Weekend Visit

Guess who's in town?!








Check back for more great photos of this fun morning! I missed them with my camera, so I will beg for them...

Memories for the Baby Book

Here's a list of memories for the baby book....

1. Out of the blue, Abby told me this week, "I want to go have a good time with Mimi". Later that afternoon, she told me, "I am going to have a good day outside" as she opened the door to the backyard.

2. Abby told me today, "Baby's in time out" So I asked her whether she had explained to Baby what she had done wrong to get into time out. She told me that "Baby hit Cindy (the one of her many baby dolls fortunate enough to have a real name)". Then, she walked back to her room to change Cindy because "Cindy had poopoo"

3. After a big rainstorm last week, Abby says from the backseat looking out her window toward Broadway , "Mama there's an ocean". I did not even know she knew the word "ocean"

4. In a store last week, out of the blue, she said to me "I want to change my attitude"

5. Jake went to Dallas last week for most of the week. When I told Abby she said, "I want to invite some friends over"... I am completely serious. That is what she said! Whoa! That's not supposed to be an issue until the teenage years...

6. The entire week Jake was gone in Dallas, Abby kept saying to me, "Is mMy Daddy at Fiesta Texas?" We had explained that Dallas is a city in Texas, and she obviously thought we said "Fiesta Texas".

7. She is in to showers now, rather than baths. She says "rainbow drops keep falling on my head"
8. Believe it or not, I am aleady hearing "Katie is pulling my hair!" and "Katie is kicking me!" when Abby stands too close to Katie.

9. When she does not know a name, she says "hi somebody"

10. She told me the other day, "I made this all by myself; I am a big girl!"

11. She also said one day "you a good mommy".

12. Mosquitoes have been interrupting our peace lately in the house. At dinner, Abby suddenly exclaims, "Wait a minute, Mommy! Squito is on your drink. Put it down right now!" Then she proceeded to hit my glass to get the "squito"

13. After taking a big swig of milk one time last week, she said "I got bigger, Daddy"

14. Daddy broke his toe this week. When Abby saw it, she said to him "that's sad" with genuine compassion. We were so amazed. She overheard Jake explaining to me that it was black and blue. She later said, "toe has black and white on it?"

15. She was standing on my Bible that I accidentally left on the floor this week. I told her, "Abby, please do not stand on Mommy's Bible. Those are God's words to us. We don't want to stand on them. Mimi overheard me and said, "actually, we do want to stand on God's Word..." point taken!

Making cake with Popop! Abby says, "I'm making!"

After school one day

Firefighters visited Abby's school a few weeks ago

I went up to the school for the firemen's presentation and stayed to shoot some photos on the playground. It was kind of fun to be a fly on the wall for my little girl's independent activities.

No surprise that Abby wanted to push the other kids as fast as she could, rather than ride...

I don't remember what caused this fit, but I thought the picture was cute.

Making cookies! She is actually getting good at baking (which is not helping my efforts to lose the baby weight!)

Classic Abby pose... had to have it for the baby book. When she is concentrating extra hard or is tired, out of her element, or in trouble, she typically has her paci in her mouth, while holding her blankie right under her nose.

Mimi and I knew that something was up when Abby wanted to cuddle with Mimi rather than play in the middle of a Saturday afternoon... then conked out in the car on the way home... sure enough, she had a tummy virus a few weekends ago.

Mimi made it all better by getting Abby a new snow white pillow, which she now insists on putting under her head every night.

Yay for the rain (and my new rain boots!)

Daddy's little girl...

Father Abraham

Here's a fabulous father-daughter performance of "Father Abraham". Abby loves performing "Father Abraham" and "Doctor Nicker-Bocker" these days.

Katie in the Spotlight

Katie girl, it's your turn for a moment in the spotlight. Here are some of the latest photos of you, our little "Katie-bug".

You are a great nighttime sleeper. Starting at about 10 weeks, you began consistently sleeping for twelve hours every night. So peaceful. Thank you!


You always wake up with a huge smile and with your legs kicking like crazy.


You are a little inchbug... no matter that we put you down to sleep tightly swaddled at one end of your crib in a sleep positioner, you almost always wake up the next morning still tightly swaddled but down at the completely opposite end of the crib. Your Daddy calls you an inchbug, quietly inching around your crib in your swaddle.

You LOVE bathtime. It is undoubtedly your favorite part of every day.

But sometimes a very serious face comes over you and you kick your legs as furiously as possible, as if you are in the final push toward an imaginary finish-line.

Your Daddy used to think his world might just stop if he lived in a household of all girls, but now I think he is living it up. He adores you and your sister. If he didn't have all girls, he wouldn't be able to say affectionately "my girls" like he does so often.

