Outdoor Fun

Today our longtime friends, Jassamine and Michae, stopped by our house on their way to the beach. Their daughter is about 6 months younger than Adam and they had a great time playing together outside!

What a cutie! Can we betroth her to Adam now?

The West Wing

If you are one of Adam's grandparents, you can skip this post and go directly down to the previous one, where you will get those pics of Adam you've been waiting for. Everyone else, keep reading.

The Russo family has been busy for the last few months. In December, we got a tour of the West Wing given by a friend from our church. We got a bunch of nice pictures, though sadly pictures are not allowed inside of the West Wing. But we got some great ones outside. It was cool!

With our friend and tour guide, Bill Behrens:

In the "press pool"

Outside the West Wing

Oh wait, there was a picture of Adam in there. Sorry, grandparents, I guess you should have read this one, too.

A few pictures

I know, I know, it's been entirely too long since I've updated this blog. We've been all over, on vacation, spending time with family, and just plain busy at home! Here are just a few Adam pictures to satisfy his fans while I get our pictures organized and uploaded.

playing with his 3-D glasses at the M&M's movie in Las Vegas

in the baby pool with his pal, Malaika

refusing to look at the camera at the Smithsonian's butterfly habitat

excited to see the butterflies!

It's Official!

Karl gets "hooded" by his Dissertation Advisor, Robert Inman, on Sunday evening.

Shake and take.



Proud parents!

The Wharton School PhD class of 2008...well, those who came to the ceremony.

One of the speakers advised the grads to be like LedZepplin: Loud, Confident, and Wrong.

It was a fun reception, complete with sushi, fruit & cheese, and dessert.



Karl with his son and the city he studied in his paper.

Karl's parents threw him a party beforehand.

Adam and his Aunt Steph at the party.

"LiLi" and Adam (Grandpa Mac in the background)

Our friends Retna, Gus, and Peter attended.


So did Heidi and Andrew! (and Kristen, too, but I didn't get a pic of her. Oops!)



the cake


future Wharton grad?

Long Time, No Post

Sorry for the recent lack of postings. We've been very busy! First, Adam has become quite mobile. No, he's not exactly crawling yet, but he can rotate and roll around enough that nothing is safe! I have a feeling that crawling is just around the corner.




While my little Squirm-Squirm has been napping, I've been working on a project of my own. Our dining room has been a very plain off-white since we moved in. It was time for something more exciting. How about "deep pomegranate"?

We have curtains. As soon as Karl has a free moment, he promises to hang them for me.

The first color we chose ended up looking more magenta than plum. So we ditched that expensive Home Depot paint and ended up with something better from Wal-Mart. Go figure. It was much better quality, requiring only 2 coats instead of 4. I had a bit of fun painting over the magenta. My former roommates, Beth and Kristen, had a joke about painting kitties. When the two of them lived alone together, Kristen had two cats and Beth was an avid artist. As Beth painted, Kristen would ask "where's the kitty?" To satisfy this question, Beth began painting a kitty in the underpainting of her portraits. No one could see it when the painting was finished, but Beth and Kristen would know it was there. We've all kept the tradition in our household painting practices.


I also found time to bake a fun lemon cake from our America's Test Kitchen recipe book.
It was a lot of work, but pretty good. I don't know if I'll make the cake again, but I'll definately be using the icing. It's like a meringue, but cooked over the stove so it keeps it's peaks and is safe to eat.

On Friday, I had some other mommies and babies over to the house for a playgroup. Here is my freind Nicole and her baby girl, all bundled up for the trip around the corner form her house to mine.

Baby's First Bowling!

On Saturday night, we went bowling with our good friends, the Reedy's. We had a coupon for a free game for up to 10 people at any local AMF bowling alley. We chose the most convenient location and met there. To our suprise, it was a duck pins alley. The pins were about 6 inches high, with porportionately small bowling balls. You can see the "Adam sized" ball in Karl's hand above. We looked around and saw several children's groups, but plenty of adults joining in the fun. Apparantly it's not just a kiddie version of the sport, just a different variation. They did have bumpers in most lanes, so we opted to keep ours, given the novelty of the experience. Still, the only member of our party to break 100 was Ethan Reedy. Good thing we weren't competing!

