Trains

Our mall has a great toy electric train exhibit every year at Christmas. Nana and Pops took the whole family. This is the 3rd year we have gone and the kids always enjoy it. There are different scenes with a dozen trains running at a time. The details are pretty cool if the kids allow you to stop long enough to look.

Sophia is showing off her cool conductor hat.

Ally is showing off her huge blue eyes. She always looks surprised. Nana and Katherine are looking at the trains.
Jaime and Sophia in front of the New York City skyline.
Caroline loved the part with the subway because she could look at it on her own.
Caroline also loved her conductor had.

Thanksgiving visit

Uncle Will, Aunt Jaime, Sophia and Ally came for a long visit last week. They arrived Sunday and went home on Thursday. It was a lot of fun for them to be here so long and for the girls to get so much time to play together. Sunday night we played at Nana and Pop's house and ate dinner. Katherine was sure to bring dress up clothes over so that all of them could dress up at the same time.

Monday we went to the Science Museum. Nana could not join us because she was having a root canal and Caroline went to mother's day out (She is still having a hard time so we did not think she should skip a week). Since Sam was at work it was kind of nice to have an day with just Katherine. I rarely get that alone time.
They dug for dinosaur bones.
Experimented with the floating ping pong balls.
Made bubbles.
And dressed up in the nature room.
Even Pops joined in on the fun.
Last we played on the farm where Katherine rode a stick horse.
We then ate lunch and picked up Caroline and rushed home before time for our evening activity.

16 months

Caroline, your personality is really starting to develop. You are a very happy girl who is starting to have a great sense of humor. You are very sweet and love to snuggle. You are such a joy to our family.

You love to be outside. Every afternoon when Katherine is taking a nap you want to go play outside when I check the mail. Luckily we have had a very mild fall so we are able to play in the front yard for awhile. You helped me to plant pansies and you explore the yard and sidewalk. You get so sad when it is time to come in.

You are continuing on your language explosion. It is so fun to be able to understand what you are trying to say. Most of your words are approximations and are best understood in context and because I am familiar with your approximations but some are very clear. I have a list of your words and you currently have about 55 words and 30 signs that I can distinguish consistently.

People often ask why we do sign language since no one in our family has issues with hearing. It is one thing that I am so glad we did. Have you ever thought about how many common words start with the "ba" sound? I did not until I had kids learning to talk and you realize how often they communicate saying "ba" where it can mean many different things - bear, bottle, bed, bar, book, bath, bow, bye, bag, boo, baa (sheep), bug, baby, bee, bag, bubbles, bottom, bagel, blanket and more. Of those words, both of our girls know the sign for about half so we can tell more easily what they are referring to. It has been so helpful.

Some people wonder if sign language would delay verbal communication but we (and research) have found that it does just the opposite. Caroline really understands the idea that objects have names and she wants to know their name. I can show her a sign just once or twice and she knows it. Most of the words that she signs she cannot say. If we are reading a book and see an elephant, she will do the sign but it will be a long time before she can say it.

In fact, Caroline said her first 3 word sentence this month. She was in the bathtub and pointed to a photo on the wall. She said, "Eeee duh baby" as she did the sign language for each word. She said (in English) "eat duck baby". It was a photo of 10 month old Katherine with a duck in her mouth. She also often strings together signs and words such as "more book please".

You are also starting to identify the people in your life. You call me "mimi" and yourself "dada" which is the same as what you calls your daddy. You also says "nana" and calls Pops "pa". There is still no name for Katherine. You also identified your first friend, "ack" for Zachary.

Another new phrase for you is "NO". You have certainly learned to say "no" a lot this month. Sometimes this is a good thing like when I ask you if you want a snack or if you want to read a book. It is nice to know that you do not. But you also are learning to use the word "no" to be disobedient. The first obvious time you verbalized this was at Madi and Ben's house. I asked you to come back to me since you were holding a smoothie. You said "no" very firmly and walked the other way. It was so surprising that it was hard not to laugh but of course you had to be redirected.

You are very polite. In the morning you usually eat a bagel. I give it to you a piece at a time while you are playing in the kitchen. After giving you a piece of bagel you walked into the other room and then came back. Why? To tell me "Thank you" using sign language. I love that you are learning your manners already. Now you have added saying "thank you" as well. It sounds like "nay new". I love it.

Daddy and I have noticed that you really seem to enjoy pretend play much more than Katherine did at this age. Of course it is because you are playing with Katherine. You love to play dress up and can put on your costumes by yourself. At Nana's house you go to the toy box and get the "t-tu" all by your self. You also love to play with baby dolls and you feed them, wear them in a sling, give them bottles and put them in a stroller. You also enjoy our play kitchen and are always making me things to try.

