thelittlezoo.com

I have a wish on the Robinhood Funds website. It might seem silly, but it's important to me. Take a look, please, and if you think it's worthy, vote for me! You have to register, but it's quick and painless.

My Wish

Wouldn't you know it, Hannah's first recognizable artwork wasn't on “real” paper and I can't keep it for her baby book? She drew a picture on her Aquadoodle today. So I had to quickly throw the pad onto my scanner and scan her art before it dried. It's not a great scan, but it's the best I could get.

So without further ado, here is “Little Bear” by Hannah, age 3 years, 7 1/2 months.

It is absolutely beautiful here today. The sun is shining, the sky is blue with just a few fluffy white clouds. It's probably 65ºf out there. Hannah and I played outside for a while since Sarah was napping. Now we're back in the house and waiting for Sarah to wake up before we head to town in about an hour. We've got the front door and several windows open and it is so neat sitting here listening to all the birds singing. They are really enjoying the weather, too, I think. I can hear the goldfinches fighting over the bird feeders I have out back, and dozens of them chirping and singing in the trees out front, as well.

Don't you wish you were here? It couldn't be a more perfect day.

We went grocery shopping tonight, where Sarah wanted to push the cart. Yes, 20 month old Sarah. She pulled the cart out of the line-up of carts and with just a little steering from Mom or Dad, she pushed the grocery cart through the entire store as we shopped. It was a good thing we were only after 2 or 3 items because she did NOT want to slow down! She just trucked along, pushing that big cart all by herself.

Sarah also seems to be taking after me. She says Clifford {the big red dog}, Swiper {the fox from Dora the Explorer} and Stripples {vegetarian “bacon” strips), but it all sounds alike! Apparently when I was her age (or thereabouts) I would say a word that sounded basically the same whether I was saying pencil, pretzel or poncho. Sarah's word sounds like “schwippo”, no matter to which of the three she's referring.

Hannah is doing well; we're so excited that now she not only sleeps all night in her room, she sleeps all night in her room with nothing more than a night light! No more movie!

Tomorrow we'll be going to K.I.D.S. for part of the afternoon so I can babysit for a friend. I have to pick Charlie up from work because the alternator has gone out on his car, so I might as well be in town in the afternoon, so my friend doesn't have to hurry clear out to our place (a minimum of 20 minutes from downtown) to get her in time for me to leave to get Charlie.

I suppose that's about it for now… more later!

Sarah learned how to say her name last week. It's very cute. We were over at Grandma & Poppa's house tonight and tried to get her to say it, but she didn't want to perform. Dad started telling her “I'm Sarah!”, trying to get her to deny that and say her own name. She ignored him for a while, played with some other toys, left the room, came back, and Dad said it again. “I'm Sarah!”

Sarah didn't hesitate a moment. She pointed at herself and said “I'm Poppa.”

It's been a busy few days, so I haven't had much time to post updates. Not much going on, really. The big news here is that Hannah has been sleeping all night in her room without her “fishy movie” - just a night light. Yay! She's really excited about it, and tells us every morning “I slept in my princess bed ALL NIGHT! I'm a BIG GIRL!”

Sarah is still amazing us with her vocabulary. She's almost 20 months and I'm sure she says close to 200 words now - I've lost track! And she speaks in sentences, sometimes up to 6 words long.

We're planning a camping trip at the beginning of next month - going with some friends to the Oregon Coast. That should be fun! We'll probably go Whale Watching while we're there - it's a great time of year to see the whales migrating.

I'll try to update a little more frequently. But it's hard when nothing much is going on, besides every day working and playing!