Friends. And a Lot of Pink.

Sabine said her first sentence last Friday. It was, "I see dinosaurs!" Thus noted for the annals of Sabine history. She doesn't string three words together as often, but we do hear a lot of doubles regularly.

Sabine has also made a new, dear friend, and their cuteness roared to new heights at a playgroup on Tuesday when they decided to leave the circle, hand-in-hand, and then proceeded to hold hands for the rest of the morning. (Until a very tearful separation.)

I present to you: insane amounts of cuteness. You may want to sit down.

And even coordinated digging for rocks. I just about died from the sweetness. Thank goodness another mom had a camera phone on-hand, and kindly sent us these shots.

Easter

We had a lovely Easter this year. Sabine isn't quite old enough to grasp the concept of the Easter Bunny, but she was more than old enough to grasp (and readily consume..and demand more of) all the treats he brought.

Easter morning:

It took about .06 nanoseconds for her to open a plastic egg and pop the pastel-colored M&M in her mouth. I have no idea how she knew they were edible, but she did not need to stop to ask for directions.

Back for more.

She found a few "hidden" ones.

Daddy turned out to be adept at opening the plastic eggs without spilling both M&Ms inside, so he was recruited to help.

Then he quickly became the receptacle for the discarded eggs.

Once Sabine was sure that all the chocolate had been consumed (we triple-checked all the eggs), she moved on to another favorite pastime, accessorizing.

Nana Lin and Aunt Dani showed up bearing some fun sand toys and la creme de la Easter creme, an Elmo couch for Sabine. She was ecstatic! (Despite what this picture makes it look like. I think she was annoyed we made her pause for a picture.)

She showed us all the possible uses.

UP!

Down! (and giggling)

And snuggling into the fold-out sleeping bag.

We had a nice brunch once Sabine came down off the ceiling from all the excitement.

Then Sabine squeezed in a nap, and we headed up to Longmont to spend the afternoon with the extended family. Sadly, I forgot my camera for that part of the day, but we had a wonderful time, and Sabine did get to wear her Easter dress, even if she had to wear long underwear underneath since there was rain and even a few flurries in the afternoon.

(We do still have lots of copies of this picture if anyone would like one!)

Doctor Says She's Growing

We had Sabine's 18 month well-baby visit at the doctor's office today. I am happy to announce she's way up in the weight percentile. (That could possibly be related to the copious amounts of cupcakes we've been eating recently...dunno.) The official stats are: weight, 20 lbs 11.5 oz, which is the 24th percentile. Whooo-hooo, that's way up from the 6th percentile, which is where she was at for her last appointment. She was 31.75" long, which puts her in the 49th percentile for height, and her head circumference was 18.5, which puts her in the 71st percentile there. Fairly consistent with where she's been previously. (= still top-heavy.)

The doctor acted properly impressed with her vocabulary, especially when Sabine announced

"POTTY!" and tried to take off her diaper. I think it was more Sabine announcing that she is aware her diaper is somehow related to potty-things, but the doctor said we could go ahead and try potty training since Sabine seemed interested in it. We'll wait at least until after our trip in May, but it's exciting to think about diaper-free days sometime in our future.

In other news, Sabine is still enjoying music class, running, coloring, singing "ABCD," and doing the hand gestures for "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider." She's a big fan of Elmo and the Snuffleupagus, as well as dinosaurs and bulldozers. Conveniently, there's still quite a bit of construction going on in our neighborhood, so we see "buh-buh-hsss" in action regularly.

We also got her pictures taken in her Easter dress, and we have a ton of extras, so if you'd like a copy, let us know. They are really cute. (I say, not very objectively.)

18 Months

Our little cupcake is growing up fast. 18 months is such a big milestone. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, and she's stringing together more and more words. She's also creating phrases herself, as opposed to mimicking us. For example, yesterday we were pulling out of the garage, and I hear her pipe up in the backseat, "Bye-bye, home!" That's definitely nothing I've ever said before, if I had come close, it probably would have been "Bye-bye, house" or something like that, so it's just been neat to see her expressing herself with her own words.

