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Archives for January 2004

More Words!

New Cousin & Visiting the Zoo

Katherine’s new cousin, Tyler, was born this past Wednesday. We visited the hospital in Everett after work on Wednesday night and had dinner at a local diner. Katherine was a total trooper – after an hour in the car, she was a bit cranky but managed to keep it together. Patty had talked about visiting the new baby all day, and so Katherine was very interested to check out Tyler. I think she was a bit upset when I told her that we could look but not touch since he was sleeping (ahhh!!). She even made a lot of “baaa” noises on the way to Everett; perhaps she said “baby?” Anyway, Katherine passed out on the long drive back home.

Given all the attention on the new baby, we decided to take Kevin and Katherine to the zoo using our new AquaZoo membership. Grandpa, the two kids, Steve and I cruised around for 90 minutes – we walked thru the African Savanah, the Asian Forest and the Northwest exhibit before we decided that it was too cold to continue. The cousins seemed to have a good time together, being pushed in their umbrella strollers and chatting with each other. Katherine had a couple funny moments, particularly with monkeys. We were at one exhibit where two monkeys were behind glass and walking towards us. At one point, one monkey was directly in front of us. Katherine moved to Steve, and yanked on his legs so he would hold her. The other funny event occurred when we were standing in front of a window and two black monkeys – one which we saw, the other we didn’t. When Katherine saw the second monkey, she got very upset and had to be carried. Nonetheless, both kids did well and we headed to Lynnwood for dinner. We decided to visit Patty at the Spaghetti Factor, have dinner and get takeout for the Olbrights. Cousins mowed their way thru crackers, spaghetti and had a rousing time at dinner. Katherine was so tuckered out that she passed out going to Everett. We spent some time with Amy, Jason and Tyler before coming home.

More Words!

Finally….Katherine now says “maaaammmma.” Last night, we decided to give her warm water and not formula to get her stomach out of the routine of waking up at 1 or 2AM. In short, she was kind of mad and cried for 20 minutes (with us periodically going in her room) until she came to bed with us – thereby reinforcing another bad habit to stop another. Getting back to the original point, when Steve visited her, I heard her crying “mmamaaamaaam” ๐Ÿ™‚

Katherine works hard on other words too. We get “up” pretty consistently and “dad.” Last night, we played with her little people farm and get “cow!”

The head shaking is now happening more frequently. I gave Katherine to Steve to say good night last night. Steve said “good night” and Katherine shook her head at him as he went down the stairs. She also shakes her head whenever she’s had enough food or doesn’t want anymore drink.

Playing with her Toys

When I initially unpacked her Little People farm, she didn’t play with it too much. Now, she loves to mouth her animals and put them in the different compartments. For instance, she knows that her horse goes in the stall that neighs and the cow in the stall that moos. She can even put her scarecrow next to the garden and she tries to put the rooster and windmill on the roof.

Her rollercoaster is a huge hit too. She tries to stuff the people in their cars, but can’t quite hook the cars to the top of the coaster. So, we do that and then she hits the button (sometimes) sending the car down the coaster.

Katherine is also starting to try and imitate Elmo doing the hokey pokey. When we turn him on, she bounces up and down and wags her arms around – occasionally putting her arm in/out and shaking it around. We’ve even seen her stick her foot out. Eventually, she’ll learn how to dance the hokey pokey!

No…No…No!

Zoom Zoom!

Katherine loves to explore our closet when we leave the door open. This week she came out with a big shoe box which she had been putting toys in. Sometime this week, I got out of the shower to find her sitting in the shoe box with Steve pushing her around the room. We got big grins and squeals when Steve zipped her down the hallway. Only minor incident was a rollover – when they tried to corner quickly and the box tipped over.

This is now a regular activity in the mornings. Katherine climbs in, we make vroom vroom noises and we push her down the hallway. The box is still holding up – but won’t last too long at this rate. ๐Ÿ™‚

Field Trip with the Parents

Over the holidays, I had bought a AquaZoo pass which allows parents and children to visit the Seattle aquarium and zoo unlimited times during the year. We took advantage of our pass today and visited the Aquarium as soon as it opened this morning. Katherine was pretty tired to begin with, but perked up when Steve let her touch a starfish. She was initially a bit scared to go into the dark fish exhibits but once she touched the glass she seemed more comfortable looking at the fish. The otters and seals were probably the biggest hit – we were outside and she just stared as they cavorted around. We left after 40 minutes or so and headed up to Queen Anne to have lunch with the LeVines.

