Allison is walking

Allison took her first step over two months ago, but it's taken her this long to actually decide to go for it. Her babysitter commented that she just didn't like falling (it does make her throw a royal tantrum when she falls) and there is probably some truth to that. I had forgotten how sweet it is to watch those little ones taking those first uncertain strolls. Every day her balance gets better, and now a week into it, she's walking way more than she's crawling. Go Allison!

Here's a few recent pictures of our little Alligator. We just can't get enough of her.

e

Kaitlin comes into the kitchen yesterday and asks for a piece of paper. She comes back a few minutes later and asks me to help her draw a baby - she's having a "hard time doing it by herself." We go through the body parts - drawing the head, neck, body, arms, and legs together. I'm thinking, wow, this is fun drawing with her. She takes the picture, and comes back a few seconds later. She asks me to draw a circle around the baby, and she's very specific about where the circle should go. We draw a circle, then she takes the picture and leaves. She comes back 5 minutes later, and she's drawn a read slash through the circle. I say "Kaitlin, it looks like your picture is trying to say 'no babies'...did you mean to do that?"

"Exactly", she says, and runs to put the picture on her bedroom door.

Wow, I totally just got conned by my four-year-old. You go girl!

Kaitlin: "Mommy, I have to apologize to you."

Mommy: "Okay, Kaitlin, let's hear it."

Kaitlin: "Mommy, what does apologize mean anyway?"

Mommy: "It means you want to tell me that you're sorry."

Kaitlin: "Nevermind, I don't want to do that."

Wake Up!

Kaitlin's been doing a great job with her letters and numbers - finally! Thank you Kylie for introducing us to the leapfrog DVDs. She's in that cool phase where she suddenly is trying to read signs everywhere and asks the significance of numbers she sees. This week we've started discussing telling time, and we explained to her that she's not allowed to wake us up until the clock ways "7". It worked great, until this week when we wake up to a startling "WAKE UP GUYS!" shriek. I sit up an look at the clock...it's 5:27. Project for this week - discuss the order of numbers.

Spring time girls

We were in Seattle for Easter, so we took the girls out a few days before to get pictures in their spring dresses. Kaitlin got the new buggy at a twins sale and has had more fun pushing her babies and carebears around ever since.

More Seattle

The Museum of flight museum. Sitting in some manner of fighter plane.

The Piroshky in Pike's market were out of this world. We also found amazing cabbage rolls, barszcz, pelmini, and all sorts of other food that we shared in common on our missions. We ate well!

The gum wall outside of Pikes market

The Emerald City

After nearly a year of interviews, tests, physical training (the list goes on and on) Michael was invited to Seattle for the final phase of interviewing with the FBI. Given the coolness of the city, and the chance to get away kidless for a long weekend, we decided to make it an "us" trip and a very much needed getaway. It was wonderful. Even though the weather was rainy and incredibly windy for most of the weekend, we had a really fun time. Couple of highlights.

My lasting impression of Seattle is this: extremely hilly (rivals San Francisco for that any day), very friendly and smiley people, even downtown, out of this world food (the seafood, Russian/Polish food, sourdough bread, and Thai food are still fresh in my mind:).