I'm a ballerina!!

Makenna disappeared for about 10 minutes upstairs tonight before dinner. It was awfully quiet... which means she's up to something. Suddenly we heard, "Look at me! I'm a ballerina!" And we see this at the top of the stairs. As she descended down the stairs she started "posing"...I kid you not. See for yourself :-)

Let's Sing and Dance

Cameron is now 8 months old, Makenna just days away from 3 1/2. Watch them dance, "sing" (er, rap) and cheer for the Ducks!

Watch Cameron Dance:


Makenna's rendition of Grandmaster Flash's rap "song" called "The Message":



Go Ducks!:

Crawling!

It's official...as of a couple of weeks ago Cameron is now a "real" crawler! With it comes a new found love of:

• exploring
• climbing over things
• falling over backwards while on his knees and holding on to the stairs (quite an impressive yoga move but the thud when his head hits the ground is a bit frightening)
• getting into his sister's toys
• enjoying the "brrrnnggg" sound when he flicks the door stopper over.....and over.....and over.....and over again

The best part however is when you come home and he sees you and immediately crawls towards you and on top of your lap :-) Like this:

He is also beginning to try some more "real" solid foods such as those oh, so tasty puffs. In this video he's just learning to grasp the puffs in his fingers but ends up resorting to a nice strategic move where he puts it in his mouth and then uses the highchair tray for reinforcement.

Leap Frog

So in a week's time (beginning a week ago today) Cameron has gone from rocking back and forth on his arms/legs and scooting his legs forward, to crawling. It's not the "full crawling" as one'd imagine but regardless he's mobile and by all definitions, this is considered "crawling."

While it sure is fun to watch him get to where he wants to go, a downside has come with it: he somehow manages to find every single thing (no matter how big or small, how hidden or exposed) that he should not be getting into. This includes hidden cords, a crayon hiding behind the leg of a chair (that he spots 9 feet away), the cat's tail, the DVD player, etc...

And as you'll see in one of the videos below, he's become obsessed with Makenna's puzzles. Makenna will spend 15-20 minutes putting a puzzle together and being the perfectionist she is, every single piece has to be in place absolutely perfectly. Cameron, however, sees the puzzle as an opportunity to distruct something and will look past his toys and crawl as fast as he can to her puzzle and then swipe his hands across it....messing her "perfect" work up. Makenna, so far, is handling it pretty well and will say "no buddy...no buddy" nicely.....and then will begin to raise her voice to him.

Enjoy!

Cameron enjoys his baby food!

Cameron's doing pretty well with his baby food these days. Hasn't shown any signs of dislike towards anything we've given him: squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, pears, bananas (applesauce is next). He sure makes it obvious once he's done though :-). See for yourself.

Gymnastics

Makenna wrapped up her very first gymnastics course last Saturday. The course ran about 4 weeks long total and she loved it! Had a couple of weeks where she was hesitant to leave our sides (or us leave the room) but after a few minutes she quickly got over it. Here is some video of her last class.

PS: Some of the footage is "bumpy" ...you can thank Cameron for that as he was trying to eat the flip cam while I was video taping :-).

Rock-a-Bye Baby

In the past 7 days I've seen the following happen:

Cameron try to pull his knees underneath him (1 week ago)
Cameron pull one knee underneath him, kinda go up on that knee only to fall sideways and roll over (6 days ago)
Cameron pull BOTH knees underneath him and get on all fours for about a second then collapse (past 5 days)
Cameron scoot backwards in the "froggie" position (past 5 days)
Cameron get on all fours, steadily, and rock back and forth (yesterday)

Here's a video capturing him "rocking" on all fours. Of course every time I turned the camera off he'd stop but these should give you a good idea of what he's been doing. He's gonna be crawling before we know it!

I Have a Dream

Just a typical morning in the Koetz household :-). Be sure to watch through the entire redition, by Makenna, of "I Have a Dream." She picks a winner!

You Are My Sunshine

Makenna sings "You Are My Sunshine" to Cameron...both of them love this song.

The Zipline

We spent the afternoon today celebrating the 5th birthday of one of Makenna's friends at school, Sophie. The party was a success not only because of the kids having fun, the cake, the presents, etc...but because of the zipline Sophie's parents installed in their backyard -- it was a huge hit!

We thought Makenna may be a bit hesitant to try it out but there was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to do it.

Below are videos from 2 of her many times on the zipline.

1st try:

2nd try:

"Talking"

Cameron decided to start up a conversation with himself today which included a lot of "spitting."

We have a roller!

About 3 1/2 weeks ago Cameron mastered rolling over from tummy to back. Just this past week (June 2nd - 1 day after his 5 month birthday) he mastered the other half, and most difficult part, of the milestone: back to tummy.