March 2015

First of all, yes, I know I've gotten pretty lazy with the titles.  I really need to pick up my game.  Be sure to check out the videos at the end!

Other than Emily's birthday, nothing terribly exciting happened in March.  Kara has continued her Tae Kwon Do lessons and will be testing for her yellow belt pretty soon.  Her reading has been improving as well.  We think she has memorized a ton of sight words,but still gets a little frustrated when she has to sound a word out.  She's getting pretty good though!

Emily has learned to count up to 5, consistently, though we've heard her count as high as 11.  One of Emily's favorite things is to race. She'll say, "ready set 1 2 go!"  Potty training is continuing.  Emily has figured out that the potty can be a very powerful tool in delaying bedtime.  Almost every day now, she'll say, "need potty" at some point during the night-time routine.  We want to encourage her to listen her body, so we'll get her down to the potty.  Most of the time she'll do something in the potty but is always very insistent she needs to do more when we try to wrap things up.  Emily has also learned the words "my" and "mine" and applies them to pretty much everything, even Kara's toys.  For the most part Kara is pretty okay with sharing her toys with Emily, but Emily has not learned the concept of sharing....

Near the end of the month, we got a visit from Mom's side of the family: Scot and Cassie (and their babies Amelia and Bryn), Brad and Maggie, and Uncle Randy and Aunt Tracey.  It had been a long time since we'd seen all of them.  Emily thought the babies were awesome.  She helped feed the babies, change a diaper, and pet the babies hair while saying "fuzzy".  Kara, on the other hand, was excited to have people to play with and spent most of the time playing ball with Brad and Maggie.

Kid Qutoes:
(playing a card game with Mommy)
Kara: "I got a 3-4-5."
Mom: "Kara, you're not supposed to tell us what cards you have."
Kara: "Oh, I was just kidding. I don't really have those cards."  She did.

"Oh boy!" Emily's new favorite expression.

"I conjured the toy behind your ear from thin air!" Kara explaining how she did a magic trick.

Link to pictures



Mom made chocolate chip cookies one day. They were a big hit. Here's what Emily had to say about them:


And here are Kara's thoughts:


Here's Kara showing some improvement in her Tae Kwon Do skills:


Emily has been practicing her tee ball skills (notice the hit right at the beginning of the video):

February 2015

A couple decent snow storms late in the month rolled through, dumping almost 2 feet of snow over two weeks, which was quite a contrast with the first half of the month with record high temperatures.  It made for some good snow fun and some warm weather for playing outside!

Kara has been really improving with her reading skills.  She's been reading through some of our books at home (we mostly figured she'd just memorized the words); however, she really impressed Mom when she picked up a book at the library (Pete the Cat at the Beach) and read through it all by herself!  Kara has started Tae Kwon Do lessons.  She seems to enjoy it and is catching on quickly (see the videos).  It's great fun!  On the less fun side, however, Kara got her first cavity.  None of us are excited about that...

Emily has been continuing her swim lessons every Saturday.  She loves getting in the water and playing. Emily is speaking in 2-3 word sentences and impresses us every once in a while with a new word or phrase ("one more book").  She has started counting and frequently counts to 2 (as in "1 2 ears" or "1 2 eyes").  She knows the words for higher numbers, but she doesn't understand the concepts yet.  Emily has regressed a bit with potty training.  She's fighting Mom and Dad when they try to remind her she should use the potty.  Although, she has been getting better about feeling she needs to go and letting us know (usually after she's already peed in her pull-up).  Ah, fun times!

Cousin Cassie and her husband Scot welcomed their twin babies (Bryn Oliver and Amelia Rose) in January.  Kara and Emily got to meet their second cousins early in February, though they were more interested in playing with the toys than they were in the newborn babies.

Kid Quotes:
- Kara loves making up jokes and songs.  Here's a joke:  Kara:  "What do you call a hairless monkey?  A cold monkey!  hahaha"
- Kara: "Thank goodness Valentine's Day only comes once a year." Why? "Because of all the work I have to do to make my Valentine's card box!"
- Kara: "Gah, I talk as much as Papa.  I'm turning into Papa!"
- "Emily do!" Emily's favorite saying.
- "Step stool!" Emily usually demands to have the step stool, so that she can help out with things in the kitchen.
- "One more time."  Emily is always asking for just one more...
- "Love you"  ahhh, Emily now says these words.  With a sweet look and a hug, Mommy just melts!

Link to pictures

May Activities

We've had an eventful few weeks but not many pictures to show for it. The major family news is we bought a house April 29th in Louisville! Grandpa S. and Tyler have been doing lots of work on the house, and we'll be moving in Memorial Day weekend.

Kara is a real chatterbox these days (at least with Mommy and Daddy)! She is constantly talking, gibberish and real words. Some "words of the day" include: cheese, apple, happy, up, go, eat, please, dance, shark, turtle, cracker, cupcake and yes, even lots of "mama's"- yeah! Kara refers to herself as "tata" these days, which is pretty funny.

Kara went to her first gym class this past week and had a ball. She started running around the gym floor, climbing and crawling all over the place, before class even started! She really enjoyed the balance beam (with Mommy's help) and the obstacle course. Kara even clapped for the other kids - what a sport!

This morning was filled with family visits. Kara got to meet her great-uncle Randy from Kansas for the first time today! She also got to see Mommy's cousin Cassie. Kara warmed up to her immediately and was even saying "Cassie" by the end of the visit! In addition to Randy and Cassie, GG K. came up for a visit. We showed them around our new house (which is kind of a mess at the moment since we're putting in new hardwood floors). It's a work in progress...

Link to pictures