June 2012

Summer has definitely arrived!

June was a month of many doctor visits and calls. From croup, to fevers, to some other symptoms we won’t share, we kept Mommy and Daddy busy this month trying to get us healthy and stay healthy themselves.  (You will note runny noses in many of our pictures this month!)  Thankfully, at the end of the month, we logged in almost ten completely healthy days, breaking a streak that has seemed to go on for a couple of months now.  Whew!

Not feeling well, and having some pretty warm days, has kept us inside more this month, but we still got to do some fun hiking and walking with Mommy and Daddy, and we had some great, fun playtime with our friends.

The warm weather has given us a chance to really enjoy “water play” for the first time, with lots of water tables and sprinklers at friends’ houses – and at our own!  We had fun trying out our new elephant sprinkler, and the sprinkler ball, although we’re still trying to decide whether a sprinkler ball is something we want to get very close to. Playing with our new water toys at home is fun, and will get us ready to LOVE water-play time when we start school!  We also had our first taste of popsicles at our friends’ house (still not sure about those), and frozen blueberries – mmmmm!  And on cooler days, we’re enjoying fun family meals on the porch with Mommy and Daddy.

We got to meet our teachers at Chesterbrook at the open house earlier this month, and they seem really nice! Mommy has gotten our backpacks, sheets, name labels, and extra supplies all ready to go for when we start “school” in August.  For the record, we start school five days after our birthday, to get used to our new routine as Mommy gets back into her classroom.  We’re a little nervous, but are practicing lots of “big kid” things to get ready, like eating with our spoons and forks more, and we keep practicing using a knife and drinking from a cup! 

At the end of the month, we got a taste of life before electricity, when a huge derecho storm came through our area, causing widespread power outages.  The storm was so big and so fast, it went through Ohio on the same night, causing similar damage.  Our power went off on a Friday night, and didn’t come back on until the following Thursday!  So we got to go on lots of fun trips to the store to get cold milk and ice, and we got to eat out a lot with Mommy and Daddy.  We found lots of fun ways to keep cool that week!  We enjoyed a fun family trip to the Baltimore Aquarium, where we saw SO many fish, dolphins, turtles, and sharks!  In the mornings we played at parks and pavilions while it was cool, and went to see a concert at the library.  Some nights we ate dinner at the mall, and then Mommy and Daddy let us explore and run around there.  We also swam at our friends’ house a couple of times (thank you, dear Carlsons!), and spent the 4^th of July listening to the fireworks in our neighborhood as we slept with the doors and windows open to keep cool.  It was pretty warm at our house, so we got to camp out in the living room all week, sleeping in our tents!  What an adventure we had!

We’ll save some of our power outage photos for July!  We hope you enjoy our photos and videos from this month (below), and can’t wait to visit all our friends and family in Ohio soon!

Love,

Christopher and Katharine

June 2012 Photos

June 2012, a set on Flickr.

May 2012

May was a very active month!

At the beginning of the month, we hiked as a family in our second annual March For Babies, to support the March Of Dimes!  With your support, our family was able to contribute $700 to our team (the INOVA Fairfax Hospital Center NICU team), which raised a total of $27,513!  These donations help the March of Dimes fund research and programs related to premature birth and birth defects, and help bring comfort to families with a baby in newborn intensive care.  Thank you so much for helping us support this organization!

The weather was mostly beautiful this month, and we enjoyed lots of walks, hikes, and bike rides with Mommy and Daddy.  We went to the farmer’s market, hiked around Meadowlark Garden near our house, and explored the Cross County Trail.  We even had lunch in our backpacks for the first time, while hiking on Sugarloaf Mountain, in Maryland, with our friends! 

As always, we had fun playing together at home!   We love watching the squirrels eat “helicopters” on our deck while we eat breakfast and lunch each day. We also had fun playing at music class each week, going to friends’ birthday parties, and playing with our playgroup friends.

On Mother’s Day, we got to go play with Mommy at the park – SO fun!  And we got to talk to our Grandmas and Grandpas on Skype that afternoon, which was the BEST, because we really miss them!

Then for Memorial Day weekend, we went on our first family trip to Shenandoah National Park to hike and enjoy lunch out in the great outdoors for two days in a row! We saw so many pretty waterfalls and beautiful views on our hikes. And at night, we had lots of fun exploring our room and having dinner at Big Meadows Lodge.  What a wonderful adventure we had!  Back at home, we got to go on a fun bike ride with Daddy on Memorial Day!  Wheee!

Mommy and Daddy really noticed on our hiking weekend that we keep growing (and getting bigger and heavier!).  We also had lots to say!  Christopher loves to hum and chatter while we hike.  And we both love to make the sounds of all the animals we know!  We like to try saying almost anything we hear, and can say so many things now, that Mommy is losing track of how many words we know!

Please see post below for photos and video from this month. Enjoy!

With Love,

Katharine and Christopher

May 2012 Video

May 2012 Photos

May 2012, a set on Flickr.

