It's spring, how did that happen?

Oh, where to start? Six full weeks of updates to do in one big, honking post, so if you’re interested enough to read this – strap in. The short version is that we’re doing great.

Last we checked in with Rachel, she’d just turned two, and started going to gymnastics. It’s still one of her favorite activities, and she’ll ask if she can “Go ‘natstics?”. The big news in the last couple of weeks is that she has graduated out of her crib and into her “big girl bed”. She’s as proud as can be over this upgrade.

In the last six weeks, Rachel’s verbal skills have taken a huge jump forward. Her pronunciation of words has become clearer to other people (previously we were the only ones fluent in her dialect) and she strings together more of them at a time.

A couple of weeks ago, Daniel did something funny, and she said “Daniel, dat’s siwy. Dat’s REWY SIWY” (silly and really silly, respectively). If you say something that’s incorrect, she’ll say “Dat’s not wight” or “Dat’s wight” when you get it right. Right now we’re working on correcting her “Me want X” and “Me do Y” with “I want X”.


As long as she gets things her way, Rachel is a total sweetheart, but her feelings can get hurt fairly easily, and we’ve had a few incidents of her just throwing herself flat on the floor/ground in utter hysterics because she didn’t get the answer she wanted. Then it passes, and she announces that “Me happy now” and gives you one of her fabulous hugs.

Rachel’s pretty close to Daniel’s height right now, having gone on a bit of a growth spurt. People on the street frequently assume that they are twins. This doesn’t seem to bother either of them.












Since last time, Daniel has been a firefighter. That’s not much of an exaggeration. He got a firefighter outfit from farmor, and has since wanted to wear it to the store, to school, in the car and around the house.

The day before fire safety day at preschool, we overheard him preparing what he was going to say. “…and the most important thing is to not play with matches…. Now, who has a REAL firefighter jacket?”

Preschool had a spring program last Friday, and Daniel’s class had a couple of songs to sing, which was nice. He clearly loves the social aspects of going to class, so that’s been good for him.

Daniel has been helping out more in the kitchen as well. He loves pretending that he’s a waiter and setting the table for dinner, and on a couple of occasions he’s made cookies with Eric. He can mix the dough, roll out the cookies and most importantly knows that knives and a hot stove are not toys.

It’s a new session at swimming lessons, and Daniel has a new teacher. Last time he lost his teacher, it was traumatic and set him back 3 months, but this time he hasn’t missed a beat. His form is great, but he’s still not so clear on the whole “needing to breathe” thing.

Daniel loves his sister, and is generally very protective of her. When she visits at preschool, he shows her off to the other kids, and they have started to play more together (albeit with Daniel largely setting the rules of engagement, and Rachel just happy to be invited along.) It’s not always perfect, and they do occasionally blame the other for meltdowns, but it’s usually good.

Grandpa and Farmor are visiting, and Daniel has re-taken-up basketball (now he dribbles) and has added golf as part of his bonding exercise. It’s great fun.

I’ll try to add some more pictures and video as time allows.

Until next time.
Love, A.D.R.E.

Rachel turns 2

Friends

A month has passed - where does the time go? And so much to tell. Our little girl went off and turned 2 years old, which just doesn't seem possible. She was well celebrated with a "Dora the Explorer"-themed party at home. Carly, Eli, Declan, Fiona and Harrison were in attendance. Between celebrating early with some friends, Grandma Babe coming into town early, and Grandpa coming in late, it was a full week of partying.














With a milestone birthday, come the measurements.

• Rachel weighed in at 28lbs 4oz, (70th percentile)
• She measured 34.875" (88.6 cm, or 80th percentile
• Head circumference was 19" (70th percentile)
• Cuteness at 100%

So we're still tall, slender for our height and have a big noggin. By the approximation that she'll grow to twice her 2-year-old height, she's destined to be about 5'10". Most of the time, Rachel is one happy little girl - it takes a lot to shake her off her rocker, so she'll be fine, fine, fine, fine - until she's not, and when she's not happy - she's really not happy. She has an unfortunate tendency to bite Daniel (hard) when she feels threatened in any way, but we're working on it, and Daniel is showing more patience than you honestly would expect from a 3-year-old.

