the ever elusive first tooth...

pretty soon my babe is going to have a toothy smile!
i swear more of it surfaces every day.

EDIT: I got a better shot of her tooth on Sunday so I changed the pic. What a difference a day makes, eh?

my daddy's back!

after more delays matt made it home safe and sound tonight. now mommy can finally get some real sleep.

alice goes boy crazy

while daddy's away...

alice, mommy, auntie mary, and someday auntie kathy (fred's woman, who looks like she could be my long lost sister) went to brookfield zoo on wednesday. it was a typical day at the zoo filled with lots of animals and impatient mothers (seriously, can't i change my kid w/o you looking over my shoulder every 5 seconds to see if i'm done?!). grandma gave us tickets for a free safari ride, so we jumped at the chance to rest our legs for a bit.

there was this adorable little boy at the front of our car. he was very flirtatious with all around him. at one of our stops he and his family came and sat in the row in front of us, and he and alice had lots of fun socializing.

it's times like this when i wish i knew what they were thinking.

gee, do you think she had fun?!

for your viewing pleasure...

here are more baptism weekend pics. (click to enlarge)

i'm leaving on a jet plane...

after many delays, matt finally made it to orlando at 5AM EST monday morning. hopefully he got some sleep last night.

full house

no, not the crappy 80s TV show. saturday matt, alice, and i had quite a few visitors over for dinner and some gab. 20 of us crammed into our tiny little condo for a few hours and actually it went a lot better than i thought it would. sure it was cramped, but i don't think anyone was uncomfortable.

what's with all the company? well the fam was in town for one very special reason, alice's baptism. after many scheduling conflicts we were finally able to settle on getting her baptized at 7 months old, even though i would have liked to have done it sooner but what can you do?

lucky for us GG (that's great-grandma rice to you) took really great care of grandpa rice's baptismal gown and alice was able to wear it (just like mommy and several other relatives). unfortunately the gown is so delicate that just holding her before the service we seemed to have put a tear in one of the arms. luckily our pastor allowed me to hold alice over the baptismal font for i was afraid just the extra passing around would cause the gown to deteriorate even further. then after they paraded us around the church (seriously), we took her outside and changed her. jessica took some pics of alice before we undressed her, but i'll have to wait until she sends them to me to post.

after church was over we all headed to my mother in law's house for grub. thankfully she was kind enough to offer up her house for the reception because there is no way we could have fit 60+ people at our house! good food was had by all and the cicadas didn't bother us...much. my ears were ringing for hours after i went inside.

all in all it was a pretty fun day and i'm glad so many people were able to come (although i did miss a certain baby, but i know she would have come if it had been possible).

alice received many special gifts, but one that mommy will for sure cherish forever is the quilt that jessica made. if it looks familiar it's because jess used the left over fabric from my mother's quilt that she made when mom was sick. same pattern and everything. i'll be sure to tell alice when she's older just how special it is.

well mike stole my title...

but my post is better. ;) we've been dealing with a cranky sleeper ever since we got back from vacation and i think we finally have a reason why. she has a tooth! well, it's more like a very tiny razorblade at the moment. last night i was poking around in alice's mouth (poor kid) and low and behold i felt something sharp. wouldn't you know it when i peered in there she has a little tiny bit of a tooth sticking out. i wondered why she had gone back to her normal sleep routine, i guess now we know why.

i know, i know. growing teeth, crawling, talking (did i mention she says "ma-ma" and "da-da" and yes she does truly mean us), these are not uncommon things - but i can't help but be intrigued by it all.

since i couldn't get her to sit still long enough to get a pic, here's a pic of all that is good in life.