We invited Adam to play but he preferred to sit in his carrier and watch.

Josiah and Wendi were on Mommy's team

After the game, we dined at Ledo's Restaurant, a local pizzeria. Adam, tired out from listening to bowling pins, took a nap under the table while we ate.

A 2007 Retrospective

What a year this has been. On January 1, 2007, Karl and I lived by ourselves in row home in downtown Philadelphia. I was employed as a public school music teacher while writing my master's thesis. Karl was a full-time graduate student. Karl was planning on applying for jobs in several cities, but we had no idea where we might be living once the school year was over. We were hoping for a child, but would not discover that I was pregnant until the following day.

On January 2, I watched with delight as the line on my pregnancy test turned pink.

In February, we trekked down to DC for Karl's first job interviews.

Karl accepted a job offer in March. We began researching the real estate market in DC and talking to folks from our church who were interested in buying our Philadelphia home.

I spent most of April trying to complete my master's thesis. I don't remember many details about my topic anymore, but I do remember multiple technology failures, such as crazy margins in MS Word, countless printer failures, and flashdrive chaos. I didn't ask Karl about his memories from this month. I'm not sure if I want to make him relive the stress of being married to an irritable, fatigued, pregnant student.

In May, I marched in Temple's commencement ceremonies, finally completing the master's degree that I began working on in 2001.

June is sort of a blur. From what we can recall, we decided to forgo selling the house in Philadelphia in order to rent to our friends. We selected our home in DC and began the sometimes humorous, sometimes nauseating process of closing on that home. (The process included no less than 4 home appraisals, 3 mortgage companies, 2 mortgage brokers, 2 insurance policies, 2 price adjustments, and, as we like to say, "a partridge in a pear tree.")

We finally closed on the home in July. We moved in the same night and were delighted as friends from our new church helped us to settle in.

I spent most of August unpacking boxes and painting the nursery, while Karl studied the finer details of the federal tax code at his new job.

The Lord gave us Adam in September.

I don't need to recount the rest of the year to you, blog readers, since it is already recorded here.

So, as you can see, 2007 was a banner year. It reminds us very much of 2004, which is the year that we got engaged, got married, and bought our first home. The two intervening years have been wonderful, but relatively uneventful. Kind of like treading water.

It makes us wonder what 2010 will be like. We have been joking that perhaps we will buy a third home and have another child in that year? We certainly wouldn't mind two years of relatively uneventful living until then.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

I don't normally listen to weather reports, and Wednesday was no exception. I was pleasantly surprised to ind this scene when I looked out our front door.


I bundled up Adam and walked to a neighbor's house for the afternoon. Adam did seem to take some exceptionally long looks at his surroundings. Maybe he did notice the snow. Hard to say.

I remember him looking much happier than this:
My friend had fun taking her baby daughter outside and looking in through a window at her Kenyan mother-in-law sitting snugly inside. Having never seen snow before, her mother-in-law was amazed at a little baby being outside in such weather, even in a snowsuit.

The snow lingered through Thursday Friday but was completely gone by Saturday. It was nice while it lasted. I didn't attempt to drive our car on Wednesday, but the roads were just fine on Thursday morning. I think we had about two inches of coverage in all.

So, dear readers from around the country, did you see any snow this week?

A Visit to Lancaster

This weekend, we celebrated "Thanksgiving" with my mother's family. Since everyone has other plans for Thursday, we had a nice meal together on Saturday instead. Present were my Mom, Gepi, Grandma and Grandpa Eberly, my Aunt Terre and Uncle Randy, Aunt Terre's mother, Wanda, Karl, Adam, and myself.

Adam got to meet his Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Eberly.

He and Grandpa Eberly spent a lot of time together. Adam was glad to finally meet the man from whom he got his middle name.

While they were getting to know each other, everyone else enjoyed a game of "Up the River."

Of course, Adam spent some time with "MomMom."

