Sabrina Turns 2

...and Mommy gets a new MacBook Pro Laptop (which I'm still trying to figure out, so I'm trying to catch up on photos, videos, etc). Here goes.

First, our little baby has turned 2! She seems to have made leaps and bounds in the past month to us in terms of speaking, thinking, sharing (some of the time), empathy, sweetness (especially to the baby in my belly) and her awareness and memory of other people. I think spending time in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving and then with the whole Clarke crew for Christmas really helped her cement everybody in the family in her mind and she talks about everybody often. She even says "Good Night" to Erica's baby a lot! She's very sweet and thoughtful.

In the past few weeks she's said some pretty great things (many of which I've already forgotten), but here are a few that stand out to me:
-- I got a new iPhone for Christmas (thank you Santa/Brent/Daddy!) and it's coming in the mail. This week I was talking to Jill on the phone when the call dropped and I made some comment under my breath about my stupid phone and Sabrina said "Mommy, you need your new phone." We hadn't even told her about the phone really...why would we?...but she has clearly been listening!
-- When I opened my new laptop on Christmas morning, I looked at Brent and said "You went to the Apple store!" (it's one of his favorite places) and Sabrina said "I went to the Apple Store TOO" - when I asked what they sell there she said "...apples" (as if I was a total dummy). Then she went on to say "Mommy, it's a new laptop!" In this family, she definitely knows what a laptop is.
-- Me: "maybe aunt ashley could come to your Christmas concert at school." Sabrina: "yeah!" Me: "Should we invite her?" Sabrina:...silence...then "no, I don't want to bite her" haha

As I said, I'm sure there are more that I've already forgotten, but I'll throw them up on the blog if/when I remember them. She's pretty insightful these days and has an amazing memory that regularly shocks us.

To celebrate her big day we had dinner at Nana and Poppy with the whole fam (Nana, Poppy, Ashley, Dante, Tim, Erica, Erica's baby, and Natalie, Kurt, Celia, Della, Lee, Cara and Casey!) It was a wonderful dinner followed by skating on the Boulder Ice ice rink that Poppy has been working on tirelessly to get ready for the Christmas/Birthday season, capped off by a fruit tart cake (candles, of course) and prezzies. The next night we hosted a party for more friends at our house where Sabrina got yet another cake (with more candles, which almost burned off her hair...we're not used to leaving her hair down!) and several more prezzies. We're going to be a part of one more group party next weekend with her birthday buddies, Casey, Lily and a new friend, Noa (all of whom were born on the same day, 6 days after Sabrina). That should be another fun and crazy event! The fun never stops around here.
Her favorite gifts from her birthday include her new strider bike from Nana and Poppy, her baby doll stroller from Grandma Gail and Grandpa Rich, her drum from the Baumgartners, the new CD for Mommy's car from Ashley and Dante (with Yellow Submarine and Octopuses Garden on it...new faves), her blue monster from Tim & Erica, and her "food baby" from her teacher Zeba at school. She got many more things and we're still finding time to play with everything. We're feeling very loved and lucky these days!

Here are some photos and a few short videos from her first two birthday parties.

Sabrina Skis Part 2

This is a follow up blog post to Brent's back in early November. Here is an album with all the shots of our skiing outings (now 4) to date! It include a few duplicates, sorry about that, but we wanted to capture all of her 1-year old skiing in one place.

We started in early November at our house, then moved to the parking lot in Breckenridge for both night and daytime skiing with Poppy and Brent, then we graduated to the bottom of the Quicksilver lift at Breckenridge. She didn't want to put on her skis at the big resort, so we just held her in our arms and had her "ride" our skis, but we figured that another day of exposure is good - especially if we can keep her having fun and asking for more. We only make it for about 20 minutes at a time right now, but it seems to be perfect for her. Not too intimidating, not too cold and never too far from a warm cup of hot chocolate or tea!

Also, please pay attention to how hard Brent and Poppy are working in these videos to cart her back up the slopes (even the small ones!) time and time again when she says "More!" "More hockey stop!" - they can't resist her and they are getting a great workout as a result!

Holiday Concert at the Cottage School

Every Thursday, Mr. Scott The Music Man, comes to Sabrina's school. She is smitten! Thursdays are my favorite morning because I can always get her out of the house in a hurry if I just say that "Mr. Scott is coming today!" - she will pick out her outfit lightning fast, put on her jacket, her hat, her mittens and stand by the door waiting for me. I am SO tempted to lie on some Mondays so I could get the same motivation...but she's too smart for that more than once, I'm sure. Anyway, he is certainly a big hit in her mind so we were excited to meet him and see his show in December. They hosted a cute little concert for parents (and grandparents) just before the holidays. The photos tell a thousand words, as they say...