Whizzing By

June has whizzed by, and so has our Liana! She is a little girl on a mission, crawling around and exploring her world – of course, always making a beeline for the cords, electrical outlets, wobbly stools or other dangerous objects. She is just starting to hold herself up while on her knees, and is occasionally experimenting with standing. We mostly babyproofed the living room and added various gates, corrals and foam puzzle mats to the ever-growing mound of baby things that has slowly begun to engulf our house. So much stuff for such a little person! Ideally, we’d like for Liana to be able to safely roam around the whole area without being confined, but it’s nice to have a space where she can’t get into too much trouble if I need to leave the room or get something done around the house.

Despite the record-breaking rainy weather lately, we’ve had some really fun days out and about. For Tom’s first Father’s Day, we headed to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) to finally see the wooden puzzle he designed (and won!) in a brain-teaser puzzle contest. Liana was so proud of her daddy! Tom was then treated to his favorite dessert The Concord at the local French sweets shop Pix Patisserie.

Babi also came to visit Portland for a quick in-n-out trip, and we all had fun visiting the Oregon Zoo, Fort Vancouver, the park and just spending time with all the family. Below are a few highlights, but you can see all our photos here: picasaweb.google.com/nataliemaciukenas or via the Photos link above (the photos in both places are exactly the same)

In other news at The Cottage, we are in the process of having some work done in the front/side of our house: new driveway, new side path and a whole new landscaped front yard space. As of now, the driveway and path are complete, but the landscaping will be done by the end of July. I’ll blog about the whole project in a separate post, but the driveway work was cool to watch and included a couple of of beefy guys wielding sledgehammers at 7:00 in the morning to break apart the old driveway. Man, they were fast. Needless to say, it was exciting and we look forward to our new space. 

This weekend Liana will experience her first Fourth of July (with sparklers, of course), and then it's off for our 10-day trip to NJ and then Chicago to meet the Maciukenas contingent for a little family reunion. We're preparing ourselves for the likely forecast in both places: hot and humid.