Year: 2010

Brrrrr…. It’s cold around here.  Keep warm!

We discovered Justin Beiber’s new song just the other day. Alas, we don’t learn about these teen heartthrobs via Edda as she often keeps her own feelings of teen pop admiration very much under wraps – rather we learned about the new Beiber tune via an NPR story. The jist of the story is just that this particular Beiber song did not make it very high on the Billboard charts, but it is the #1 viewed video on YouTube of all time with 400 million hits. That’s like almost half a billion views. And we added our two or three hits ourselves.

Here’s Jeremy learning the moves. To augment our standard couple-dom repertoire of holding hands and hugs and good-bye kisses – we are adding the pointing followed by two thumps to our chest with our fist to indicate affection.

Vince’s moves –

I find this photo amusing – Vince (with glint in eye) is trying to include Edda in the family dancing by picking her up and moving her with the music. Edda is not pleased. In the background, Jeremy is intently studying Bieber’s moves and trying to imitate.

My mom’s arthritis in her thumbs is acting up so my dad volunteered to cook for our weekly Friday night dinner. It’s not often you see Dad in front of a stove stir-frying.

Vince’s hair is getting so long and unwieldy that we’ve had to implement a daily hair-care regiment which involves washing and combing. Ah, the injustice of it all! Unfortunately, Vince doesn’t really have a great example to follow – Edda and I do not spend a lot of time on our hair and we both manage to keep our hair relatively tangle free. Vince always cries when I try and comb his hair and then I threaten to cut it all of and the cries turn to whimpers and he says he doesn’t want his hair cut.

The next day, we went to a classic NY diner for some eggs and home fries with Scott, Kiki’s godson from Austin, TX.

I had to document our parking space (free street parking! Unheard of!) – we actually had to ask a local if it was really, really free.

We went and saw the famous Macy’s Christmas window displays

And we went to find THE Macy’s Santa, but the line was very long and you can’t see Santa from the line and so I just got a photo of an elf 🙂

We drove to NYC this past weekend to surprise Kiki with a birthday/retirement party. And boy was Kiki surprised! Jeremy and Bob have been planning for months – lots of folks from out-of-town came to celebrate. There were Kiki’s friends from high school, college and beyond – about 30 people. (That would be two parties planned by Jeremy within 10 days of each other, we are partied out). I did not get an actual “surprise” photo. It was a little difficult to manage Edda and Vincent (who were two of the three small children in attendance) in a relatively small space with adult food and wine everywhere and allowing them both to stay up past their bedtime. So no free hands for too many photos –

The party –

The princess cake and linzer torte –

We stayed overnight in a Quality Inn in Queens which was 15 minutes from the party and yet only $127 for the night and free parking to boot! I love Queens! Edda loves hotel rooms – whenever we travel, she seems to love being in hotel rooms. The layout sometimes presents a challenge as she likes leaning up against the bed and sometimes she misjudges the width of the bed and leans back into thin air and sets herself up for a tumble…

It’s Christmas time when the dogs in the house turn into reindeer.

I was looking at Edda the other day, her head tilted towards her father who was holding her in a standing embrace and realized that Edda is really no longer a young toddler/preschooler/kindergartner. I think we are passing into another stage of Edda’s life – not one really marked with the same milestones as with other typical children, but marked by more subtle challenges and changing experiences.