Improvements

Some improvements of note:

Kaitlyn . . .

. . . started crawling almost three weeks ago. Well, mostly she just drags herself across the floor. But she picked it up really fast and is already getting into things she shouldn't. Today we were at a backyard party, and she snuck across the grass and snagged my plate of icing left under my chair when I ate my cake! Theif! She has a funny technique where she uses her right elbow and her left foot to propel herself, while he left arm is outstretched to grab the next item she gets to.

. . . has been eating baby food for two weeks. I tried to feed her oatmeal a month ago, but after painfully pumping the milk, mixing the oatmeal, and spending a half an hour patiently feeding it to her with no actual food making it in, I just got lazy. But when I finally started feeding the poor girl the second time, hoo boy! Now she will not go down for a nap if she hasn't had food in addition to her milk. Last night's feeding was an entire 6 oz "2nd foods" tub mixed with oatmeal. She likes food :). She also LOVES to grab the food herself and eat it. Still not gaining extra weight, just pooping more. (TMI? Sorry!)

. . . can get from crawling to sitting and back as of two days ago.

Tyler . . .

. . . has had an explosion of words! I am not kidding here. He is now a pro at labeling everything in sight. It used to be that we only had 20-30 objects that he knew the name of, and each word came after what felt like thousands of repititions. But now we just tell him the name a couple of times and he labels it every time he sees it. The speech therapist asked me to make a list of all of his words a month ago, and I made the list right after she asked me. Then, when we got back from vacation, I opened up the list to update before our visit and gave up trying to write them all down!

. . . has figured out the puzzles that Grandma gave him that we all thought was too old for him. The pieces just fit together with no backer, so no picture of the part that goes on top of it like he is used to. But yesterday he just LOVED working on it, and needed less help every time. If he worked on the fire truck, he would shout "YEAH fiya tuck!" every time two pieces went together and "oh no!" every time he tried a pair that didn't work. It was adorable.

. . . now asks for "hup", or help! For the longest time, we have been working with Kids on the Move to get him to ask us for things. To tell me when he is hungry or tired, or that he wants a toy, or something along those lines. And now he has figured out that when he wants something done and can't figure out how to do it, he brings it to me and says "hup!"

. . . got resourceful at the grocery store the other day. I put all the groceries in the trunk and reached down to get him out of the front- it was one of those carts with the red car attachment on the front. But when I reached down I saw him sitting there with chocolate all over his face and clutching a partially eaten stick of Rolos. He had picked it up while I was checking out! I tried scolding him, but by that point I was scolding him for something he had done 15 minutes ago. And how does he know that everything he sees doesn't belong to him, anyway? So we just had to head back into the store and have them scan the Rolos. Little punk. (Daddy was proud.)

Christopher . . .

. . . is working hard training for the Logan Top of Utah Marathon, which is Sept. 20th. He has been putting in a lot of runs and a lot of mountain biking for some cross training, and is really happy with his progress so far. He just loves being in shape.

. . . spent the second half of our Ohio vacation "swimming in fiberglass" in my parent's attic to help my Dad rewire our house. My dad made good use of having another electrician guy in the house for the week. It looked like hard work. Such a great hubby!

Sarah . . .

. . . figured out enough html code to make this new blog layout! Hubby was so proud. It still doesn't look exactly how I want it to, but I had a lot of fun along the way, and learned a lot for my next attempt. If anyone knows how to make the text and pictures in my posts not 80% opacity like the white box the posts are in, that is my current project I want to fix.

. . . had a lot of fun with my "bow party" the other day. We had a good turn out with about 8 ladies coming to make hairbows. I seriously love projects like this where a group of us can get together and benifit from buying supplies in bulk, like my baby shoes. I mentioned this at the end, but I am serious that I would love to keep doing these parties and would be more than happy to travel to other wards or groups that want to have a party! The more people share the costs, the more colors of ribbon I can buy for everyone. And hey, I am more than happy to gather all the directions and supplies in return for having all of that in my house whenever I want to make something.