Milestones!

Our girls have been doing some serious development lately.

Both of our girls have been proficient crawlers and neither of them seemed to be in much of a hurry to toddle around on two feet. Catherine started walking at 14.5 months and Caroline took her first real steps on Saturday, the day after her 15-month mark. She looked surprised and delighted. Especially for our super serious baby, this amount of pleasant emotion was unusual. (We get plenty of the other types of visible emotion, but that's another matter . . .)

Here is a video of Caro taking a few steps in Catherine's room tonight. Just before this video, she climbed all the way up our straight staircase completely on her own. (I was there, just in case of a fall.) I'm in so much trouble!

It's getting so hard to put them to bed; they just love playing together (especially at bedtime . . . coincidence?) and getting each other super wound up around 7:30 every night. This seems to be a summer phenomenon. Nothing is sweeter than watching them play together nicely! And of course, they always play nicely, are never jealous or selfish with toys, never utter "Mine!" or deliberately pick on each other. Yes, I am so glad I don't have kids who do that. (You do hear the sarcasm!)

Catherine is also hitting all kinds of developmental milestones as well. She hasn't ever been very advanced in the gross motor skill department, but she is now happy and quite capable of climbing, jumping quite well, and swinging from the furniture. She started a 2 year olds gymnastics class last week and really loved it. I think it will be great for her and it burns off a ton of energy! And she does have a ton of energy.

Catherine has been very interested in letters and sounds for a long time. I don't remember when she first recognized all the letters, but it has to have been at least six months ago. (This is why I'm blogging now, so I'll remember later!) She's known all their sounds and been able to recognize beginning sounds of most words for maybe three months. Putting multiple sounds together has been a good deal harder for her, naturally, but we've really been working on sounding out simple words. She has a LONG way to go (I am not saying she is reading yet, by any stretch of the imagination) but she did sound out the word "bat" completely on her own last week, with no help or context from me. Wow! Her father and I might need to take advantage of spelling in front of her while we can, because we won't be able to do it for too long, I'd bet. She is already very good at using context to figure out what we're spelling. Sigh. Outsmarted by a two-year-old on a regular basis...

June Guests

Summertime always brings visits from my mom. Since she is a teacher, her summers are full of leisurely days by the pool, thumb twiddling, and relacing all her shoelaces. Okay, as a former teacher, I can say her summer is full of a few days of much-needed recovery, preparation for next year, and professional development. And maybe those few things around the house that kinda slide when you're working 60 hour weeks.

Just the same, she always manages to squeeze in a little grandbaby time. My dad joined her for their visit last week and I think it was the first time I've spent Father's Day with my dad since high school. We needn't talk about just how long ago that was. Here are a few pictures.

Daddy with his girls on Father's Day. Yes,

Fun was had by all! Thanks for coming all this way to see us. I mean, our kids.

Those summer nah-ights!

Here I can here you saying, "tell me more!"

Okay, what I have to tell isn't juicy. It might not even be interesting unless you are related to us. But who can resist a Grease reference?

I love summer nights. Being slightly cold-natured, there's something about the warm, humid air without the glaring sun that just fits me. We've been having some gorgeous evenings around here.

We enjoyed a beautiful picnic by the water in our neighborhood last night.

Caroline has food in her mouth. She keeps food in her mouth for-ev-er. Seriously. Half the time, we have to take some out when it's time to brush her teeth at night.

Yes, we fed our family Sonic. Don't judge. It was delicious, I'm not going to lie.

I love our beautiful neighborhood! It may be full of senior citizen-types and houses circa 1985, but the scenery can't be beaten!

Then tonight we enjoyed a playing in the sprinkler and bubbles before supper time. Catherine hadn't really ever played in the sprinkler before and she had a blast. Caroline wasn't too fond of it but . And I don't know where her other shoe is.

Favorite toy is the packaging the bubbles came in?

Check out these curls!