ari turns ONE

ari celebrated his 1st birthday with lots of friends (mostly big people friends) and sushi! he loved playing in our backyard, with it's newly constructed fence, entertaining our friends and making killer sushi rolls. he did have a few little people over, including his book babies 'twin,' talulah! they humored all of us and sat for a photo shoot - they compliment each other's cuteness so well!

ari loves using instruments: spoons for eating, scoops for digging, chopsticks for banging on things to make music, etc. (note: all of these instruments are interchangeable and able to used for various purposes). so, it was no surprise that when given his portion of his birthday cake (in the shape of an 'A' for ari), he began using his #1 candle to dig into his cake and eat the icing and cake off of the candle.

little ari fish

easter morning, day, and night

ari woke up to find a lovely basket of items that the easter bunny found in our house - books, socks, soap, snacks. he was so stoked! his favorite was the rice husk treat - baby mum mums. what a sucker.
later in the day, he enjoyed playing around in the yard in his snow suit since it was freezing! sticks, apparently, are quite tasty. a nice easter dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, and asparagus (his newest favorite vegetable) was enjoyed by little ari.

ari swims!

here's a little video of last week's swim adventures. ari goes to his infant aquatics class every week and loves it! he has perfected his 'yoga pose' since this video and can stand and balance for a pretty long time. he loves to hang onto the side of the pool (and can climb out by himself), float on his back...so relaxing, and play with his little swim friends.

d.c. or bust!!!

ari had some pretty important business to attend to in our nation's capital so i went along with him to document his travels. he did some pretty impressive lobbying at the capitol, after observing some of our national memorials and plethora of Smithsonian museums. he also took time to eat out, enjoying sticky rice and the famous burgers and fries at five guys. his trip almost turned nasty when brad and angelina tried to kidnap him in his sleep for their 5th child. luckily, he woke up in time and decided that settling for me as his mom wasn't such a bad thing. after all, i do let him drink as much soda as he wants with his burger and fries... all in all, it was a good trip. he and paula had some great bonding time and decided to become pen pals.

how much does ari weigh, you ask?

well...it all depends on which planet he is on (he is quite the traveller)

jupiter: 53.5 lbs
mars: 49.32
earth: 21.4 lbs
moon: 25.6 lbs

ari comes home!

who would have thought sending your 9 (& 1/2) month old kid away for a week would be so hard?! weird. i couldn't wait to see ari on monday when i picked him up from the airport. i dare say he was a wee bit excited as well. he kept hugging me, looking up at me, smiling really big, and then hugging me, and cycling through that routine all the way to the baggage claim... i don't think we'll be doing that again for awhile. maybe i'll make him wait until he's 10 before he can sleep over at his friends' houses, like my parents made me!