On the move

Kate has begun to roll around to get where she wants to be. She has been rolling inconsistently for a while now, and all of the sudden, Kate totally figured it out and has been rolling all over the place. Check out the next few pictures to see a progression of her on the move. She started by rolling a little bit under the couch and playing for a while with the bottom of the couch.

Then Kate decided to give me a show and started to pull up her shirt. She LOVES to pull up her shirt! Any time Kate is sitting around, she grabs the bottom of her shirt, pulls it up to show off her tummy and then proceeds to suck on her shirt.

I took these pictures while sitting on the couch recovering from knee surgery and Drew came over to say hello to me. He got very excited when I let him drink the rest of my cup of water. He loves drinking out of a cup, although we don't always let him do it. It's still so much easier to give him a sippy cup!

Back to Kate, who has moved quite a bit! She reached for that magazine that you might have noticed earlier and grabbed it in her hands. We snapped this picture, then grabbed the magazine before she started to chew on it. As you can tell, Kate isn't that discriminating right now about what she puts in her mouth! She rolls all over the place and chews on everything. Drew is out of that "let's put this in my mouth"-stage, but we constantly need to keep an eye on our little roller to see what she's getting into!

Drew loves helping Jana give Kate her bath in the evening. Drew helps out with the washcloth and he helps by washing Kate's elbows and knees. It's a lot of fun to watch Drew help and to see how excited he gets over helping us take care of his baby sister. I wish I had a video of this to show you because both Drew and Kate were giggling away.

Here are my two favorite ladies! Kate's eyes are well on their way to a very interesting shade of brown, so now I have two brown-eyed-girls to enjoy!

Jana is protecting Kate's modesty, but look at all those rolls of baby fat that Kate has on display! We could put Kate in a tire and sell Michelins! She is such a nice, solid weight now after being rather petite when she was first born. Around each wrist, she's got a wrinkle from all the fat in her arms.

Kate is a snuggler and Jana captured this picture of Kate cuddled in on my chest. Kate has a bit of a dubious expression on her face, but she was quiet and enjoying lying on my chest for quite a while before this picture.

One day while I was recovering on the couch from knee surgery, Jana put Kate down to sit with me. Kate gets stripped down to her diaper for most of her meals because it's so messy, so she must have just finished eating. Kate had a nice full stomach and within a few minutes she dozed off sitting next to me.

The giraffe that Kate is holding here is one of her favorite toys. She loves to put it in her mouth and chew on it. It will keep her busy for minutes at a time (and therefore it is one of our favorite toys too!).

The other weekend we celebrated birthdays in Grand Rapids, and Great-Grandpa Vryhof made sure he got a turn holding Kate. It's not always easy to get in a turn when both Grandma and Great-Grandma are around! It almost looks like Great-Grandpa is admiring the solidness of Kate's legs :)

I was trying to rest my knee (as I've been doing a lot lately), so I snapped pictures of things while keeping my knee up. I've made a lot of use of the zoom feature on our camera so that I can capture all the action around me.

Drew has favorite toys at each grandparents' house. At Grandma Lynn and Grandpa John's house he loves the Lincoln logs and the "marble" set (they're not really marbles, but that's what he calls it). At Grandma Sue and Grandpa Bill's house Drew loves the trucks and cars. Drew is playing here with the old toys that Todd and I had when we were kids. He sets them up in front of the fireplace and gets totally engrossed in his play.

Grandpa Bill and Great-Grandpa Vryhof had a project of putting together a wheelbarrow. Drew LOVES to do projects, so he was all over helping out with the tools. In the picture below, he is helping to put together the wheel.

Drew grabbed a socket wrench and went to work "tightening" all the nuts and bolts on the wheelbarrow. He was a big help!

At times Drew was more interested in his tools than he was in the work that was being done :)

It was fun to watch the three guys working together to assemble the wheelbarrow. It was especially fun to not be doing any of the work!

This is a more representative picture of Great-Grandma holding Kate. She typically gets much more Kate-holding time than Great-Grandpa.

Drew helped my dad and I blow out the candles on our birthday cake. We have started singing "Happy Birthday" twice because Drew loves blowing out the candles after the song.

Drew tucked right into his piece of cake and finished off the whole piece. After a slow start in life with eating sweets, Drew has started to do a stellar job of eating anything with chocolate in it!

After all the work putting it together, Drew went for a ride outside in the wheelbarrow.

Kate is wonderful to hold in her footed pajamas. She's full of smiles and perfect for cuddling!

