February Update

For the month of celebrating sweethearts we, of course, have to feature our little love bug! Ascha's seventh month was incredibly eventful. She went from rolling to crawling to pulling up (and practicing taking steps with Daddy, much to Mommy's chagrine) in a matter of weeks. She acquired her first two teeth. She also got her first ear infection. She started trying to do sign language a little bit ("all done" is the sign for just about everything, but she is starting to put her fingers together for "more"). She has learned to clap her hands and has also gotten into enthusiastically waving "hello" and "goodbye." Her favorite waving moment is the first time, on any given morning, that I carry her past a mirror. She loves to start her day by waving "hi" to the mommy and baby in the mirror. Here she is in all her grinning glory:






Hanging with her favorite playmate:











...And my, how the time has flown! Where has our little baby gone? This is one of her newest favorite pasttimes - watching brothers from the top of the stairs.




Showing off her two new pearly whites:





In other "tooth-related news," Taylor has had four loose teeth for a while. We went to the dentist ("Gentle Rental," according to Aric) in February and Taylor was quite pleased and proud to learn that he was looking at losing four teeth rather than just the two he knew were loose. As of this blog posting, Taylor is down one tooth. Today he and Aric were looking out the window when Aric flung his arms in exclamation (from what I can piece together from the varied stories :-). His hand bonked Taylor's tooth, which went flying onto the floor. Taylor immediately started crying when he saw blood and Aric started happily shouting that Taylor had lost a tooth. It was chaos, but in a few minutes, after Taylor realized it didn't hurt, he was pretty pleased with himself. He's so excited about the coming of the tooth fairy that he decided she ought to have a note. He wrote it all by himself and taped his tooth to it before sticking it under his pillow. The note says: "Have a grate day and night thanks for the thing you gav me" - not bad for a kindergartner, I think. :-) (I always get a little giddy when he thinks to use the silent E as he spells things - we haven't worked on spelling at all, and the fact that he already grasps the concept makes this language-loving mama happy.)





Taylor also had an eventful "Open House" at school last week. He and his classmates had created many special projects to show off, and he got to take home his work in a custom-patterned, custom-laced portfolio he made himself. (sorry about yet another disoriented picture!)





Since February is Valentine's Day, each child had decorated a big heart for the wall, but you can guess how they looked. Much more interesting to me were the drawings of Washington and Lincoln that they had created in conjunction with Presidents' Day.

(can you believe those ears?? Tee-hee! I love it!)

Taylor's wrestling program wound down with a big Jamboree last Saturday. Unfortunately, Taylor had a virus and a fever and had to miss out. However, here's one last picture paying homage to this fun chapter in our winter:

We're planning on growing a big garden this year and I've been working on tilling up a plot. The boys and I are taking these down days to plan and plant so we have seedlings to transplant. Taylor and Aric are excited to grow another garden - they were outside digging in the mud a few weeks ago for HOURS. I came out to call them for dinner and they excitedly showed me their handiwork - they'd raked and smoothed the mud and made nice straight lines in it. Then they'd taken a little stick and poked holes to drop the seeds in. Of course, in mid-February, in the mud of one of our half-finished landscaping projects, one cannot find ideal growing conditions, so I congratulated their efforts and promised we'd plant things inside very soon. Now, it's officially March, and we've officially planted 72 pots worth of seedlings (with 72 more planned for tomorrow). Happy almost spring. :-)