Bragging Rights

I'm long overdue on bragging on my kids... so here's the latest and greatest on the girls.


Sadie was a flower sprite for Halloween. She started walking at 12 mos 2 weeks, and has been on the run ever since. She's now 14 months, and has at least a dozen words in her vocabulary, including her newest: Buuhrrrrd (bird), Fower (flower), Dawa (Darla - our senior citizen canine), Tayteh (Katie), Ni-Nah (Kerinda)... and those are in the last week. Her vocabulary is almost doubling daily now.

She also has lots of great animal sounds and can pick out the animals (e.g. Where's the penguin?) for more than 75% of Katie's Schleich animals (if you don't know what they are, you don't have a kid under 10) and knows who moos and who baas and does a great tiger (RRRaawwwwhrrr!) that scares the puppy.


Katie was Barbie Island Princess for Halloween. Somehow, in the last year, she morphed from my fun-loving tomboy into a princess dressing, nail painting, love sick five year old. It's crazy how fast it goes. She thoroughly enjoyed Halloween this year, and is still working on the giant pumpkin full o candy.

We put her in a "normal" daycare this year instead of a Montessori, and I think it's had negative effects. Her bi-annual "evaluation" came back last week with things like "she knows all her colors" (what 5 year old doesn't?! She knew them at 18 mos!), she does well cutting shapes (again, she was doing that at 3, so what's new?!) and she's a "joy to have in the classroom." I shouldn't complain - the school is full of nice people. I just miss education. Guess I better get used to it since we have to do the public school routine.

We're working at home on reading and math, and she's great with addition and initiates math "games" on her own all the time now. She is reading 3-5 letter words, and loves to practice writing. I wish I'd put her in Kindergarten this year, but was worried about the potty issues, which still persist.

Playing on the beach. Don't be fooled. It is rare for the girls to be in the same 10' radius and not be fighting. This is a rare photo - kind of like a sighting of a UFO or BigFoot. And no, I didn't use photoshop to get this.

While I can't stand the bickering, it is good that Katie is finally free to be a sister, and not a caregiver. She no longer worries (too much) about Sadie's fragility and now fights back like any big sister would do when pestered to death by a strong-willed toddler.


Peek-a-boo! Sadie's running around the house now. For a few weeks she walked with her arms thrown up over her head. Just this week it stopped, and I already miss it. She's bending and picking up without falling, and loves to feed the new puppy everything... food, hair clips, playdoh, paper, Katie's favorite Schleich animals... the list goes on.