Katherine was really beat, but we didn’t expect her to fall asleep with me and Steve talking in the car after only a few minutes. We drove only 5 minutes or so up to Queen Anne, found parking and Katherine was in a deep sleep. Steve picked her up, thinking eventually she would wake up. We walked to a diner and then to another with our friends. Katherine slept in Steve’s arms the entire time. She finally woke up as we sat down for brunch. ๐Ÿ™‚

Katherine’s First Molar

Earlier this week, Katherine had been waking up a couple times a night crying very hard. We figured that she was hungry and wanted her formula. Well, we were mistaken! Her 9th tooth, a molar on her right, lower side of her mouth came in last Wednesday night. I came home to find Patty with a book, so she could point to the tooth (as Katherine didn’t want to open her mouth for us). According to the book, this molar typically comes in at 18 months and is the fourth tooth to come in that side of her mouth (I think she skipped the third tooth, which would be next to her bottom right most tooth.)

The irony is that Steve, for once, was not taking care of Katherine himself that night. He had been traveling again for work, and I had been taking care of Katherine both Tuesday and Wednesday night. She was quite unhappy Wednesday night, as the tooth had partially come in. Her gums were very swollen. We should have known that something was up. For several days, she would chew her food and cry out in pain. We thought that perhaps she was biting her cheek or her lip. Clearly, the tooth hurt as she chewed. Poor Katherine!

No…No…No!

This past week, Katherine has been shaking her head more and more. For instance, I asked her this morning “can you nod your head” and she shook it back and forth to say no! I also asked her to stop feeding Bisco from her high chair. Afterwards, she shook her head vociferously as if to say “I shouldn’t feed Bisco.” Patty says that Katherine very rarely nods her head, but has said “yes.” I guess we’re still waiting to hear it.

Growth Spurt & Matching Bruises

Katherine has been on a tear growing lately. Her 18 month Nordstrom shirts fit almost exactly, her 18 month PJs just zip up and her 24 month Zutano pants keep riding up. Thankfully, a lot of stores have sales this month. We visited Nordstrom and Gymboree -and I’ve bought a few more 18-24 outfits that should take her through Spring.

She’s also getting very heavy. We’re not sure how much she weighs (have to make a pediatrician appt for 15 months), but we can’t hold her very long.

While Katherine is fairly coordinated now, she loves to climb and explore. Today her adventures resulted in two bruises, on both sides of her face! Steve was playing with Katherine at Nordstrom as I shopped for her clothes. She was climbing a stool around a glass display, and next thing I knew Katherine was crying and Steve was holding her. She had slipped somehow and gotten a scrape and small bruise (half a dime) on her cheek. I also took the opportunity today to put her 12 month and summer clothes away in the closet. As I was organizing her clothes, I heard Katherine cry again from the bathroom where Steve was filling the bathtub. Apparently, she was reaching for a book next to the tub, slipped and got a very small bruise on her other cheek! I don’t think these experiences deterred her at all. Before bedtime, she must have climbed up a stool to our couch and then back down at least half a dozen times. It’s a real challenge keeping an eye on her, letting her explore but making sure she doesn’t get into any accidents.

Playing with Friends

It was a busy weekend, filled with more adventures and learning for Katherine. We happened to have several friends younger and older over with their parents. Katherine had a blast, once the children got used to being around each other. She played with the other kids and watched them playing with her toys. The good news is that Katherine only tried to take over a toy from another younger child only once. ๐Ÿ™‚

Katherine was fairly preoccupied this Saturday with her new ball pit. Unlike the traditional inflatables, this ball pit is constructed with fabric and netting and is not inflatable (it looks like a 40″ square transparent nylon tent). It has an opening on one side and on the top along with vents to stuff balls on the side. I ordered 150 balls, so there are at least 2-3 layers of balls in the pit. The pit arrived Saturday during Katherine’s nap. I unpacked it and set it up before she woke. Once she came downstairs, her eyes just lit up and she headed straight for it. She loves to sit inside and flap her arms. Steve shakes the sides of the little tent around, and the balls go everywhere. We also fit her little tunnel into her ball pit, so she has to crawl thru the tunnel to get inside. I think we’re going to spend a lot of time playing with the pit. Once she gets used to it (maybe another week or two), I’ll pack it back up and put it away for a while. That way, the pit will remain a special treat for her.

