Fall is Here!

After a week of rain, we woke up today to some beautiful fall weather. I can't complain with a partly sunny day at about 65 degrees! Of course, I mainly enjoyed it on the way to work. I did, however, sneak home for lunch and found Ari and Claire just finishing a walk and starting a photo shoot. Daddy certainly does like to take pictures of our little cutie. He even dressed her in some adorable warm clothes. If you click on the title of the blog you will be linked to quite a few pictures... I didn't want to edit any of them out!!

Recharged with Hope

This last weekend was the Cincinnati Children's Medical Center's Cancer Survivor Picnic. It was held at the zoo, which was a great venue. I cannot stress enough how perfect the timing was. Recently, quite a few (and isn't one alone too many?) of our patients have lost their battles with cancer or after bone marrow transplantation. My heart has literally been hurting for weeks and poor Ari and Claire have witnessed many tears. So on an absolutely beautiful Saturday afternoon, we all went to the zoo to be reminded why we fight this battle every day. I saw some of my patients that are already finished with the therapy running around and acting like kids; no signs of their surgeries or previous chemotherapy. It was so awesome. Claire and Ari of course had a good time... they always do when they are together!

9 Months!

Time flies when you are having fun... also, as it turns out, when you work 80 hours a week but lets talk about happier things. Claire is officially nine months-old. Our little angel has blessed our lives for 3/4 of a year already! This month she has really changed. She finally babbles, not just nonsense but repetitive syllables. She has never been all that vocal and Ari and I have worried our fair share that our little preemie might be behind; have no fear, she is not! Her favorite things to say are "da da da da da" and "ya ya ya ya." "Mama" does come out when she is tired or upset; I can certainly handle that. Certainly she does not associate her ramblings with objects just yet but it is a major step forward. She also has developed a pincer grasp (she can pick things up using her pointer finger and thumb). She still is not a big fan of being on her tummy and moves mostly in circles and backwards. She does, however, pull herself up to stand on anything she can. I am thinking she may just skip crawling and be the shortest baby to ever walk. Ha! She continues to be a performer; just tonight she was banging away on her toy piano and looking up to wait for her applause. We are so blessed to have her and so many other things to applaud for.

Bienvenue a la Maison!

That is French for "welcome to our home." (Right, Marine?) We were so happy to welcome Marine's mom, step-dad, and sister to Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago. They had never been to the United States so Marine took them to New York and then they spent time with her in Cincinnati... an unfortunate representation of the U.S. We were lucky enough to spend the day with them, Tiffany, Jeff, Jake and Max (Marine's host family) at the Reds game and then at Joe's Crabshack for dinner. It was a beautiful day for baseball and the Reds were their usual subpar selves. The company, however, made up for the lack of offense. Dinner was good, but we were eating outside and it got chilly as the sun went down.

We invited what we affectionately call our French family to our house the next day for wine and cheese. We again enjoyed the company, but could really use some French lessons. Just knowing how to say "delicious" and "disgusting" did not get me far. We look forward to going to France and seeing our friends in their home!

A Day in the Park

I know you are going to find this hard to believe, but last weekend Ari and I were both off! The weather was beautiful so we decided to picnic in Ault Park. When I say picnic, I actually mean pick up sandwhiches from Potbelly and bring Claire's food. The lack of effort on my part didn't spoil our day. We ate, enjoyed the sun and each other. We also got a few great pictures of our little bear.

Another Leak!

Another leak?! Yep, that's right. We replaced 80% of our plumbing in Milwaukee due to frozen pipes then started with leak after leak in this house. It is enough to make us swear off buying old houses... maybe. Though our 112 year-old beauty is a true gem, the leaking is really getting us down. This time is even worse because the cracked drain pipe is ruining our beautiful built-in. It looks like we'll be replacing about a twenty foot section of pipe. Until that happens, though, two of our bathrooms and our washer/drier are out of commission. So check out the pics below of Claire and daddy helping fold laundry at the laudromat. We can make lemonade out of these lemons!!