Fall Fun

I just wanted to pop in and share some pictures from last weekend. More updates later...

Haloween--Sage was a garden elf:
Hiking with the whites on Saturday:




Trying on the beautiful kimono granddaddy brought back for Sage from Japan. So beautiful!! Emma has one too!

Hiking, dancing, and more craftiness

It has been almost a month since I last posted, and of course Sage has grown and changed dramatically since then. She frequently talks in three and four-word sentences, and sometimes even throws in a five-word sentence (example: "Bike ride, hat on head!" Hat = helmet in this case). She talks almost non-stop, so she gets plenty of practice. ;-) She has also been conjugating some verbs, which is pretty phenomenal. Some of her words still bear very little resemblance to the actual English words, but I can carry on quite a conversation with her, since I know what most of her words mean. Her newer words are fairly accurate, but her older words tend to be frozen at an earlier stage of speech. Tickle is still pronounced "ga-ga," for example.

She is a very compassionate and caring little girl, and is currently particularly interested in mother-child relationships. Every animal she sees in real life or in a book becomes a mama, and she always informs me that the mama gives milk to her babies. She also loves to have me nurse her stuffed animals and dolls. Apparently that is fairly normal for a nursing toddler. She has taken to calling her little friends' mothers "mama" too, and she is quick to ask the mamas for help on her fiends' behalf when they need a hand to climb up on something, or to put their little shoes on. My sweet child loves to give and get kisses and hugs, and likes me to rub her tummy and back as she goes to sleep. She has become quite a sweet little companion.

We had an amazing adventure last weekend hiking at Natural Bridge with my mom, Rachael, Emma, and Nadja, my parents' Danish guest. Watch Rachael's blog for more details, but suffice it to say for now that forest fires, dizzyingly steep, sloping, sand-covered rock stairs, and crutches don't mix particularly well. The forest fire was apparently on the other side of the mountain, but we could smell it very well, and it was rather disconcerting. Sage was not concerned, however, and had a grand time hiking. The rest of us enjoyed the ride up on the sky-lift, and the view at the rock bridge, but the descent on foot was a bit stressful. Here are some pictures from that adventure:





We also went to a contra dance that weekend, and enjoyed ourselves very much. Sage danced with me part of the time, and played with Grandma and Emma part of the time. We left at the break, and considered it a very successful dance outing. Here is a picture from the dance. Sage was obviously having a good time:


I've been in a sewing phase recently, and have made Sage a few more dresses. I hope you all won't mind if I show them off a bit. ;-) I think Sage looks awfully cute in little mommy-made outfits.

This one is from the same pattern as the last little dress I made. It matches the beautiful quilt auntie Deborah made for her:

This one is made from a knit fabric (my first attempt at sewing knits), and it is very soft and comfy. Sage chose the colors. She really loves it so far.

Here's the back view with the fun knotted hood:

Here's the most recent one, a wrap-around jumper dress. I just finished it yesterday. It's made from a thick corduroy, so it should be really warm this fall and winter. I really like the way this one turned out:

Please excuse the poor photo quality. I took these last pictures with my cell phone, because my camera batteries ran out.

I'm really enjoying making clothes for Sage. It helps helps ease the stay-at-home-mom syndrome by giving me a product I can show at the end of the day, and giving me an outlet for creative energies. Honestly, my mood has improved dramatically since I started being crafty again. :-)

Just for fun, here's another phone picture of sage running through the grass at the park yesterday:
You can really tell how grown-up she is here. Doesn't she look like a big girl running?!

I think this post is more than long enough, so I'll end it for now. Hopefully for the rest of the month I'll do better about keeping up the blog.

Ta-ta!

New Little Dress

Here's a sweet picture of Sage in the new little dress I made her yesterday from this pattern. I think it's pretty cute. :-)


Here's a close-up of her sweet face:

We love you, Sage!