You like your Bumbo seat, but I usually find a pool of spit-up around the base of your seat. You can spit up with the best of them. You have the attention-hungry cough down... fake coughing to get our attention. Abby never did that, but then again, she was never competing for attention with a big sister.

You love Bunny. I laugh at how soon you became attached to a "lovie." On the other hand, you are not nearly as fond of your paci as your big sister has always been. You like it to help you go to sleep, but spit it out at any other time of the day.

You are a happy girl with a great big grin that lights up our days.

You find life full of wonder and surprise.

And you ponder it all over in your cute little head.

One of these days, I just know that when your words begin to come, you will have all the answers for us all.

Sisters in the Pumpkin Patch

Now looking at the photos from this afternoon's activities, I can't say that my pumpkin patch selection for our photo this year was perfect! Is it possible that the pumpkin directly in front of Katie scares her? I was flying solo on this mission, and was very focused on getting a shot with both girls at least looking at the camera before the very short window of opportunity closed.. so the scary ugly pumpkin completely escaped my attention!

Here are a couple that turned out pretty well. Abby was doing a great job holding Katie.


This photo below makes me laugh, because their expressions are so similar...as if they are both saying, "Come on, Mom! Enough already!"



Abby insisted that she was going to take this wheel barrow home instead of a cute little pumpkin in the patch behind her...


Maybe I can get some traction if I just pull from this angle...

Exercising With Daddy

This is a video I took within the first few weeks after Katie was born. Abby saw Jake riding the stationary bike and began to play copy cat. When he wiped his face, she wiped her face. When he pumped his arms up and down, she did too. Of course, she went on to "shake her booty", "get dizzy" and many other extras that Jake didn't. It is interesting to point out that all this happened on the same morning that Abby pulled Aunt Joyce's homemade cobbler off the kitchen counter to eat all by herself for "dinner" on a Saturday morning (see 8/26/09 post), so there was a pretty decent amount of sugar involved in this display of frenetic energy. Sorry so long... got lazy on the editing.

Guess Who?

Whoever guesses correctly which kid is in each of the following photos gets their very own night of babysitting Abby & Katie!!! Haha :-)

A.
B.
C.
D.

Defining Excitement

This series of photos should be published in the dictionary under the definition of "excited". Pure excitement, without the assistance of sugar in any form. She begged for dip dots, but Mimi and I held our ground. She strutted through the Wiggles Town at Fiesta Texas as if she owns the place, now that she knows her way around. It's remarkable how much fun you can have as an adult watching a kid be a kid. Thanks once again Mimi! And thanks Popop for the yummy homemade dinner!

Abbyisms

1. Last weekend when it was cold and rainy, we walked into Mimi and Popop's house to see Abby's first fire in a fireplace. She had a perplexed look on her face, and then as if she figured it all out, said to Popop, "you got meat?" She has only seen fire in the BBQ in the backyard where Popop grills "meat".

2. Recently when I was sitting on the floor playing with Katie, Abby walked up behind me and gave my shoulder a little squeeze, while leaning forward to my face & said affectionately, "have a good day, Mom?" She was mimicking her Dad.

3. When she had a stomach virus last weekend and slept a lot, she kept telling me "I sleeping good." This round of tummy yuckies was much easier than ever before since she understands what I am saying whe I explain that she can't have any food. She told me every half hour that she was better and that she wanted chocolate milk.

4. She told me the other day that it is "Abby's job to take care for Katie" (I tell her regularly that she needs to be gentle with Katie because it is her job to take good care of her sister).

5. Sad to say that Katie woke up with a bug bite on her leg one morning last week. When Abby noticed it, she said "Katie have owie..." then she proceeded to fold her hands and pray "Dear God, Katie owie. Amen"

6. She told me on Saturday when she woke up that she was "tooting in sleeping"

Katie's "Bathtism"

Katie was baptized at church a few weeks ago as a sign of God's covenant promise of grace. The whole family stood on the stage along with the other families participating in the baptism and kept a close eye on Abby. Although she did not spontaneously break into song or holler out "where's Jeff?" or begin undressing on the stage, she did wave and holler out several times "Hi, Popop" & "Hi, Mimi". For a week afterward Abby would frequently grab Katie's hand and excitedly say close up in Katie's face, "Katie you got bathtized!" Then one night when Katie and Abby were taking a bath, Abby suddenly leaned toward Katie's little tub and dumped a cup of water on her head. It startled me, and I instantly told her "No!" and demanded to know why she did that. She responded by saying that she was bathizing Katie.




Don't be fooled... this next picture is Abby, not Katie!