We have a talker and crawler, all in the same month!!

Yes you read it right Kara is finally(well not that we were pushing but McKenna was at 6 months so we were expecting it at any moment) crawling and talking. I had Kara in my arms one morning and brought her over to our bedroom and she saw Aaron and said "dada". We both got really excited but thought it was a fluke too, but then she did it again another day and now says it all the time. She is so proud of herself when she says it to, along with making a car noise when asked what it says. It is really cute and McKenna LOVES to ask her questions and see if she will get the "answer" right. We don't have any videos of her crawling yet but we will soon enough. She loves to pull herself up on any and everything and often drops her toy to crawl over to me, just to stand up and do nothing else. She really likes to stand up on this little table, but as you can so she gets lots of "help" from big sister, then gets annoyed and plops down over to another toy.

Kara's favorite book is Brown Bear Brown Bear in the morning and then Miss Spider's Tea party at night (and you better read it at night or she won't go to bed!) Her favorite game is Peek a boo and loves to play by herself in the mirror. If she wants you to play she will yell at you until you notice her on the ground then she will hide her head in the carpet and pop up when you say "where's Kara". It is really cute and she gets a kick out of it. She is such a happy go lucky baby and rarely cries, unless you put her down away from the action, we love her to death and McKenna really enjoys playing with her and making her laugh. I can't believe she will be 9 months old next week!!!

McKenna has a very busy month ahead of her. She has started ballet and tap

as well as a Spanish class. Her favorite is dance class she says but she still really enjoys her "school" as well. It is really nice for me that she is in the classes because it gives Kara and myself some time alone to play while McKenna is doing her thing. Her favorite thing to do is to go to the Natural Science Museum in the discovery room. The room is geared toward children and is a hands on learning room. They have everything from live bees you can observe to caterpillars turning into butterflies, costumes to dress up, books, etc. But the thing she LOVES best about this room is the live beetle cage. She will spend an entire hour looking at the beetles,

playing with them, observing them, talking about them, etc. Then she will go over to the learning drawers they have and pull out the scat (animal poop) drawer. We then proceed to read the book Everyone Poops and pull out the specimen samples and try to name the poop. It is really gross, but she loves it! We go about 1 - 2 times a week depending on the weather and it never gets old for her. I can't figure her out ballerina one day, anthropologist the next. Can you believe she will be 3 on the 15th!!!

Aaron has been working nights for the past week and will continue to work a schedule of 6x12's for about 7 weeks. He goes in at 6pm and gets off at 6:30am. So he leaves the house around 5:10 and gets home around 7:15, stays awake long enough to say good morning to us girls and eat cereal. He then crashes until 3:30-4 when we come wake him up. It is a really terrible schedule only seeing him for 1 hour a day but it is only temporary and we will return to a normal schedule soon enough.

I am trying not to lose my mind spending 24/7 with the girls but they have been excellent so far and really have been doing a great job of napping, going to bed on time, etc. If this keeps up I can handle it for 6 more weeks however if it all goes South, well that is another story!

Hope you enjoy the pictures.