As yes - Daniel has had some fun moments of his own in the last month. Probably the most impressive development is that he's made large strides with his swim lessons. He can now plane out and swim with both his arms and legs - face in the water, and he'll do this for 8-10 feet at a time. He just needs to remember to breathe, and he'll be off to the races.













Daniel has always had a knack for memorizing his books/stories. Long ones too (He'll read the entire "Gruffalo" book to you if you flip the pages). But he's started recognizing whole words and reading based on word recognition, which is huge. He read all of "Orange, Pear, Apple, Bear" to Rachel the other day.

Daniel has always been good with words, and he's turning out to be a social guy. Our friends the Dows came through town during the weeklong Rachel celebration, and Dan said it best: Daniel will never know a stranger. Favorite toys vary by the day and week, but trains and being a firefighter are the current hits. Farmor made him his very own firefighter jacket.

Rachel has started going to a gym class while Daniel is in school, and has taken to that like a fish to water. She climbs, bounces, balances, slides and has a fantastic time. And no update on Rachel would be complete without mentioning that she sings all the time. Mostly variations on "twinkle twinkle little star", but there are others.

As alluded to above - Grandma Babe came and visited for a week or so. Grandpa was in town for just a few days. So the house has been full of visitors and actually feels a little empty now that everyone is gone.

And that'll have to do for now. Hope everyone is well

Love, ADRE.

Monsta Cucks!

Friends

The flight to Houston was delayed. And then delayed again, again and again, and by the end of it, we were 5.5 hours late, and arrived at Grandma Babe's house after 4am. Not a single whine from the kids over this - we have amazingly good travelers.

Houston was a long series of gatherings and parties. Kayla and Aunt Erin celebrated birthdays while we were there, there was a belated Christmas celebration, and of course New Years Eve. So it seemed to be an endless series of partying, presents, food and fun. All of the cousins had a great time together.



New Years Eve was celebrated with the Pasta family, and we left our camera behind, so you'll have to look for photographic evidence on their blog when Dave gets around to it.


Rachel started to ask "Why?". She says it a lot.

Now, you might be a redneck....if you take your extended family to a Monster Truck rally as a Christmas gift.

Yes, it's true - on Saturday before coming home, we took the cousins, aunt, Babe and the Pastas to see "Monster Truck Jam" with 75,000 of our closest friends at Reliant stadium.

And it was a great time. Daniel was so enthralled that he just about forgot to breathe for 4 hours, and the next morning, Eric had to lay down on the floor and pretend to be the cars that "Taz" the monster truck smashed.

He was concerned though -> "Won't people be sad when their cars get crunched?"

It was a bit loud for Rachel even with earplugs, and so she had to be calmed down and as you can see in the background, she slept through some of the show.

And that's about it for our Houston adventure. We had a good stay, and in just a couple of weeks, Grandma Babe will be up in Denver for Rachel's 2nd birthday.

Until next time.

Love, ADRE

Christmas Chaos

Friends

So we'd been back from Thailand for a few days - mostly enough to eliminate Jet Lag in all of but Rachel, when we went to a pre-Christmas party held by the neighbor of a friend. It turned out to be a great time - Santa showed up, sang some songs, told some stories and then had time for all of the kids. Daniel had the routine pretty much figured out, but was a little more bashful with Santa than his parents (where he had his wishlist down to a well-rehearsed litany).

Rachel wasn't so sure about this guy in the red suit, but since all of the other kids had talked to him, she did too. When Santa asked her what she wanted, she didn't hesitate: "Peasants!" (presents) is what she asked for.

We had a planned trip to Steamboat Springs for a long weekendd before Christmas but with the delay in Thailand, we cut that down to 2 days. It was cold, but good fun. We brought sleds (fun, but brief) and went for a dinner sleighride. Rachel slept through the whole ride, which was a shame.

