a new park and an old favorite

Last Thursday I took the girls to a new park, the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. They both loved the very friendly geese, playing in the "children's corner," and looking at some turtles and big fish.

playing in the children's corner

the "bat cave" at the children's corner

friendly geese :)

turtles!

On Friday Matt was home and we all went to one of our favorite parks, Burke Lake park. After the train and merry-go-round we found a good place to fly our kite and have a picnic dinner.

All aboard!

Happy Birthday, Abigail!

Today Abby is 13 months old! Yesterday when we were out someone asked me how old she was and I said, "She just turned 1." The other person said, "my baby is 13 months." I said, "oh, actually, mine is too." It feels like Abby just turned 1 yesterday, but I guess it has been a whole month now. This has been such a busy month for Abby between working on communicating with us and learning to walk. She points at everything now and makes some kind of noise. It seems like she is always watching our lips and trying to mimic what we are saying. She still loves to nod, "yes." Sometimes she will point to something she wants that is out of her reach and nod her head, "yes." This means, "yes, I'll take that, please get it for me." Last night she shook her head, "no" for the first time. I said, "oh, you said, 'no.'" She was quite amused with herself and she shook her head, "no," again and laughed.

She's still only taking a few steps at a time. She does prefer walking to crawling though, as she is always trying to get me to hold her hand while she walks around.

Happy Birthday, Abigail, we love you!

Viva Vienna!

This weekend is our town's carnival, Viva Vienna! We've already been there twice and will probably stop by one more time before the end of the weekend. Abby has had fun going on her first carnival rides:

riding the train with Daddy :)

Anna riding the cars with Mia from preschool :)

Good-bye Turtles!

This past Friday was Anna's last day of 2 year old preschool. She had a great year as a "turtle." Her favorite parts of the year included music class, doing artwork, playing on the playground, eating special snacks for each color of the week, baking gingerbread men, and of course getting to know her classmates and two wonderful teachers, Miss Cookie and Miss Brigitte. Here she is singing in her end of the year concert:

Singing with her friends, Mia and Naomi :)

Yes!

I love it - Abby's newest form of communication is nodding her head, "yes." She nods yes to most any question we ask her. It's so cute and I must say it's nice to feel like I have such good ideas :)

Abby's also busy trying to take steps in a row. She had 3 great tries this morning!

First set of steps!

On Tuesday night we were trying to get Abby to take more than one step in a row. She seemed really close so we got the video camera out. It turns out she was so excited to get the video camera that she ended up taking her first steps to try to get it. Consequently we caught her first set of steps on film:

and her second:

Go Abby, Go!

Her 1st, 6th, and 7th...

In the past week Abby has taken her 1st unassisted step, said her 6th new word, and gotten her 7th tooth!

Abby really wants to walk. Often when I try to put her down in a sitting position, she refuses. Instead she stays standing and tries to walk, but immediately falls. Then yesterday she started standing unassisted and she took her first step!

Abby's 6th new word is actually a phrase: "Happy Birthday!" Okay, so it was more like, "habba ba," but it was definitely what she was trying to say. Since Anna & Abby's birthday parties, Anna has been hosting birthday parties here at the house everyday. She chooses a birthday recipient (usually Abby or Mini Mouse), gets out all the leftover decorations from the parties, decorates the dining room, and then we all sing, "Happy Birthday." After we finished singing a few days ago Abby just kept saying "habba ba," "habba ba!"

Also this week Abby got her 7th new tooth and said her 7th new word too: park (actually "pa").