You love to play with the big kids and get quite frustrated if you get left out or cannot do what they do. You are surprisingly able to keep up and hold your own.

You are a good little helper. Your job is spinning the lettuce in the salad spinner. You also like to get a wash cloth to clean up things. You have discovered the trash can and can throw things away. So far I have not discovered you throwing away things that should not go in the trash but I expect it to happen.

One of the biggest events of this month was giving up your pacifier. I took it away cold turkey one night. You really did fine without it. I am so glad I took it away now rather than later when you could really express frustration. When I took away the paci I also stopped going in to get you in the middle of the night when you cry. Of course there have been exceptions when I have gone in like when you were congested or if I was not there at bed time but overall you are waking up much less at night which is nice. You still wake up at about 5-6 am and we then let you come into our bed where I nurse you back to sleep.

If I do go to you in the middle of the night you point to our bed and say "mommy, daddy" over and over as you point to our room. So I know that you really just want to be with us. You are still a good eater. You eat what we eat most of the time. I am still nursing you though I am trying to stretch out longer during the day. After this weekend I plan to try to give you sippy cups of milk during the day rather than nurse. I think it will help you do better at Mother's Day Out and it will also move us toward weaning. I will be out of town for a weekend in January and don't really have a preference for if you are weaned fully or not but I do want you to have a good weekend with daddy.

It appears that we have hit the age where people start to think it is odd that I am still nursing Caroline. The other night when I was out with some girl friends a few looked at me like I had horns growing out of my head when I said I was still nursing her and thought it even crazier that I have no plan of when I will wean and I nursed Katherine until 22 months.You are quite the curious climber. You like to climb onto chairs, tables, the swing set, ladders and the bounce house. It can be quite scary. One day you were quiet and I found that you had climbed onto a chair in the dining room so that you could help yourself to a pear. You were so proud that you found your own snack.

You love books now. So much so that it is hard to put you to bed because you want to keep reading. You have an opinion on which book you want to read and will go grab it off the shelf. Your current favorites are "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", "Tumble Bumble" and our baby signs books. If I try to get you to bed without books you will do the sign for light and point to the "light", then the sign for "book" and then the sign for "please". You have learned that signing "please" gets you what you want a lot of times. In the photo below you are reading a book and doing the sign for ball which is in the photo.

You have learned to identify many of your body parts, especially parts of your face. You will touch and say "eye", "no" (nose), "tee" (teeth) and "bee bee" (belly button) and also point to ear, head, hair, feet, toes, hands, fingers, arm, and leg. You are also getting into animal noises and love to imitate cows and sheep the most. You also surprised me by growling like a tiger at the zoo.

I love watching you follow directions. It if fun to tell you to do something and you actually do it.

Caroline, you are so fun. I love to spend time with you and really enjoy seeing you learn more every day.

Dinosaurs!

My college roommate Ashley was in town last week for a family wedding so we met up with her and her kids for the day. We headed to a local museum and nature area that was new to all of us. They had a nice collection of mainly earth science items inside. There were fossils, shells, dinosaurs, gems and minerals and cave and volcano models. One of my favorite things of the day was when Caroline did the sign for "crocodile" when she saw a long dinosaur. My little scientist was communicating quite well.

Helene, Campbell, Katherine and Caroline

Outside there were miles of trails. One of the shorter, closer trails currently has animatronic dinosaurs on display. Amazingly neither of the girls was scared by them though Katherine acted scared for the photos.


Helene thought that it would be a cute photo to have the dinosaur eating her. Katherine did not want to copy Helene.

There was also a very small zoo. Caroline enjoyed that and especially loved climbing the fence.
We wanted to walk the wetlands trail but realized that it was quite a bit further than we had planned to we turned back. There is a lot more to do so we will have to return another day.
I love this picture of Katherine and Caroline on their hike. The love to hold hands.

BFF's

Elise is Katherine's very best friend. She goes to our church and we were in a community group with her parents until this fall when they started a new group. Any time we go to church Katherine asks if Elise will be there. They get so excited when they see one another that one time they ran towards each other so fast that they collided and both fell down.

Unfortunately Elise and Katherine go to preschool on opposite schedules so we rarely get to see her outside of church.

Elise's birthday was at the end of November and we thought we were going to have to miss her party. Both girls were sad. At the last minute our plans changed and we were able to go. It was a wonderful surprise when Elise came to the door and Katherine was there.
Aren't these girls so precious?