As for skiing - Daniel wasn't too excited about it, so we spent some time watching the other kids in ski school. By the end of it, he seemed interested, so we might try to get him into a lesson before the end of the season.

Christmas morning, both kids were in fine shape to open presents. Daniel got the skid-steer loader he'd been eyeing for a while, and along with the Pirate ship and Diego gifts (camera and legos), those were the big hits.

Rachel got a bunny doll, some legos to call her own (though Daniel decided he needed to show her how to play with them) and an easel (a joint gift, but Rachel got more excited about it) to play with.

And since it was cold and generally disagreeable outside, having plenty of new toys to play with and books to read was a good thing. In the days after Christmas, we took the light rail downtown to explore, went swimming at the local recreation center, went to the zoo and saw the zoolights with friends and generally got ourselves ready to go to Houston for New Years. (see next posting, which it's time to write now)

Love. A.D.R.E.

We're back, sorry for the delay.

Hey there everyone

So it's been almost a month, but we have good excuses, really. We just got back from a trip to Thailand that ended up being a little longer than expected. They had a coup, closed the airport, and rather stranded us there - though that sounds a lot more dramatic than it really was for us- we basically just spent an extra week on the beach.

Grandpa and Farmor were there of course, and Aunt Sara, Uncle Michael, Jacob and Leo came too. So it was a fantastic chance to spend 2+ weeks with the family. Thais really love children, and particularly little blond kids. Travelling with Daniel and Rachel was like being part of some rock star entourage - heads turned everywhere and going through the airports, random people came up to say hi, rub their heads, etc.

We'll let the pictures tell the story, but have a few anecdotes of note. By swimming every single day, Daniel regained his confidence and skill in the water, and by the end of it said "I learned my swim lessons!". We also had the following exchange for the ages:

How old is Jacob?

Jacob is 9

How old is Leo?

Leo is 4-and-a-half

(pause) ...When am I going to turn Brown?

Rachel has really matured quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, her vocabulary is huge (though sometimes only understood by us), but her most memorable development is that if she wants something, she sings it to the tune of Queen's "We will rock you".

We will, we will

Eat din-ner!

We will, we will

Take a Nap!

We will, we will

Go Simming! (swimming)

Flights were long, but the kids were superstars, and once you're in Phuket, life is pretty mellow, so we're nice and relaxed. Flashback 2 years in the blog if you want to see what it was like with just Daniel. Breakfast (Watermelon Juice! Chocolate Milk!) fed into swimming (beach!), lunch, nap, cocktail hour and dinner on the beach. Repeat as needed.

Sorry for the lack of updates here - it just didn't seem all that wise to post something that effectively said: "we're not home". If we don't get around to posting before the holidays, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Love, A.D.R.E

He's an animal...

Friends

November is just flying by, and it's hard to believe the year is almost over. This has been a fun month for Daniel and Rachel, though there haven't been a lot of "gosh, we have to capture that for the blog" moments.

Last weekend, we took the kids to see Madagascar 2 at the local theater, followed by dinner. It was Rachel's first time at a movie theater, and she did pretty well. Daniel was totally into the story, and has been pretending to be Alakay the lion ever since. We thought he said that girls have no brains and he was very insistent on this fact, only to discover that he meant that girls have no manes, which was in fact an accurate observation lion-wise.

Daniel also revealed that he's been cataloging what he's not allowed to do yet, with the following (verbatim) sentence at dinner: "Someday, when I'm a grown-up, I can drink Pepsi, and Diet Coke, and Wine, and Coffee and Beer"

Rachel's still our little turbo-toddler. Anything Daniel can do, she wants to do too. She has 2 teeth coming in up front, and those have been bothering her enough to make our otherwise unflappable little girl cranky. She's gotten a lot more verbal lately, and will let you know what she wants by forcefully saying "yes!" or "no!" when you ask her a question of what she wants.