A what could possibly be sweeter than to hear your child say I love you? Nothing. I'm sure of it. A couple days ago, I was singing a song to Sage that featured those words, and she spontaneously began saying "I love you" to me, and when I told her it would be nice to tell Dada she loved him when he got home, she started saying, "Dada, I love you, Dada, I love you!" and then "Mama, I love you, Mama, I love you!" It really sounds more like "I yuh you" but we know what she's saying. My goodness, I think I must have the sweetest child in the world. Later we talked to Grandma Alice and Emma on the phone, and she told them she loved them too. Dada's heart was completely melted, I think, when he came home to such a sweet welcome: kisses, hugs, gentle pats on the shoulder and multiple assertions of "Dada, I love you."

I also have been forgetting to mention that Sage has been out of diapers for a few weeks now. She is VERY good at sitting on the potty to pee, and she doesn't even need a diaper at night (though we do have to get up to sit on the potty multiple times per night). We think it's pretty amazing for 19 months old! Before anyone gets concerned, I certainly didn't push her to potty train so early. She was "all done" with diapers, and all I had to do was show her that the potty was an OK place to pee.

AND, Sage has been doing so well at eating with a spoon and fork at the dinner, that I wanted to include this little video of her eating soup with a spoon, and not spilling a drop!

A few more pictures from Cumberland Dance Week

Here are some pictures of Sage and her friend, Bridgette, taken by Bridgette's mom, Beth Battey. They had such fun together!

Middle of the Night Post

For you, dear family and friends, I am posting after midnight. Computer time is scarce these days, as Sage is actually napping in bed rather than in my arms, so I feel like during her naps I have to do something more useful around the house--like the dishes, or other such house chores. But I wanted to let you all know that my dear sweet child is continuing to learn and grow at a stunning pace. She is now learning lots of words each day, and seems to be able to talk about most of the things that are important to her. Aren caught a 3-word sentence a couple of days ago, and she uses 2-word sentences much of the time. Some recently-learned words are: purple, wet, bike, cat, mess, man, meat, broccoli, yogurt, book, potty. :-) She has begun to have phone "conversations" with Grandma Alice and Emma, which is wonderful. Her end of the conversation usually goes something like this: "Hi," *listen very hard, press ear into phone, smile, point at dog* "Dog," "All done," "bye bye".

Here are a few pictures from the last couple of days:

Talking on the phone:

Wearing the hat I made for her a few weeks ago:

With the little elephant I just made for her:

Giving the Elephant a kiss:

Giving the Elephant a hug:

More pictures from August

Here are some more cute pictures taken in the last month by Emma (who has an amazing new camera!), Grandma Alice and Grandma Jan. Enjoy!


Sage did a lot of sleeping in the wrap while I danced at Cumberland Dance Week:
This baby is well loved:


Here she's doing the sign for more:
Posing with Dada's hat for Emma at the woodland Arts Fair:


Simultaneously sweet and silly:

A random person told me yesterday that Sage was the most beautiful baby they'd ever seen. I'm inclined to agree.

Catching Up

July was very busy around here, and then we didn't have internet access for 3 or so weeks, so I'm afraid I haven't even had a chance to update the blog in a very long time. I do apologize. A lot has happened, though, and Sage has done so many things, and learned so many things since the beginning of July, when I last posted. Here are some Sage updates:

She's learning new words at the rate of 1 or 2 per day. Some recently learned words are nap, moon, giraffe, knot, hot, ice and night-night. She has also learned to jump, walk on tip-toes, and do somersaults, as well as sort items by color. She really lives for a good game of Ring Around the Rosy or Jump Jim Joe and can sing the E I E I O part or Old McDonald for me while I sang the rest of the song. Her grasp of the concept of pretend has improved dramatically, and she has just begun to feed her baby doll (with a little paper tag). She has begun to enjoy giving kisses to everyone she loves, including her dolls and stuffed animals. We have also entered the phase of "do it myself"--though she can't really say that, and we had to buy her some shoes she could put on herself, because shoes were getting to be a real struggle. She absolutely must put them on herself, but she couldn't put on her old shoes without help, and she definitely didn't want help. Along with the "do it myself" phase, comes the phase of temper tantrums, and we certainly have some of those as well, especially when it's nap time, or night-night time. BUT, she's also getting better at sharing, and genuinely seems to enjoy playing with other little ones her age. She's such a sweet little person, and I feel very lucky to be part of her life.

