Sarah Kate--15 months

Sarah Kate is getting to be such a big girl! Is it possible we're starting the terrible twos already? That girl has some OPINIONS. She answers most questions with "no," although she does answer "yes" occasionally. She wants to eat whatever we're eating, and she lets us know by leaning toward the desired object, opening her mouth wide and saying "Ahhh!" She also does this when she sees me with a drink or sees any toothbrush. :)

One sweet new skill this month is giving kisses, complete with the sound effect, which she pronounces "mmm-NA!" When Daddy came home from work today, she said "hi! hi! hi!" over and over again, until she saw him kiss me, and then she said, "mmm-NA!"

Sarah Kate is slowly becoming more of a walker. She's taken up to 10 steps at a time by herself, and she loves to walk all over the house if she can just borrow one finger from someone else. Most of her walking has been done when she thinks no one is watching. If you try to get her to walk for you, forget it! So we might not have video of this feat for awhile.

She's also started using a fork, primarily because the other day she brought a little plastic fork from the toy tea set to lunch with her, and I noticed she was successfully stabbing banana slices and getting them to her mouth.  So I gave her an actual baby fork,  and she did great!

Sarah Kate has learned where her nose is but can't seem to remember any other body part. And while learning about her nose, she has discovered it has these two nifty holes in it that are just the right size for her finger. She spends a lot of time at the dinner table with a finger in her nose, just checking it out.

Will's new bike!

Last Sunday we got Will his first bike.  He's doing awesome with it already!  We're so proud of you, Will--you are such a big boy!

Sarah Kate--14 months

Sarah Kate continues to make us laugh with her babbling, squealing (must be a girl thing!), and laughing.  She is starting to do more pretend play with kitchen toys and dolls.  (While we're on the subject, she loves dolls!)  She loves to say "hi!" and points to things all day long saying "those?" and wanting me to either tell her what it is and/or give it to her so she can put it in her mouth.  She continues her obsession with shoes and often tries to get my shoes on her feet, which is an improvement over putting them in her mouth!

Sarah Kate loves books and will sit on my lap through however many books I have time to read.  Today she kept turning back to the front of "Peekaboo Kisses" several times until I finally put it away!  She has gotten really good at her upright crawl and shows very infrequent interest in walking.  She also went to the pool for the first time this past month.  She loves splashing in the water!  In fact, she gets upset if I'm holding her in the pool and she can't reach the water.

Here are some photos and videos from this month . . .

This one gets a little slow in the middle, but it's funny again at the end:

Baseball 2010

Christopher had a blast playing baseball this year.  We were blessed with fabulous coaches, and they were so encouraging to Christopher (despite a definite lack of natural ability).  At his age, they get three pitches from the coach, and then they get to try to hit it off the tee.  Midway through the season, I tried my best to talk Christopher out of his desire to play baseball next year, when the tee is absent.  He just wasn't hitting it from the coach at all.  Well, in his last game, he proved me wrong--he hit it with the coach pitching TWICE!  The last hit was a strong drive inside the third base line.  I was so proud of him!  He definitely earned the right to play again next year if he decides he wants to.  Here's some videos of photos of Christopher in action.

Last big hit:



Sliding into home:



Hitting off the tee, with his "fake-'em-out" strategy:

Practicing Piano

Do you think Christopher will ever learn to play the piano with all this "help" from Sarah Kate?

Cooking Shows

Today as Sarah Kate was playing with her kitchen toys (ok, they're mine, she doesn't have a play kitchen yet, poor thing), Christopher hatched the idea to film a cooking show.  And since we were home all day waiting for someone to puke (because Will had the night before), I was just desperate enough for entertainment that I let him waste a fruit cup and 1/2 cup milk on this little project.  Of course, Will had to follow in his footsteps, so it ended up being 2 fruit cups and 1 cup milk.  Anyway, here are all three kids' cooking videos.  They can get a little slow, but I find them entertaining! And in case you are wondering, we did eat "fruit cup dip" with tortilla chips at dinner tonight.