Half Year Birthday's for Our Girls!

Aspen just hit the half year mark on Aug 5th and Claire hit her 8 1/2 year mark on Aug 18th! Aspen celebrated her half birthday by getting shots at the pediatrician's office - no fun! Claire spent her half birthday swimming and diving! (I think Claire got the better end of the deal)

Aspen is getting longer, she is now 27 inches (she grew 2 inches from her last doctor visit). She is still in the 75th percentile for height for babies her age, and in the 50th percentile for weight for babies her age. She weighs 15 1/2 pounds, so her weight gain has slowed alot, probably because she is spending lots of energy trying to CRAWL!!!! As much as we are trying to keep her our little baby as long as possible, she has learned to get up on her knees, rock back and forth and she can scoot all over the place. Aspen is eating "solid" food now (why do we call it solid food when it is all mashed up?). She will eat ANYTHING you give her. So far she's had carrotts, squash, peas, apple and pears. She made a funny face with the peas, but that didn't stop her from eating them. She makes quite a mess, we say that she "enjoys" mealtime. Aspen is starting to do better again with sleeping all night. She was doing great, then those first 2 teeth came in in July, and she went back to waking up a couple times a night. But now she sleeps until 5 or 6 am which helps sleepy Mom.... Aspen also had a quick surgical procedure done for her tongue. She had what you call "ankyloglossia", more commonly known as being "tongue-tied". So our good friend Dr. ENT cut the frenulum under her tongue and now she can stick her tongue out of her mouth. She was a trooper. She was mostly mad about being held down. She stopped crying the instant it was over and I was able to pick her back up. Claire was the sweetest big sister to Aspen. She knew it was going to hurt her, and Claire could not bear the thought of Aspen hurting, so Claire volunteered to let us cut her tongue instead of Aspen's...what a sweetheart. Unfortunately that would not have helped Aspen. Aspen is also starting to "babble" alot now. She says "Da Da" alot. Claire is trying to teach her to say "Sissy" (meaning for big sister Claire).

Aspen is fascinated with looking at everything. She LOVES our friend's little dog Sammie. Sammie is not so sure about Aspen, but Aspen is enthralled with Sammie.

Claire has been a busy beaver as usual... she just started 3rd grade and she was so excited she could hardly stand it. Here are some photos of her on her first day of school. When she came home after her first day, she went right to the dining room table, sat down and started doing her homework...go figure. I asked her when did the alien come invade her body? She is an excellent student and her teacher likes how responsible Claire is and uses her to help alot. Claire was assigned to help a Kindergarten child read and she goes and helps the new students get on their bus after school every day.

Right before school started, Claire helped with a huge service project with her Brownie Scout troop, collecting and sorting school supplies for students that need them. She was a very hard worker. Aspen was there "helping" too. You can see her smiling and happy when we sat down to eat lunch. (click on the photo and you can see it larger).

Claire also finished up a fun summer swim season, here are a few photos of her in competition. She qualified to compete on a relay team for the county meet, but we had already scheduled our week vacation at the beach. But she was not upset as she loves the beach.

Claire is such a thoughtful, sweet girl. She knew it was our wedding anniversary on Aug 2nd. She woke up real early on Aug 1st (She was confused and thought it was Aug 2nd), snuck downstairs and "fixed" breakfast for David and I. Only because she was mixed up which day it was when she awoke early, David had already left for work...she was so disappointed when she carried our breakfast upstairs to us to give it to us in bed to realize Daddy was already gone to work. (For Claire, every summer day is like one long week of Friday's when school is not is session...) So the next morning - Saturday - she made sure Daddy was not going to leave early to go running or go to the hospital, and she made us breakfast again! She was so excited. Of course I had to be very happy about eating fat free cottage cheese and skim milk for breakfast.... David was relieved to get flavored yogurt instead of cottage cheese and chocolate in his milk. What a sweetie pie she is!!

Tune in next month and we'll try get a video clip of Aspen when she takes off crawling for real!!