A lot has happened event-wise since I last posted too. We went to Allentown, PA (Dada's home town) to celebrate the wedding of "uncle" Justin and his lovely wife, Heidi, and also to celebrate the baptism of their son Del.

Then Sage and I went to Cumberland Dance Camp with my parents, Emma and Rachael, and had a perfectly lovely time dancing, and hanging out with our new friends, Beth and Brad and their 20 m/o daughter, Bridgette. Sage and Bridgette were so very cute together, as they ran down hallways hand-in-hand, and played Ring Around the Rosy together. Sage had a particular affinity for eating Bridgette's snack, but fortunately, Bridgette didn't seem to mind too much. I did get to do some dancing with Sage in a Mei Tai or a Wrap (comfy, soft, simple baby carriers), and she would always fall asleep almost immediately.

We also took another little trip up to the Cincinnati Zoo with Grandma, Emma, Rachael, Aunt Nancy Ann, Camille and Adelie, and it was great to see Sage and Adelie warm up to each other again.

Most recently, Grandma and Grandpa Jodock and uncle Erik came to visit again, and we spent some quality time giggling and romping around with them this past weekend (never enough time, of course)

Here are a few pictures from the Allentown trip:



And here are some from the Zoo trip:




Hopefully the two grandmas will e-mail me some of the pictures they have taken recently and we can add some pictures from Cumberland Dance Camp and from the weekend with the Jodocks before long.

And just for fun, here are a couple of pictures of Sage with carrots:

Grandma and Grandpa Jodock Come to Town

Sage had a perfectly lovely visit from Grandma Jan and Grandpa Darrell this weekend. Even though it had been quite a while since she'd seen them, she warmed up to them quickly and was everyone's darling little sprite all weekend long. On the 4th we walked in the 10k race. My friend Ruth and I had Sage and James on our backs, and Dada and Grandma Jan came along to join in the fun. Then we had a little birthday dinner for mama with Sage's little friends, James and Aiden, and their parents (our friends) Ruth, John, Alexis and Brandon. On Saturday we went to the Renaissance Faire where my morris team was dancing, and then out to dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Sage made friends with the waitress and entertained the other patrons with her antics and her friendly smiles. She is definitely coming out of her shell recently! On Sunday, Dada's aunt Karen and Uncle Cliff came for dinner and a visit, and again Sage took her job as entertainer very seriously. She had us all roaring with laughter as she bounced on balls, and ran around crazily asking for tickles: "Gi gi gi gi gi gi!"-- translation="tickle tickle tickle tickle tickle!"

Mama unfortunately didn't take a picture all weekend, but here are some highlights beautifully photographed by Grandma Jan.

This series Shows Sage demonstrating for Grandma all the ways it is possible to wear a cloth diaper:

























Here are Sage and her dada enjoying a silly moment:
And some fun with Grandpa Darrell!
Silly times with Mama:
At the renaissance faire in our matching poofy sleeves:
Looking mighty cute at the faire (and having a little snack of cheddar bunnies):
Riding on a liittle tractor with Grandpa!
Pure sweetness just before bed:
Silly Sage wanted to wear grandma's shoes. She walked all the way down the hall in them!
Another sweet little smile caught by Grandma:
Blowing bubbles: She actually blew one herself!
Enjoying some particularly stunning jewelry:
Reading a Babybug magazine with Mama (this one once belonged to Emma!):
And playing with Grandma's watch (Oh so silly!):

Sadly, since Grandma Jan took all the pictures, we didn't get any of Sage and Grandma together. But they certainly had some wonderful times worth remembering! We'll just have to keep those pictures in our heads.