Gimme Shelter

Regan and Caroline's beautiful wedding brought us to Shelter Island, NY, this past weekend.

Sadly, this is the best picture we took of the happy couple (we left our 'good' camera at home)...it appears to be the classic wedding photo of a groom wildly applauding his new bride's rapid head and arm movements...

Highlights
The Eight Winds house and crew comprised bride and groom, the Trinity Bantams, Regan's siblings, and ourselves. Before this group headed to the rehearsal dinner, A snapped this picture:
L to R: Jesse D, T, Matt G, Regan, Quinn, Garret R, Maggie V

The wedding and reception:
Shell Beach:


Lowlight
The weekend included Luca's second time being sick with a 105-degree temperature. This bout of fever far surpassed the previous one in terms of stress as we were stranded on an island reachable only by ferry (which did not run 24 hours-a-day). To make matters worse, at the time of the fever spike A and Luca were home alone at Eight Winds while a huge thunderstorm battered the island knocking down humongous trees, further isolating the sicky with completely blocked roads. Thankfully, everything turned out AOK as we were able to get some phone advice from Aunt Sara and to have Luca see the island's doctor with some help from Regan.Hilarious photographic evidence that the kid was under the weather...

Happy Father's Day

This weekend marked T's first ever father's day. We took every opportunity to celebrate, though the highlight might have been letting T play his new Mario Kart wii game to his heart's content. Now phrases like "I was doing great and then two turtles got me" are common around here.

Luca is reaping the benefit of summer vacation by getting to spend some extra time with T. The two of them cracking up at T's silly songs or goofy antics is a sight to see.

Happy father's day, T!

This picture was taken during one of Wiggles McGee's few quiet moments since he took to crawling.



We thought that we knew Luca's personality before, but recently it's as if his world has expanded and his personality along with it. Suddenly he is charging toward every hazard, and he's turned into a real yeller. On the softer side, he's also become more cuddly, frequently pulling himself into one of our laps and trying to give us french kisses. Just when we thought we had him figured out...

Mind your electrical outlets, ladies and gentlemen

This weekend the Backers, Dunbars and our little troop converged up north to enjoy the cabin life for a few days. We did all the right things - grilling, drinking beer, playing cranium, reading and napping - and all with great success. We even had the bonus excitement of a north country power outage.



Little did we know when we left Minneapolis with a stationary boy that we would be returning with a mobile one. It's true, Luca officially crossed the crawling barrier this weekend and is now able to diligently shuffle from desired object to next desired object. We're starting to understand what people meant when they told us that crawling changes everything.



Thanks to the cabin cheer section for encouraging Luca to crawl, and thanks to Ryan Backer for capturing the moment.

Luca at 11 months

Today Luca is 11 months old. At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, I feel the need to point out that 11 months is very close to 12 months, which equals ONE YEAR! Not. Possible.

Well, it turns out that it's totally possible. Every day our "little baby" is a lot less like a baby and a lot more like a 1-year-old. Here are some of his new big boy skills:

1. He has figured out how to go from lying down to sitting up. In a case of unfortunate timing, he discovered this skill in the middle of the night, and alerted us to his alarming state of affairs by yelling really loudly until T went to investigate. Turns out, he can sit up but finds lying back down more challenging.

2. He is one with airplanes. Living in SW Minneapolis comes with a lot of benefits, one of which (if you're a baby who loves airplanes) is that we're in the flight pattern. All those planes flying overhead have captivated Luca's attention, and now whenever one passes overhead - whether he's in his highchair, in the car, or in the yard - he reaches his hand to the sky and looks at us as if we just invented the most spectacular treat imaginable.

Luca continues to be very sociable, particularly when other children are around. With few exceptions, strangers always comment on one feature: his huge eyes. T & I don't know where the giganto-peepers snuck into the gene mix, but wherever they came from it is sure that, for now, his eyes are Luca's most remarked upon feature.