New Hair Styles..

I got my hair colored, cut and blow-dryed this afternoon and came home to Maya with her very own new hair style!

Capitol Tour

So what does a toddler do on a Friday morning? Why, go on a Capitol Tour of course! It helps when your daddy works there and gets all sorts of special perks ;)

Baba, Baba-Baba, Maya and I headed down to the Capitol this morning to see the sights and we snapped a few pics (of course!):







Her favorite part..the train from the House office building to the Capitol:



Holding a meeting in the Rayburn room:

Afternoon at the Pool..

We spent the afternoon at the pool, thanks to Wendy and Lilly. Maya loved playing in the kiddie pool, but she really had a blast swimming in the deeper pool. She loved jumping in and going under and pretending to swim around. She loved it so much that she threw a toddler tantrum when it was time to leave. I even tried "Don't you want to go see Daddy?" to which her response, as she was putting her foot in the pool trying to get in on her own, was "No!".

Here are a couple of pics:

Bye-Bye Song...

At the end of each Tumbles class, Maya and her classmates sing the "Bye-Bye Song", which consists of one word--goodbye. Recently she's taken to singing this on her own and making the little hand gestures-it's really cute. A couple of days ago, Maya and her friends, Katie & Grace, spontaneously erupted into bye-bye song and Stephanie caught it on camera!

Memorial Day Part Deux

We had a great Memorial Day with lots of outside time. We went to the Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima) and the Netherlands Carillion in the morning and Maya did a lot of running around (and picking dandelions):









In the afternoon we hit the pool and after an auspicious start, Maya had a fabulous time! We couldn't get her out at the end and had to lure her out with snacks.







When we came home, Maya had (among other things) an entire ear of corn on the cob! She takes after her Dziadek-she was chowing down!

Memorial Day Weekend...

We're enjoying our Memorial Day weekend here at home. It's kind of nice to enjoy the extra time off without having to battle traffic and crowds and it always seems like the area is quieter, even though that is not the case with all the motorcycles that come through town.

On Friday we went to Callie's house for a little happy hour:





Yesterday morning we had breakfast at Silver Diner. This is what happens when your toddler starts to assert herself about her clothing/shoe options:



We had some friends over for dinner, but somehow didn't get any pictures :(

And here is Maya playing in Gtown after lunch:

608 Days...

Or 20 months and 1 day old. Maya is officially out of her teens ;) It's absolutely crazy to me that the next big milestone is 2 years old! Wow!

Today we spent the morning at the Botanical Gardens in DC. It is really so pretty there and Maya always enjoys herself. The last time we went we only hung out inside, but today we got to enjoy the outside gardens as well.

Maya did a funny thing today. She loves to throw pennies into fountains/water. She saw a little waterfall and starting adamantly saying "down! down!" Having no idea what she meant, I just looked at her inquisitively. She started grabbing at my bag, so I gave it to her, thinking she wanted a snack. Nope. She opens my bag, grabs my wallet and opens it to get change! We gave her a few pennies and she was very happy.

Here are some pictures from today:

Four Generations...

My own Baba is visiting for a couple of weeks and we thought we would mark the occasion of four generations together with a professional photo session with our favorite photographer, Matt Mendelsohn .

Here are a couple of pictures that he took-I hope that he is OK with me posting them-they are just so beautiful. You can see the whole group of them by going to the proofs page on his site. Email me, and I'll email you the password.

Steak Dinner..

My aunt Miska was in town this weekend all the way from Stockholm and she had one request for her visit-a big steak dinner. It was Maya's first foray into fine dining and she did OK. She has the attention span of a gnat, so long dinners aren't really her forte. However, we managed to squeeze in a couple of courses and a couple of pictures:

Greek Fest 2008

We may have just taken the second installment in what will be an annual tradition of pictures at the Greek Festival:

Playgroup wagon fun...

We had playgroup the other day at Melissa's house and everyone had fun in the wagon.

PS. I lifted some of these pictures from Stephanie, so I can't take all the credit!

Our Chicago trip..

We had a ton of fun in Chicago and we were so happy to be able to see so many friends and take Maya to some places.

We got into Chicago Thursday afternoon after an uneventful trip, other than some bad traffic coming into the city from O'Hare. We got a couple of cool shots of the city from the airplane:



We met up with Aaron & Greer for dinner in Greektown, which hit the spot! Aaron made a great first impression by showing up with a stuffed dog, as well as Elmo and Zoe puppets!


Friday morning the three of us had breakfast together before Peter headed to work. Maya and I decided to stop by my old Crate & Barrel and see some friends, which was great. Afterwards, we headed to the Shedd Aquarium. It was a bit more crowded than I expected, but we saw a fun dolphin show. We also went to the viewing area below where dolphins swam right past Maya..she was a little startled. At the aquarium:



Friday afternoon Maya took a great nap, and then the three of us headed up to Evanston to see Carrie, Peter and Mikayla (Maya's first friend!). They had a lot of fun together...
Eating chips:


Hugging it out:

Our friends Hugo & CJ were able to stop by to say hello for a little bit and Maya fell in love with Hugo instantly:



Saturday morning we met up with the Sterns. Maya is in love with Mike...she wanted him to carry her everywhere. She loved Amanda too..but Amanda was at a bit of a disadvantage because she is not a boy ;)


We went to Daddy's favorite place:


After lunch we headed back to the hotel room for a short nap and then went to meet up with Joanna, Alyse and Andrew at Navy Pier. We had a great time riding the Ferris Wheel, the Carousel and visiting the children's museum.




Riding the Thomas Train all by herself:


We followed up the fun day with some yummy Chicago pizza. Unfortunately Maya was feeling a bit under the weather, but she still ate plenty of pizza! She's an equal opportunity pizza eater.

We came back today..our trip was a bit rough (LONG cab ride to O'Hare, long flight, lots of rain, etc), but we're happy to be back home and happy to see Baba!

Check out all our Chicago pics here!