"8, 8, 8!!"

I know this is dark and probably hard to see but it's fun to hear Caleb saying his number as he puts the puzzle together so make sure you can hear him.

hope you like

Uh-oh Sadie

I just thought I would post a little clip of Sadie. I noticed her making these sounds earlier this week and it comes really close to resembling "uh-oh". It's hardly surprising that she's put those sounds together. That's a constant phrase in this house these days with an occasional "uh-oh boom." Sadie is also starting to stand on her own a little and is trying to walk more and more holding on to fingers.

We're eagerly awaiting for a top tooth to poke through. You can see the bump and she's almost constantly drooling. She has rediscovered her bouncer seat and especially loves it when I bring it on onto the front porch when Caleb is playing outside. She also loves playing "run away from mama or dada" which is really her crawling out towards the stairs in the hallway and waiting for us to come and drag her back into the bedroom. She gets close enough to the stairs that I'm not sure she wouldn't try to go down them but still stays back enough to not fall down. I keep having visions of her tumbling down the stairs but so far she's been good. This his brought up a new challenge for us. Caleb loves his freedom and enjoys being able to decided when he wants to play upstairs and when he wants to play downstairs. But as Sadie gets bigger, it's getting harder to keep her in one place.

I can't believe summer is quickly coming to an end and in a little over a week, I'll have a 2 yr old on my hands.

Puzzle video clip

So I've returned after spending a few days down in Atlanta with my good friends and their new baby girl. She is adorable but I am happy to be back with my own babies. I missed them terribly but I knew that they were in capable hands (my husband and his mom).

I don't have time to update much. Caleb is talking even more and one of his favorite things to do is put together jigsaw puzzles. He's quite good at them. The kid has a really good memory.

Sadie is getting more and more steady on her feet and is so quick when she crawls, especially when there is something in particular that she's after (like one of Caleb's matchbox cars).

the Baby Einstein thing

So, I was reading blog posts and articles on the recent Baby Einstein controversy. I found them really interesting and decided that I wanted to put my 2 cents in on the topic.

Limit exposure to 'Baby Einstein' and 'Brainy Baby'

I found the articles really interesting but I'm worried about the direction this debate is going to take in the "real world" of parenting. I highly doubt that parents are strapping their children into bouncer seats and forcing them to watch Baby Einstein as some bizarre punishment (though many adults might thing it is punishment). Many parents show the videos because they think it might be beneficial if only by giving mom or dad a moment to collect their thoughts. These are not bad parents.

We seem to be so insecure about our parenting abilities that we eagerly look for ways to point out what other parents are doing wrong. I admit, I get sucked into this mentality myself. We forget that when you get these small infants, they don't come with a handbook of instructions on how to raise them up into wonderful, productive adults. In many cases we're all fumbling around in the dark, trying to keep the peace and maintain our own sanity while not damaging our kids too much. Ultimately though, our children our really God's children and He has the most control over how they develop and who they grow to be.

So I admit, Caleb has watched Baby Monet and his Baby Beethoven CD has saved our sanity on many car trips, much to my husband's dismay. My husband, Andy, enjoys classical music and was not thrilled with the electronic music box sound of the baby CDs. On one car trip, we even tried to switch out the baby CD with a real recording of Beethoven. Caleb cried. We tried playing a real recording of Peter and the Wolf. Caleb cried. So we resigned ourselves to listening to the baby CDs because within a few minutes of Caleb hearing it, he would stop crying and within 15 minutes, he would fall asleep.

Now, he watched Baby Monet every so often when I had a more complicated dinner to get together in our old apartment or when I needed some assurance that he wouldn't be getting into trouble in our house where I can't see what he's up to from the kitchen. Most of the time, he didn't really pay attention to them. He preferred to play with his toys and would only look up at the TV every now and then. I didn't do this to make him more intelligent but it did seem to be something he enjoyed and responded to.

