September 2011

We are 13 months old (translation one year, one month)! And Katharine is now 18 pounds and 13 ounces, while Christopher is 23 pounds and 8 ounces.

September was punctuated by wild weather and wonderful fun! We had a lot of rainy days, with some wild flooding! (One weather report said there was one day in the month without rain!) So we broke out the rain shields for our stroller! We had some chilly days, and some nice, sunny, warm ones. So we enjoyed quite a variety of indoor and outdoor activities, as well as just playing together at home.

We celebrated Mommy’s birthday with dinner out on a beautiful day, and took a walk by the Potomac in Old Town Alexandria. We had lots of fun looking at the boats and all the people around. It rained a lot (and flooded!) the week of Mommy’s birthday, so we went to two demonstration music classes, which were a lot of fun. Katharine liked observing, while Christopher loved throwing his arms in the air and crawling around the circle to try all the other babies’ instruments. All-in-all, a good time was had, and Mommy learned some new songs to sing with us.

Then Mommy took us with her on a pilgrimage to Georgetown Cupcakes, associated with the DC Cupcakes show on TV. She’s always wanted to go, so we braved driving into Georgetown on a very wet day. We were fortunate to get a parking spot right in front, during a break in the rain. We were one of the first 100 customers to get a free cupcake for knowing the Secret Flavor Of The Day, thanks to a tip from Mommy’s smart friend, Cristen. ☺ We had plenty of time to sit and enjoy playing with spoons while Mommy enjoyed cupcakes, because it poured and poured once we got there. Eventually, it slowed down enough for us to make our escape, but we were there long enough to take plenty of fun pictures! And we remembered to take some yummy cupcakes home to share with Daddy too!

Finally, the rain stopped, and it was sunny, but chilly. So we put on our jackets and warm fall outfits for our very first trip to the National Zoo! Daddy took some time off from work to meet us there, and we had so much fun! We were lucky enough to arrive just in time to see the elephants walking past us at the bottom of the hill. They were SO big! Then we got to see the apes, along with the little baby, out playing in the grass! And best of all, we arrived just in time to see the lion cubs open their birthday presents. They are one year old also, but they’re a LOT bigger than we are, and louder, too! They got to open colorful boxes with an icy meat treat to chew on, and were very excited about their gifts. We were SO interested in watching them, especially Christopher. Katharine sometimes gets nervous about big animals, but she was very brave on our trip! We can’t wait to go back again soon to see more!

We also went to a couple of picnics. The first was our neighborhood picnic in Clark’s Crossing. We got to meet some more of our neighbors, and saw our friends, Chase and Ashton, who are also one year old twins. They live up the street from us and we can’t wait to play together this fall!

The second picnic was to celebrate the beginning of the fall season at church. Mommy and Daddy took us to play in the nursery for the first time. Mommy kept us company for a little while, until we got to know the nice ladies there, and then we had a great time on our own. There are SO many new toys to play with there, and we can’t wait to go back! After playing, we went outside for the barbecue picnic. We had lunch on our picnic blanket, and got to meet some of the girls in our church who came over to play with us.

We celebrated Daddy’s birthday by going out to dinner at Lebanese Taverna, which was so pretty. At home, he got to open our gifts – our first bike helmets - so we can start getting ready to go biking with him! He was really surprised and excited about them.

One morning last week, we woke up to loud pounding and whirring sounds at our house! And there was no front door! The painters were here all day cleaning up the trim and repainting our shutters and front door – Mommy’s favorite color! You’ll have to see the pictures of our “new” house!

The first weekend of fall here was partly rainy and partly sunny (like most of the month!). In between rain showers, we were able to go out and enjoy some fun together at the Cox Farm Fall Festival. We saw lots of animals, went on a hayride, and took a lot of pictures as we explored all the neat things there for kids. We can’t wait to go back next year when we can ride the giant slides!

And the last day of the month, we went for a walk in Reston with Mommy and Miss Cindy. And it was so nice out, we went to dinner in the Town Center and see the fountain and listen to the School Of Rock concert warming up and doing sound checks. It was very interesting - our first exposure to electric guitars!

What a busy month we had! Also, we were really proud this month to see that Christopher started crawling, pulling up, and cruising the furniture all in the same week! Katharine has been crawling and pulling up for some time now, but not really cruising (taking steps while holding onto the furniture). She started cruising when Christopher did, almost as if she had been waiting for him! We continue to practice taking a few steps while holding on to things, or Mommy and Daddy. We even have let go of support for a second or two before grabbing hold again!

Photos for all of our September fun are in this Kodak Gallery:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=8899813890105%3A445723754&sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=Share-_-Personal-_-Email-_-Sharee-_-Top

You can copy and paste this into your browser to see the photos.


Enjoy, and Happy Fall!


Love,

Katharine and Christopher

Our First Year Album

We are SO happy to be one year old! We had a great time celebrating our birthdays with everyone last month!

As we looked back on our first year of life, we enjoyed reflecting on how much we grew and changed, and looking over photos and blog posts of everything we did, and saw, and learned. It was quite a year!

Mommy and Daddy decided it would be nice to make an album for us to remember it all when we get older.

And we thought you might also enjoy seeing the photos, with the highlights and major milestones of our year compiled into one gallery. Hopefully you'll see some of your favorites and some others that we loved too!

Here is the web address for it. You can copy and paste it into your browser.


http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=3965697390105%3A363730015&sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=Share-_-Personal-_-Email-_-Sharee-_-Top


Enjoy!


Love,


Katharine Leona and Christopher Lewis