Kate walks!

This is a rare picture of both Drew and Kate together! They don't often sit together and it's even harder to capture both of them looking anywhere near the camera, so I thought I'd post it. They were in their pajamas and looking pretty cute! Drew has been having fun interacting with Kate and he's been incredibly chatty lately. It's so fun to hear what he has to say, and it's also been fun to hear Kate's steadily increasing vocabulary. Drew was getting some fire calls and then responding to them. In this picture he was receiving a call and getting ready to go out and rescue someone.

Kate was having fun with Drew's fire helmet and she was cracking up over Jana wearing it. Kate has been standing on her own, cruising all over the place, and today she reached a huge milestone . . . she walked!! She took two steps for the first time unassisted. Keep posted for some video of this as she continues to explore walking.

Kate has been "talking on the phone" lately by putting a toy car up to her ear. At the end of this video our phone rings and you can see Kate's eyes widen. It's been a lot of fun to watch her walk around the house with a car up to her ear. Hopefully this is not a sign of a girl who is going to talk a lot on the phone someday!! :)

This is similar to a video that I posted previously, but I still find it fun to watch. Drew is on the stairs again putting out fires. You'll see how directive he is in his play with me and how his imagination works as we play together. I get a kick out of how clearly he tells me what to do and has a clear idea of how he wants us to play.

Fire station videos

I've got some more video from the fire station that didn't make it on my first post. The most exciting ones were on my previous post, but these also show some of what we saw today. It was lots of fun!

Todd put on all his gear for us. Here he is putting on his coat and then his SCBA. The noise from his pack is a sensor that makes noise when the firefighter doesn't move for a period of time or if they push a button on it. It allows someone to find a firefighter based on the noise when it is smoky.

Todd got down next to Drew and had his SCBA on. Todd's voice was muffled, so it does sound weird when he's talking. I'm glad Drew got to see this so that he can be prepared! The total weight of all the gear: approximately 70 pounds!

Todd turned on the lights for the MRU (Medical Response Unit). Drew had fun checking out the lights and walking around this. Kate also liked seeing it!

Fire Station 3

Today we made the trip down to Battle Creek to visit uncle Todd at the fire station, while he was working! Drew was jumping up and down in anticipation this morning because he was so excited about going to the fire station and showing uncle Todd his helmet, coat, and boots. Upon arriving in Battle Creek, Drew got to climb into the fire engine (it was an actual fire ENGINE this time). Drew showed Uncle Todd his fire helmet and Todd showed Drew his new black fire helmet. The new helmet shows that Todd is no longer in his probationary period (yellow helmet) and now is an official firefighter. We're trying to convince Drew he needs a black fire helmet now too.

We tried without success to get Drew to wear a red fire helmet (which is what the officers wear), but instead he let Kate wear it while he stuck to his normal yellow helmet.

Here is Drew with a halligan and ax. He's ready to take down a door!

There were lots of smiles from Drew as he checked out the fire engine!

I've got some video of moving the truck outside, but in this picture you can see that we're outside the fire station. The walls of this fire station are stone, and the building was constructed in 1902!

Todd took out some hose for us, so then he had to put it back. He pulled out the yellow line and nozzle to show us.There are cool compartments all over the fire engine, and here Todd is showing Drew a hose wrapped up and stored in a compartment in the front bumper. Very cool!

Drew took a seat on the front of the fire engine while uncle Todd told him about the siren he was sitting next to (with the F on it). It's loud!

Kate got in the action and walked around on the front bumper herself.

As Drew was there longer, he got more and more comfortable around the fire engine. Soon he was running around the middle of the engine checking out the pumper controls.
And he was running around the fire engine getting ready to go to fires.

Drew climbed up onto the fire engine, although it was pretty high for him, so sometimes he needed a hand.

Drew also started to get more adventurous about touching things on the fire engine. At first he kept his hands to himself, but then he started to play with things. The fire engine was like a fun, big playground!Kate, meanwhile, also wanted to take a turn with touching things. She was especially fascinated by this cord.

Here are a few pictures to remind Drew of what he saw on the fire engine. The pumper on this engine in all mechanical, so there is a lot to touch and see involved with controlling it.

This is looking back over the pump toward the fire station. The address for the station was mounted on a . . . fire engine, of course!

Here's a view from above the fire engine on the stairs of the fire station. The fire engine looked very modern in such an old building!

Todd put on all his gear for Drew. We wanted Drew to see it because often little kids hide from firemen. That's not helpful, although I don't think it's an unusual reaction to seeing someone wearing this and sucking oxygen!

Drew got to hold Uncle Todd's spanner wrench. He looks quite official, doesn't he?

