11 Months Old

How is this sweet face so close to a year old, already? I blinked.

Aspen is still not walking much, but so capable! We are kind of waiting for her to take off running, any second. She is cutting two top teeth, eating all sorts of meat with gusto, and signing more proficiently. (Not just waving a hand for every word she recognizes. See "baby" below.)



She's also signing "milk," "dog," "cat," "more," "all done," waving bye-bye, and reaching her arms up to get a pick-up. (Also to sign "so big!") She can identify eyes, noses, and mouths, and loves to point them out on people, thanks to her favorite book. She also likes to say "Mmmmm!" for "mooooo" when she sees a picture of a cow.

Aspen is wearing sizes 6-9 months, and even some 9 months clothes. She loves to be held, she loves to walk holding on to someone's hand, especially sister's, and she loves pulling things off the shelves, be they books, pans, toys, or clothes.

Currently, she still takes two naps a day, going down around 9:00 for about an hour and a half, then again at 3:00 for only half an hour or 40 minutes. Then she goes down pretty easily for the night around 8:00, often a little before, and makes it until somewhere between 5:30AM and 6:30AM, as long as she doesn't cough herself awake, which happens a couple nights a week. We are SO OVER this cough!

Aspen LOVES pictures, in a way I don't really remember Sabine doing. Aspen can point out immediate family, but favors herself and Sabine. If she's ever upset, going around looking at pictures in frames is always a good way to calm down. She still refuses to take a bottle, so starting the weaning process next month may be interesting.

Sabine is growing, too, another blink and I think she is going to officially be touring with a band.



She continues to be a bit of a fashion maven, I love her style, even if I don't think most of it is intentional. She is even foregoing dresses once in a while, usually in favor of leggings, which is a big shift.





Sabine is currently enrolled in gymnastics, swimming, yoga, and ice skating, on top of preschool and farm. She is very busy, but really seems to enjoy the stimulation. She's getting better at cartwheels, gets herself dressed in the morning (often with no supervision), and likes to play fairies and ninjas at school. She's really helpful, she often helps with dinner, when she's not playing alone with some of her Polly Pocket-type dolls. She can still sit at the dining room table and play uninterrupted by little sister. That won't last forever, but she's taking advantage of it while she can. She can also now swim the long way across the pool by herself. It's been a good phase, she's eating and sleeping well, and enjoying being a leader at preschool, as her teacher calls her.

But she still spends some quality time at home with us, and is still wonderful with Aspen. Aspen laughs with Sabine in a way that I haven't really heard with anyone else. They are good buds, most of the time.

Speaking of activities, Aspen went to her first music class last Friday. It went really well, she really seemed to like the music, the teacher, the other kids, and the fun instruments to play with. She rocked out, happily making noise with her "rumble sticks" and was reluctant to give them back at the end of class.

Sabine recently drew a family portrait, which I just had to share.


(That's Aspen front bottom, with her "poof" of hair, in her walker--hence the circle around the middle with the two giraffes to hold on to, mommy is on the left, with long hair, Sabine is on the right with a hair clip, daddy is in the back, with a cat on either side. The cats are in crates, because we are out at the park.)

It's exciting to see what each new month brings!

Not Quite Evidence

So Aspen has gotten savvy, and won't let us "trick" her into walking alone anymore. But here's a video where you can see she is quite adept with her walker, and can maneuver it around pretty well.

WALKING!

She did it! Aspen took her first steps tonight! We've been joking for a while that she could walk if she wanted to, she just doesn't have the confidence. Whenever you let go of her hands, Aspen sits down in a very controlled squat. She just hasn't been interested in attempting it unsupported.

Well, tonight when daddy came home she was a) super excited to see him b) on soft carpet upstairs and c) holding a spatula, which in hindsight we think might have given her the impression she was holding on to someone's finger. Whatever the case, she excitedly took three very real steps to get to daddy, before realizing she wasn't holding on to anything, but by then she had gotten to her destination. We were able to get her to repeat it a couple more times, only with one or two steps. Hopefully we can try it out tomorrow again, and get photographic evidence! But let the annals show: Aspen started walking at 10 months old!

