Catching Up Tidbits

Sophie is at that awesome stage where she learns a new trick almost every day. Here is a list of things she has started doing in the last three weeks: crawling, pulling up to stand, walking while holding on to our fingers, clapping, signing "more", raising her hands above her head whenever we say, "Sophie's so big!" or, "Touchdown!", giving high fives, putting her hands on her head when we say, "Oh, no!" (or, conversely, putting her hands on her head and waiting for us to notice and say, "Oh, no!")....  The list goes on, but I think I've captured most of them.

She's still not too interested in food, and would rather nurse, unless she's at daycare, then she doesn't want her bottles and would rather eat food. All in all she's a happy, healthy girl, and if every baby were guaranteed to be so awesome, I'd have a dozen more. (I'm not going to have a dozen more.) She turned 10 months old yesterday, which I'm not sure is even possible. How in the heck is this year passing so quickly?

Gabbie is So. Very. Three. It's maddening and yet makes me love her all the much more at the same time. She and Sophie have started playing together, and will get each other squealing with laughter, and it sets my heart aflame with pride and love. These girls are so awesome I can't even stand it.

Gabbie is also thriving in preschool, although I still can't get anything out of her regarding what they did at preschool other than what they have for snack and, sometimes, what was brought in for show and tell that day. A couple of weeks ago she had her first field trip to a local apple orchard and pumpkin patch. I went along, and it was a blast. Of course, most of the kids liked the hay ride and donuts and cider the best, so the rest of the tour of where they make cider was a little difficult to get them through. It was nice getting to know some of the other kids and their parents, and I'm so glad I went.

We also have a halloween party this week in preschool, and she is so excited that it's going to be a long wait until Thursday for her! She's doubly excited because we signed up to make brownies. She's convinced she's never had brownies before (she has), and she can't wait to try them. (We have to designate all foods these days into two categories: she's eaten it before, or she's never eaten it before. She's very often wrong about the assigned category, which cracks me up. I love seeing her little quirks emerge as she gets older.)

Gabbie's first parent-teacher conference is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait to hear how things are going with her and preschool from the teacher's perspective, and perhaps even find out what they do every day!

Gabbie's favorite thing in the world to do these days is to go to the zoo. Any zoo will do, although she is partial to our local zoo, just because she knows it best (although she does wish that they'd have an elephant or a giraffe). A few weeks back on a beautiful Saturday, we headed over to the Detroit Zoo and had a blast. Then, just yesterday, we went to Boo at the Zoo here in town. It was a gorgeous fall day, and all the little kids were completely adorable in their costumes. And, because we go so often (and we got to skip the line to sign up), we bought an annual membership to the zoo.

I have pictures of everything above, but haven't had time to download them from my new camera, with which I am in deep love. I plan on doing that this week before it gets some major use this coming weekend. Hopefully.

It's nice to know my family has so much faith in me

Today is likely one of the last warm days of the year, so I decided to live it up and wear a skirt. It's all excitement around here all the time, as you can tell! Anyway, I already had the iron out to press Gabbie's dress for picture day today, so I thought I'd wear my favorite khaki skirt that I never wear because it always has to be pressed. The iron was downstairs, so I came down in just my underpants (and a shirt, of course) with my skirt in hand on the way to the ironing board.

Halfway down the stairs Gabbie looked at me and said, all incredulous-like, "Mom! You forgot your pants!"

About five minutes later (I was waiting for the iron to heat up, so I was still pants-less) Aaron walked into the kitchen, and said, "Um, Jess? You know you're not wearing pants, right?"

Now I know that my family thinks I am the type of person that would forget to wear pants.

My Sweet Girls

Due to various circumstances, including a nice bonus from work and our old camera dying, I got my birthday/Christmas present incredibly early this year - a Nikon DSLR! I have been wanting a better camera for a long time now; we've had our previous camera for about 7 years which is forever for a digital camera.

Of course, I had to break it out as soon as I could last night and have some fun with it!

Sophie, at just over 9 months, is not crawling yet, but is not far from being on the move:

I finally managed to get Gabbie to give me a good smile, not a goofy three-year-old funny face. (My secret: telling her to say, "I'm a silly monkey!" It's a hit with the preschool set.)

Between these two and the busiest time of year at work I feel like I barely have time to breathe these days, but I'm glad I have these two around to keep me smiling. They're so busy being adorable most of the time, that I just about melt on a daily basis.