High Five

Claudia is super into learning now that she's back in preschool.  We're doing some pre-reading activities like sounding out words and basic math like counting, addition, and subtraction of single digits.  She loves worksheets, so we have a couple preschool/kindergarten books, I make up some of my own, and her teacher makes monthly "journals" for the kids.  At school she has made good friends with a couple of girls and in fact says that she likes the boys too because they aren't too wild.  On the weekend, she's taking a co-ed tumbling class at Seattle Gymnastics.  She really likes the trampoline and after a few times watching, got the courage to try the Tarzan swing.

Now onto Teagan, my wild child.  The week isn't complete until Teagan gets at least one bruise on her face.  She even got stung by a bee on her face!  She climbs and stumbles through her day.  The nice thing is that she burns so much energy, that she's a great napper and sleeper.  She really understand instructions like "sit down" or "come here", so that's fun.  She's super into baby dolls (already!) and likes to snuggle one and carry it around.  I'm proud that I just taught her how to do a high five and a low five  We recently started a weekly mom and infant class, which is a lot of fun.  Teagan is dominate over Claudia at home and is quite bold around the house, but she's surprisingly shy during the class.  We will see if that changes as things go along.  Part of it might be the timing because she's used to taking a big morning nap, which she misses when we have class.  Teagan has added some new teeth, first a bottom molar and then bottom second incisor.

I'm sad to report that my Grandpa J (my mom's dad) passed away in September.  It wasn't unexpected, but we're very sad over his passing.  He had dementia and has been in nursing care for almost a year.  I was close with my Grandpa and spent a lot of time with him growing up.  He taught me to play cards, darts, pool, chess, and shuffleboard.  I also "assisted" him with lots of manly chores around the house, yard, and motor home.  I'm very thankful for all the wonderful years I got to spend with him.  This first photo is of my grandpa holding Claudia in April 2009.

Teagan is walking

Teagan is 10 months old now (almost 11) and is walking!  She was taking steps for a couple weeks and now she's confident to walk everywhere.  She still holds onto furniture or the wall for speed and mixes in some crawling.  She is learning to communicate beyond crying and smiling.  She likes to clap and cheer, wave, and push her hands in front of her face and shake her head when she doesn't want something, and do the sign for "all done".  She can also understand a lot of words and can follow a few directions like "come here", "give me a kiss", or "sit down".  She gets super excited when Glen gets home from work.  I remember that from when Claudia was this age and I would pick her up at daycare.  She continues to be an awesome eater and after a bit of a bottle strike while her teeth were coming in, has taken it back up and will have 3 or 4 bottles a day in addition to three meals and a snack.

Claudia started a new preschool (pre-K) which is half days, four times a week.  So far it seems like a good fit and she has been excited to go.  She was especially excited about packing her lunch for the first time.  We've been able to do several fun adventures lately, like the Woodlawn Park Zoo, the Imagine Children's museum, and signing up for a library card and checking out our first book.  We got a Smurf book because Glen took her to her first movie in the theater, "Smurfs 2".  We also went on our first camping trip.  Teagan stayed with Grandpa & Grandma and Claudia came with us to Lake Wenatchee State Park.  Her favorites things were sleeping in a tent and using her flashlight.  At home Claudia & Teagan play a lot together now.  They pretty much climb around on top of each other or pull out 100 toys and throw them around.  When Teagan is napping, Claudia does a lot of craft projects and likes to play on the computer.  She can watch videos or play simple games on two websites, PBS Sprout and Disney Junior.  Her favorite show/character is Doc McStuffins who is a stuffed animal doctor.  So besides playing doctor, Claudia also likes to "fix" things.  She has a little tool set and she is interesting in figuring out how things work.  The most challenging thing I've had to explain recently is how Garmin GPS road navigation works.  My recent failure was "how does it rain?"  I looked it up on Discovery Kids and I'm prepared for next time!  Thank you Internet.

She's a climber

The girls have just been a joy this last month.  Teagan is crawling, climbing, and cruising furniture like a pro.  She can stand and hold her balance for a few seconds, but hasn't tried to walk yet.  We're in no hurry, she just hit 10 months old.  Let me remind you that Claudia was 13 months when she started walking.  Teagan bounces between being very active to being my snuggle bug.  She likes to snuggle soft blankets and stuffed animals and give us lots of cuddles.  The girls (for the most part) play really well together.  Claudia is gentle and good at entertaining her little sister.  Sometimes it falls apart in the afternoon during "grumpy hour" but I'm happy that they're such good playmates most of the day.  We have discovered Teagan's love for noodles.  She likes them long and slurps them up.  It's very cute.  I have to watch her starch intake a bit because if there are rice or noodles on her place, then those definitely go first.  Luckily, she still loves pretty much anything that she can feed to herself.  About my only complaint about Teagan is that she shrieks and is generally kind of loud.

Our big excitement for August so far was throwing a family garage sale at my parents' house.  They spent a lot of time cleaning out the garage & basement and us girls did our best at clearing out the closets of childhood toys, although I still have a few boxes full that I haven't been able to part with.  Gina & I added in a heap of infant clothes and we had ourselves a very successful sale.  We made $350 and got rid of probably 2/3 of our offerings of mostly 25 cent and $1 items, so that's a lot of stuff!  It was fun to see some of our (formally) prized possessions go to a new home.  While spending several days in Kirkland, Claudia was able to check on her thriving garden that she planted with Grandpa.  Beans, carrots, and flowers, oh my!  Besides that, the girls and I (and often times Auntie Neely) are just busy doing activities and visiting friends with kids.  Claudia continues to be very talkative and likes to tell long stories (sounds familiar).  Her favorite expressions are "actually..." and "well..." which leads her into her next thought.  She often says, in a loving voice, "ah, that's so cute" in reference to baby clothes and things Teagan does.  She obviously picked that up from me!  Also, she invented her own language, which she calls "Pears" and she likes to make me guess the translation from Pears to English, which has potential to be fun, but is often quite frustrating. 

