Halloween 2009


Silas has started to like to get help to sit and stand up. He's quite strong.

Maeve and Daddy enjoyed playing in the baby swings at the park. Maeve was running into Daddy and having a great time.

Silas with Daddy at Wallingford Park. He's all warm in his winter suit.

For Halloween, Maeve was a monster. She didn't wear her monster head very much, but here's where we're walking from our house down to the main business district in Wallingford, where they had trick or treating at the business starting at 3 PM. We were meeting Dagan, Kyna, and Scott at 4 PM. The view here is of Meridian Avenue, one door down from our house.

At Fainting Goat Gelato, instead of giving out candy, they gave the kids free icecream. Maeve got mint and Dagan got raspberry. Dagan was a cool dragon.

Maeve enjoyed walking with Kyna, so here's Kyna with both kids with Scott and Cat (pushing Silas) taking up the rear.

October 19, 2001

Silas and Maeve with Cat.

October 10, 2009.

One day shy of his 3rd month birthday, Silas decided to hold is own bottle, if only for a few seconds.

September 22, 2009. Silas can do pushups galore, actually likes tummy time, and started turing over when he turned 2 months.

September 12, 2009

Maeve and I were worms for the children's parade at the Seattle Tilth Harvest Fair. We also got to pet chickens and goats, and I bought winter cover crop seed for my garden. Maeve also had her face painted, got fruit and veggie samples, and honey in her hair after looking at the beehive and sampling honey.

Silas got his second bottle in preparation for Mommy going back to work in a couple of weeks. He likes the bottle fine once he figures out that it's full of milk.

September 4, 2009

We had an enormous sunflower in our garden. It's less impressive bent over but will still hopefully provide lots of seeds. Maeve's enjoyed watching it grow and said the birds could have the seeds from one of the smaller plants, but this one is for people.

Here's Silas in his jedi-knight outfit with a nice smile at almost 8 weeks.

August 10, 2009
Silas at almost 1 month being held by big sister Maeve.

Silas and Maeve Aug 1, 2009

Silas Atticus Ernst
July 11, 2009

4:22 AM
20 inches, 6 pounds 5 ounces

Maeve's 3rd Birthday party, June 20, 2009

Meridian Park, Seattle


Maeve on the turtle in the park.








Chloe can do the monkey bars.
























Dagan with Kyna.

















Maeve and Sam on the swings.








Blowing out the cupcake candle.

Addie and Everest like their popcicles.


Maeve and Elena with popcicles.



Everest and his balloon.



Maeve and Elena hiding from wolves under the table.






Mike and Paul

Visit from the cousins, May 26-31, 2009

My sister and family were in town the week after Memorial Day and got to hang out at our house and in Seattle. We were all at work/daycare all week, but it was still great to see them and have Maeve hang out with her 3 cousins. One night Mike and I even got to go out - we went out to Golden Gardens, a beach/park in Ballard to watch the sunset for our anniversary. It was chilly and beautiful and the park was packed. I think Noell and Gary got to go for a walk one night, too. Nice to have family around to be built-in babysitters and share the child-rearing time.

On Saturday, May 30 we all drove out to Rattlesnake Ledge, a hike about 45 minutes outside Seattle that is in a park that also has a lake - therefore very kid-friendly. On the way up, we played a bit of hide and seek, which involved the three mobile cousins running a ways up the trail and "hiding."Here's one of their hiding places beside the trail. We hiked part way up the trail to the ledge and it became clear that the older cousins (Elliott and Winnie) were most interested in going down to play in the lake and the younger cousin (Maeve) was the slowest and would eventually need carrying while the youngest cousin (Hugh) needed to nurse. So we went down in batches, with Hugh nursing a while trail-side and then played in the water. Maeve's still not so sure about getting her clothes wet and didn't much like walking around in wet underwear, but they all had a blast. Elliott could walk all the way across the lake.







We then had a picnic and went to a nearby water resource center that was having an open house and waterfall tours, which were already booked. At this point, Maeve was crashing so we went home. On the way out, the other car noticed that the trail had been shut and we wondered why. The next day, it was in the paper: someone had fallen and died in a freak accident.

Maeve learned tons from her cousins, we'll be figuring it all out for a while, but an obvious one was that last week she decided to quit wearing training pants and night and instead wear underwear. That she wore training pants had been discussed a couple times at night time with the cousins, but wasn't a big deal, but apparently Maeve really noticed. We've had a couple of accidents, and Maeve how has a cold and is back in training pants, but the end is near. Just in time for her 3rd birthday.

Maeve also loved touching and "playing" with Hugh, who is pretty game. She got to hold him a couple times - good practice for being a big sister in 6 weeks.

May 18, 2009

We've moved! Here's a misty photo of our house from back in early spring. It's in Wallingford, a neighborhood of Seattle, and we're slowly getting settled in. This was helped a lot by my mother, who was with us for almost 2 weeks and pretty much organized the house, including putting in closets, toilet paper holders, organizing the kitchen, putting up curtains, cooking all the meals, and prepping the house for our first guests, Rachel, Steve and Naomi from Vancouver. Our house is now liveable and would be much less comfy without her help. Rachel and family were in town to visit some friends, and crashed with us so we got to see them in our limited free time. We went out to eat dinner at Cantinetta, a Wallingford Italian restaurant recommended by friends Dawn and Eric as both vegetarian- and kid-friendly. It was both. This photo is of Maeve and Naomi walking back to our house. My mom's pushing Naomi's stroller. Maeve is a big helper and wanted to help Naomi walk, and this did keep Naomi walking a bit longer.

