Why hello Summer, we've been expecting you!

hooray, it's finally summer! I can't say I'm totally bikini ready but board shorts and tank top ready for sure! Vale on the other hand has a variety of swim suites (including the sweet little two piece you'll be seeing in a min, ciao ciao bella) to sun her lovely baby humps in. She got a head start at Kayla's graduation party this weekend. The pool was heated and the sun was out, I was so worried about packing Vale's stuff and hassling Kevin about taking his swim trunks, that I completely forgot about mine! boo!!

Anyway, I took over 200 pictures this weekend, so I'll spare you all the so so ones and give you only la creme de la creme.
enjoy!

One day she'll be talkin' a mile a minute but in the mean time, all we can do is speculate..heheheeh
Vale:"uhm..mmm...IDK dad, lets try the jacuzzi first"

Vale:" ooo, ahhh, that's nice, real warm"


Vale: "Can you guys tell I'm really trying to suck it in?"

Vale: " guys, come join me, promise I won't pee in the water"

Vale: "Canon ball"




tita love

coconut head band strikes again! if you need a band for your next party, hit us up, weez on fiya! :)



Vale is soo in lurrve with all dogs, especially ones with long lustrous hair. Russell was no exception, and he loved her too until he realized its best to love her from afar lest he get his lovely hair yanked by one eager little baby.






Congrats Kayla! Best of luck in college!

Happy father's day

Wishing a very warm and slightly belated Happy Father's Day to all the papas and papacitos out there!
Here are my three favorite:


Definitely papacito! Major hot nerd alert here :) You're an awesome dad babe and Vale adores you to pieces!

It's no wonder Kevin is a great father, he has the best of role models!

My super hero papi who inspires me everyday to be a better, more hard working person. I'm so lucky to have a dad who cares and looks out for my sisters and me so much. You're awesome dad!

Cool as a cucumber

An organic farm in Imperial Beach, whaaaaaat? yep its true, my friend Paty brought us out to Suzy farm for a tour and a pick- as-many-veggies-as-you-can-fit-in-your-bag for ten bucks a head. What a deal, fresh picked organic produce, I was so in! The farm got it's name from a dog that was abandoned on the farm when they were first starting off. I wanna say how terrible that is but he for sure had a way better life living on the farm so take that mean previous bad owners!

The farm offers hour long tours the second Saturday of the month. What was super cool was that the tour guide would tell you all about that veggie or herb and then welcome you to pick it, she also shared some of her tips for cooking the veggies. The highlight of the pickings this month was squash, next will be tomatoes and the following bell peppers. I'm planning on breaking into Vale's grandpa's garden for tomatoes next month so that covers that, but bell peppers the month after at suzy's farm is a go.

Thanks Paty for turning me onto this 70 acre gem!


Chives







wish someone had taken a picture of me picking carrots. I was wiggling and pulling the carrots just as we were instructed by the tour guide but with 18 pounds on my front (Vale) and another few on my back (diaper bag) and Vale face deep in the carrot greens, it was no walk through the farm! I was more successful at ripping the greens off straight away and then digging out with my bare hands the tiny carrots. What fun we had though!





Some of our loot, aint it pretty!?


After coming back from the farm she ate pluot's in her mesh baggie, tart, very tart and oh so delicous.



Happy Friday :) hope you all have a fresh weekend!

choo choo

hi lovely loyal readers! The fam is on vacay from work for 6 weeks so we've been enjoying every second of our down time with Vale. We have so many pictures to share and promise to catch up with you guys this week..In the meantime, I'd like to share a little video I made from small clips from my phone, quality isn't the best but still worth a watch.
xoxo -mami

Untitled from KarlaB on Vimeo.

editors note: I would have liked to clip the videos a bit more to make the video short(er) and sweet(er) but cutting out video of Vale feels criminal.

videographers note: the train Vale is enjoying herself on, was her dad's toy when he was an infant. How crazy is that!

Father knows jack

A thought came to me today that I feel I must share. File this one in the "been there, done that" category if you already know. Here goes. So, the micro-fam (Karla, Vale y yo) was in the living room just hangin, talking to the bebe, talking between the adults. Ya know, the usual. There was some baby talk, some goofy laughs, and a range of personal topics being discussed.

