It's been kind of a tough week or two, at night anyway. The kids have been hitting us on both fronts, and slowly breaking us down. Sadie goes down without a complaint, but then we hear her off and on all night crying. Jake sleeps through the night, but has been putting up a big fight about bedtime every night. Sadie slept through the night last night, so that's encouraging. It looks like her canine teeth are popping through, so maybe that's part of it.
But last night Jake and I went on a long walk before bedtime and he was in a great mood and I got to thinking about all the great little things that have happened the past two weeks, even though the nights have been rough. I ordered a few pairs of new shoes for the kids and when they came, Sadie was
so excited. Ali got this great picture of her trying on the first pair. When I came home from work she was still so happy about them, wearing one pair and carrying the other pair around to show off. Jake liked his too, but he was more concerned about seeing how fast they were. He kept sprinting from one side of the house to the other to test them out.
Another fun development has been watching and listening to Sadie work on her words! All of a sudden she started practicing, and saying "Thank you", "Mama", "Dada", "Jakey" and "Ball". I don't know which was her first, but I like all of them. And she does the two cutest animal impressions. If you ask her what a tiger says, she opens her mouth and gives the quietest "roar" I've ever heard. You can barely hear it. It cracks us up. And if you ask her what an elephant says, she happily raises her arm up like an elephant trunk. No elephant noise, just the arm movement.
Jake and Sadie have really started playing together more and more and it's so much fun to watch. They take turns pushing each other around in the little baby stroller, or climb all over the couches and each other, giggling. Sadie obviously idolizes Jake, and wants to do everything he does. He was jumping the other day, and she stood there watching him for a minute, and then tried her own little jump-step. Then she got her serious face on and practiced and practiced her jump while Jake moved on to something else. If Jake is walking around outside and steps on a leaf, Sadie will follow right behind and step on the same leaf with the same foot.
Ok, one more. Backpacks. I don't have a picture of this, but Ali got the kids new backpacks to get ready for their new school in a few weeks. The only thing Sadie loves more than her new backpack is her new shoes. She wears her backpack all over the house. And she's constantly bringing Jake's backpack over to him to wear. Whenever we get ready to go somewhere, she gets her backpack.
This weekend, to celebrate Ali's upcoming milestone birthday, her mom and sister took her up to New York for some shows and dining and miscellaneous good times. Luckily, Poppy stayed behind to help me keep track of the kids. Here we are this morning, playing Ready Set Go. As usual, Jake is in the lead, Sadie is a close second, and Poppy's bringing up the rear. We're getting quite a bit of rain today from tropical storm Hanna, so we decided to head downtown to the Natural History museum for some indoor fun. We had a great time exploring mammals and dinosaurs and insects and PBJ sandwiches. 
There's a hair tie in there somewhere, but I'm not sure what it's doing. Sadie didn't seem to mind. Before we went to the museum, I put a baseball cap on her and she looked like mini college Ali.
And here's the whole gang:
