Here is Warren Rockwood Solano. I managed to catch this little grin yesterday, and I think he was just happy that he survived his first week of life.
These tiny pacifiers always look so huge at the beginning. Warren is back up to his birth weight of 8 lbs 6 oz. Ashlyn helped me give the first sponge bath to Warren. She started kindergarten this year and is loving her class and her teacher. She is such a big help with Warren. She usually sleeps in until about 8am, while Claire is up at 7 every morning. However, lately it has become a contest of who can wake up first and hold Warren first. I wonder how long the novelty will last.

I had Claire try to reenact her facial expression. It was classical when it was genuine, but this staged expression is close. The little noises that come out of tiny little newborns are sometimes very shocking. I think Claire has used up at least a quarter bottle of our hand sanitizer getting herself prepped to hold Warren. The other day she cleaned her hands and I asked her to pick up a step she had brought out and put it away. She refused on the grounds that it would make her hands dirty again. :)
Lara's two favorite phrases right now are, "Hold him!?", and "Good boy". She shushes Warren and loves to rub and kiss his head while murmuring "good boy, good boy". I think she is hoping that he will take over the role of puppy in the girls pretend games and she can be promoted to a princess, or at least a human. Most of the time he sleeps right through her kisses and head pats, sometimes he'll fuss a little, but quiet down quickly. A minute after this picture below (what a cute little angry fact) is when I caught him smiling. He loves his loud sister Lara.

It amazes me how much newborns change in just a week. Here are two hospital shots and two from home.

Warren's sisters are very attentive to his needs. I love it when Lara will stand next to his little bassinet rubbing and kissing his head and then will turn to the rest of us and loudly shush us and remind us that the baby is sleeping and WE need to be quiet. This little guy can sleep through anything. The nurse took this picture at about 12:30am, it had been a long day. Warren was born at 11:58pm on September 16th. My doctor asked me to get induced so I wouldn't go past my due date and have the baby get too big. We checked in at 10 am Thursday morning. I got a little stir crazy waiting for the medicine to kick in and the contractions to start. I am not used to being in the hospital for that long.

"Funky green bench" and the wild animal park

When the description on craigslist said, "funky green bench", I knew I had found the answer to our table seating dilemma. It's green, but fits nicely in our apartment space, and will be handy when we have people over for dinner. The girls love it (unless Claire's plate wanders too close to Ashlyn's plate during dinner), and Lara likes having an alternative to her high chair.

We took a trip to the wild animal park and it was the first time Lara really appreciated what she was looking at. Ducks are her favorite right now. Being 15 feet away from a tiger just didn't do anything for her, but man those ducks. All the girls are becoming quite the little picture posers. We had a great time posing by the mom and baby gorilla statue. The gorillas were "off exhibit" when we were there, so we had to make due with statues. and gorilla/man comparison charts.

One of the highlights of our visit was the acrobats from Tanzania. We all enjoyed the show, except for Lara. about 10 minutes into the show Lara became very nervous about the guy doing the limbo under a pole that was on fire. Lara kept saying "All Done" and waving her hands. I finally turned her towards me and she buried her head against my shoulder for the remainder of the time. These guys were pretty amazing.

A lot of Pomp and A lot of Circumstance

Ashlyn and Claire were so excited to see their dad graduate last Friday. These pictures were taken after the 2 1/2 hour commencement and as you can see they were still thrilled.

He looks so distinguished.

Brock's parents and siblings came down to celebrate with us.My mom and grandmother also braved the ceremony. The rest of the week-end was a party with a family gathering at Filipis pizza following the commencement where my siblings with all the Plumb nieces and nephews joined us.
On Saturday we enjoyed the beach...

We had to build a barricade for rogue waves which Shannon and Aldous decorated...and Lara destroyed.

Lara went charging into the waves when we first got there and had fun running back and forth until one wave won and rolled her, she was a little shell shocked for a while, but eventually braved the cold water again. Everyone had fun digging holes, looking for sand crabs, and making s'mores.
On Memorial day we (meaning Brock and the girls) ran a 5K. It was great to watch from the sidelines. Ashlyn was really excited to race, and the night before she was super tired, but kind of woke up suddenly and said, "remember to wake up on time so that we don't miss the race." As if Claire would let me sleep in. Claire is a fairly reliable alarm clock. Ashlyn ran a good portion of the race and did short sprints up the hills and only rode on the front of the stroller periodically. Brock had a good work-out.



We then swam and BBQed the rest of the day. Definitely a week-end to remember.

Don't Know Where to Begin

Well, here we are at last. On my last post I accidentally eluded to being pregnant and wanted my next post to be the big announcement, but then I waited too long and got out of the habit and the blog fell by the wayside. I've spent the last couple of hours browsing through pictures looking for the ones that would sum up the last few months. Now, here it is 11pm, and if I don't post something I'll never dig myself out of the hole I'm in. I'll have to do a few quick catch-up/highlight posts over the next few days.

Birthdays are a good place to start. Claire is now three and requested a pizza party and kite flying for her special day. Grandma and Grandpa Solano came down for the week-end and we feasted on pizza at Felipe's pizza and were blest with enough wind at sunset park to fly our fish kite.

Before Grandma and Grandpa headed home we had to blow out a candle and sing to Ashlyn who turned 5. She had requested hamburgers for her birthday meal, and was excited about her cheeseburger cake. We made s'mores and had ice cream sundaes later that evening with all her local cousins and Grandma and Grandpa Plumb, and we put her candle in her ice cream. Grandpa Plumb can sure toast a marshmallow to perfection.

No birthday for Lara, but she is a year and a half and I wanted to post her picture because she looks so much older than she did in my last post. Lara is our queen of facial expressions and can give some pretty mean scowls. Here she is on our horse Snow Pea. I also thought this picture sums up Lara...Oh you don't want me to touch THIS...you mean this thing right here...Brock made it to the big 30. One of the reasons I married Brock is that I knew he would just keep getting more good looking as he aged...see for yourself.
The girls enjoyed decorating his ice cream cake with strawberries and candles... and we had a fun get together with a bunch of family and friends to celebrate. I'd like to thank Grandma Solano for all the decor and my mother for the hot pink frosting cupcakes...Claire LOVED the frosting.

I will not be posting any pictures of me because I am pregnant and despite expectations we are having a boy. Ashlyn was very excited about that and has already said we should name him after my sister's duck, and Claire said she wants him to be named Sunshine. Ashlyn recently said, "We'll have a brother and someday he will be my hero." :) This little prince will be dealing with a lot of little mommas. I am due September 20th and all is well.

Here are some of my favorite pictures we got of the family at the end of last year. I love these girls.

Everyone loves daddy. Even Lara does now. In this picture she still wasn't quite sure what she thought of him.

A photoshop experiment. It was difficult to agree on the "best" family shot this year. It's hard to get everyone looking and looking "normal". So here was the compilation of best faces placed on the best background. Our family of big heads. I'll work on the sizing and then next year you won't even be able to tell I manipulated the picture.

As of last week Lara is officially a walker. I was starting to get a little worried. 16 months was a long time to wait. But she is definately preferring walking to crawling now and Brock says that her walk looks like the funny dance/walk that Bill Cosby does. Too cute.

Dare we add one more girl to the mix??????!!!!!!

Clarie's famous hug/choke hold. However, Lara's starting to hold her own a little more nowadays, so Claire better watch out.