my Duke Gardens intuition

Dave has been working a lot of weekends, and with the time change it was going to be rough to get all 4 of us to Duke Gardens to capture my favorite tree with the yellow leaves by the lily pond.  Suddenly I felt as if I didn't go this one day that I would miss it and we'd never get there.  And guess what!?  I had perfect timing for the 3rd year in a row.  God willing I'll have pictures of the girls in the yellow leaves every year of their lives.  Here's what I took that day, and my favorites from the two years past.

11/2011

11/2012

See you soon!

Fall fun!

Princess costumes that are now complete with crowns Nana and Grandpa bought at the Renaissance Faire.  Perfect for the Halloween carnival at Mommy's school.  Before that, however, we spent the last of the super warm weather at a farm running through hay mazes, going down huge tube slides, picking pumpkins, feeding goats, and jumping and sliding into a gigantic corn crib.  It was awesome!

Our sitter, Abbey, took us to a farm too!  We got to play in the boucey house, one of our favorite things, got tiny pumpkins that we can have in the house, and got to see more animals.  Abbey is pretty good at taking pictures and got a great one of Catherine's smile.

Then we went to a Renaissance Faire with Nana and Grandpa.  It was also Daddy's first time.  Catherine especially liked watching the jousting, but Samantha wanted to move on to the camel ride.

A helmet for Sam, which is probably a good idea.  The most common thing she says is "I'm OK!" after she falls down.  We also took a ride in the swan boats with Daddy.  No motor, just two guys pushing a wheel in circles in the middle!

We talked to an elf and played with her pet butterflies.

But the camel ride was definitely the coolest part for us, though Mommy felt like she was going to fall forward the whole time.

Princess Catherine reigning over her kingdom of stuffed animals.

At the farm, everyone smiling in the same picture, can you believe it!?

September update

 

Well, even though we didn't get to beach at all this month we still managed to have a lot of water fun.  We took out our pool and played in the sun.  It was warm enough and Catherine didn't get the shivers or turn blue.  They had a great time, though Dave didn't, the lawn got very muddy.  It added to the girls' fun.

 

We met up with good old friends, made new friends, and played around at the science museum.  We pretended to be monsters coming out of the mist.  Roar!

We practiced our smiles and poses for the camera.

A Catherine update: She is doing so much better with her counting and her colors!  Little Einsteins is her favorite show, she loves patting and dancing to the rhythm of the music.  Her favorite games are "where's Catherine?", which can turn out badly as you will read later on, and and "I chase you", which means I chase them, hide, pop out, and chase them some more.  It involves lots of squealing.  She is doing so well with her tricycle, going forward and backward so easily.  She insists on cold water and will go get ice cubes and put them in her drinks herself and screw the top on herself.  Still everything by herself if she thinks she can, even if she can't.  I will admit, she picks it up quickly.  I am still amazed at how quickly she can put together a puzzle.  We have wooded 24 piece puzzles and she just goes to town, putting them together starting with the faces and working her way out to the edges.  She doesn't like to sit and do flash cards or other 'school things' with Samantha because Sam is so quick and doesn't give her a chance to answer.  I feel like Catherine knows the answers, but thinks about it longer, probably because she doesn't want to be wrong.  If Sam isn't there she'll sit with me much longer doing those things.  But with the puzzles Sam wasn't as interested at first, so she's not as good.  Catherine gets frustrated because Sam is slow and doesn't want to put the pieces in the same order as she does.  They both really have such different areas of strength and Catherine's seems to be motor skills and spatial orientation.

A Samantha update:  Isn't that look on her face amazing?  She looks so confident and like she's almost bored, but that really isn't her at all.  She's so silly.  Samantha has such interesting phrases now, and the way she says them just makes you crack up.  If I say something like "Let's go upstairs and read" she'll say "Oh!  Good idea, Mommy, good idea!"  She also is very polite and says "Thank you!  Thank you so much!".  She refuses to get out of bed unless you come get her, or unless Catherine does first.  If Catherine wakes up she'll come find you.  If Samantha wakes up she'll call out to you until you go get here.  Even if I am in another room with Catherine and tell her to get out of bed she won't.  A lot of nights she wants a different blanket, or decided she wants a pillow when she already threw it out of her bed.  She won't get up and get it herself.  Either Catherine will get it for her or we have to go upstairs.  My mom says that Mike was the same way.  She can sing almost all the words to the theme songs of her favorite shows and her favorite songs on the radio.  You do need to watch her though, just like Catherine.  Underneath that sweet smile and tiny voice she can be sneaky too.  She recently colored on the window sill and she loves to look through our albums and scrapbooks, but she takes the pieces out.  

