Sadie's Doctor Visit

We were back at the doctor's today for Sadie's 1 yr checkup. Pretty uneventful except that she has a slight ear infection that we need to watch. This surprised us because she hasn't really showed any symptoms but at least we caught it.

She's 29.5 inches tall and weighs 21 pounds, very average in comparison with other kids.

She got a couple of shots and seemed to handle them really well. She was her happy little self all evening- so I don't think she's going to have a bad reaction to the shots.

Caleb got his flu shot today and really didn't like that but recovered once he got his promised pretzel. In his defense, I had to wake him up from his nap early so we wouldn't be late for the appointment and he's really been needing longer afternoon naps.

that's all for now

Happy Birthday Sadie-girl!

Sadie is one today!! and I think Caleb is more excited about it than she is but what can you expect. Lots has happened in the past year.

Sadie has grown into a tough little monkey. I have to watch her almost constantly because she loves to climb on things and has no fear of falling. At the grocery store she's like Houdini, able to get out of the shopping cart restraints in just 2 minutes. I'm tempted to stop strapping her in altogether because it just seems like I'm only giving her practice. Now she doesn't try to actually get out of the cart itself- she just likes to stand up and bounce and turn around to check everything out- but I think it won't be long before she realizes that she can climb from the seat into the basket.

Sadie very much wants to be a big girl and shows us that all the time. While she is quite capable of climbing up the stairs, she waits for a hand because she wants to walk up like her big brother. She's also gotten very good at coming down the stairs on her own but that still makes me nervous.

Sadie started walking over the past couple of weeks and is building up how many steps she can take. Last night, Daddy reported, she walked for the bathroom cupboard to the toilet while carrying a rubber duck in each hand (very impressive) :-) Sadie loves bathtime. She'll stand next to the tub, watching the water and then she's try to climb in by lifting her leg over the side. She's also started helping to carry her bath toys from the cupboard to the tub. In the tub, she loves standing up and looking at her reflection in the faucets. We had to do away with the bathring months ago because again, she would climb out of it. We're working on getting her to sit in the tub so bathtime can be a bit of a battle.

Her favorite toy is still her "Bear," a little bear head attached to a soft silky bit of blanket- it sounds weirder than it actually looks. Bear is her pacifier and helps her to calm down when she's sad.

Her favorite song is "Itsy Bitsy Spider" but she really loves any music and loves to dance.

Her favorite book is Brown Bear, Brown Bear and we know that because she will actually drag it over to us and sit in our lap to hear it (the only time she ever sits still). She also likes our cloth Noah's Ark book that has removable characters. She'll take out the girl's (Noah's wife and daughter-in-law) and carry them around the room. She really seems to like people. She loves the Little People and sets the up on the couch or lets them ride in the one car that Caleb lets her play with. Sadie also likes cars though and will roll them back and forth on the floor- just like big brother.

Outside, Sadie's favorite thing is the rocking horse (thank you Tom and Theresa for leaving that behind). She has so much fun rocking back and forth on it. She makes us nervous sometimes because she can get a little wild on it.

Sadie is talking a little but not much. She consistently says mama and dada and ba and we've caught her saying all done. I think she's put talking on the backburner while she works on mastering walking.

Also I would not be painting an accurate picture if I didn't mention that the girl loves to eat :-) She will eat anything but not everything ( I'll get to that in a minute). You can't even think of giving Caleb a cracker or a pretzel without giving her one. At dinnertime we're offering her lots of different things. She seems to favor corn. But during meals she'll randomly decide that one bite is not good so she'll drop it on the floor, then eat another bite.

It has been a fun year with this addition to our family. She's such a blessing. We love our Sadie-girl.

Happy Halloween

okay, so I'm a couple days late but I've been fighting a cold. We did have lots of fun on Halloween. Sadie was a monkey that we felt was only too appropriate because she will climb on anything. Caleb was a farmer or what I also like to call the "I'm a 2 yr old and I won't wear anything remotely resembling a costume" so he wore his overalls and a plaid shirt and carried around Puppy and Sneeze-Bear and was quite happy.

We waited outside for Daddy to come home from work and then walked up and down our street for a little while. The kids got a lot of candy for only having a tiny little bag to carry it. I wasn't really expecting people to give Sadie candy but she got plenty. We made it almost back to the house when Caleb decided that he'd had enough. We got back to the house and I mentioned chicken nuggets and milk and that was it. Even with all the candy- the boy wanted his chicken nuggets. He did get to try a reese's peanut butter cup and really liked that.

