Here are all the extra pics from August!  Ms Vanessa sent us these adorable pics of Blaine and his friend Lucy on the playground at school.

Blaine’s new favorite book is Curious George.

Dr. Blaine examining his patient.

Spreading some grass seed with Daddy.

With Mommy at a birthday party at Mt Baker beach.

Gorging on pizza once again at Serious Pie.

We tried out a new playground and Blaine loved this fire engine.

Sarah has started to enjoy the slide (she’s been going solo, feet first on her tummy), but she is not a fan of the swings.

She loves Blaine’s cozy coupe, though.

Sarah’s crawling a lot faster now and has figured out how to carry something while she crawls.  She started climbing up stairs the last week of August, and now she loves to go upstairs, yelling “up!” all the way.  After that she pretty quickly figured out pulling up, as well.

Here’s a video, which I particularly enjoy because it shows off her rolls in all their glory.

It’s starting to feel like Fall around here!

Happy Birthday, Gram and Grand-dad!  We’re so sorry that we couldn’t be with you celebrate, but we’re glad that we got to video chat with you and share the sign that Blaine and Sarah made.  When I asked Blaine what we should draw for you, he said we needed to draw a fire truck, with Gram driving, and Grand-dad riding.  So that’s just what we did!  Then of course we added a fire hydrant, wrench and hose for good measure.

Love, Blaine, Sarah, Sally and Andrew

I thought these were cute – after we’d finished drawing, Blaine wanted to “ride the fire truck” by sitting on the sign.

Uncle Tim was in town and stayed with us on 8/18.  We were so excited to see him even though it was such a short visit!  Can’t wait for the big event in September.

Sarah was 10 months old on 8/10.  She now has four teeth and is making the most of them on a wide variety of solid foods, though it’s still unclear how much she’s actually eating.  I was pretty sure she said “ma” at one point, but it hasn’t been repeated so perhaps I dreamed it.  She’s working on nonverbal communication… she recently mastered pointing at things, and she’ll gesture elaborately to get me to put some music on (bopping up and down, pointing at the Sonos, clapping her hands).  She’s also getting more dramatic and will cry and whine to get attention when she’s not happy (e.g. when I turn the music off).  She’s crawling pretty quickly now and loves to be chased, and she squeals with delight when she knows she’s getting into something that’s off limits (cords, fans, Blaine’s potty).  She’s started pushing up to standing on low objects like the bottom step and Blaine’s blue chair.  She hates when I am out of her sight, and she gets very jealous when I’m holding Blaine instead of her.  But she is also fascinated by whatever Blaine is doing and wants to get in on the action, and I’m pretty sure her “ba ba” refers to Blaine.

Month by month series:

Also on 8/2, we went out to dinner at the new Capitol Hill location of Tom Douglas’ Serious Pie.  It’s in a giant new Starbucks roastery that has a definite Disney feel to it.  But the pizza was delicious as usual!

The Dahlias are blooming in Volunteer Park:

Sarah has recently started pointing, and now it’s her favorite thing to do.

This picture shows off all 4 teeth!

The black-eyed susans look beautiful in front of our house.

Here are two pics of the two kids crammed into the cozy coupe (Blaine’s idea).

We finally got the whole PEPS group together again on 8/2, so we took another group shot.  So far 5 out of 6 couples have a second child, with the 6th expecting at the end of the month (on the right).

We went to the Burke Museum on 8/1 to see the mammoth tusk that had been found next door to Blaine’s daycare.  Unfortunately, it was still undergoing the drying process so we didn’t get to see it!  We were also disappointed to find out they didn’t have air conditioning (our other goal was to escape the heat).  So, it wasn’t a huge success, but we still had fun!

Blaine had never seen dinosaur bones before and was quite concerned that something was going to bite him.

He even thought this wooden animal might bite him…

When we got home we played with some water on the deck to make up for the heat of our outing.