Catherine loves to make sure that the TV is off before we go to bed.  I wish she would do this with her crayons and stuffed animals voluntarily.  I will say that she will clean up of you ask her.  

Heidi loves the girls now.  She always liked them, especially when they were dropping food all over the food at meals.  The girls have gotten better at this, though, so Heidi is not as fortunate at meal time.  Now the girls a big enough to throw the ball far enough for her to chase it and they can run around the house and play tag together and play tug of war.  Sort of.

 

Over the summer we went to the outlet mall and into the Disney store.  The girls loved the cups and the figurines, but especially the book bags, and especially Catherine.  So they went on sale and we got a Minnie Mouse one and a princess one with their names embroidered on them.  When Dave and I went to NY for our anniversary trip we gave them to the girls with coloring books and crayons in them.  They loved them!  Catherine was so excited that she whispered 'thank you' with a look of awe on her face.  Then she insisted on wearing it (notice the Tinkerbell slippers).

The girls had a great time with their Nana and Grandpa.  Catherine got in trouble for hiding in the closet and Grandpa couldn't find her for more than 10 minutes.  I can just picture her sitting in there behind the curtain giggling thinking they were playing a game while my dad freaked out.  Otherwise it seemed like everyone had fun and Nana and Grandpa are not so scarred that they wouldn't do it again.  The best part was how excited they were when they saw us at the airport when we came home.  I think everyone in the airport smiled at them running and yelling "Mommy!  Daddy!  You're home!"  Our girls are good girls, and while they like to find exactly where that line is, we love them so much and are so glad that they are ours.

Summer's end

Catherine gets so excited when she does something right, she's so proud of herself. She's starting to get less frustrated counting and is making it past 2. It was always 1, 2, 1, 2, but now she keeps going to 10.  She's making good progress on the potty and often asks to go. Both of them are much better about sitting and going right away.  Catherine is so proud when she's dry and gets to have chocolate raisins.  Catherine recently has ben spending a lot of time making sure she knows where everyone is and that they are OK.  She'll tell us to wait or come back, or will ask where someone went and what they're doing.  She also makes sure when Sam is upset to tell her that it is OK and to 'calm down'.  She even pats her hands in the air like Dave.  We've discovered her hidden talent, too.  She is VERY good at puzzles.  We have wooden 24 piece puzzles and if you do 3 or 4 pieces for her she can finish herself, and we've only had them for 2 days!

Samantha loves to say 'I do it' and we're proud that she can do so many things and wants to be independent, but sometimes she can't do it and she gets mad, sometimes it is something she shouldn't do and she's mad, and sometimes it will take her 5x as long to do than if we did it and we don't have time, and she gets mad. We're working to find common ground.  I'm amazed that she can count to 15 and often all the way up to 20 (though sometimes she skips a few), and she and Catherine are both getting good at identifying what sounds the letters make.  They also have this matching game that they play on the iPod touches they use if they 'tinkle' and I've watched her think about it and make correct matches with upper and lower case letters in a memory card game.  She can also sing the ABC song!

We went to the zoo on an incredibly hot day.  You can see they are already kind of pink and we went to the elephants first.  They were troopers, though, and we couldn't believe Sam insisted on walking the whole time.  Catherine was smart and sat in the shade of the jogging stroller a lot of the time.  I think Samantha just gets so excited at places like that she wants to move from one thing to the next when it suits HER.  The stroller removes control.

I'm so cute!

As the summer finished we made one last trip to the beach to see my cousin Christine, Catherine's godmother.  We had a great time at the pool and playing catch (backwards, look out!) and hanging out and looking pretty. 

Dad also got them a little golf set, but I taught them how to play field hockey instead, which they both preferred and Catherine is pretty good.

What a pair!  This picture frightens me a little, actually.  Catherine always wants to do what the adults are doing.  At least Heidi had fun, we found a squeaky ball for her.

This picture cracks me up.  I can only imagine what their conversation is.  Dad: "Well missy?"  Sam:  "Let me tell you, Grandpa!"

It was an amazing summer full of sun and fun and smiles. The girls got tan, built and destroyed sand castles (the best part, apparently), and grew up in some ways more than I wanted, and less than I wanted in other ways.  They are incredible and keep us on our toes and we love every minute of it!