The other ngiht we made cupcakes because Sabine has been obsessed with a lovely bouquet we got from my cousin, that was shaped like a cake. We've talked about "CAKE!" all week, and she's pretended to eat the flower arrangement daily. The flowers finally started to wilt, so we decided to make real cake.

Sabine loved helping put the paper liners in the pan.

She also loved taking them out again. Then putting them in again. Then taking them out. Then mommy took the pan away briefly so we could get on with the other ingredients.



Sabine liked to help pour, but was a little afraid of the mixer, or "VROOM VROOM" as she calls it. But she finally got up enough courage to peek in to see what it was doing.



Fortunately cupcakes bake quickly, so we had them in the oven, baked, and cooled before bedtime. Naturally, we had to taste the fruit of our labors.



The tentative nibbling lasted for about two bites.



In hindsight, bright red was, perhaps, not the ideal color to coat the finger-food-fest in, but it was slightly improvised, since we didn't actually have regular icing and mommy just happened to find a leftover tube of red decorating icing from a Valentine's Day project.

Sabine graciously shared with daddy, and then it was off to bed.



We've eaten a few more cupcakes as the week's gone on, however we've skipped the icing. Since we don't let Sabine have refined sugar very often, she's been happy with plain cake. (And even requests it for breakfast. NO.) I doubt this will last long, but at least it's slightly less messy! (And slightly less sugar.)

Happy year and a half, sweet girl!

TGIF!

Sorry we haven't been around much recently. We got hit with a stomach bug this week, that kind of put us all out of commission. Then mommy accidentally dropped her phone down a storm drain on a walk yesterday, so that added to the chaos.

Sabine is talking more and more, despite stomach bugs and lack of phones. Her current favorite exclamation is "OH BOY!" which she will say anytime you guess what she wants correctly. She's very enthusiastic!

Hoping Last Sunday's Snow Is the Last We'll See for a While

It's hard to top that last post, but suffice to say we've been having fun in the warmer weather, too. Sabine's language has started to really blossom. She's literally saying new words every day, and she's getting better and better at repeating sounds she hears. She's also just starting to string a few words together, including "Nice hat!" and "Nana! Gus!" (Nana's cat is named Gus.)

Sabine is also getting a better handle on her autonomy. She's becoming more and more aware of her independence and ability to control her environment. This also means she's learning that mommy and daddy are also autonomous, and can make decisions that aren't necessarily in line with the decisions SHE would make. This has led to her very first bout of separation anxiety. We've done well the past 17+ months, she's been very independent and cling-free. But she's much more aware of our presence (or lack thereof) recently. That's made our nights a little tough, she's regressed a little and has been struggling to put herself back to sleep instead of calling for mom and dad every time she rolls over. Hopefully it is just a phase, because on the occasional night when she is just SO tired, she has finally, finally started sleeping through the night! HOORAY!

I will freely admit that I have been enjoying her newfound cuddliness that has come along with the separation anxiety.

In other news she's become interested in bikes, so Grandmom and Grandpa brought her an early Easter present. There was some assembly required, so it turned into a family affair. Everyone pitched in to help.

Sabine has enjoyed riding her new trike, both inside and outside.



But the real piece de resistance has, so far, been The Bell.



We talk about the "BIKE! DING!" a lot.

This week Sabine has already seen two different babies, she's gone to a play group, danced with neighbors to stall bedtime, and hung out with Nana Lin and Aunt Dani. We've got music class tomorrow, and hopefully story hour at the library. Our social butterfly is keeping us quite busy. We're definitely ready for summer!

Filmmaking

Sorry for the lack of posting...we've been excited about a new medium: Camcorder! Hey, Cat, welcome to 1990! The wait has been worth it. I present to you, Downhill.

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Actual film still pending.

ARRRGHHH, I just realized this blog is cutting off the right side of the movie. Click HERE to go directly to YouTube to watch the video there, it's much better when you can see the whole thing.

Addendum: I believe my super schmart brother fixed the viewing problem. The blog format may look slightly different, but now you should be able to see the video correctly right here. Thank you, Uncle Eric!