I don't think I should feel guilty about letting my child watch a video geared to babies. I don't think my parents were ever concerned about what TV I watched growing up and some of my earliest memories are of Bugs Bunny and The Price is Right. I don't believe that Caleb watching these videos has had an impact on his development. I don't believe that I'm a neglectful parent because I used a 30 min video to occupy my child so that I could get supper on the table. I don't think that Caleb or Sadie lack for social interaction because we have videos every now and then. Maybe I am justifying my actions but I'm very proud of how my toddler has developed and I have no concerns about how intelligent he's going to be with or without videos. I love him for the sweet adorable boy he is.

so for all the grandparents and family hoping for an update on the kids i'll have a post on thm very oon. now i have to run cause sadie is up and wiggling out of my arms

ABC's

So Caleb is surprising us again. We've discovered that the boy can recognize about 3/4 of the alphabet. This came up on Saturday when Daddy was wearing a college t-shirt. We new that Caleb could recognize I and T but then he started pointing to daddy's shirt saying "O, I, C, S, O, N." He got a little mixed up because the D's and the O's looked very similar to him. Later that night, we were reading Kipper's A to Z and he was able to name most of the letters in the book. Then he got his toothbrush, which is Elmo and says that on it, and said "E, L, M, O."

It's crazy thinking that less than a month ago, he didn't talk at all. But the kid is definitely absorbing what's going on around him. I'm amazed at the memory he has not only how quick he'll remember pictures or words in a story but how accurately.

Sadie continues to play peek-a-boo with everything- today she tried a puzzle piece, a block, a burp cloth, and when she doesn't have anything with her, she puts her hands up next to her ears and waits for you to say where's Sadie. She's not walking yet but is becoming very fast at crawling and has even crawled over to the stairs. That might be the next step- crawling up the stairs but I think her legs are a little too short just yet. That might be wishful thinking on my part, though.

Well, I'm off to Georgia for a few days to visit a friend. G'ma from New Jersey will be staying to watch the kids while Andy works. Who knows what Caleb will be saying when I get back.

1,2,3,4 and other updates

Caleb is counting!! Can't quite believe it but he's been pretty consistent with counting the stairs when he walks down them- 1, 2, 3, 4 - we have more stairs than that but he doesn't seem to like the number 5. He won't say 5 but if you say 5, he'll say 6. I even think I heard him say 7 yesterday but I'm not sure about that.

Oh, I should probably add that this whole talking thing began last week when we were out in NJ with Andy's parents. He just started saying different words- so many that I can't keep track of them. A sample of his new vocab-
hot, help, up, down, boat, bus, dig, T, S (is pretty good at recognizing those letters) hi, bye, more, hat, all done... that's all that I can think of right now. He won't say these things when you ask him to. He only uses them when he needs to- definitely not into performing on demand. But it is wonderful that he's actually answering questions for real- like if you ask "do you want a grape?" and he says "yes", he really means yes. I even got him to point to his cheek when he hurt it this morning and I asked what hurts. He's really becoming this little person and it's so great to watch.

We also can't seem to keep him in puzzles although the most recent batch have been taking him longer to master. I picked up some little 12 piece jigsaw puzzles of construction vehicles and he loves putting those together but he needs help with them. He still likes putting together his other puzzles but that lasts only about 10 minutes, then he's looking for something else to do.

Sadie is becoming more and more adventurous. She's crawled into the kitchen a few times and has made a couple of pit stops at the cat food dish. She hasn't eaten any yet but there is more of a curiosity to it than Caleb had. Sadie loves her big brother and is already quite good at annoying him. It doesn't matter what he's doing, she wants to be right there with him, usually trying to pull up by grabbing his legs or shoulders. He tries to move away from her to do something else and she follows right after him. I move her away from him and try to interest her in another toy and she crawls right back to him. I'm working on teaching Caleb to say "no no" to her so he doesn't get too frustrated. He knows he has to be gentle with her but this could definitely be an interesting year with the two of them. They are starting to play together a little. This morning, Sadie had Caleb's drum and would hit it to start music playing. Then Caleb would dance to the music. Then Sadie would clap for Caleb dancing. This went on for a good while and was so cute to watch. Sadie's also babbling a lot more. Ma ma, Da da, Ga ga, Ba ba. We're hearing these sounds a lot more.

