Wow, We're Two! - August 2012

August has been a very busy and exciting month, with lots of change in our lives!

We started out the month balancing play dates, family walks, hikes, and bike rides with lots of busy-ness.  At home, we had lots of hard playing to do, with our cool new play kitchen and our very first bikes! We had speech therapy and physical therapy appointments, doctors’ appointments, and got new shoes.  We tried to see as many of our old friends as we could, since our new fall schedule won’t allow lots of play dates. And we went on fun family outings – lots of trips to parks, the zoo, the Air and Space Museum, and petting the animals at the 4-H Fair.

Meanwhile, Mama worked hard to restock the freezer (following our power outage and trip to Ohio – and getting ready to start back to work!).  And we had lots of fun birthday preparations to make! 

All of a sudden, we are two years old, and Mama and Dada can hardly believe it!  We celebrated our birthday by playing with friends at Clemyjontri Park!  It was a rare, perfectly gorgeous day, with no rain, not too hot, and just a light breeze!  Our family friends, and friends from playgroup and the neighborhood came.  We shared fun treats and pinwheels and got to blow out candles on our mini-muffins.  Then we all rode the carousel, and played and played and played!  Whew!  Were we tired when we left! We had such a fun birthday! Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate here, and for all the sweet cards from afar!

We are HUGE now!  Katharine is 24 pounds, and Christopher is almost 30 pounds!  And Mama and Dada can hardly believe it (a running theme here…)!

And then it was time to start school.  Mama worked to make sure we had all of our school things ready to start (sheets, backpacks, changes of clothes, all labeled and ready to go).  And we tried to make sure that WE were ready to start – we read a book about going to school, and even went to play with our class a few times before we started.  A thankfully quick round of illness kept us from starting school exactly as planned, but we still got to begin to get to know our new friends at school in time for Mama to get settled into her classroom before teacher workdays.

We are getting used to our new routine at school.  While there is some protest at drop-off time, we have been happily playing, eating, and sleeping at school during the day.  (Again, Mama and Dada can hardly believe it!)  At night we can be pretty tired, and a little grumpy.  But we’re still enjoying some fun trips to the park or to Meadowlark after dinner for family play time. 

We also got to see a few friends from our NICU days at the NICU Family Reunion the hospital hosts each fall. The hurricane canceled it last year, so this was our first reunion.  It was very crowded and noisy, so we didn’t stay long, but it was nice to see some familiar faces.

And our Grandma Sturgeon came to visit with us at the end of the month, while our school was closed.  We had so much fun showing her all our favorite games and toys, and she made being at home lots of fun while Mama and Dada were at work.  We all went to dinner before she had to go home on the airplane, which was lots of fun too!  We can’t wait to visit with our Grandmas and Grandpas (and uncles and cousins!) again soon!

With all this wonderfully fun busy-ness, we realize that we haven’t captured as many photos and videos this month.  We’ve just been glad to enjoy our family time together, as our lives begin to be even more full of activity and new things!  But we hope you enjoy the ones we’ve taken.

We hope you have a wonderful end of the summer, and can’t wait to share about our new adventures in September!

Love,

Christopher and Katharine

August 2012

August 2012, a set on Flickr.

July 2012

July was such a busy month, and went by SO quickly!

We started the month with our power outage adventure, enjoying trips out in the mornings to visit, play, and swim with friends.  And lots of dinners out made the week even more fun!  We enjoyed playing at friends’ houses and parks in the mornings before the very hot middle of the day (100+ degrees many days!); and played outside in the sprinklers on some of the cooler nights.

The best part of the month was our trip to visit friends and family in Ohio!  We stayed with our Grandmas and Grandpas, went swimming in a pond, played in a fountain, and got in lots of swinging, sandbox, and slide time.  We had fun seeing the kitties, fish and doggies at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  We also got to pet the stingrays at the Columbus Zoo, and saw all the neat animals at the Akron Zoo.  And best of all, we loved exploring, spending time together, and playing with our friends, cousins, Aunt Robyn and Uncle Mike, and our Grandmas and Grandpas!

We can’t believe we’re almost two!  The summer seems to have flown by, as has the last two years, and what a big month of change we have ahead – Turning two, starting school…  We will miss all of our play date friends, but at the same time, we’ll be meeting so many new people and learning so many new things.  We can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Here are some of our favorite photos and videos of things we did and saw this month!

Love,

Katharine and Christopher

July 2012 Photos

July 2012, a set on Flickr.

July 2012 KLK CLK Ohio Visit

July 2012 KLK CLK Highlights

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