Vacation

I was on vacation this past week so Sarah was a very busy girl. Last weekend we took her to Anderson Japanese Gardens here in town. Sarah was very good and sat in her stroller for most of the walk. She even fell asleep for a little while! Her favorite part was the pond. She just loves water and we’re pretty sure she was trying to figure out what the point is of having so much water if you aren’t going to swim in it.

We also celebrated Father’s Day on Sunday. Sarah got Matt “The History of the Chicago Bears” on DVD, a Chicago Bears T-shirt, and a magnetic picture frame for him to put in his toolbox at work. We invited Papaw, Mamaw, and Aunt Kari over from breakfast and then we went to Aunt Tracy’s house to celebrate with Matt’s side of the family for dinner. Sarah and Matt had fun playing together as Sarah is trying very hard to crawl. She has figured out how to move both knees independently but she hasn’t figured out that she has to move her hands as well.

We also went to an open house for the son of a friend of ours on Sunday. Sarah got to “play” with Josh and a couple of other babies. Of course, her idea of playing involves trying to see which parts of the other babies she can fit into her mouth! She spent a good part of the time trying to “chew” on Josh’s fist. It was really cute to see them looking and reaching for each other. They even started babbling back and forth! Everywhere we go people tell us how small Sarah is for her age. She is perfectly average according to the doctor but we found out that everyone else seems to be correct. Josh and his cousin are both about 2 ½ months younger than Sarah but they are both as big as she is already! You can see in the pictures that they are about the same size.

On Monday, Sarah and Matt came to the stable to watch me ride. I was very happy that Sarah was not at all afraid of the horses and she was even grabbing onto the bars on the stall fronts to try to pull herself closer. She got to pet several of the horses but Ginger, the horse I rode, wasn’t the best behaved so I didn’t take her riding with me (yet…!).

On Wednesday we went to Sarah’s Gymboree playgroup inside the Carlson Ice Arena. Matt takes her every week but since I’m usually at work I hadn’t had the chance to meet any of the other kids and moms-and I still haven’t! Only one other little girl showed up for the play date! Sarah still had a blast though. She likes to hold herself up by hanging onto the ropes and she’s scarily steady when she does this. She also enjoys going down the slide with help from dad and mom.

On Thursday, Mamaw and I took Sarah shopping at the outlet mall in Huntley. We got Sarah some very cute clothes at the Carter’s, Oshkosh, and Baby Gap outlets. She is going to be the best-dressed baby in Rockford! She also got her first pair of sunglasses, which she actually leaves on for short periods of time. Doesn’t she look like a star?

We took a couple days off and then today we took Sarah to the zoo for the first time! We went up to Madison to the Henry Vilas Zoo, which is free to enter. She seemed to enjoy it. She really liked the seals (or at least she liked the water the seals were swimming in) and the polar bears. She also liked the turtles in the reptile and amphibian house (again it might have just been the water). We walked around for a couple hours and took some cute pictures of her. We got to see lots of new animals and she even fed one of the goats! She is definitely taking after her mother as she doesn’t seem afraid of any kind of animal and she really seems interested in most of them.

Sarah’s sleeping patterns haven’t changed much and we love that! As for eating she has now tried all of the stage 1 fruits and veggies and is moving onto stage 2. She will pretty much eat anything we give her. Her least favorite is peas and her most favorite is applesauce. Bet you’ll never guess what her favorite non-baby food is? Pickles! Dill pickles spears specifically. She has been very interested (and by that I mean grabby) in all of the foods that Matt and I eat so at lunch the other day when she was trying very hard to get a hold of my pickle I finally gave in and told her “you can try it but I don’t think you’re going to like it.” Boy was I wrong. She ate the middle out of both Matt’s and mine. I guess she really does take after her mother!