Season's Greetings!

Girls Gone Wild

Taelyn was in the mood to entertain the other day, and entertain she did! She started off by performing a little rhyme that she learned from Toddler Time in Colorado about bees. The rhyme was obviously not enough of a performance for her because she immediately started running around and acting silly. Eventually, she crashed in to the wall, fell on the floor, and then got back up and started running again. Later she added some words to the whole ordeal and started saying "dada," "mama," "T," "Kae-ya"; apparently she was listing off the people that were in the room with her. But after that she also started rambling "ucky bu" (yucky bug) for no reason. To top it all off, she then started throwing a ball at my head! Taelyn was a riot, and we were able to catch it all on video. Only the first few minutes are displayed here, but she actually continued on in this manner for another five minutes.

We also were finally able to record Taelyn singing the Winnie the Pooh song. For anyone that may not have heard the song lately, some of the lyrics are:

A donkey name Eeyore is his friend
There's Kanga and little Roo
Rabbit and Piglet and there's Owl
But most of all Winnie the Pooh
Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh
Fuzzy little wuzzy all stuffed with fluff
He's Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh
Willy nilly silly old bear

Taelyn picks out most of the main words from the song in this video!

Kaelia's 1st Feeding

Kaelia started solid foods today, and she did very well. She made a little face at first to try something new and completely different from what she is used to. She quickly started to get involved with the feeding process, though, by grabbing the spoon with a grip too strong to pry the spoon away. Then when I let go of the spoon altogether, she started feeding herself! It looks like meal times will not be too big of struggle to get Kaelia to eat. Here is the moment caught on video. (Try to ignore the background sound - Taelyn was watching Finding Nemo, and it's a little distracting!)

Kaelia - 6 Months

Kaelia has continued to grow this past month; she is now 16.3 lbs., 26 inches long, and has a head circumference of 16.3 inches. While she learned to roll from front to back at the start of the month, Kaelia's primary motor growth has been in sitting up. She has always loved this position and wanted to be held and placed in her bumbo this way. Now that she can do the task on her own, she wants nothing to do with laying down any more. And Kaelia's favorite part about sitting up is that she can interact with her sister more - basically this means she can try to pull Taelyn's hair and take her toys away!

Not only are Kaelia's stomach muscles getting stronger, but her legs are stronger too. When she is not in a sitting position, Kaelia likes to be in a standing position with some help, of course. She is grasp on to our fingers to keep herself from falling over, and stand on her little legs with ease. We even got her to hold on the coffee table and stand on her own! It is truly amazing to see how strong her legs are.

Aside from Kaelia's physical development this month, her personality has continued to sparkle. She still loves to laugh and smile, and she will often blow bubbles or make raspberry sounds with her lips; Taelyn gets a big kick out of this, so Kaelia will perform these little tricks to entertain her sister.

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Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a couple of days off of school for Thanksgiving, so we decided to take a little road trip down south to the ocean. Before leaving, though, the school had an International Day celebration where everyone came dressed to represent their own countries and marched in a parade in sections of the different countries. I brought the girls up to school that day, and we all marched together in our red, white, and blue. It was a very nice celebration.

The next day, headed south to a small diving town called Umkomaas. We stayed in a great little cottage with a swimming pool and a big back yard for Taelyn to run around. One day while Taelyn and I were hanging out outside, we noticed that there was a mango tree in the yard. So we went to investigate and see if there were any ripe mangoes to pick. As we got closer and closer to the tree, mangoes kept falling down, nearly missing our heads. We looked up and found several monkeys in the trees that were trying to hit us with the mangoes! Eventually the monkeys decided to leave us alone, and Taelyn loved to see them every day. We soon discovered that they were a family with two little babies that would hold on to an adult monkey's belly every time they moved about the trees.

Most of the time while in Umkomaas we just relaxed, but Justin and I also went scuba diving over a couple of days. Depending on what sources you read, Umkomaas is ranked in the top 5 or 10 diving spots in the world. My diving experience definitely lived up to these expectations. I saw many sharks and at one point was just a few feet above one. They were large and harmless. The diving instructor found a shark tooth during our dive that he gave to me under water. I also saw huge sea turtles and again, came very close to one, and I saw lots of interesting types of fish and coral. It was an amazing dive - the best I have ever had. Justin, however, did not have the same experience. He struggled with some ear issues, and his dive site was not as eventful as the one that I went to (we went separately from one another so one person was with the kids while the other person went diving). He had to end his diving short for the weekend and unfortunately did not get the same experience that I had.

We also took the girls to the ocean during our trip. It was our first time ever going to the Indian Ocean and Kaelia's first time at any ocean. We were not dressed to swim, but I dangled her legs in the waves; she seemed to really like it. Taelyn could not say the same thing, though. At first she liked the beach and the waves. But then when a wave came crashing in and knocked her down, she did not have a good experience any more.

The entire weekend was very relaxing and calm, and we were happy to see a new part of South Africa. It truly is a beautiful country.

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