Here are some things we’ve been up to lately.

Amelia stopped taking naps a couple months ago.  This is a big adjustment for me, because Kathryn is good with a quiet time and entertaining herself with art or computer games.  Amelia is not.  She doesn’t know the meaning of quiet unless she is putting her stuffed animals to sleep, which never happens during “quiet time”.  But every few days she gets so tired, she falls asleep for a nap to catch up.  Here she is in the pack-n-play. 

Kathryn loves drawing and cutting.  She will often draw something, then cut it out to play with.  We have a book of “masks” – the pages have holes for your eyes so you can put it up to your face as a mask.  One day Kathryn drew the monkey face from the book, then cut it out and made it into a mask.  Then she made little ones for her babies.

The girls have been catching butterflies a lot lately.  The colander is the butterfly net and magnets are the butterflies.  Oh yeah, and Amelia rotates between being Cinderella, Super Girl, and Diego.

Three kids in a box.  Sounds like something from a Dr. Seuss book.

And Kathryn came up with a pilgrim costume.  I think it looks great!

And not to forget Daniel.  He is just as cute and busy as ever.  Since his birthday he loves books, but he loves the camera more.  So I can never get a good picture of him with a book.  Also we recently took him to an allergist who declared that he does not have food allergies.  Just eczema.  Hallelujah!  We were suspecting a gluten allergy, and all the gluten free things I tried to make (bread and pizza crust) were gross and complicated.

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What can I say?  Amelia is so Amelia.  She just has such a different personality from Kathryn.  She is so adorable, but sometimes we just don’t know what to do with her.  She says great prayers and often sings her night personal prayer.  Sometimes I don’t think she can sit still or even just use a quiet voice.  But then she plays with Little People or nativity sets for a solid hour.  Anyway, she started a gymnastics class today.  Gymnastics seems to fit her personality.  Plus when we were in Canada last summer a gymnastics coach (friend of a friend who happened to be at dinner with us) said she has something they look for in a future gymnast.  Namely:  lack of fear.  She was jumping off a couch as far as she could and she was getting pretty far.

Anyway, here are a couple pictures from her class today.  Sorry about the blurry one – I was juggling Daniel at the time and Amelia was on the move.

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We started off the day frosting the cake.  I had two little helpers.

Then Grandma and Grandpa wished Daniel happy birthday on the webcam.

Soon it was on to the presents.

Daniel absolutely loved this book.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!  He made his excited noise, and continues to do so.  Whenever he sees the book he takes it to me (or Darryl) and wants to look at all the pages.  

We did the cake after lunch. 

It seems Daniel has a sensitivity to gluten.  So I tried to make a cake with rice flour.  I didn’t like the result, but Daniel did!

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I didn’t capture the best moment of Daniel.  When he gets excited he says something like, “whoo, whoo!”.  If you know Daniel, you know what I’m talking about.  It is soooo cute!  He was pretty excited about the blocks.

I asked the girls to make their “Grinch” faces.

Skating pictures.

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We flew on Christmas Day (afternoon) to California to visit Grandma and Grandpa and others.  It was such a great trip.  I have to say leaving on Christmas was the way to go.  We still did our own family things for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, but we still got to do a lot of Christmas things with everyone else on the trip.

One thing the kids loved was Grandma and Grandpa’s backyard.  My mom planned for that when we moved into that house 16 years ago.  Thanks, mom!  On my other camera are some pictures of the girls learning to skate.  Neither had done it before and both did very well.

Another bonus was my grandpa was also visiting.  He said he enjoyed all the noise and commotion of the kids.  I believed it.

Darryl took some pictures of my sister’s family.  I like this one with Hannah and baby David.

And a highlight was playing with cousins.  Kathryn and Amelia love their cousin Hannah and you can see by the pictures that they had a great time together. 

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A brief recap of some Christmas presents.  I got a camera!  Its quite funny, because now I have really noticed how great the pictures turn out with Darryl’s camera.  Now if I could just figure out how to get them on the computer I would share some.  I think Darryl said we need a new/different cord for that.

I was clever enough to save several toys that we had packed up when we moved to Kyiv.  So that made for Daniel’s Christmas (and most of his birthday coming up), and most of Amelia’s Christmas.  And thanks to DI (second hand shop), both girls got a Little People house.  The girls had so much fun on Christmas morning.  Amelia didn’t want to stop playing with the Little People house, and Kathryn told Grandma that she got a half full stocking.  At least she seemed excited about it.

Kathryn got a doctor kit.  This was a spontaneous hug, she was just so excited about it!  We had one in Kyiv and she played with it just about everyday.  But it was so cheaply made and we just couldn’t take everything with us, so the doctor kit didn’t make it to Seattle.  She has asked about getting one for most of those 6 months.  She also got a new doll;  her old one wanted to be a kitty one day so Kathryn drew whiskers on the doll’s face.  But when the doll didn’t want to be a kitty, the pen wouldn’t come off.

Amelia had a favorite pair of blue socks that she wore out.  So she has been hoping for blue socks for a few weeks.  And she got what she calls a giant bear. 

Daniel was pretty much everywhere, but wouldn’t sit still for a picture.  He wasn’t interested in opening presents, we actually didn’t open most of his until we got home from our trip on New Year’s Eve!  But he did get some cars, puzzle, and a stacking toy.

Darryl got a new router, that isn’t really exciting enough for a picture.

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