Our Weeks :: August 1-14

Meghan loves playing outside, on a not ridiculously hot morning, she enjoyed playing outside while Daddy and Mommy worked on yard work and sister napped.

She has discovered pencils and enjoys "writing letters" with them. It's just so cute!!

Meghan has been enjoying working with play-doh when Mommy is working on her Bible study during the day. This day she made a lot, a lot, a lot of snakes :)

We call this style - autonomy. She was so proud of her matching ability (and Mama was a little jealous as I'm sure I couldn't pull of mixing patterns in such a way!).

Katie's head holding skills are rapidly improving...she has started sitting in her Jumperoo for a few minutes each day and thinks it is a pretty awesome experience!

Meghan outgrew her old weighted blanket. We went to Hobby Lobby and she picked out the "peffect" fabric for me to make her new blanket. While I worked on the basic constrcution, she was with me in the sewing room and very interested in what I was doing and did lots of imitating.

So snug and cozy under her new blanket.

A relationship is starting to bloom between these two girls. Katie is always giddy to see Meghan and loves to watch whatever she is doing. Meghan enjoys tickling Katie, bringing her toys, narrating the events of her day, and holding her hand. It is SO. CUTE.

Meghan's imagination is awesome...note the baby pink love dragon who lived at her farm one day :)

She's a cleaning super star! A bib for a cape and a spray bottle hanging off of her oven mitt.

Meghan is very into imitative play and doing the same things as Mommy does. She enjoys using a long scrap of yarn and a large crochet hook to "cwoshay" when I work on my handwork.

Katie discovered her reflection in the mirror on the zebra in the pack-n-play.

She has been getting very good at grasping her toys, moving them to her, and getting pieces of them into her mouth.

Meghan enjoys playing mommy to her baby dolls. This day she was making ballerina baby dance.

Meghan brought Katie a few purses - gotta make sure we're raising her right! I'm so impressed with how eager she is to share with her sister - I'm hoping this continues!!

Katie is starting to show a lot of interest in holding onto toys. She is also starting to try to bring her hands together to move toys from hand to hand. She's not at all successful yet, but very interested.

Katie at Three Months

Eating:

• Taking 4 ounces of formula every 3 hours during the day; one feeding before Mom goes to bed. Sleeping through the night about half of the time! And waking between 3-5 to eat the other half of the time. 
• Still lots of spitting up - but still a happy spitter. 
• Had a tummy bug at the end of last week. You're super cuddly when sick and seem to be feeling better.

Sleeping:

• Still belly sleeping - so cute!!
• We rock for 5-10 minutes before nap, sing the "I Love You Song", and you rarely cry at all before falling asleep in your crib; generally nap 1.75-2 hours three times a day. 
• Fourth nap is a catnap if it happens - it's starting to disappear!
• Wiggle and move all over the crib during naps! You've even turned 180 degrees while napping!

Playing:

• Love watching the fan and the swing.
• Can grab toys and move them to your mouth. 
• Can bat at toys to make them make noise. 
• Love talking to mom and dad or to your toys. 
• Starting to be able to sit up, holding head, while in the jumperoo. Not playing with toys yet. 
• Love watching and talking to the monkey on your carseat.
• Starting to giggle and laugh.  
• Absolutely love bath time - super splasher!! 
• Love sucking on your fingers! You will often spit out your pacifier to suck your fingers instead. 

Growth:

• Wearing size 3 disposable diapers and no longer using cross-over snaps on cloth diapers 
• Wearing 6-9 month clothes even when not in cloth
• Super cute chub on arms and legs! I love the rolls on your thighs and your second chin!! 

Miscellaneous: 

• Your hair stands straight up - Daddy has taken to calling you "Spike" as a result. 

Our Week :: July 25-31

Meghan managed to get my flip flops on her feet and walk all over the first floor in them!