Luckily, they stayed in the basement and identified a small wet spot on the basement carpet. This turned out to be the tell-tale sign of basement flooding, a perinial Pacific northwest issue where water is the enemy of your house. We've found a faulty downspout from our gutters and will be getting that fixed, which should mostly solve the problem. We now have slightly moldy carpet, a soaked carpet pad that's been put in the trash, and are running a fan in that room in the basement with the carpet pulled up. Sigh. Homeownership.

Last weekend, we took a little day trip to start enjoying the nice spring weather. I'd never been to the Cascades, so we went to Snoqualmie Falls, which is maybe a 45 minute drive in a pass in the mountains. The falls are beautiful, and there's a 1/2 mile hike down to see the river at the bottom. Maeve hiked all the way down, no problem. The way up, which is steep, was clearly going to be a problem, but we discovered hide and seek. Maeve would run ahead and "hide" often by standing by the side of the path and saying "here I am." By the end, she got the idea of going off-path a bit or hiding behind a tree. We did this for the whole half-mile - one of the first hikes she's walked the whole way.

She also enjoyed playing around this tree. She was wearing Mike's earbags and was being and elephant with great big grey ears.

March 29, 2009

Maeve participated in her first Easter egg hunt with a friend Elliott. The dads hid eggs around the porch and back yard, and the egg buckets were soon filled.

March 25, 2008

Maeve is learning how to make silly faces in the bath.

Cat and Sarah on the porch of our house, overlooking Lake Washington and the East side.



February 10, 2009

We're getting settled in Seattle, and haven't been taking many pictures. Sarah Fish was in town over the weekend for a conference, so we got to hang out on Sunday. We inflicted a day at the playground on her.





We also had our first parent potluck at Maeve's daycare, the Child Learning and Care Center. I didn't get many pictures, but here's one of Maeve and Mike at dinner. Maeve's adjusted to day care more quickly, and after about a month of observation, without really joining in, she's now an active participant in her class.

Christmas 2008

Mike and Maeve getting in the Christmas Spirit

We've now moved from Germany to Seattle, and after a couple weeks the beginning of December in Seattle, we headed out to SC and Tx to visit the grandparents for the holidays. We normally see one or the other, but since we were gone for the last year, we made the grand tour. The BEST part of the trip was getting to South Carolina. Seattle was having a blizzard. On December 18, it had just started snowing, but the taxi we'd scheduled to take us to the airport didn't show. We called Eric and Dawn, some friends, and asked for a ride to the airport. We got in our car to drive to their house to get a ride, and we couldn't get out of our neighborhood. Our car is a civic, not very heavy, and it currently doesn't have all-weather tires. We had maybe 2 inches of snow, but the house we are renting is in a very hilly neighborhood (Laurelhurst) in Seattle, and we were sliding all over the place. So we parked the car and I was walking with Maeve while Mike was pulling our two suitcases to get out of the neighborhood. We flagged a passing pickup truck, which took us to the local bus transfer at the University District. From there we took a bus downtown and transfered to the airport. Two hours later, at about an hour after our flight's scheduled departure, we arrived at the airport. We checked in, and were put on standby for the next flight out to Dallas, which we had to fly through to get to Greenville-Spartanburg. On our way to the gate, we saw our original flight leave, over an hour late. Two flights later, we got on a flight to Dallas and made it there by 10:30 PM, where we crashed with Mike's parents, who thankfully live 15 minutes from the airport. At 6 the next morning, we got on the flight to SC. When we got there, our luggage wasn't there, but we got it late that evening. We were all exhausted, but it turned out we were lucky to even get out of Seattle as the city was pretty much snowed in for a good week.

After that, Christmas was great. Maeve really enjoyed hanging out with her Grandmom Shirley and her two girl cousins, Winnie and Emma. Here, Winnie and Maeve are cracking up looking at themselves in the mirror while Emma's chilling with Granmom.










We also went to Emma's Christening. It was a very nice service with family only, at Jennifer's home church in Greenville. Emma was great the whole time, even when every member of the family was wetting her copious hair.










The weekend before Christmas we went to visit my Great Aunt Becky in Ellerbe, NC. The plan was to drive during nap or evening sleep time, which we did. Maeve did not really sleep in the car, but on the plus side, she didn't get sick either. We're just not in the car enough for her to be relaxed and sleepy there. The visit was great. Maeve walked to church with Daddy and Great-Uncle David, and walked back with me and Uncle David. It was beautiful out. We then had lunch with the extended family and ate lots of Beck's goodies.












After Christmas on Christmas Eve in SC, we flew out on Christmas day to TX to see Mike's family. In downtown Grapevine, there was a Christmas light show, and animatronics show, and some climb-onable animals. Maeve liked the polar bear.


















We went to playgrounds a couple of times between visiting Kathryn Schoenbrun and family and Chris Kribs and family. On one playground, Mike found some mistletoe and Maeve learned to put it to good use.













By the time we left, Maeve was sad to leave and enjoyed holding her grandparents' hands in the airport and coordinating a group arm swing dance.