My crazy girls

Teagan is now 9-months old.  Here are here statistics from her well child visit:
Weight: 19 lbs. 7 oz. (55%)
Length: 28.5 in. (74%)
Head circumference: 47 cm (98%)
Yes, my child has a large head.  It's part of her charm.  She's beautiful, just like her mom with a big head!  More room for her brains.

Teagan now has 6 teeth, 4 on the top and 2 on the bottom.  Her nickname is now snaggle tooth.  Actually, her teeth are more average sized than Claudia (and Glen) with their large and friendly teeth.  Teagan is sadly already weening from her bottle.  She would rather have food.  She still takes a couple small bottles, but she mostly has finger food and a sippy/cup/bottle of water.  We're still trying to figure out what she wants.  So she has had a lot of night wakings this last week as she figures out the "new normal", which is frustrating and tiring for her and us.  She is very sure of is her optimism for moving and getting into things.  She can now cruise furniture, walk with a baby walker, and basically get into everything she's not supposed it, like the bathroom, my purse, keys, and cell phone, and anything else that's NOT a toy.  She likes to put everything in her mouth and even though Claudia and I sweep the house for "choking hazards", she still manages to find something off limits to put in her mouth.  She seems to understand the word "no" or at least understands my tone of voice.  We love her tenacity and energy though.

As a family, we've made it over to Alta Lake again, this time with my mom.  We went to the Pateros Apple Pie Jamboree and my mom won 2nd place in the apple pie bake off.  Glen & I enjoyed playing a round of golf together, and the girls loved hanging out naked on the deck splashing in buckets of water and the sprinkler because it was 100 degree F.  We've also been able to do some fun local stuff with Auntie Neely.  We love summer.  Claudia also did a week long vacation bible school offered by the United Methodist churches of north Seattle.  She absolutely loved it and was excited to go every morning, so I'm looking forward to preschool starting up again in September.

Summertime with my girls

Summer is just flying by with all our activities.  Claudia did a course of swim lessons and we're practicing every day that we can in our own pool.  She is still a bit apprehensive of getting her face and ears wet, but she does it sometimes, like bobbing her face under and humming to blow bubbles out her nose.  She can do a "blast off" from our arms to the side of the pool, doing the doggie paddle a few seconds to get there.  Neely has been helping us out almost every day to coordinate appointments, errands, and lessons!  In addition, I started a new part-time job as a medical receptionist, so my mom and dad are watching the girls while I do that.  We're very thankful to have so much family support.  We made our first trek of the season over to Alta Lake and Glen was able to golf for the first time since his skiing accident.  We also took Claudia to Slide Waters in Chelan and she went down her first "big kid" slide (in my lap).  We also participated in the 4th of July parade of golf carts.  It sounds kind of silly, but it was actually pretty fun.  We hope to make it out to Eastern Washington a couple more times this summer.

Teagan is into everything these days.  She is pulling up on furniture and crawling everywhere.  She has been getting into the Tupperware drawer and trying to bang on the computer.  She has 4 teeth now and has struggled a bit with teething.  She has a rash on her face and gets uncharacteristically clingy and sleepless for a few days around a new one erupting.  With that exception, she is now sleeping through the night.  She generally sleeps 9pm-5am (8 hours), has a bottle, and then goes back down for 3 or 4 more hours.  Nice.  She is also a good eater and we've switched over to mostly finger foods because she wants to do it herself rather than having us spoon feed her purees.

Australia Trip

Teagan has grown leaps and bounds since my last post.  She is now 7 months old and has done a lot in the last month.  First of all, she has made her first overseas trip to Australia.  We went for 3 weeks in May.  The girls did fairly well on the long airplane trip and managed to sleep a bit on the red eye flight over, although struggled a bit more on the way back when we started out during the day and then had to layover in LAX from 3-8am.  Glen had a conference in Sydney (and we stayed with Adrian & Jo), then a job interview in Melbourne, and then we were up in Brisbane for the rest of the trip to stay with Nana & Poppy and catch up with friends and family.  The Banks family is spread out among Queensland and New South Wales, so we were so thankful for everyone that flew and drove in to see us.

Teagan got her first two teeth at 6-1/2 months.  They actually bothered her quite a bit coming in.  She rarely cries, but she's a talker.  I think she's just competing with Claudia.  She says "mum mum" a lot, but we've also heard a couple "da das".  She is busy.  She wants to mouth and grab everything.  And, she's crawling!  She scooted backwards for about a month, but as soon as we got back from Australia, she was in full on crawl mode.  She is super excited about food and will pretty much eat anything, either mashed food on a spoon, or even better, small pieces that she can feed herself.  She smiles and laughs a lot.  She especially likes her big sister and will do a big chuckle if Claudia does peek-a-boo or anything silly.  She is just such a happy easy baby.
 
I'm behind on posting her statistics, but here are the girls stats from their most recent appointments at the pediatrician.  Keep in mind that Teagan is probably a couple pounds heavier since then!
Teagan, 6-month:
17 pounds (62%)
16-3/4 inches (76%)
25 cms (96%) - a big head like her mommy
Claudia, 4-years:
33 lbs, 4 oz. (34%)
39-3/4 inches (49%)