upside down dottie

Esther and Amiga

(our next door neighbor's puppy)

Happy Valentine's Day (a day late!)

New Valentine's Day outfits from Kiki and Grandpa for the girls (Grandma Cam and Grandpa Bill also sent some adorable outfits too but it was a touch chilly for them yesterday! We love them!!! You can also see a Grandma Cam creation in the first picture of Dottie writing a name on a Valentine...).

Of course none other than ice cream cone valentine's for the kids from school and the neighborhood...

For more Valentine related pictures, click HERE

language (esther)

I have been trying like crazy to get a good video of esther talking and this video is about as good as i can get because she is a tad stubborn and seems to not want to "perform" when the camera is on... (unlike her sister who actually called me into the room the other day for a good photo op of the 2 of them hugging on the couch :-) She has had a language explosion in the past couple of weeks and repeats many of the words we say to her or points to things and says the word. I started to count the words in her vocabulary and lost track at about 25. She has also been putting 2-3 words together on the random occasion saying here saying, "bye bye dada" or "love you". Of course they are not super clear but they are distinct words for each thing she is referring to as you can see in the video. It's so very cool to watch it all come together!

****pardon the crazy "beast" in the background!

morning

ice cream!

with ella and erna on one of many gorgeous evenings we have had this winter

"mommy"

by dottie

benihana!

with jason, penny, wyatt, and malcolm.
dottie was a little intimidated at first but wyatt made sure to show her just how cool it was!
a monster our of rice! where else can you go for that?

nose picker

Esther has found her nose (or perhaps what might be inside of it...)! i am a horrible mom for posting this picture but I can't help it. It is so classic and Esther will surely be delighted to look back on it down the road.
:-)

uh oh

esther has recently discovered just how fun toilet paper can be

close ups

of esther at 15 months

the notz family is back!

If only for a weekend...
Our friends John, Basak, Lula, and Adele have been living in Turkey for the last 18 months (to be near Basak's family) and have just moved back to the states. Sadly for us, they are not moving back to SF but have moved to Chicago near John's family (lucky for them!). I met Basak at the NY Stationery Show in May of 2008, soon after Dottie was born, and we became fast friends. Lula and Dottie are only 2 months apart in age AND we both ran letterpress card companies. Could it get any better! Thinking back on it, I am pretty sure that Lula was Dottie's first real friend. Even thought the girls hadn't seen each other for more than 18 months, they got along like 2 old friends and even included their sweet younger sisters, Adele and Esther, in on the playtime.

There are many past posts with Dottie and Lula but here is a particularly cute one of them together when Dottie was about 17 months old. (click on their names)

esther loves babies!

From an early age, Esther has loved any and all of the baby dolls that we have in our house.
She kisses them, feeds them, puts them in her stroller and walks them around...
When we had a playdate with Anna and her girls recently and Esther was absolutely enthralled with her daughter. I am pretty sure Esther thought she was a babydoll! The only problem was that she is (at just about 6 months old) almost as big as Esther wasn't so keen on being held for too long by a 15 month old. When we went to take her away, Esther started crying and saying "more, more, ...".

4 year check up (dottie)

at 4 years old, Dottie is:

38 lbs (75th%)
42 1/4" tall (90th%)

So far so good on her vision. Fingers crossed that she will take after Chuck in this area...

As you can see from the picture, Esther is still a little intimidated by the doctor's office. By the end of the visit, Dottie had her convinced that it was pretty cool!

milo has a new best friend

playdate with jack

jack and dottie were sweet to include esther in on their playmate this past week...

dance party

the kids decided to have a dance party post lobster dinner at penny and jason's the other eve.

blue

Happy 4th Birthday Dottie!!!!

esther walks!!!

the minute she was born, esther has decided to do things her own way. she started "scooting" on her bum at around 8 or 9 months, learned to crawl at 13 months (and still preferred to scoot), and now it looks like she has decided to walk (but still might prefer to scoot, who knows!)! she has been playing with the idea over the last couple of weeks taking 5 + steps here and there but we are thinking this might be the real deal.

happy hanukkah!

out of nowhere, dottie started making a menorah with her duplos yesterday. though she didn't know it, her timing was perfect!

what's wrong with this picture?

we got a very small tree this year because we will be in tahoe for christmas (we leave tomorrow!!!). after decorating it, we realized it was all in vain. as you can see, esther has been interested in the bottom 2 feet of tree. 4 ornaments broke and we are now thinking that it was crazy to keep on trying. we are now loving our weird looking tree...

advent calendar

Dottie has been more than excited about the advent calendar my mom and dad sent this year. As a child my brother and I received this same advent calendar (an old Coca Cola crate filled with presents for each of the 24 days before Christmas) from my great Aunt Jackie and we looked so forward to it every night before Christmas. My mom took some of the old toys and trinkets that we used to open and added some new ones and it is just wonderful. We will of course continue the tradition for years to come. I will take a picture of it when all of the presents are open. Tonight Dottie opened two little mini pirates and a parrot! She has been letting Esther open up about 1 of 5 presents at this point. She will need to be a little more giving next year I think...

5 days to go!!!!!

extreme esther

free standing

esther made big strides yesterday with balance and was standing for about a minute at a time without any assistance at a birthday party we went to. notice her perfect timing with the music at the end of the video!