We needed a picture of Drew and Uncle Todd in his fire suspenders. A classic joke for you: Why do firemen always wear red suspenders? To hold their pants up! (groan)

Uncle Todd's a strong guy, he grabbed his nephew in one arm and his niece in the other. The combined weight of the two of them is still less than a full-size jaws of life!

Kate was fearless inside the fire engine, so eventually Drew had to join her. The two of them had a great time getting dirty around the fire engine. Luckily, we managed to keep Kate from putting anything in her mouth.

Kate went for the this flashlight inside the engine and for anything else she could get her little hands on.

We're moving on to the video portion of our trip! Uncle Todd took Drew in the back of the fire engine, rolled down the window, and then had the driver drive Drew out of the fire station inside the truck. Drew's eyes were big as saucers!

At the end of this video you can hear that they also turned on the siren for Drew. He got quite the experience! We tried and tried, but Drew was totally quiet inside the fire engine. Too much excitement to talk :)

Uncle Todd attempted to show Drew a hose, but Drew quickly scooted away. There were a number of things that Drew liked better when he was several feet away from them! As I mentioned, he warmed up to everything over time, but it was all a little too exciting for him at first.

As you can tell, we had a great trip to the fire station in Battle Creek. Thanks Uncle Todd! We'll be hearing about today for a while :)

Grilled cheese

The NCAA basketball tournament starts this week, and Drew has been watching a lot of basketball with me lately in preparation for the last few weeks of the basketball season. After watching basketball for a little while, Drew always turns to me and suggests that we go into the basement to play some basketball. He's also been getting into March Madness by wearing his Spartan jersey. Go State!Kate has been enjoying getting into everything Drew is doing. He emptied out this bin of all his toy trucks and cars, so Kate came over (Drew wouldn't let her touch his cars) and made off with the bin. She was quite pleased with herself. Most often Drew is pretty tolerant of Kate's interest in everything he does, but sometimes he calls her the "Destructor." (Cough, cough . . . I might have given him that idea) Kate has off and on tried small pieces of table food, but this was the first time she really took to anything with enthusiasm. What was it? Grilled cheese, a healthy staple of an diet. She couldn't get enough of the sandwich and ate pieces of it until she and Jana finished the sandwich.

Kate knelt next to Jana (no hands) and ate away. Kate continues to gain leg and trunk strength and it doesn't seem like it will be too much longer before she walks. She moves QUICKLY around the house now when cruising or crawling. One minute she'll be right next to you, and the next she's gone. We've always got to keep an eye on her!

The other day Drew helped me with a project (repairing our back door) and that brought a renewed interest in his drill. For the past couple days the drill has been carried around everywhere.

It's incredibly hard to get Drew to smile nicely for a picture, so most of them end up like this. I believe he was reading in this picture. As you can tell, he gets very focused when reading.

Jana doesn't tend to pose for the camera as much as I do, so whenever I get the opportunity, I need to include pictures of Jana on here. After finishing her grilled cheese sandwich, Kate was excited about snuggling in with Jana. She's a smart girl; she knows where most of her food comes from!

I mentioned in my last post that Drew likes to go up our stairs and pretend they are his fire engine. In the video below I caught him in action. As you can tell, there is no script as he continually surprised me. He throws some pretty random stuff in here, and I should explain that we talk in our family about police officers pulling over "naughty" drivers to keep the rest of us safe. Somehow Drew thinks he's pulling people over in his fire truck, rescuing them from a crash, and going to put out fires. It was a busy day!

Drew made it up to the top of the stairs and I captured this video of his exploits at the top of the stairs. He made it up, was doing his thing, then he happened to look out the window and was reminded of how high up a second story window is. At first we were trying to figure out where Drew learned this latest turn of phrase, then we realized that Jana occasionally uses it. Drew is definitely in that stage where he picks up EVERYTHING we say and then may repeat it when we least expect it. He's also catching on to spelling and yesterday asked what the P-A-R-K was because he wanted to go there. Pretty soon I think Jana and I will have to covertly communicate in front of Drew with morse code! :)

Whenever we are in the basement, Kate is highly attracted to the stairs. We have to continually block them off or redirect her to something else. I finally caved in and took this video of her scooting up the stairs grunting away. Kate loves to grunt, and she especially gets into it on the stairs. We're not at all sure how she picked up on grunting, but it continually cracks us up!

stomach flu . . . yuck

At the Aupperlee home we've been hit hard lately by the stomach flu. Jana got it first last week, Kate followed the next night, Drew picked it up the following night, and I managed to help everyone back to health . . . and now it's my turn. I'm home today with a bout of stomach flu myself. I knew it was only a matter of time!

