October 2012

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October seems to have flown by as well!

We are starting to get into a natural rhythm with our school schedule, sort of.  It seems we see the doctor, and sometimes miss school about once a week, for one sort of illness or another.  Thankfully, we have mostly just had colds or slight fevers this month.  The last weekend of the month, Christopher had two trips to the ER for breathing treatments for a nasty case of croup, but he was all better by Halloween! But we’ve had lots of fun on our extra days at home with Mommy and Daddy!   

We have enjoyed going to the farmer’s market, the park, and Meadowlark Gardens on the weekends, and getting to know our friends in our new Sunday School class.  We got to play with our playgroup friends and enjoy a music class at Colton’s birthday party, and then saw everyone again for play group on Columbus Day.  Toward the end of the month, we went to the multiples Halloween party, where we watched a concert, enjoyed snacks, ran around, and made a sticker Halloween scene.  And the weekend before Halloween, we got to decorate pumpkins and play with neighbors at a fun party on our street.

At school, we are getting to know our new teacher, Ms. Mayosha, and a lot of new classmates this month. We're practicing colors, numbers, and shapes.  And we had a really fun field trip to the pumpkin patch!  Our class walked to the farm next to our school. We went on a hayride, got to see the vegetables and animals, and picked out our very own pumpkins to take home with us!

We are doing a LOT of talking!  We are using two and three word phrases a lot, and Katharine is even stringing several word phrases together, which she is finding very effective for getting what she wants – sometimes.  Now our communication is sounding more like “I want my milk”, “I’ll get it”, and “I want this one” (and sometimes even “please”!).  And we are both really enjoying singing along to our favorite songs, counting, and naming colors and sound we hear.  Car trips and meals are frequently accompanied by sections of songs.  We both surprised Mommy and Daddy this week with spontaneous segments of “Starlight, Starbright” and “Happy Birthday”.  We’re also becoming really good runners!  Christopher keeps Mommy and Daddy on their toes when we explore at Meadowlark Gardens, as he loves to run down the hills.  And Katharine is doing a really great power-walking-almost-run now too!

At the end of the month, we had a beautiful day to take family photos at Meadowlark Gardens.  We were thankful for the ten-day forecast, and for our photographer’s flexibility – we had been scheduled for photos on the day Hurricane Sandy arrived!  Fortunately, we were able to move it up a few days, and had a perfect day, with just enough color and leaves left to get some beautiful fall photos.  And as always, we had a great time running around at Meadowlark in the process! 

We got two extra days off to play at home with Mommy and Daddy during Hurricane Sandy.  We were very thankful for only a 16 hour power outage this time!  While all the storm and power outage preparation and cleanup is a lot of work, a couple of extra days at home together are exactly what we needed! 

And the rain and sogginess dried up just in time for a fun Halloween!  Katharine was Raggedy Ann, and Christopher was a brave lion.  We visited our neighborhood kick-off party, and then went home to answer the door for trick-or-treaters.  We had so much fun snacking and playing while we waited, then running to the door to see all the neat visitors we had.  Even after we turned our lights off for bath time, we enjoyed hearing the kids playing outside, and saying “ding-dong”.  :)

We hope you enjoy the photos we took this month!   

We’re also sharing a link for the proof gallery from our fall photo session below. Enjoy! 

Your online proof gallery is ready and can be viewed at:

http://www.veralana.com/proofs/2012/102612proofs/slideshow/

user: client
pwd: myportraits

With Love,

Christopher and Katharine

October 2012

October 2012, a set on Flickr.

August September 2012 KLK CLK Highlights

September 2012

Wow, September has flown by! 

We enjoyed a long Labor Day Weekend as a family.  We saw the planes at the Air and Space Museum and had a fun trip to the park!

Our new school schedule is busy and sometimes tiring, but we have enjoyed lots of fun, and are getting to know our new friends better too.  We have a neat art gallery started in our kitchen at home with our favorite projects from school.  We got to dress up for picture day at school, and can’t wait to see our photos.  Christopher did not want to sit on the tricycle for his photo, but he was willing to try it out the next day for class photos.  So we hope to have some nice photos from that.  And our family got to explore and race toy cars at the family social event after school one Friday!

After our first real week of school, we were ready to celebrate Mommy’s birthday.  (We have switched to saying “Mommy” more now, because that’s what most of the kids at school say, when they are picked up,  “Mommeeeeee!”)  We enjoyed a fun walk to the farmer’s market, where we got some super cool fire hats at the firefighter’s booth, and some really pretty flowers for Mommy’s birthday.  Later that day, we had a fun adventure in our basement, while there were tornado warnings in Vienna.  And afterward, we were still able to go out for dinner, and run around at the mall, which was lots of fun.

The next day, we got to see the new America Trail exhibit at the zoo, with grey wolves, and sea lions.    We also saw the lions, elephants, zebras and lots of other really neat animals.  When we saw the cheetah, he was perched high on a large branch, making loud, sharp barking sounds, which was really exciting.

For Daddy’s birthday, we went on a beautiful three-hour hike down the Cross County Trail, near our house, and Mommy and Daddy remembered when they once hiked it all the way to Great Falls and back.  We may get to try that with them one day!  And we enjoyed blowing out a candle on Daddy’s strawberry rhubarb birthday pie. Various illnesses have cancelled our plans for Daddy’s birthday dinner, but we look forward to going soon!

In the evenings after school, we’ve been playing at home and at the park, exploring and watching the geese, fish, and turtles at Meadowlark Gardens, and we even got to help “supervise” the building of our new deck, which was SO interesting!  We’ve enjoyed some fun hikes, walks, and bikes with Mommy and Daddy in the stroller too!

And we’re talking so much! We’ve started to pick up conversational phrases such as “OK”, and “I’m coming”, and we’re getting really good at getting our point across with “No want it” and “I need help!”  A recent car trip went something like this (while listening to a favorite dinosaur song)  “No, my dinosaurs”, “No My dinosaurs,”  NO MY dinosaurs,” “NO MY DINOSAURS”… you get the idea!  We’re even starting to sing along with favorite songs with lots of the right words, and name colors and numbers correctly (sometimes).  Mommy and Daddy are sometimes surprised to hear what we know how to say! 

We can’t wait for all the fall fun of October!  We hope you enjoy our pictures from this month!

Love,

Katharine and Christopher

September 2012 Photos

September 2012, a set on Flickr.

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.