together

As you'll be able to tell, Jana and I have been taking pictures of Drew and Kate together lately. It's so easy to get pictures of Kate, but much harder with Drew, so it's been fun just snapping away. The other night Kate had just finished eating and Drew was having some cereal before bed, so we sat their chairs side-by-side and Jana got some fun pictures of Drew and Kate interacting. Kate has a new "surprised" face that she likes to do. It cracks us up, which is probably why she keeps on doing it!

Eventually Kate got very interested in what Drew was eating and she scooted over in her chair to check out his food. She's always VERY interested in whatever her big brother is doing. She watches him very carefully!

Once Drew got done with his food, Kate was pretty tired and she both flopped over and Drew was tickling her. I actually wish I had video of this because the two of them were giggling away. They were both pretty tired and getting a little silly.

Kate is fascinated at the moment with cups. If there is a cup within reach, she will go for it and put it in her mouth. That's been a fun thing for us to figure out because we are able to use a cup to induce her to move. We enjoy watching her figure out how, through a combination of scooting and rolling, she can get to the cup.

Here's one last picture of Kate just for fun. Jana and I have been amused that whenever I walk into the room I get a huge grin like this. Even if Kate is nursing, she'll pause, turn her head, and give me a big smile. Now that's love! :)

show me the evidence

Kate was doing some funny smiles for me a couple days ago, so I snapped some pictures of her. Usually, she has nice, normal smiles, but every once in a while she does one like the one below. Both Drew and Kate have been having fun playing around the Christmas tree that you can see in the background. They're both very good about looking at it and not touching it (Kate can't reach it :) Drew was playing nicely with Kate during the photo shoot and he paused to go over and give her a kiss! Then he came over and gave me a kiss and went into the kitchen and gave Jana a kiss. Drew is a delight to be around!

Kate is enjoying the big person tub and taking baths with her brother. Look, she's got a little hair now on top of that bald head! We're hoping that for Christmas we might be able to pin something in her "hair," but we don't expect it.

Kate moves all over, but being a scientist, I needed some photographic evidence to put on here. I keep writing about it, but pictures tell the best story. Yesterday, I set out to get some pictures of this movement! I took this first picture of Kate after I noticed that she had left the boppy and started to make her way toward the blue plastic cup.

She left that area and headed back toward the boppy and the Christmas tree. She was lying there in this picture talking away to the Christmas tree. She continues to talk more and more, especially when Drew is quiet or not around.

Kate reversed course back again and started to play with the plastic tongs that were in the middle of the room. Kate isn't crawling yet, but she's not sitting still either!

Drew was playing yesterday with his Duplos and Jana and I were very impressed when he created the animal below on his own. We asked him what it was, and he replied, "It is an elephant, with a yellow trunk." Nice creation, Drew!

Kate has been babbling away and standing, so I captured it on video this weekend. Jana has been busy grading final papers for the semester, so I've had lots of time playing with Drew and Kate. We've had fun!

Be thankful that I'm just showing you this much because I took minutes and minutes of footage, then pared it down to these two short clips. In this one Kate is on the ground rolling around. You can see that she is getting closer to crawling as she works on getting her torso up off the ground. She's not quite there yet!

Nightly tradition

Jana and I have been continuing our nightly tradition of going into each child's room to check on them. Kate likes to attempt to pull her bumper toward her like a blanket, so we often scoot her more toward the center of her crib after checking on her. We enjoy watching our little bundle of pink softly sleeping! After checking on Kate, we are always amazed at how big Drew is. It's hard to believe that he's only two years older than Kate because there is a huge size difference! Drew continues to sleep so soundly that you can ruffle his hair, whisper "I love you" in his ear, and rearrange his covers without him even moving. He gets that from his dad :)

Kate looked up from the living room floor in this picture to show off her chins. We have lots of fun putting her on the floor and seeing what she will do. She's scooting all around, but not crawling consistently yet.

I was dressed in my brown pants and Kate was dressed in her brown sweatsuit, so we had to take the opportunity for a couple pictures. It's not often that we coordinate our outfits!

I don't think Drew would want pictures of it, but his big accomplishment has been making the switch to underpants!! After a couple consecutive days with dry diapers, he made the switch today to underwear (Lightning McQueen underwear). After some resistance to the idea, he's caught on quickly to using the potty and in the past two weeks he's gone from not using the bathroom at all to using it all the time. Way to go Drew!!

Chilly . . . but fun

Drew has been around now for about 1038 days (if my math is correct) and Jana and I recently surpassed 8,000 pictures and videos taken since he was born. That's a lot of time spent behind the camera! A lot of the pictures now include Kate, but the bottom line is that we snap a lot of pictures of Drew and Kate. A LOT!!

Often our pictures don't turn out so well and they don't make it up on the blog. For every good picture we capture, there are at least five pictures that look terrible. Like this one: We've been practicing having Drew and Kate pose together because we want a good Christmas picture of the two of them. It's impressively difficult to get. Drew will look cute on only so many pictures because he loves to do weird faces now for the camera. It's impossible to MAKE him give a nice smile (we've tried :) When Drew smiles nicely, then Kate loses focus and stops looking at the camera like in the picture below. Of the ones that we took of Drew and Kate in their pajamas, this was the best one!