Sadie was in for her 9 mos checkup and is doing well. She's 17 lb 1 oz and is 28 in long. Caleb will be in for his 2 yr check up next month. Time is just going by so fast.

Idlewild 2007

Okay, this is probably not the best time to write this but if I don't do it now, it probably won't get done for awhile. The past few days have been a little crazy around here as we're replacing the windows in our house and at the same time packing to go away for a week to visit the fam in NJ.

However, we did just enjoy a family picnic at Idlewild Park in Ligonier, PA over the weekend. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the park, it's a smallish amusement parks that is really great for families. They have StoryBook Forest, a great kiddie land and even a nice-sized water park. I've been going there for as long as I can remember and worked there as an artist when I was in college. I realized coming into the park, this was the first time I can remember ever paying myself and driving myself into the main entrance of the park (when I worked there, we went through a special employee entrance). It was very weird.

We went there Sunday morning with my mom and step-dad and lots of other family from her side. We got a pavilion near a little playground area so that Caleb could play and set up tons of food. Then Andy and I took the kids to walk through StoryBook Forest. This was fun but a little overwhelming for Caleb. It seems that while he loves people dressed up in Elmo suits and Wildcat suits, he does not like people dressed up in more realistic costumes- raggedy Ann, Goldilocks, even the Little Old Lady in the Shoe. He was very shy around all of them. Everything else, he seemed to like. His favorite spot was Gipetto's Workshop from Pinnochio. It was just a little one-room cottage, that had a workbench set up with toys, but Caleb kept going back to look inside. It was fun to walk through and neat to scope out the artist stand that I used to work at.

After that we went back to eat lunch before venturing out to ride rides. Caleb enjoyed tiring out Andy and "uncle" Chris (Jackie's boyfriend) at the playground and getting filthy in the process. Sadie was the little doll baby who was passed around from aunt to cousin to aunt and she was so happy but so sleepy. There wasn't really a place for napping but Andy managed to get her to sleep for a little while in her stroller while we enjoyed some really delicious picnic food.

When the eating was done, we saw that we had a very tired toddler on our hands but no place for him to rest so we decided to just plow through and get him on rides to see if he would get a second wind. I should probably mention that he was running on little sleep after being up a good bit of Saturday night (we're not really sure why). Caleb went off with Jackie and Chris and Andy and the rest of the family followed shortly behind. I stayed and fed Sadie before taking her over to the kiddie rides. Caleb loved the rides and was even very patient standing in line waiting for his turn. He rode on motorcycles, cars, dinosaurs and boats. He rode special hand-crank carts with Andy. His favorite ride of all was the Doodlebug- a little bus that goes round in a circle. We didn't get to make it through the Mr. Rogers trolley because the line was too long for our tired little boy so we walked back over to the main park. Sadie enjoyed ice cream with Aunt Jackie- she tried pulling herself out of her seat to get bites. Caleb rode the carousel with G'ma Susie. Later I took Sadie on the carousel and she seemed to like that a lot. Kept trying to eat the reins though. The carousel had very strange music, if you ask me. I'm not used to hearing Johnny Cash songs being played on the carousel organ but that's just me :-)

After all of this, Caleb was fading fast so we decided to head back to the picnic area and pack up but not before one more stop so Caleb could have some ice cream. We got back and had time for some quick family pictures before heading back home.

The kids passed out and slept almost the whole ways into Pittsburgh and even after we got home, they were very happy to go to bed. Not a bad day for our first family trip to Idlewild.