Sadie will get candy next year. Fortunately we also got some snack packs of gold fish and pretzels for her to enjoy.

happy halloween

Sadie's Walkin'

Finally, we can say it! The girl is starting to walk- up to 4 or 5 steps at a time and gaining confidence to try more all the time. Although, she still sometimes likes to take couple of steps and then just dive face-forward to me or Andy so you really have to be careful with this one. Sadie's walking has developed very differently from Caleb. He seemed to just decide one day that he was ready to try it and from within the next couple of days he was walking all over (still wobbly and falling down but walking more than crawling). That day happened to be when he turned 11 mos. Now Sadie on the other hand has been standing up and cruising since about 8 or nine mos. We thought for sure that she would be walking by Caleb's birthday but that day came and went and she was not interested in even trying. At the beginning of Oct. she could very easily stand up on her own with out holding onto anything but she would not take a step, no matter how small and how much we tried to urge her on. So now that she's walking, I can't exactly pinpoint the day that she took her first steps. A couple weeks ago, she started doing little half step to get places that she couldn't reach but again, she would not try it if were pushing her to. As she's started taking more steps, we've been really cheering her on so that she wants to do it more and that does seem to be working.

It's hard to imagine that very soon, I will have 2 toddlers running around.

I have to admit, Caleb has been very tolerable of Sadie as she has become more and more of a presence in his space. He's gotten very good and saying "mine" and "no, no, Sadie" and surprisingly that words frequently come out before any kind of pushing or shoving action. He's been so good at sharing his toys. We started out trying to keep his puzzles and his cars just for him but Sadie is just too quick and determined to get into things. And when I discovered that Caleb didn't really have any objections, it didn't really seem worth the energy. It's much more challenging trying to keep her from eating the crayons (and we're not talking just chewing on the crayons- we're talking biting decent sized chunks off).

Caleb is becoming our little mimic but is also very good at saying full sentences. Lately, when he doesn't see something (a toy or person or thing) he says that it's missing. This started a while ago with his books (of course). We would read to him and if pages got stuck together he would say "oh no. Missin' a page." Then we started missing puzzle pieces so he would walk around singing "missin' a piece." Today, we're out at my G'ma and Papa's house (the Bushes) and when I told him that the backhoe was working he said "oh no, missin' backhoe."

One final note- Andy wins the Great Daddy Award. He put Caleb to bed last night and it was a little more challenging then usual. Caleb sat for his stories, brushed his teeth, and happily said goodnight to me but when Andy put him in bed, he started sobbing. He wanted Toot and Puddle (another story). So Andy read him this final story and again, the boy started crying when he went to turn off the light. Caleb wanted Mike Mulligan (another story). Well, it seemed like he was using a stall tactic so Andy said no more stories and it was time for bed. Caleb went to sleep with a little protest but not much and we blamed it on the cold he's still fighting. We went to sleep only to wake up at about 12:45 this morning to Caleb crying again. Andy went to get him and couldn't understand what he was saying or why he was upset. He eventually understood mommy and brought him into me and I tried to figure out what he wanted. We got him a drink and calmed him down a bit but still weren't quite sure what was going on (it's been a while since he's gotten up like this in the night). We went to put him back in bed and he started crying again but this time Andy could make out "Mike Mulligan." So Andy put him in bed and at about 1:30 am and then read Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Caleb happily went to sleep after the story without any more fussing.

And I got to stay cozy warm in bed :-)

More Pumpkins

A busy weekend with a visit from CJ. CJ is Caleb's alter ego. CJ throws tantrums, misbehaves and generally spends his time in time out. CJ seems to be around most mornings until after he has an afternoon nap and then Caleb wakes up and plays with us happily until bedtime. CJ definitely tries our patience but our sweet Caleb was around for a good bit of the weekend.

Saturday we decided to try to find Trax Farm. We had no idea how big it was and spent a good 2 hours there. Caleb loved the petting zoo. His favorites were the horses and he almost went on a pony ride. We were going over to get in line for the pony rides when a little kids train came by and that was it for Caleb. He forgot about the ponies and only wanted to ride the train. He waited nicely in line with daddy and really enjoyed his ride.

Sadie liked the petting zoo too. She was not afraid at all of touching the different animals. The only problem we had was that she wanted to crawl and that was not a good idea.

After the train ride we got to climb on pumpkins. I think this was Sadie's favorite part. She seemed to really enjoy watching the kids and trying to climb on the big pile of pumpkins. Caleb was content to stay on the ground and just try to move the pumpkins. It was fun watching as he figured out that the could roll and he would push really hard until it moved. Caleb also liked the large wooded jack-o-lantern. He stood for the longest time just looking at it and saying "oh, beeg, pumpkin." The whole day was a lot of fun and I highly recommend going there for a visit.

