Party Trick

Last night we had some spoons out so we could play the castanets along with Don Toro on Jakers. Long story. Anyway, we were done with our Spanish music show and I asked Jake if he could balance a spoon on his nose. Without skipping a beat, he held it up to his nose, made some snorting sounds, and sure enough when he took his hands away, it was hanging on his little nose. Neither Ali or I have ever been able to do this trick, but Jake wanted to see us do it too. So, he taught us how to do it.
Here he is showing Ali his secret.

It worked!

Sadie turns 0.5

Sadie turned six months old yesterday! She's been practicing her crawling for a couple of weeks now, and is getting better every day. I think Jake sat up before he crawled, but Sadie decided to do it the other way around. Here she is, after mastering her sitting technique. She's also started to lift herself up and stand while holding on to the couch! Jake is very excited by all these new tricks - so excited that he tends to forget that she still needs some more practice before she can run around with him.

Sadie continues to be a pretty easy-going baby. She loves to giggle, and loves to have one of us hold her while chasing Jake around the house. She's starting to play by herself a little bit too. In this picture, she'd just crawled across the house to a corner where we have some toys, and she'd been playing quietly for 15 minutes or so before I got out the camera and she started hamming it up. See more pictures here.

So, happy Half-Birthday, Sadie! We love you!

Farmer's Market

Here we are at the Farmer's Market this morning. Jake is sporting his new fall collection, as well as a little pumpkin he picked out for Sadie. He said it was for Sadie, and he kept showing it to her, but he never actually gave it to her. Anyway, it's the thought that counts. We picked up some fresh basil and big juicy tomatoes. One last gasp of summer....

Here's Sadie snoozing in the wagon. That's the life.

Pebbles

Nice day

It's a little bit cooler today, and I'm glad summer is finally starting to give way to fall. On top this beautiful weather, Ali brought the kids in to visit me at work today. It was story hour at the bookshop downstairs, but today they had little-kid yoga instead. It was just Jake and another little boy and when I walked in they were doing tree and lion poses.

Afterwards, we went out to Enjera for Eritrean food with Fred. If you like Ethiopian food, you'll love Eritrean food. Actually, it seemed to be identical to Ethiopian, but I didn't want to point this out since I think those two countries don't get along too well. They give you a giant piece of round, flat sourdough-y bread, with little piles of food on top. We had some lamb, chicken, beef, lentils, potatoes, etc. Then, they give you more of the bread that you use to scoop up the toppings. I think Jake was a little confused, although he did seem to like the spinach topping. But mainly he just went around to all the other tables and brought the salt and pepper shakers back to our table. Luckily we were the only ones in the dining room.

And the best news of all is that Sadie has been sleeping through the night for the past four nights!!! One night she woke up needing a diaper change and went right back to sleep, but other than that she's been going 11 or 12 hours!!! We're so excited we didn't want to even talk about it for fear of jinxing it.

Zoo

Over Labor Day weekend we visited the Roanoke Zoo, which is situated right off the Blue Ridge Parkway, overlooking the town/city of Roanoke, VA. It was a really pretty setting, and a cute little zoo where you could get pretty close to all the animals. Jake had fun naming some of them. The big turtle was "Taxi", one Boa snake was "Pony" and the other was the ubiquitous "Pokeeno." Pokeeno has been the name of most animals since he started naming things about a month or so ago. We asked if he meant "Pinocchio," and he said "yes, Pokeeno." I don't think either of us have read him the Pinocchio story, so we have no idea where that comes from.

On our way back to the car, we passed a bench in a wooded area and Jake sat down. We hardly noticed, and kept walking for a minute until we hear him shouting about something. We turned around and he was saying "Jake BIGGER! Jake BIGGER!" Apparently a few weeks ago Jake was upset that his feet didn't touch the ground when he sat down and Ali assured him they would once he was bigger. Well, Jake found a bench that sat pretty low, and sure enough his feet touched the ground. He was so excited. It was pretty cute.

Hiatus

Yes, we're still here. I took a break from the blog while we were on vacation last week down at Smith Mountain Lake where, in fitting with the small town atmosphere, they only have dialup internet.

It was a great week, and the Jacksons came down with us, so we had a lot of fun with them. Jake got more practice swimming, and even jumped in the lake from the dock! We also visited a real dairy farm and the Roanoke Zoo (pictures coming soon...).

Here's a short clip of Sadie practicing crawling with Jake at her side. Of course, as soon as he realizes I'm filming, he takes the camera and uses those weird camera angles that are popular on MTV these days.