As much as we love being around Kate and Drew, it was very nice for Jana and I to get away for a night last weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time away with just the two of us. We haven't had time like that since Kate was born! Here is one of the pictures from our trip.

laughing

A lot has been going on at the Aupperlee house and our internet hasn't been working for me to share it! We finally got internet back this afternoon, so I'm quickly taking the opportunity to get some things done online.

I've been home since last Thursday recuperating from a second knee surgery. The surgery went well, but my knee is being affected by arthritis and the joint is starting to degrade. Yuck! I've had lots of time to sit at home, but no internet connection, so I've been watching lots of movies, reading lots of books, and enjoying when I can get Kate or Drew to slow down and sit with me.

In the picture below, Drew was coming up to Kate and giving her kisses and making her laugh. You can check out a video of it at the bottom of this post. Drew has been a big help with Kate and sometimes she will laugh when he walks into the room! As it has gotten colder, we've brought out Kate's warm fleece snowsuit thing (I don't know what they're called). We put the hood up and she looks super cute in it!

Drew likes it when Kate visits him in his big boy bed. One morning Jana brought Kate in with her to get Drew and he was happy to have Kate by his tummy.

Kate continues to love smiling for the camera. What is it about babies at this age? To our total joy, Kate is also a snuggler! Drew was not much for cuddling, but last night I was on the couch for over thirty minutes with a wide-awake Kate resting on my chest and cooing softly. It was wonderful!

In the morning while he's getting ready for the day, Drew loves to have a blanket with him. He also makes sure that Kate has one too so that she doesn't get cold.

As I mentioned, Kate loves being held, so while sitting on the couch for the past few days I've had plenty of opportunities to hold her. I'm ready to be done with the bandages and the surgeries!

Taking care of three babies (I'm not much use right now) can be difficult, so my mom came this past weekend to help out for a bit. She knitted Kate a hat to keep her bald head warm, and in this picture Kate was trying it out. It's a pumpkin-colored hat with a stem and a leaf!

I doubt it was because of the hat, but Kate was very interested in the camera. She's started to reach for it and try to grab the cord.

Drew has been using my crutches to "squirt" out fires. He grabs one crutch and I hold the other one on the couch and we put out fires around the living room. It's great fun!

Drew loves handling the crutches and every once in a while we need to tell him to set them down for a little bit. He swings them all over the place putting out fires!

This is our new favorite video at the Aupperlee house. Drew is playing with Kate after supper and making her crack up. By the end of his attention to Kate, our family was giggling!

MSU gardens

I forgot to put this first picture on my last post, and it is one of my new favorites because Kate looks like such a big girl. Can't you almost get a sense of what she's going to look like as she gets older?! The other night Kate fell asleep on my chest and since Jana wasn't around, I took a picture of it myself. It turned out all right, and you can get the idea of how sweet it was to have her hand pulling on my shirt and her head nestled into my chest. She's such a pleasant weight right now when she falls asleep on you.

Kate still looks like a baby in her pajamas and bib. She's so soft and huggable in her soft footed pajamas!

One of my favorite places at MSU is the gardens that include the demonstration gardens and children's garden. They are such cool places to walk through and amazingly, Drew and Kate had never been there. This past weekend Jana was at a retreat, so on Saturday night to get out for a bit I took Drew and Kate to the gardens. Drew had fun checking everything out and exploring the gardens.

The garden is right next to the train tracks and while we were there a train went by on the tracks. Drew has seen MANY trains from the car, but it was the first time we were up close when a train went past while blowing its horn . . . and it was loud! Drew's eyes were huge at the noise the train made. After seeing the train, Drew got up in this play train and enjoyed driving it.

He poked his head out of the engine room to say hello to me and Kate.

To my disappointment, this part of the garden wasn't operating. Usually you can rotate the metal thing Drew is holding and the frogs in the background have water pumped out of their mouths. It's pretty entertaining for kids (and adults too), and I was hoping to show it to Drew. Drew still had fun rotating it around, but it wasn't the same without the water shooting out of the frog's mouths.

Both Drew and Kate were THRILLED when Jana came home. They had a good weekend with Dad, but they lit up when mom got home. Kate chatted away and smiled all night, and Drew was giving everyone hugs!

spicy

Jana and I continue our nightly tradition of going in and checking in on both of our kids. Kate has settled in for sleeping and sleeps just as soundly as Drew now. We go in and give her a little kiss and I rest my hand on her chest to feel her breathing. She's getting so much bigger, but when she's sleeping she feels so fragile and tiny! The other night Kate was lying with one arm out and we snapped a picture of her sleeping. We could stand by their beds and watch our kids sleep for a long time! Kate was rocking her dress earlier this week and Jana snapped some pictures of her. Kate is at that age when she likes to work it for the camera. As soon as we pull out the camera she starts cooing and smiling. It's too cute!