Sunday was a day spent with CJ. It was amazing that we actually made it to church. The boy was being put in time out left and right for pushing Sadie or throwing toys or just needing some time to settle down. Apparently at church he was an angel (of course). We hoped Caleb would come home with us but even as we pulled in the driveway, we knew CJ had come home instead. For some reason, he didn't want to go home but we couldn't figure out where he wanted to go. After trying to talk to him and reason with him for a little while, I had to just drag him into the house. Then just about everything made him unhappy. We finally decided to just read him stories and put him to bed and after a long nap, Caleb woke up and was quite pleasant the rest of the day.

Sadie's still refusing to walk but she's starting to say something that resembles all gone or all done. She still loves dancing and playing music and tries to get the toys to make music for her like Caleb did.

Saturday evening, I caught them playing peek-a-boo over the coffee table. It was so adorable to see them popping up and down and giggling at each other. Caleb also sat with me for about a half hour looking through the National Geographic magazine. He liked looking at the pictures but there weren't too many animals in this issue. His favorite picture was of the chimpanzee who went into space. We explained the picture to him a little and he proceeded to sing "spaceship panzee, spaceship panzee." Very cute.

Caleb's Pumpkin

Okay, it's late but I'm so excited I just had to post my picture. This was taken over the weekend in Philly and through the magic of photo editing, I made a really neat, bright orange pumpkin. Okay, so maybe it isn't that neat but I think it's a pretty cool picture and I'm happy because I'm new to this whole photo-editing wackiness.

It does help to be married to a computer genius- I can just say "I want to do this" and he shows me how.

Alright- good night everyone

Back home and the big boy bed

Well, we survived our trip out to Philly but it was a challenge, beginning Thursday night. Sadie's getting about 3 teeth right now and has been very uncomfortable. After going to be quite nicely at 8, Sadie woke up at 10:30 crying. We gave her some tylenol and tried to put her down again but it wasn't working. She would be quiet for a few minutes and then would start crying. Andy and I took turns holding her and she would fall asleep in our arms but once we tried to put her down, she would wake up again. This went on until we got the hint and realized that we were going to have to sit up with her all night. I lasted until 2:30 but I just can't sleep sitting up on the couch, so Andy took over for the rest of the night. And we still had packing to do before heading out.

We managed to get packed and actually got on the road by 11 which wasn't too bad considering how tired we were. Traffic wasn't bad so we managed to get to Breezewood and had a late lunch. The rest of the trip went really well. Caleb and Sadie napped on and off and when they weren't napping, they were content to look at books- and we had plenty. We were making really good time until we got just outside of Philly. We had timed it perfectly to arrive in the middle of rush hour traffic so the last 15-20 min took way too long. By this point, Caleb was tired of being in the car and began fussing. I tried my best to point out police cars and tower cranes just to distract him.

By the end of the trip, I had started to develop a bad headache.

We got to Betsy's and unpacked and had dinner. Caleb loved seeing Betsy and she quickly became his favorite. The grandparent's showed up a little after 8. The kids visited a little and then we started getting them into bed. Once again, Sadie was up most of the night crying. Thankfully, Andy and his parents took turns with her because I was so out of it with my headache.

Saturday morning, we got up and had breakfast then set out for Franklin Square park. It's this really cute little park that is right before you get to the Ben Franklin Bridge. We took the subway and passed some of the historical sites before getting to the park. At the park, Caleb and Sadie rode the carousel, picked pumpkins and painted them (Caleb painted), listened to stories, played at the playground and rode a train. We also had a picnic lunch and couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather. After lunch, the kids were tired and the grownups were tired so we headed back for naps and dinner.

Dinner was from a pizza place where you actually have to reserve your dough- they apparently only make so much fresh dough every day and when it's gone, it's gone. Betsy was nice enough to get some GF pizza shells for me so I had that but I couldn't resist the talk about this pizza. I tried a small bite and I'm very thankful that I didn't get sick from it. I didn't think that it was that great- definitely not Jioio's so I didn't feel too bad missing it. Betsy also found these wonderful GF gobs that I got to enjoy while they all had cupcakes and cookies.

Sadie slept Saturday night and we were all happy for that. We all woke up the next morning to hear Caleb talking about waking up Betsy and that's what he did. After lunch we packed up and headed back on the road but not without Caleb getting very upset at having to leave Betsy and G'ma. But we did make it home- this time with no traffic and everyone slept really well last night.

Today was exciting because Andy changed Caleb's bed from a crib to a toddler bed. Last night, Caleb insisted on going to sleep on the futon and he did. So tonight Andy read him stories and he happily laid down with puppy, sneeze bear and lion (who is actually a dinosaur) and the boy went to bed. No trips downstairs, no bouncing and thumping. The little boy is growing up.

For Sadie, the big change was that she got to sit at the dinner table with us instead of in her high chair. She's been so hard to keep strapped in, I got tired of fighting her and set up the other booster seat on the empty chair. It was so nice. She sat happily through dinner with out really trying at all to get out of her seat.