Here's the epiphany: We've got a third party involved here, people. Vale is going to be a real, actual person one day, and we're conversating like she's in the background most of the time. I'm not going to say that we're always talking about inappropriate things around the child. We just talk about inappropriate things very frequently... tee-hee ;) But, what if she were to go public??

Obviously this isn't happening yet. And it won't for some time, me thinks. But as a parent, when do you start to censor your conversations for the sake of the little one(s)? When do you start to do that weird parenty thing where you spell out certain words mid-sentence because you don't want the kiddies to catch on? Like if you've ever had a dog and you say you're going to go for a WALK, and when they hear that word they know what's up, and then they start to go nuts*... that's what I'm saying.

Bonus survey question: Do you ever recall any of these terms being spelled out in your presence as a child?

1) I-C-E C-R-E-A-M
2) P-A-R-K
3) B-A-T-H
4) S-?-X
5) C-A-N-D-Y


*more on babies as human puppies in a future installment ...jk :{

Soul Sistah success

Big cosas were cookin at the Soul Lab Project's debut celebration yesterday. The menu was power packed with poetry, dance, song, familia and friends, and Brazilian BBQ in a major way. Errything BIG!

But in cereal, the Soul Lab Project is the latest creation Tita Kwistin and company. Its kinda like a supe-cool, artsy, hip, fun performance group-ish project and more type of thing. Words cannot describe their butt-kickingness. Check them out on F-book and Twitta.

We got a bunch of pics with Vale and many of her loving peeps that were in attendance yesterday. Oh, and the photos were already cool but we made 'em even mas cool with instagram

:{

8 meses

She picked out her own outfit, I had a selection for Kevin and I to deliberate over when Vale casually crawled over and picked up and started chewing the items you see in this picture. Well problem resolved.

she's sick in this picture, but through the magic of procrastination, she is now 90% all better since this was taken on the 29th!

She's crawling, standing up on stuff, doing the back arch when I take away something she shouldn't be playing with, such as the computer charger (ruined) the car keys (nasty) my phone (propensity for water damage), her parents shoes (nastier), She's even learned the word "no" making this the second word she very noticably reacts to, second to "leche". She gets a no, no, no when she tries to follow us into the kitchen or restroom. I think this makes her want to go in even more.

She eats blueberries, grapes, cherries, watermelon and mango either in her mesh baggie or in small pieces ALL DAY LONG. Mango especially makes her hyperventilate, and at 5 mangos for a buck, she's a cheap date.

Happy 8 months you purple faced, conga playing, back arching, moco faced, happy, laughing baby, we love ya to the moon and back.

The Social Network (less annoying, real-life, baby version)

What follows was a kewt little moment that we had the opportunity to witness and photo-document a few days ago. It actually had nothing to do with that movie mentioned in the blog title, which was pretty annoying btw imo, but it was some babies socializing.

The dialogue is possibly rooted in truth, and is based on my interpretation of the situation. Cuz ya... a picture may be worth a thousand words, but that's just too many words.

Enyoi :{


DANGER: (playin it cool) "Hey."
VALE: (playin it cute) "Hi."


DANGER: "That's a cool bike."
VALE: "Ya. It's mine."


DANGER: "Can I play with it?"
VALE: "Don't touch my bike, fool!"

pony tails or horns?

Anyone up in the LA area looking forward to seein some of ^this^ next weekend??

Maybe we should do this too!

Greetings from our dark and quiet apartment, Vale is 40 minutes into her nap and she'll either be up in 5 minutes or she'll go for an extra half hour. I'm tiptoeing around here hoping for the latter. She has a cold and has not been sleeping very well so naps are super important or she'll be a grumpy, snotty mess all day.

Her cousin Tommy was baptized on Saturday at the Greek Orthodox church in North Park, it was a lovely ceremony followed by a party at my tia Ana's house. There was a ton of food, a jumper, mimosas, music, and lots of family. Unfortunately, I think Vale might have picked up her cold in the jumper.




She totally loved being in here with all the big kids