Blog? I have a blog?

I have been reminded by several people lately that I have a blog and that people are waiting for new pictures! I don't have pictures to post at the moment, but I thought I'd start by writing some things out. When I get the chance to post pictures, I'll focus on getting those up and not on writing very much.

First, Jana and I had lots of fun last week celebrating Drew's third birthday. I can't believe our little boy is already three! As we watched the Super Bowl I remembered holding Drew in my arms for his first Super Bowl the Sunday after he was born. We were still in the hospital, and we watched it in Jana's hospital room. Drew and I both got all sweaty and my arm fell asleep, but I loved every minute of that game. Drew's birthday this year fell on a week day, so Jana and I got him up early that morning and spent some time with him before daycare. At daycare Drew brought "bug" cupcakes covered with "dirt" to share with his friends.

On the evening of Drew's birthday we let Drew choose where he wanted to go for his birthday dinner. He chose the "peanut restaurant," which is his phrase for Texas Roadhouse, a restaurant where you can crack open peanuts, eat them, and drop the shell on the floor. Drew loves it! While we were there, the serving staff came over to sing Happy Birthday to Drew and he got to stand up in his chair while the whole restaurant gave him a loud "Yee-haw!" We asked Drew later if he liked that experience, and he said, "No, it made me pretty nervous!" A very honest answer! At least he liked the peanuts :)

Kate recently had her nine-month doctor's appointment, and she is right on track developmentally. She weighed in at a solid 20 pounds 12 ounces, and was only 27 1/2 inches long. Her weight is in the 75-90th percentile and her height is in the 25- 50th percentile. In other words, she's currently shorter and heavier than most kids her age! (how funny!) How she gets that with Jana and I as her parents, we don't know, but she's very cute and solid and moving EVERYWHERE! As she moves around, we're confident that she'll grow a little more and thin out.

Kate has been crawling all over the house and getting into everything. She pulls up on everything to standing too and cruises around (that's walking around holding onto furniture). She has even let go many times and can stand for a few seconds unassisted. Finally, she recently took a few steps unassisted. She's rapidly gone mobile on us and it's been fun to watch! I'll have to provide you with some video of her moving.

In addition, Kate has started talking and she frequently melts our hearts by saying "Dad-dee" or "Mom-ma" and grinning when one of us walks in the room. She's also saying "Amen" at the end of our prayers, "All done" when she's done eating, and she recently picked up every child's favorite word: "NO!" We knew it was only a matter of time before she learned that one :)

In other Drew-related news, he has been doing wonderfully with potty-training. It's been weeks since he's had an accident, and he wears his big-boy underwear all day now without a problem. We've had some interesting experiences with public restrooms (things Drew says or does in them), but he's done very well with all aspects of learning to control going to the bathroom. Without diapers, it seems like he's growing up quickly!

One final story is that for the past few months Drew has been carrying around a stuffed bear that he named "Harrison" (in honor of our friends Nate and Meg's baby). He will lift up his shirt occasionally and feed Harrison like he sees mom feed Kate, but he mainly carries Harrison around saying that he is Harrison's dad and Harrison is his son. He reads books with Harrison, hugs him, plays cars with him, and basically mimics all the things I do with Drew. Often at night, I have to give both Harrison and Drew a kiss and tell them I love them. It's both heart-warming and unsettling to see how similarly Drew treats his "son" to how I treat him. He is paying attention to everything I do! Very cute!

2008- a year in review

Eventually I will get to posting some of our Christmas pictures, but I wanted to start with a couple of my favorite pictures from 2008. Jana and I had fun going back through some of the pictures from the past year and choosing our favorites.


Where else could we start 2008, but with the birth of Kate?! Katherine Lynn Aupperlee was born on April 7, 2008, and this was my first time holding my daughter. I am a very proud dad!
Kate immediately reached up with her little hand and grasped onto my finger. She's a smart little girl because this move melted my heart. It was pure joy to hold my daughter and to admire her. This is my favorite memory of 2008!
Drew was fascinated to meet Kate for the first time. After hearing so much about his baby sister, he was excited to meet her. He didn't entirely understand what was going on, but he knew it was exciting!

Kate was such a little peanut when she was first born!

Drew welcomed Kate home from the hospital, and he's been incredibly good with her ever since. It's been a lot of fun to watch the two of them together this past year.

This was one of Drew's first times holding Kate. He has been thrilled to be a big brother.

Getting Kate to bulk up was quite the struggle for us initially. We were extremely grateful how helpful Drew was with Kate and how quickly he adjusted to having a little sister.

We've had lots of fun this past year sitting on the couch and enjoying Drew and Kate!

Drew went to the zoo for the first time this year. We'd never taken him before! He liked looking at all the animals.

Drew has been getting more independent, and this year we enjoyed going for walks where he hiked along with us. It's so much fun to explore the outdoors with a two-year-old!Other than Kate's birth, our family highlight this year was a family vacation to a cottage on Lake Michigan. Drew and I had many special moments around the cottage while Jana and Kate rested.

We have so many favorite pictures from the beach that we had to choose a few. Drew was an absolute delight at the beach. His favorite thing was throwing sand, rocks, or sticks in the water.

Drew was so proud of his shovel and pail. He strutted up and down the beach playing hard.

Drew has quite the arm and he had quite the wind-up for his delivery. He threw the sand far!

This is my favorite picture of Jana and Drew from this past year. We had a great week together as a family and we look forward to spending a week like that again.

Kate became much more enjoyable around that time as she finally got the hang of eating and started to bulk up a little bit. It was nice to be able to just enjoy her without having to put so much work into feeding her!

Drew loves it when Kate joins him in his bed.

It's been so novel to me to have a daughter who wears little dresses!

Drew got more and more comfortable IN the water as the year progressed.

Drew got to make good use of this lifevest for swimming and for his first sailboat ride.

This year has been a year of firefighting excitement for Drew. That included a few trips to Battle Creek to Uncle Todd's fire rescue. Very cool!

Drew still talks about feeding the giraffes at the Binder Park Zoo.

Having two children around has been exhausting at times, but it has always been an enjoyable adventure!Kate has gotten cuter and cuter, and we've thoroughly enjoyed watching her grow. Look at those big eyes.

Drew has loved it that Kate has gotten more and more active and interactive. He's looking forward to playing with her as she gets older.

Jana and I loved Kate in this dress. She looks like such a little girl!

This is a relatively recent picture that I still enjoy. Kate always lights up whenever I walk into a room. It makes me smile too!

Here is one last picture of Drew and Kate playing together. As I'm writing this Drew is in the living room sharing toys with Kate, talking to her, saying "I'm playing with her," and giggling away. Kate has been crawling around and Drew is fully potty-trained. It seems that they both are growing up so fast!

We've had lots of fun this past year as a family and we're looking forward to 2009!!

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!!