While home I thought I'd make myself useful and I'd post on the blog. This is actually Kate pre-flu, and we think she may have thinned out a bit as the result of her illness. She's back to her usual eating and drinking though, so we're not concerned about her weight! On Friday morning I stayed home with a sick Kate and we allowed Drew to stay home too. He probably enjoyed Kate being sick because of all the time he got to spend with me and Jana (although he got sick later that night himself). Drew was in full firefighter mode. He put on his coat, his firefighter shirt, and he even added his own touch: a "tool" belt for his fireman tools. He put together some of Kate's toys and wore them around his waist as a belt.

Next, he headed to the stairs. The stairs in our house are his fire engine and he gets into the fire engine (goes onto the stairs) and shuts the door of his fire engine and then drives around. He goes and saves people from fires and makes trips to McDonald's (I'm not making that up!).

After playing for a bit Drew was soaked with sweat from his fire helmet. I'm sure real firefighters can appreciate that the helmet gets hot after a while!

Drew put his hat and coat back on to go in the basement to play some golf. I don't have video of it yet, but Drew can not only hit a baseball, but he also swings away (like a hockey player) at the golf ball.

To protect Kate from the balls flying around, I strap her into our stroller and she plays with some wiffle balls of her own. She loves holding a ball!

Kate was so cute crawling around in her outfit that I couldn't resist taking her picture (she was sick with the flu at this time!).

Kate has been working on walking around and lately she's been working on walking behind her walker. She cruising around the living room behind her stroller.

Kate has also been crawling up and down stairs. Whenever Drew heads for the stairs to be on his fire engine, Kate wants to join him. She loves the stairs!

I got new glasses about a month ago and haven't had a picture with them posted on here yet, so here are a few with me wearing my glasses and playing with Drew and Kate. They both made it to the top of the stairs and were romping around me. Drew was having great fun crawling all over me.

Kate made it up the stairs and decided to join us. Jana snapped some pictures while Drew, Kate, and I giggled away! I'm sure every parent has something somewhat embarrassing that your child says and you wonder, "Where did he/she pick that up??" Well, I happened to catch one of those moments on tape. Drew and Kate were playing in the bathtub one night when Drew put a cup in his mouth and started blowing on it. I made the mistake of asking him what he had in his mouth. He was using a . . . "smoker." Where did he learn that??? We don't smoke! As a cancer researcher I'm vehemently opposed to smoking. Is he pushing my buttons already?!

I thought you would get a kick out of this video. It's not often these moments are captured on tape (thank goodness).

puzzles

Wow, who is that mustachioed man? :) This past weekend I went to a beer tasting festival and all my friends decided to wear mustaches to the festival. The mustache is generally not a look embraced by young men in their late 20s or early 30s, so it was quite entertaining to walk around in the group. It was not quite as entertaining when I was by myself!

We stopped at my parents' house in the morning to spend time with family for Todd's birthday this past week. Kate got into a dress and tights for the occasion.

See, there were a lot of us sporting the mustaches. What a rough looking gang of guys! We got comments and attention throughout the day (not all positive) about the mustaches.

In case you missed the dirty upper lips in the previous photo, we pointed to them for you.

We had a great time and enjoyed some very tasty microbrews. The mustaches were a hit, but we'll have to see if they return. Jana did NOT like my mustache and I got lots of eye rolls and sighs over the mustache.

I haven't been clean shaven in a couple years, so that was almost as weird as having a mustache. Jana's very glad that I don't have the mustache any more!

Enough about me and back to the kids! Kate was snuggled in on my lap the other night, so Jana snapped some pictures of Kate. Kate is so different from Drew in that she loves to snuggle. It's wonderful!!

The other morning while we were getting ready for daycare Drew grabbed a book, some blankets, and made himself a nest for reading.

He just laid there reading away from "What do people do all day?" Drew totally takes after his parents with reading a lot!

Kate loves to crawl and peek around corners. She's always got a smile!

Drew got this four puzzle set for his birthday. It has four separate 12-piece puzzles. Drew can separate the four puzzles based on the symbols on the back of them (triangle, circle, star, or square) and then complete each of the four puzzles without any help. He loves his puzzles!

Drew whips through this puzzle and we're starting to think he might need some new more challenging puzzles. He gets them down after a few times, and then he experiments with different strategies for doing them (top to bottom, left to right, right to left, bottom to top, edges to center). We have lots of fun watching Drew work on these because he'll sit for quite a while doing and re-doing his puzzles.

This next video is the longest video I have ever posted. Unless you're family, I think you'll probably be bored (I'm being honest!). It's a little under 4 minutes long and it shows Drew dismantle and then re-assemble a 24 piece puzzle (while fighting off Kate's destructive tendencies). He's talking away during the process and telling Kate "NO!" each time she comes over to his puzzle. He also sings a little bit of "You Never Let Go" by Matt Redman. Like I said, not the most exciting video in the world, but it will give you an idea of how Drew puts together puzzles.