Season Finale

We had a good end to our holiday season. We got snow on Christmas, and fortunately daddy was off of work, so he and Sabine did a bunch of shoveling before New Year's.



Sabine logged a lot of Lego hours with various adults, Daddy, Mommy, Nana, Grandpa, and Lindsay all helped at various points, and she completed her stable that she got for Christmas. It took hours to build, and she has since spent many happy hours playing with it.





We have made it ice skating a couple more times,



...and it suddenly "clicked" for Sabine. She went from having to hang on to me to suddenly "Don't stand so close" and then "Let's race! ... I'm faster than you, right?" Scary thing is, she just about is!

(She is at the very back and slowly comes forward in this video:)

But the finale to the whole season was a trip up to Grandmom and Grandpa's house to celebrate Christmas one last time, as well as Grandpa's birthday.

We got there fairly early in the morning, and had a lovely breakfast



Then got right down to gifts. Among other things, Sabine got a beautiful new clothes rack for Blueberry Girl, made by Grandpa and Grandmom.



Aspen got some neat presents, too



Although she seemed to be the most excited by Grandmom's trivet.



Sabine also got some new clothes for Blueberry Girl, the biggest hit being the ice skates! (Notice a theme in her world, these days?)



And a hand-knit sweater from Grandmom.



Aspen also got a kick out of some new bath toys that had little air holes.

There was a relaxing afternoon, complete with football



And a very nice steak dinner (both girls LOVED it, Aspen is proving to be quite the carnivore), which I failed to get a picture of because I was too busy eating.

Then we headed home, and both girls crashed on the drive back.

Christmas

Merry (belated) Christmas!



Christmas Eve the weather was actually pretty nice, so I took the girls down to the pocket park to burn off some energy. Aspen experienced the sandbox for the first time, and LOVED it. She was just bummed that I wouldn't let her eat the moldy old leaves.



Grandmom and Grandpa came down and we all got to have dinner together, the girls opened their first presents (matching pajamas!) and Sabine put out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. She carefully counted out nine, so that there would be one for Rudolph, too.



We switched between old world traditions and new, reading Christmas books with all the adults, and checking out Google's Santa tracker in between each story on the computer.







It was fun to watch Santa arrive in South America on the computer, and as he started traveling north, we decided we better get to bed, just in case.

In the morning, Sabine came running downstairs and got the handful of M&Ms in the last door of the advent calendar, then announced that she had noticed that Santa had left presents under the kid tree upstairs in the loft, so we all went upstairs to open those first.





There was one big box for both girls, Santa gave them their own ornament holder, since they now have so many of their own.

Then we went back downstairs to check out the big tree and the stockings.

Santa, friends, and family were all very generous with Sabine and Aspen. Thank you to all of you! It was a fun morning, and while Aspen didn't totally get what was going on, Sabine helped her open some of her gifts, and she got the hang of ripping paper very quickly!

Santa did deliver the requested lego set, the very stable set Sabine had in mind, and she was thrilled.

Everyone in the family really enjoyed the whole morning and got into the Christmas spirit.

After presents, we had a good breakfast

Sabine got her own champagne glass again (with Martinelli's)

And, of course, we had to have our yule log cake!

After breakfast, the legos were immediately opened, and work commenced.

After Aspen's nap, we headed up to Longmont, reluctantly leaving the legos behind. Once we got there, though, it was a blast to be with the whole family.

There were presents for the kids, a lovely Christmas dinner, and a fun white elephant gift exchange for the grown ups.

It was a really lovely day, overall, we loved all the family time, more legos were assembled when we got home, and I think both girls really enjoyed themselves and slept well that night. You really can't ask for a more magical Christmas than that!