And I couldn't help but take another picture of Adam and his daddy.
Uncle Randy took a picture of our four generations together. Aunt Terre was standing behind him, trying to get Adam to look at the camera. I can't tell if it worked for this picture or not!
Special bonus picture of the little guy, content in his great-grandfather's arms!

On Sunday, we saw many friends at Calvary Church. Among them were Hannah and Michael. Hannah, who was the matron of honor in our wedding, got to hold Adam. I *finally* got to meet her two children in person. They look so much bigger in real life than in their photos!

Sunday Lunch Out

Last Sunday after church, we dined with our friends Greg and Amanda, and their new baby, Jesse. We walked a few blocks from church to a deep-dish pizzaria. It wasn't the same as our beloved Philly pizza, but it was pretty good. Mostly we just enjoyed being out with other new parents. It was empowering to make a spontaneous plans with two newborns in the mix.


Adam is a little less than two weeks older than Jesse, so they are bound to become friends as they grow up. We had fun laying them side by side so they could interact. I'm not sure how aware they were of each other, but it made for a fun picture!

A Visit to Philly

The homesickness bug bit, so we packed our bags and headed to Philadelphia for the long Columbus Day weekend. Having been unable to travel in my final weeks of pregnancy, this was my first overnight trip since our move in the beginning of July. Our good friend Kim Dengler was kind enough to host us for our three night stay.

We had an uneventful drive down late Friday night. There was some traffic, but overall it was a pleasant journey. We stopped at a McDonald's in Delaware along the way so both Adam and his parents could eat. Karl ordered a cherry pie, which they were out of. So he ordered an apple pie. None of those. As he switched his order to a sundae, the ice cream machine broke. The manager generously offered Karl anything on the menu he wanted, free of charge. So he ordered an orange juice (the only other sweet thing available) and got a very large one for free!

On Saturday, we spent some time in our favorite Philly haunts. We went to the Italian Market in both the morning and afternoon. First, we had $3 bacon, egg, hash brown, and toast breakfasts at a little hole-n-the-wall eatery. Then we went to the famous kitchen store, Fante's and picked up some odds and ends. Next, we went to the Spice Corner, which carries every dry item you would ever need for your pantry. Planning a pasta making session for the near future, I purchased some semolina flour along with beet and spinach powder for tri-color pasta.

We had lunch at the famous Lorenzo's Pizza at the corner of 9th & Christian. We've found that they just don't make anything close to that in DC! (We also bought some of their dough to bring home and freeze.)

In the evening, we met up with Gus, Retna, and Kristen. We had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant in South Philly, then retired to Gus & Retna's home to watch the Philly's game.

On Sunday, we attended the services at Tenth Presbyterian. This was like coming home for us. This is the place we met, the place we were married, and the place where many of our dearest friends worship. Adam got to meet many new people, including his Aunt Karen. Adam did very well despite all of the overstimulation of strangers touching his toes and rubbing his head all day. His eyes were wide open as we left in the evening, but he slept well at night! After evening service, we joined some friends for dinner at Applebee's.

On Columbus Day, we headed to the Independence Mall area. We visited my old workplace, where all of my former teacher colleagues ooh'd and ahh'd over Adam's blonde hair and blue eyes. While in the area, we picked up some delicious buttercreams and caramels from our favorite chocolatier, Lore's. Then we joined our friends Luke and Debra, and their children Thomas and Nathaniel, for lunch at their home. Debra prepared a delicious and authentic Norwegian meal, which included Sweedish meatballs, Ligonberry jelly, Fiskeboller, potatoes, and an apple salad. For dessert we had stoopwaffels, which I would describe as a pizelle with a thickened maple syrup-like filling. Delicious!

We left for DC in the mid-afternoon. We were sorry to leave our beloved city again, but glad to be back to our home routine. We remarked along the way about how much we would love to live in Philadelphia again, yet how much we know that God has us where he wants us right now.

Adam and his daddy in front of Daddy's favorite Rittenhouse Square statue

First time in Rittenhouse Square: He seems to sleep through all of his firsts!