One more haircut video

At the beginning of this one, listen for how she says her name. She also says "choo choo," "bubbles" and "Mommy" on this one. And you can see the finished haircut.

Haircut video

Here's the first video clip from Nicole's first haircut. Look at how she's cooperating. And she makes a priceless face at the end.

To-Do #2

Incredibly frustrated with Shutterfly's new "work in progress" site. Definitely more work for me. Not a lot of progress. I was able to post pictures from our trip to Sedona, Nicole's first haircut and her first day back at school today. (For anyone tempted to order prints of the school pictures, I wouldn't. They were taken from another site and not high enough quality to make prints from.)

Video of the haircut will be coming another day when I have more patience.

Here are the pictures.

To-Do List: Item #1 complete

The technical difficulties have been resolved. The links to pictures on the right have been fixed, as has the link to the vacation pictures in the most recent post. I'm too lazy to go back and fix all the other posts, but you can always get to pictures off the link on the right (older ones available at the 'View all pictures' link). Thanks to Shutterfly for changing this without even a courtesy e-mail to tell us about the changes.

Note: As soon as I posted this, the new links stopped working. I'm fairly certain it's just a problem with Shutterfly now, and the links are OK. Please bear with us.

Technical Difficulties

Seems like Shutterfly is at it again. It looks like they've changed the links to the pictures, which means that when you click on a picture link from this blog you get an error message. Fixing the problem has moved up to the top of our "to-do" list, along with posting pictures of Nicole's first haircut yesterday.

Catching up from vacation

Here are pictures from Nicole's trips to Baltimore and the beach. Co-stars are Maggie, Madison, Lindsey, Erin, Justin and Kara. (I know my mom, Kelly and others have some more good pictures. I'll try to get them soon.)

It was quite a whirlwind tour that also included 2 weddings for mommy and daddy, and a side trip to New Hampshire. Nicole hung in B-more with Bubby and Grandpa during that part of the trip. They certainly enjoyed some extra time with her.

Nicole was great on the boardwalk, pushing a stroller, saying hi to all the babies and making friends with everyone. She was OK on the beach, was scared of the ocean and polished off a dozen steamed crabs. (Or maybe that was me.) She somehow even got her Grandpa to share his ice cream with her. Mommy and Daddy shared with her too. For someone who is under the 5th percentile in weight, she sure can eat.

These days, Nicole is missing her Mommy, who is away in Chicago. She's talking like crazy - the words she doesn't know on her own she will almost always repeat. It's amazing what having two brilliant parents will do for a child's vocabulary. She's recently learned funny, Chicago, money and she says some semblance of "watermelon."

Enjoy the pictures. Coming soon -- updates and pictures from a trip to Sedona, Nicole's first haircut, new bedroom furniture for mommy and daddy (no more mismatched dressers from college), pics from the pool (it's still blue!!!) -- and not too far off -- Ravens season. Nicole's got her Shannon Sharpe jersey ready. Gotta love hand-me-downs.

Finally some good news

Loyal readers will be happy to know that the pool and dishwasher issues from a few posts back look like they are solved. The dishwasher has a new motor as of Tuesday and hasn't failed us since. The pool is once again a lovely shade of blue, and has cleared up just enough that we can see the bottom. It should be swimmable just in time for us to leave for vacation. Hopefully it's still blue when we return.

Nicole is up to her wonderful tricks, although her friend Ava at daycare showed her up today when she said Nicole's name perfectly. Nicole pronounces Ava's name more like Wava. But Nicole has learned to say Costco and chocolate, two necessities in life.

She not only can say chocolate, but she's pretty good at eating it. Hoping to get her up to the 5th percentile in weight, we try to pile on the calories. Lately it's been chocolate pudding (Ding! as Nicole says). She also insists on doing the spoon herself. She's not bad (for her age) but the result is still worth sharing. Here are pudding pictures and more.