We love dogs around here, as my long-time readers already know. Well, Sarah says two things quite frequently—”mama” (which can mean me, or just that she’s unhappy about something and the status quo needs to change), and “woof woof” when she sees a puppy dog! (Actually, she seems to think ALL animals say “woof woof,” but we’ll get that straightened out later.)

This isn’t the best, but you can kind of hear her saying it if you turn up the volume:

And in other dog news… do you remember “Pound Puppies”? Well, I didn’t have those. :) I had the “Kennel Kuddles” from Wal-Mart, and they were great. I kept them, and I just put together a little puppy playset for the girls. There are some baby washcloths for blankets, some silver condiment cups for food bowls, a baby hair brush, and a doctor kit to play “vet.”

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This morning, as usual, Anna wanted to know where we were going. And as usual, when the answer was “nowhere,” she was ready to help me out with a suggestion. This morning she came up with this:

“Let me think where we could go… maybe we could go buy a present for a little girl.”

“What little girl?” I asked.

“Maybe in Africa…”

“Oh, you mean a little girl who doesn’t have any toys?”

“Yeah.”

Oh, what a sweet spirit she has! She was remembering back to some charitable giving we did before Christmas, when I told her these presents were for “a little girl who doesn’t have any toys” and I threw out Africa as a possible destination. And when her grandparents took her to buy a doll “for a little girl” and they dropped it off at a local toy drive. Apparently she thought that was pretty cool. May she continue that desire to give to others all through the year!

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There’s this toy that I… I mean the kids… have been playing with a lot lately. It’s Magneatos! It’s very simple—just a bunch of magnetic rods and joints—but the possibilities are endless and it’s almost therapeutic for a geometry geek like me. Squares, triangles, hexagons! Pyramids, tetrahedrons, cubes! And of course, the cool stuff on the box that I like to… I mean that Anna likes to… build by looking at the picture. Over the past few weeks she’s gotten better at looking at the picture and figuring out what comes next. That’s some kind of good spacial-relations skill, right?

Anna now knows lots of shapes, including the difference between a square pyramid and a triangular pyramid. Sarah likes to play with them too, even though she isn’t trying to build things yet. She’s pretty good at tearing them down, though, and putting the blocks back in the box when we’re done. :)

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Surely everyone has heard about Operation Christmas Child... if you haven’t, go read about it! Anyway, I’ve been doing shoeboxes for years (for the oldest age range), but this year we decided Anna was old enough to sort of understand what she was doing if she packed her own box for a little girl her age. I told her we were picking out some presents for a little girl far, far away, maybe in Africa (because she knows about Africa), who doesn’t have any toys. She might not even have much to eat or many clothes to wear. Anna asked me what her name was. She wanted to take the box to the little girl herself. So, there are a few things she doesn’t quite grasp yet, but she understood the broader concept. She had a good time at Dollar Tree (we went there so I wouldn’t have to worry about prices; anything she picked would be ok).

Here she is packing up her things:

Sarah wanted to “help” too:

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Anna is reading. She’s 3 1/2. And I am one proud mama.

No, I’m not one of those moms who pushes her kids to overachieve and reach milestones faster than their peers. At least, I don’t think I am. Anna just has a natural knack for it. And I’ve guided her along the way, but really I’ve done very little.

We first figured out she might be an early reader when she was not quite 2 years old. We had given her a toy laptop for Christmas, designed for older kids, but we thought she would have fun pushing the buttons and watching the screen and hearing the sounds… typical baby stuff. Then one day I was watching her play the game where it was “raining letters” and she had to hit the button for that letter before it disappeared from the screen. And she was getting every one right. Upper and lower case. Very impressive, but I thought surely she had just memorized where the buttons were on the computer. So I asked her to point out specific letters for me in her books. And on t-shirts, and cereal boxes, and anything else in the house that had writing on it. And she knew them, almost every one. Upper and lower case.

She had completely taught herself her letters, before she was even two years old, while her dumb mama was totally oblivious (more…)

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Long before I had kids, I learned through babysitting and working in the church nursery that my favorite age is around 1 year old. And Sarah’s in it right now. Here are some of the reasons why:

I rub lotion on my hands, she sees me, drops what she’s doing, and starts rubbing her hands together.

She picks up the comb and tries to comb Anna’s hair.

She holds the toy phone to her ear.

She puts things IN sometimes, when directed to, instead of always pulling them OUT.

I say, “Hug Mama?” and she leans her head in to me.

These seem so simple, but they just show how she’s learning to interact with the world around her. Babies are just interested in experiencing things through their senses—they want to pick up something and see how it feels, tastes, sounds, etc. But 1-year-olds are learning what to DO with things. It’s just a cool transition to watch.

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I thought the cake warranted its own post, with instructions!

From the time Sarah was very little, I decided to make The Very Hungry Caterpillar “her” book, the one I read to her almost every day. By the time she was a few months old, she seemed to recognize it. She would even giggle  prematurely on the page where the egg went “Pop!” because she knew what was coming.

I had seen the idea of making a caterpillar cake out of a Bundt cake a long time ago, but I Googled “Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake” to get some ideas.

I increased the cake recipe by 50% and made one Bundt cake and one 9×5 loaf cake. I cut the Bundt cake in half, then cut one half in half again to make the body (more…)

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Sarah is 1 year old today! David took off work, and we all started day off right by sleeping in a bit. :) We went to the library, then shortly after we got back it started to rain. During a short break we took Sarah outside and got a few pics of me and her before we started getting wet; the rest are just some playing inside shots. We’ll party on Saturday… look for some party pics in a few days!

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Sarah here…  I’m about to be 1 tomorrow, but oh my goodness, there’s still so much I haven’t gotten my hands on yet! I’m always on the move… no time to sit still and smile at a camera. I’ve got to go explore!

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It seems like the last few posts about Sarah have featured her more serious look, so I wanted to show you that she really does have a great smile sometimes. That’s all. :)

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