Last Saturday morning we went out to Tannenbaum Farms to cut down our Christmas tree. We bundled up because it was VERY cold. Drew kept on telling us, "I am CHILLY!" We briefly paused on the way out of the parking lot for this picture. It was Kate's first Christmas tree! We didn't stand still for long because the wind was howling and the wind chill was hovering below zero. Not a good day for Drew and Kate to be outside for very long!

We rushed out to the type of tree we wanted and within minutes we had one selected. I sawed through the trunk, Drew yelled "Timber!" and we had our Christmas tree. Drew and I paused for a picture next to our tree carcass. It was so cold that Jana put her purple scarf on him.

Drew really wanted to hold the saw, so I let him hold it for a little while and "saw" some branches off the tree for me. Jana is looking at me with an expression that says, "What are you doing letting a two-year-old hold a saw?" Drew was in his glory with the saw, and that, I explained to Jana is why Drew's holding the saw. He wants to be like his dad!!

Jana and I were grinning away while watching Drew hold the saw. He was covered in so many layers of clothing that it was a little unwieldy to hold.

Drew had lots of fun tramping through the snow. Our theme for him for the morning was "Chilly. . . but fun!!"

We all watched the workers shake our tree and then bind it up for the ride home. Watching those machines was probably Drew's favorite part of the trip. We were all VERY excited to get back in the car and take the tree home!

On Sunday morning Drew and Kate were both dressed up and sitting in Kate's room. They were playing really well together and suddenly I realized that I was missing a prime opportunity to capture the two of them together in a photo. I quickly remedied the situation.

As soon as we got the camera out, Drew had to horse around a bit. He's already learning how to give his little sister a hard time!

It was a lot of fun to watch Drew and Kate sitting together. You might be surprised, but this situation was not at all posed. Kate was sitting in her room and Drew plopped down beside her and started entertaining her. He brought in his blanket and then he brought her a teddy bear to play with. It is a total joy to see the two of them interacting.

Kate puts EVERYTHING into her mouth and that often leaves her looking like this:

I saved this picture for last because it's one of my new favorite pictures. Kate and I were chatting in the living room and Jana captured this picture of the two of us nose-to-nose. Kate was smiling away and making cute noises, and I was totally enjoying spending time with my daughter (she pooped her pants a few moments later and then spit up on my shirt and pants :)

two in the tub

One of the new experiences at the Aupperlee household has been Drew and Kate beginning to take baths together. It is too fun to have them together in the bathtub!! Usually, they both do their own thing like in this picture It's been going very well and Drew has been great with sharing his bath time with Kate. Jana and I like that it shortens bath time to have them together. It's especially easier if just one of us is around. Look at the difference in Drew and Kate's coloring. Kate is so much darker, isn't she? We're amazed by how different Kate's coloring is from Drew's color. Any time both Drew and Kate are in the bathtub together we're struck by it.

Kate was happy to get out of the bath and into her mom's arms. She makes a pretty cute flower, doesn't she?

Last week we were in Grand Rapids for Thanksgiving. We spent one day with Jana's family and one day with my family, and we started out with Grandma Lynn and Grandpa John. Kate enjoyed their floor and sitting with her measuring cups. Throughout our time in Grand Rapids we were all impressed with how well Kate does sitting on the floor and playing independently. She can go for hours!

As you might guess, Kate's grandpa and grandma enjoyed spending lots of time with her!

Kate has been doing very well with standing and is probably ready to walk behind something. If she hangs on to anything and we move it, she'll walk along behind it. Mobility!!

Drew also likes to play on his own. It's nice for us to be able to sit around and talk while Drew and Kate entertain themselves. Drew moves from one thing to the next until every toy is scattered throughout the room. He's very good at making a mess!

If you look carefully, you can see Kate's two teeth in this picture. I've got more pictures coming that also show her teeth. They're quite visible when she's laughing and smiling.

We've switched locations to Grandma Sue and Grandpa Bill's house, but you can see that the sitting and playing on the floor has continued. Why mess with a good thing?!

This toy fire engine is actually Uncle Todd's toy and it's HUGE! It was the biggest toy fire engine any of us had seen and Drew couldn't get enough of it.

I have to admit that I took a turn with the fire engine myself because it was pretty cool. The ladder on the top was battery controlled and would go up and down at the push of a button. You could also turn on the headlights and to Drew's delight it had a siren.

Here are those two teeth again. Kate was giggling away here and showing them off. It was nice that for Thanksgiving both Drew and Kate were starting to feel better. They were both sick for about two weeks, but now our family is on the mend (they got Jana and I each sick for a few days too).

Uncle Todd got a turn feeding Kate her bottle. This is the only picture I have of it, but Todd was sporting a pretty sweet mustache for the holiday. I wish you could see it better. He truly looked like a firefighter! Although he shaved it off, I'm encouraging him to make it a more permanent look :)

Grandpa Bill and Grandma Sue were pretty excited about seeing Kate too! She's a wonderful size right now, although as her mobility increases she's getting more squirmy. The days of her sitting still in your lap are gone!

Kate is getting off the ground from her stomach pretty well and every once in a while she'll crawl a little bit. One of these days, I think she's just going to take off and never look back.

Where is Kate's sock in this picture? She took it off, like always. She is definitely in that "can't keep socks on" phase of her life. Her socks are always coming off and going in her mouth. Just in time for winter, we can't keep her socks on her little feet!