Katie is continuing to love toys that are hung on the side of her pack-n-play. She has been doing a lot of talking imitation when with them and with us. She is also getting very good at getting the parts of these toys to her mouth to chew on or batting them around. She got a tummy bug during this week, so there aren't as many pictures of her as normal.

We have been working on scaling back on tv/media, choices, toys, and books around here. Things had gotten more full and busy than we like during the craziness of the last year and a half. Meghan has been responding to it SO WELL! She has spent even longer periods of time engaged in imaginative play and the depth of that play has increased drastically! And we've had fewer tantrums! It was very much the right choice for us to make!!

Here she was making dinner for Daddy!

She built a "flower tower!"

With decreased book choices at a time, she is also spending longer periods of time reading books that she enjoys. I'm amazed by all the words she knows (from hearing us read them) when she reads to herself or to her stuffed animals.

She is my constant little imitator. This day, I was cleaning counters in the kitchen, so.....

SO MUCH animal play around here!

She has continued to love puzzles this week. The color one was a concept she just couldn't master two weeks ago - to match a color swatch to an image of something that color. This week when I got them out, she put them all together so easily.

She has also been loving putting together her See and Spell - matching the letters as puzzle pieces to spell words.

As I said above, the imaginative play has been exploding since simplifying and there has been so much animal play....this day the wooden animals were all eating out of or living in her colored blocks. So cute!

Meghan and I worked together to make a cheesecake .... it was so easy, so fun, and so delicious!

She also discovered pencils this week. She used one to circle numbers on this scrap paper as Cole would say them to her. Watching the cuteness of her doing "math" in her jammies, with crazy post-bath hair, with Daddy, at the counter just made my heart happy. I'm so glad we'll be homeschooling and this can be her experience of learning!!

Our Week :: July 18 - 24

Meghan has been super into "school" the last week or two so there are lots of pictures of that this week - which is great timing because we've been under extreme heat advisories and I just don't feel comfortable taking her (and especially not Katie) out when it's this hot. So, we've stayed inside and done lots of puzzling, reading, art and free playing.

She enjoyed working on these three letter word puzzles. She has just been very into puzzles this week and these were a fun twist on your typical jigsaw puzzle. 

We set up the jumperoo to have another place to hang toys from so that Katie could play out in the playroom with sister. She has been getting very good at using her hands to grab a hold of hanging toys that she wants to play with. She has also been getting very vocal! (There's a video of her "talking" on my instagram feed!)

It's no secret that Katie is growing, growing, growing but comparing the eleven weeker we have now with her back at one week makes for a pretty incredible comparison! In only ten weeks that itty-bitty-newborn has disappeared and this happy, lively, energetic baby has appeared in her place.

Lacing cards are tough - but this girl is building her concentration and endurance while playing with them. She finds them fun despite their difficulty and a week of practicing with them has definitely showed much improvement.

Bathtime is a very, very favorite time around this house. And, now that I have figured out a method for doing bathtime with both girls in the afternoon so that they both get lots of playtime and Katie gets down for a nap (in the bathroom - it totally works!) when she is ready, we have taken to doing this at least 2-3 days a week. I would gladly do it with them everyday - it's so much fun - but dinner wouldn't get made consistently and these people expect to eat everyday.

I have been trying to actively involve Meghan in my cleaning - she enjoys working on real work and enjoys that "special" time with Mommy. So, I have been giving her cloths to clean with me too. This day, she hung her cloths up on the trampoline handle after "washing" them in her sink. She declared that she was hanging them to dry like Mommy does - and that's how I dry our clothes - outside on the line. She is watching all the time and always learning!

A picture of Katie cuteness, because.....I mean, look at this girl....

We got out the finger paints this week. It had been nearly a year since we had last used them, but Meghan is a messy-sensory-experience-avoider and hasn't been wanting to get her hands messy. But she had SO. MUCH. FUN. She made a "tomato bush in the sky." So much creativity in this little mind!!