him on the changing table with a clean diaper -- I was playing with his feet, and blew raspberries on them, and he just burst into laughter.  The sweetest sound in the world!  And the second time was in response to David tickling his belly and squeezing his cheeks while he was playing in his activity gym.  So he's an equal opportunity laugher.  :)

No videos of him laughing yet (though that's on my list of things to try to get!), but here's my new favorite photo of our adorable little guy smiling his heart out at us!


Other Joshua news to come.  We had a wonderful visit from David's brother Iain and his girlfriend Erin last weekend; we're also starting to get Joshua used to being bottle-fed by his daddy, in preparation for my return to work next week.  These both deserve posts of their own, and will get them once I get the photos uploaded off our camera!

In honor of David's 31st birthday

My husband is a very serious, thoughtful, respectable kind of guy.  He speaks with the weight of authority, and has much wisdom to draw upon in counseling his college guys.  Though he has a great sense of humor, which comes out in his messages and when he's leading Bible studies, no one would ever call him silly.

No one, that is, except me.  :)

I have the dubious honor of bringing out an exceedingly silly side of David when we're alone together.  And it wasn't until he married me that he discovered that he has an extraordinarily plastic face, and is capable of sending me into paroxysms of laughter with a single shift in expression...

We recently discovered an old folder of photos that I took last year, documenting many of these facial expressions.  I was going to post a few to the blog then, but chickened out -- I was worried that these photos would undermine David's general air of respectability.  But finding these old shots made both of us laugh harder than we had in a long time -- so David's given me his blessing to share some of our favorites with the world!

So without further ado, the very staid and respectable David Keddie:





And for some reason, this one's my very favorite:


Happy birthday, sweetheart!  Thank you for always knowing exactly how to make me laugh.  :)

Birthday Week has come and gone...

You know you're a mother when the one thing you blog about on your birthday is your son's three-month birthday... :)

It's funny; I used to make SUCH a big deal about birthdays.  I think this is in part because I skipped second grade, and so was always a year younger than everyone in my class... I would count down a ridiculously long time before April 28th every year ("Hey, it's January 1st, which means only 117 days until my birthday!") and have fun planning huge parties to celebrate.

And even though I'd calmed down a bit about my own birthday in recent years, it was fun planning "Birthday Week" for me and David -- after all, our birthdays are only five days apart!  And last year was David's 30th birthday, so of course I had to go all out with it.  The Star Wars birthday party was perhaps the most fun I'd ever had in planning a party, culminating in the coolest cake I've ever baked:


Sorry, I just had to take the opportunity to post that photo again. :)

This year?  No crazy countdowns, no big parties, and certainly no Death Star cakes...  To be honest, even though things are going swimmingly with Joshua, David and I got tired just thinking about planning any birthday hoopla.  So we decided that it would be a much more low-key birthday week this year.

I hadn't counted on my husband's sneaky ways, though...  David has a series of meetings on Wednesdays, and sometimes comes back home in between.  Last Wednesday, which was my birthday, every time he came home, he had another little gift for me. :)


A beautiful bouquet of peachy-orange roses (one of my favorite colors, and in a small enough bunch so as to not aggravate my allergies -- so thoughtful!), and a strawberry frasier cake from Chez Alice (a smaller version of our wedding cake!).

We brought the cake to our small group that night, and had an impromptu birthday celebration there with our dear friends.  I even got to blow out candles for the first time in years!


David's 31st birthday was yesterday, and per the birthday boy's request, we spent a very relaxing, enjoyable day at home together.  David's actually been fighting off a bug of some sort, so it's a good thing we didn't have anything wild and crazy planned.  I do, however, have a special birthday post in the works for David, so stay tuned for that!

Thank you all for the many, many (many!) Facebook, email and phone birthday greetings -- you made us both feel so loved.  We have the best friends and family ever!