"Help" in the kitchen

Just like her brother at this age, Maggie loves to climb in and out of the dishwasher!

Maggie is 8 months old!

Maggie is 8 months old today! I hate to admit this, but I didn't realize it until someone else pointed it out to me! Oops- guess I have very little time to sit around watching the days turn on the calendar lately!

Maggie is such a bright spot in our family that it's very difficult to remember what life was like before she joined us! She is such a doll. This is what is going on in Maggie's life at 8 months:

-She is crawling very fast, pulling herself up on everything, standing on her own after steadying herself on something, and starting to take a few steps on her own occasionally.
-She loves to play with toys, especially anything that brother Aaron is playing with (already)!
-Almost everything she touches goes straight into her mouth. Her favorite things to put in her mouth are anything she can find under the kitchen table (she cruises under there to see if Aaron has dropped any food) and any and all shoes!
-Maggie's mouth is starting to fill up with teeth! She has the two front teeth on the bottom, one of her top front teeth, and the other top front tooth and the one right next to it are pushing through right now. You can see another one that is almost ready to cut through as well! We think she's hoping to eat turkey by Thanksgiving!
-She loves to eat food, particularly finger foods. (She's getting really good at her pincer grasp!) Her favorites are puffs, those baby cheese puff things, baby dried fruits, and she loves the Ella's Kitchen brand foods that mix fruits and veggies.
-She loves to laugh and smile, especially at Daddy and Aaron!
-She is ticklish, especially on her neck and inner thighs, and likes to be tickled.
-When you say to Maggie, "How big is Maggie?" she will put her arms up in the air when you say, "SO big."
-Maggie likes to be held and will crawl around behind you when she wants you to pick her up.
-She is a decent sleeper- goes to bed at 7, usually gets up once in the night to eat and often ends up sleeping in our bed after that until about 6 or 6:30. She naps at 9 am for about 30-45 minutes, again at about 12:30 for usually 1 1/2 - 2 hours, and then often again around 4 for about 30 minutes.
-Maggie loves to be around other kids and really gets right in the mix with them.

We love Maggie so much and think that she is the cutest little girl that we've ever seen! Don't you?!


(Maggie loves phones! She is holding mine here.)

Two and a half!

Aaron is celebrating his half birthday today! It's hard to believe that in 6 short months he will be 3 years old already! This seemed like a good occasion for an Aaron update.....

Aaron continues to be VERY active. He loves to run, jump, and climb and excels at these things. He has taken an early interest in sports and can't wait until he can try out some organized sports!

Aaron is getting so big. He weighs around 37 pounds and is wearing 2T/3T pants, 3T/4T shirts, and size 8 1/2 wide shoes. He only wants to wear "nice and comfy" pants and tries to get out of wearing jeans or dress pants. He likes to pick out his own clothes, but we compromise by letting him choose from 2 pairs of pants and then choose from 2 shirts that match.

Aaron still eats his fruits and veggies really well, but has become a bit of a toddler eater with other things. One day he will eat a ton of something and two days later you could feed him the same thing and he might only eat one bite! If allowed (which he is not), he would drink chocolate milk and juice and eat only fruit and veggies. His favorite foods are any kind of fruit, cucumbers, yogurt, chocolate milk, any kind of juice, Jimmy John's sandwiches, chicken nuggets, PB & J sandwiches, and any kind of muffin or donut.

Aaron took an early interest in potty training (about 6 months ago), which totally fizzled out after about a month and the only person potty training was me! He is wearing diapers at this point and we'll probably be thinking about tackling that project fairly soon.

Aaron has really incredible speech and language skills, much to the delight of his mother! He speaks in long sentences (6+ words) and loves to try out new words that he hears from us. I'm always amazed by his vocabulary and don't know where he learns half of it?! He can't say his L sounds or his R sounds yet, but he has recently perfected most of his S blends!

Aaron knows all of his basic colors, can count to 12 (with one to one correspondence up to about 5), can recite his alphabet and knows all of the sounds that the letters say. (He learned this from a LeapFrog dvd at Kate's house called Letter Factory! I didn't even know that he knew all of them until one day he recited all of them to me!) He knows most of his basic shapes and can't wait to get the chance to go to school!

Aaron loves to read books and play outside. His favorite books right now are the Froggy books (Froggy Gets Dressed, Froggy Rides a Bike, etc), Mr. Putter and Tabby, Dr. Seuss (Green Eggs and Ham, The Sneetches, etc.) and song books (Ants Go Marching, Wheels on the Bus, This Little Light, etc.) He does a lot of imaginative play right now and enjoys playing with his tools and play food. Aaron likes to play with 'real' things rather than toys and often putters around with things he finds around the house. He likes to play with play dough and paint with watercolors. He loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and some of his favorite movies are the Toy Story movies, Bugs Life, and Cars. Aaron loves to help in the kitchen and is starting to have some of his own 'jobs' around the house. (Putting recycling in the bins, helping to set the table, helping pick up his toys.)

Aaron is a good listener and helper when he wants to be, but has to spend his fare share of time sitting in time out! He uses his good manners (please, thank you, excuse me, etc.) most of the time without being reminded and is generally very good to his sister! He loves to make her laugh and wants her to be around, even though he already doesn't like it when she tries to get into his toys!

We are very proud of our newly 2 and half year old, Aaron! We love you, Peanut!

Family

We are blessed to have such a wonderful family. Sharing some fall photos from our trip to Iowa!

Pumpkin patch

Amy and I tried to take the kids on the hayride to the pumpkin patch during our visit to the apple orchard, but we were there too early and would have had to wait for a couple of hours. So the kids played in this 'pumpkin patch' instead! This was my attempt at getting that perfect photo! I might as well realize that perfectly posed photos are NEVER going to happen and just embrace action shots! Enjoy some shots of the action!

Pumpkin decorating

Maggie and Aaron loved the small pumpkins and ghords that we used to decorate around the house. They would take them down and move them to different places all the time!


Here we are decorating a pumpkin with the push parts that we had from last year.



When Maggie is teething, her cheeks and chin get bright red and chapped. (The same thing always happened to Aaron when he was getting teeth.) You can put lotion on them several times a day and they will still look like this! She enjoyed chewing on the push parts!

Happy Halloween!

As usual, I'm a little behind on most things in my life right now! I still wanted to share all of our Halloween fun, so I am going to start with actual Halloween and share them backwards!

We went out to Downers Grove to celebrate Halloween with some of our friends, Karrie, Dave, Lucas, and Andie. They used to live a few blocks from us and moved out to the suburbs about a year ago, so we enjoyed getting to spend some time with them.

Aaron dressed up as a Northwestern football player and Maggie a Northwestern cheerleader! Tim really wanted to stuff Aaron's jersey to make it look like he had shoulder pads on, but Aaron was having none of that. He did actually let me put some eye black on though, which I was surprised about!

Aaron had a great time trick or treating with Lucas and the other neighborhood kids. He would run from door to door, coming back to me after wards and telling me "Look Mommy- I'm getting a ton of candy!" Maggie stayed back at Karrie's house with Daddy, which was really nice because it was pretty cold outside.

After trick or treating, we went back to Karrie and Dave's house for pizza and some play time. We had a great time!

Daddy and his little Northwestern kids!

Maggie is standing on her own a lot now! She's never worn this shoes before, so she was trying to get the hang of standing up in them!

Trick or treat!

Can you tell that Aaron was enjoying this?



Nobody was home at this house, but Aaron and one of the neighbor girls, Natalie, kept trying to knock and yell "Trick or Treat" just in case!


Aaron says, "Just one more try- TRICK OR TREAT!!"