There are early signs that Rachel has inherited some of Anida's, desire for order - when playing mr. potato head, she wanted to build one head with nothing but eyes, and one with nothing but ears....



During the summer, we did a "family walk" around the neighborhood after dinner most evenings, and with the darker fall season, that turned into "dark family walk" where Daniel and Rachel get to carry flashlights. Good fun. There's also been several trips to the local rec center for Simming! Wawa! (Swimming in the water)

At Daniel's playschool, each kid has a "Beary special day" where their parents can come to the classroom, and they get to present a poster of things they like, and their favorite book. Then they get to take the classroom Bear home for a week. Daniel's was 2 weeks ago, and for his poster he chose pictures of shrimp (his favorite food), "bob the builder" and "diego" (his favorite characters), blue (his favorite color) and various pictures of us. He uses the phrase "that's my favorite... " a lot, which it probably is at the time, but the favorites have a tendency to change a lot.

He also got his report card, and as before, he's doing great. No behavior or developmental issues to note. He's apparently little mr. social at daycare, making friends with everyone. When we all went to his Beary special day, he was showing off Rachel to his friends - pulling her from one to the next "Owen, this is my sister", "Samantha, look it's my sister" - he was very proud of her, and it was fun to see. (this is notalways the case).

And just in time for winter, Daniel's finally figured out how to use his Razr scooter. Oh well, spring will be here soon enough.

And that's about it for now. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving everyone. We'll be back with lots of updates soon.

Love. A.D.R.E

Milestones all over the place

Friends

We have some milestones to mark:

Daniel turned 3-and-a-half on the 29th

Rachel turned 21 months on the 30th

As of today, Daniel is exactly twice as old as Rachel.

We're biased, of course, but we think we have the perfect kids. Rachel has always wanted to play with Daniel, of course, but it's just in the last couple of weeks that Daniel has started seeing that he can have fun playing with her too. So now they chase each other around the house, and Daniel has taught her such fine games as "Scream Go-away at the cat" and "Pretend to use a chainsaw on Elmo". She's just happy that her brother likes to play with her.

Daniel is very proud to be three-and-a-half and not just three anymore. He's not tall or large for his age, but he's been on a little bit of a growth spurt lately as evidenced by all of the clothes that don't fit anymore. He's little-Mr-Social at playschool, and even though we've been bragging about his verbal skills for years now, there have been some really amusing exchanges recently.

Daniel does not like nap time or bedtime, and plays all sorts of games to delay the process as much as possible. He'll take multiple trips to the restroom, insist that he can't tuck himself, ask for more books, suddenly discover that he's hungry, or scared of an airplane noise or that it's too dark in his room, or that he has "just one more thing to tell you" or that his water bottle needs to be topped off - etc, etc. This can go on for a while. A few evenings ago, it had been quiet for a while upstairs, but his light was on. On peeking in, Anida found him in bed surrounded by a pile of books - with a big grin he said "I'm a book monster" and kept reading.

For most spoken words, he can tell you what letter it starts with (c and k get confused) and if you ask him "can you name some words that start with letter..." he has lots of examples.

Rachel refers to herself as "Me!", and so when she wants an adult to do something, it's "Me Go!", or "Me Carry", or "Read me!". It's only in the last couple of days that she'll say "Atchel" for her name, and that is far from consistent now.

She'll count to two, correctly identifying if something is in a quantity of one or two. Those gaps in her teeth are finally filling in on the bottom, and she'll walk up and down stairs without holding onto anything.

Ownership concepts have come in, in that she'll say "Mine!" of things she has or wants (Mine Doll!) or doesn't want Daniel to take away. Rachel is the mellowest, most easy-going kid you've ever met - nothing phases or upsets her - until it reaches a threshold, and then it's like a switch was flipped. So her moods are binary - there's no middle ground, but mostly she's very easy.

This evening, while trick-or-treating, she started saying "Thank you much" rather than just "thank you". Everyone thought that was adorable.

And that'll have to do for a 21-month and 42-month update.

Love. ADRE