The Adorables!: Just 'cause they're so cute!

Grace will turn 4 a week from tomorrow and Rachael will be 8-months-old on Thursday! Grace still shows Rachael so much love, she works so hard at making her baby sister giggle and laugh! Grace is Rachael's favorite entertainer! One way we always get Rachael to smile is by singing, of all things, "Nothing But The Blood". I was singing "By His Wounds" one day and got to the part where they sing a portion of that hymn, and Rachael just grinned away! So I started singing the whole hymn and she beamed and beamed -- now Grace knows the song and we both sing it when we want Rachael to smile. Rachael tends to favor hymns when it comes to her music preference -- if she gets fussy, I break out in "Great is Thy Faithfulness" or something and she calms down! Not so if I slip into a chorus of "Hangin' Tough" for fun! :-) Grace's favorite thing right now is to dance around to any music -- but she prefers Mommy's rendition of Shane and David from "The Upside Down Show" doing their dance to "Udder Chaos" most of all right now! There will NEVER be pictures of THAT!

Obviously Grace isn't reaching groundbreaking milestones right now, but it's been a real pleasure to talk to her after school this year! She seems to be much more conversational about what goes on at school, it's so much fun to hear her talk about her friends, what they do in class, what her teacher reads to them... She's also in the preschool choir at church, and after the first meeting she was singing me a song she learned about Jesus being her best friend! Awesome! She also explained that when they see a "p" they sing softly, but when they see an "f" they sing loud. She now knows more music theory than her mother! ;-)

The biggest questions about Rachael right now are 1) Does she have any teeth? and 2) Is she crawling yet? The answer to both questions is, "Not yet!" The pediatrician expects her to be a late teether like her big sister was (Grace's first tooth didn't poke through until well after she turned 1), so it's not a big deal to us! Now, most of you will remember that Grace was fully walking by the time she was 9-months-old, so some people thought we'd be impatient for Rachael to take her first steps early. NOT SO! It's kind of nice to set her down in one place and know she's not going anywhere for now! Rachael does love to stand up, and she has let go and stood unassisted a few times, much to our surprise! You can see the wheels turning in her head when she's sitting and leaning forward to get things, and she's gotten on her knees a couple of times, so I'm sure she'll be crawling before too long! She can take her time and do it whenever she's ready! Rachael's also quite "talkative" at home, she babbles a whole lot -- we hear "Dada" often, but so far we're not 100% that she is referring to Daddy! Although when she was eating one day, she stopped and turned to face the TV where Mommy was faithfully watching a Phillies game, and when she saw the action she said, "Dada!" ;-)

I can't believe how fast time flies by! I'm hoping to come up with a good slideshow within the next week to celebrate Grace's birthday -- just looking at pictures from last year when she started school, I can't believe how much she's changed! And Rachael basically looks like a totally different kid from the one we brought home! :-D Here are some more pictures of the girls, just for fun!

Fun with hats....