Drew, on the other hand, hams it up in a different way. The best way to get a nice picture of him is while he's sitting in his chair eating. Otherwise, pictures of his "smiles" are hit or miss. We're still working on him giving a nice smile for the camera when we ask.

Kate lights up whenever I enter the room. It's so much fun to be around. Sometimes I'm distracted and I don't notice it, and Jana will say to me, "Will you at least look at Kate? She's been grinning and making noises at you and you haven't noticed!" Once Kate has my attention it's hard to get back to what I was doing!

Tonight I sat down to dinner with Drew and Kate and Drew looked down at his plate and said, "This food looks very spicy for me." He still tucked right into it and after eating a bunch of his rice and chicken he looked up at me and said, "My food does taste spicy to me." You know what? He was right! The rice and chicken that I made for him WAS a little bit spicy and as soon as he mentioned it the first time I realized he was right. I didn't even know he knew what spicy meant!

first apple picking trip of the fall

Drew and Kate continue to be absolutely . . . delightful! Drew still loves to hold Kate and softly touch her and make her laugh. He was so excited in this picture that he got to hold her! I've been enjoying snuggling with my daughter (and so has Jana). She's been pretty tired at night lately, so sometimes she falls asleep in my arms before we get her to bed. That's a special treat! A few weeks ago Kate and Drew both had colds, and one night while comforting Kate and suctioning her nose, she fell asleep like this on my chest and I didn't realize it until we both woke up several hours later. Jana and I have been cherishing the experiences of Kate being this small because she's continuing to grow and get bigger. Keep at it Kate!

Kate's eyes continue to stay dark, although the exact color is going to be difficult to determine. Her hair is also starting to come in a little bit . . . and it's dark! Kate is starting to look more and more like Jana (and that's a GOOD thing!!).

This past week we went apple picking one night after work. Last year we only went once and we ran out of apples within a few weeks. This year we decided to get out to the apple orchard as often as possible! Drew was a big help and frequently had two apples in his hands: one apple to eat and another to go in our bag.

Kate went along for a ride with Jana in the Baby Bjorn. This was Kate's first time apple picking, and it was Drew's THIRD fall of apple picking!

I pulled Drew over for a picture with me. He was squirming away and still doesn't like to pose for pictures (yet he loves to look at pictures of himself).

Drew loved striding around the orchard with an apple in hand. He ate two apples while we were out picking them. We saw lots of cool tractors that Drew needed to check out.

Drew enjoyed the freedom of wandering around the orchard. He's getting to be a big boy, isn't he? People continually mistake him for a four-year-old!

Drew liked wandering under the trees and helping us with picking apples. The apples were a little small this year, but they taste delicious!

I caught Drew in this picture with a mouthful. He would take a bite of apple, walk around, take another bite of apple, walk around, pick an apple for us, take another bite of apple, and so on. He always had an apple he was working on eating!

Jana gave Drew some help on picking some of his apples.

It was absolutely beautiful out in the orchard with the sunshine and the rows of trees filled with apples. We went before the weekend crowd, so the trees were FILLED with apples.

Kate enjoyed her tasty Baby Bjorn and had it completely soaked by the end of the trip. We're pretty sure she's headed toward some teeth as she's been chewing on everything and drooling like crazy.

Mom and daughter had fun apple picking!

On our way out we had to check out the farm equipment and the pumpkins one more time.

Just like last year, I needed a shot of the sign advertising the place we went to pick apples. It's the perfect place for families to go apple picking. We had a great time!

The other night, to Jana's amusement, Drew and I got ready for bed in the same outfits: black Addidas warm ups and white t-shirts. Drew's mouth dropped when he saw what I was wearing because he LOVES to have similar outfits as I do. Although he doesn't always get it quite right, about once a week I let him choose my outfit so that the two of us "match" (at least in his mind :)

This past Saturday we had a "party" at Michigan State University. We tailgated with Jeremy (on the left) and his wife Kristin, and Jayme (on the right) and his wife Lindsay and son Cole, and with Uncle Todd. It was a beautiful morning to be outside and we had a great time making and eating breakfast (bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, and pancakes . . .yum!).

Drew brought along his soccer ball and had fun kicking it around the grassy area next to where we were sitting.Drew is quite adept at dribbling a soccer ball. It is so much fun to watch! I'll have to get a video of him doing it because he can run almost full speed while dribbling a soccer ball. I gave him some rudimentary lessons on kicking the ball, but his skill at dribbling is all natural. I hoped he might play football, but maybe his skills are in soccer.