April 2012

Spending Easter with our families in Ohio was the highlight of the month, (see our previous post for more details), but after we got home, we had a busy and fun April!

We went on some fun hikes with Mommy and Daddy, and got to see neat things at Meadowlark Gardens; lots of pretty trees and flowers, new people and dogs along the Cross County Trail; and the animals at the National Zoo!  We got to help Mommy and Daddy out in the yard, and learned how to dig in the dirt with our shovel and trowel. We went to a friend’s birthday party, and we had some friends over to our house for playdates too!

We have been doing such a good job using our forks and spoons and sipping out of cups, that we also got to start using our new big-kid booster seats! So now we get to eat right up at the table like big kids, and we’re so proud!

And Mommy and Daddy are really surprised by how many new words we’ve been learning lately! Mommy’s having a hard time keeping track, but she thinks we’re learning about 5-10 new words a week. We love to say Hi and Bye-Bye to everyone and everything now (“Hi kids, bird, sales lady…..” “Bye-Bye store, balloon, dog”). And instead of throwing our fork or spoon when we’re done eating, we can now let Mommy know, by putting them in our plate, saying “Ah – Done”. We love to show off our new words and use them to get the attention of the grownups we love!

And we love to play outside, and explore all over our back yard! We both got great, supportive new shoes, and Katharine got some new inserts for her shoes, which is making it even easier for us to climb up and down, and really take off after things that are interesting, like bubbles or butterflies, or just checking what’s going on over in our neighbors’ houses!

Photos from the rest of our fun adventures are in our April Gallery. You can copy and paste this into your browser to see it, and if you’ve seen the Easter photos already, you can just scroll over and start with the ones you haven’t seen yet.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp;jsessionid=C971C9AC79A9EB967DAB3F467342CBF2.ecom104_main?sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=Share-_-Personal-_-Email-_-Sharee-_-Images&token=4808876841105%3A1110688009&_requestid=287660

Also, we are very much looking forward to our second annual March For Babies Walk next weekend, May 6. We are excited to see some of our friends and nurses from the hospital, and are very glad to be raising money to help support families and developments which help babies grow big and strong, like we have! We are so grateful for everything they have done for us, and we are very proud to be walking as part of the Inova Fairfax Hospital Center NICU Team.

You can visit our pages to get more information or make a donation if you would like to contribute.

Here is their site... http://www.marchforbabies.org/s_team_page.asp?seid=1751339#team_roster

If you would like to read our posts or donate to our fundraising goals, you can access our pages by clicking on our names in the roster. You’ll find us under “Keller, Andrea and Katharine”, and “Keller, David and Christopher.”

Thank you so much for considering this worthy cause!

Love,

Christopher and Katharine

Easter Trip, April 2012

We had so much fun on our trip to Ohio for Easter!

We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Keller for a few days at their beautiful new home! It was so fun being able to go everywhere, with no safety gates keeping us in or out! It was nice to meet people and see old friends again at church on Palm Sunday. We played at Kaleidoscope Park, which was so cool because the steps were just our size, and the playground was made all of wood. We had a yummy and fun dinner at the Taggerts’, and got to eat out of our very own bowls with spoons for the first time. And neither of us even tried to throw or turn over anything, because we so enjoyed eating at the big table with everyone! (A few days later, Mommy started letting us use forks, and we love feeding ourselves now. We’re even trying a few sips of water from a cup, which is still pretty messy!) We had fun playing with Grandma and Grandpa and some of our new toys, and even got to go see the Easter Bunny, although we did NOT want to sit in his lap or be in a picture with him.

And then we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Sturgeon for a few days. We had so much fun when the weather was warm enough to run around outside, try the slide and sandbox, watch the tadpoles and fish in the water, swing on the swings, and chase the kitties around. And inside, we were able to get that Zoe dog to sit down with us and even take a few naps nearby so that we could get close for pats and cuddles. We had fun playing with Grandma and Grandpa, and our Aunt Mike and Uncle Robyn. Our cousins Katie and Sam showed us how to color Easter eggs – we just watched this year, but we paid close attention, so we’re all ready for next Easter! Katie and Sam also made a great Easter egg hunt for us, and helped us find them. We even learned how to fill a piñata and then break it open!

We had so much fun exploring and playing with everyone, and can’t wait to visit again! And when we got home, we went on a fun “Easter” hike with Mommy and Daddy (really the day after Easter) to see the pretty tulips and animals at Meadowlark Garden.

We had the best Easter! Here are some fun photos of our trip! There were so many, we thought we’d share them now, and share the rest of the April photos later. You can paste this link into your browser to see them. Enjoy!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/slideShow/Main.jsp;jsessionid=3CE0CE9FB333CC4D48D018FD78627C01.ecom202_main?sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=Share-_-Personal-_-Email-_-Sharee-_-Images&token=9530107541105%3A2032884786&_requestid=74873


Love,

Christopher and Katharine