Eight months old

Here are Sophie's eight month photos. She just keeps growing! She is VERY close to crawling at this point. She can wiggle in just about any direction except forward. She gets so frustrated! But she is also very persistent and is clearly eager to start keeping up with big sister, Anna.

I love these two pictures with her little tea cup (Anna gave her a tea set for Christmas). Such a little lady.

Christmas in Michigan

We had a great time with Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Rachel in Michigan. The girls loved exploring and chasing the cats, and there was lots of room for Sophie to perfect her rolling skills.

 

Hanging out with Aunt Rachel.

And of course, time for naps. (It's hard to tell in this picture, but Sophie has fallen asleep in the middle of all those newspapers.) I have a series of nap photos with Grandpa, now!

Silent night.

 

Thank you for such a great Christmas!

Fantasy of Trees

This year I attended a holiday fundraiser event for the University of Tennessee Children's Hospital. It's called Fantasy of Trees, and one of our friends from church is heavily involved in planning it. Businesses, organizations, and individuals decorate and donate trees to be purchased by the community. There must have been over 1,000 trees displayed at the convention center, plus live music and entertainment, rides for kids, face painting, craft tables, and one of the highlights for me, a gingerbread house contest. Each gingerbread house seemed more impressive than the last, and just when I thought I'd picked my favorite, another one blew me away. I did not envy the judges. Here are just a few of the entries:

As you can see from the ribbon below, this was a first place winner (though I cannot remember the exact category). The detail on this house is hard to capture on camera. Just as an example, the "stone" walkway up to the front door is almond slices.

 

And here is the inside. The tiny little paintings on the wall were just fantastic. I'm actually not sure how they were done.

  

Here are some others.

 I loved this one for its "modern" flare. Very unique.

And lastly, another first place winner. I could not believe this was really gingerbread and cannot imagine what went into making it.

Between this and the cake bake off I attended last March, I'm convinced Knoxville has some real talent when it comes to sweets!

Seven months

Ho Ho Ho! Here we are at 7 months, and it's been a busy few weeks. Almost overnight Sophie started babbling--"bwa bwa," "ma ma," and "da da." Of course her favorite word is "da da." Nearly everything is "da da." "Ma ma" is reserved for serious distress. She is also rolling, rolling, rolling all through the house. Crawling is not far off. She's pushing up on her hands and just starting to balance with her knees. Mostly she pushes herself backwards, but she'll be keeping up with Anna in no time.

I'm a little pumpkin

Anna has bonded with her pumpkins this fall. She has memorized a poem from one of her High Five magazines. Here it is.

I'm a little pumpkin short and round
My skin is orange and my stem is brown
Scoop out all my seeds and put in a candle in
When darkness comes just watch me grin!

Whoops! A little late here...

I didn't entirely miss taking the five month picture (though it was about a week late). I just didn't get it up on the blog. Here it is, along with today's sixth month photo.

Our two amazing girls. They never stop surprising us.

Synchronized stretching

These photos started out as an attempt to capture the girls' matching outfits. Naturally their own antics proved a much better subject.

They're on the same wavelength already. Ben and I had better watch out.