Trying to say words

Katherine is trying really hard to say words. For the second time with us, she’s tried to say “shoes.” It comes out as a very quiet “shooo” that you have to listen pretty carefully to hear. Her friend Sid kept saying “ball” today, so she said “baolll” or something like that when he left. We’ve gotten a few distinct “ups” today when she wants us to lift her up. And, we swear that she said “no” once this weekend.

She’s also learning to shake her head. For instance, Steve was holding her bottle last night and Katherine was desperately trying not to go to sleep. So, she shook her little head, smiled, turned around, and walked away from Steve (e.g. “I’m not ready to go to bed.”) Of course, she was exhausted and ended up hitting the sack a few minutes later.

Tonight, she kept pointing towards the stove during dinner. Eventually, she was so upset that we got her out of her chair. Later, during a tour around the kitchen, I discovered that she was pointing at a bunch of bananas on the counter! She mowed thru half of a banana and wanted more. Finally, I asked Steve to please eat or put the banana away, so she would stay regular.

Power Outage

Katherine and I had a very interesting Wednesday and Thursday while Steve was in Vegas at Consumer Electronics Show . Because of the snow and rain storms earlier in the week, lots of tree branches had fallen on power lines. This left almost 100K homes without power for over a day. Well, our power first went out at 4AM on Wednesday while Steve was still at home. After Steve turned off our beeping UPS, we went back to bed and the power went back on at 5:30. I thought no more about this and headed to work. According to Patty, power then went off at 11AM and stayed off during the entire afternoon. The house became very chilly and they went over to Patty’s family’s house to stay warm.

I came home early that afternoon to start the generator. The issue of course with our generator was that the battery had drained and Steve had jumpstarted it with the Volvo every time we needed to use it. So, not remembering that I had jumper cables in the Audi, I had called Tina to check on power status and she offered to come over a with a very cool battery jumper device to start the battery. I wrestled the generator out of the garage, set everything up and we started the generator without any issue.

Of course, this got way more complicated, cold and smelly before it got better. At 7AM, the generator ran out of gas, right as I was putting Katherine in her PJs after her bath. I worked on my tablet PC by flashlight for a couple hours and headed to bed. Katherine wore her fleece sleep sack to bed with PJs and onesies underneath to keep her warm.

At 4:30 I woke up just frozen. The house had dipped to 53 degrees. I tore thru the Audi and finally found an old pair of jumper cables I had never used. I drove the Audi to the generator, read the manual on how to open the hood and find the battery (not an easy task with the S4). I started the car and jumped the generator. This also involved finding an actual can of gas in the garage, spilling gas all over myself and hoping that I wouldn’t ignite my clothes in the process. By 5:30, the generator was running, I was wrapped up on the family room couch smelling like gas with a roaring fireplace. It took over 90 minutes for the house to heat back up again – Katherine’s room was only 63 degrees by the time she woke up (poor kid!)

I can thankfully say tonight that the generator battery is replaced. We have full cans of gas in the house and a cool battery jumper device from Costco in case the battery runs out again. I wouldn’t be surprised if power goes out one more time this winter. (RANT: I just don’t understand why PSE doesn’t bury more power lines on the East side. Every year the power goes out several times; tons of people lose power, and something catastrophic happens! I’m going to get off my soapbox on this issue – at least until the next inevitable power outage.) The only good news out of this whole miserable experience is that I’m ready the next time Steve leaves town during a major and extended power outage.

Active Playtime

We don’t have any updated pictures today. But thinking back on the day, there have been so many interesting occurrences that I had to get them down. Both Steve and I stayed home today and telecommuted as best as possible. We received about 3″ of snow starting at 8AM thru noon. And then because freezing rain starting at 4PM, we told Patty and Paulette to head home before the roads became unmanageable. I spent at least 3 hours playing with Katherine during the day and then another couple hours with her tonight before bedtime.

Active Playtime

Katherine now plays actively with her Little People Farm. She flips the chicken coop to hear the clucking and opens/closes the gate for neighing. She takes the rooster off and tries to put it back on the roof. Interestingly, she remembered that the little bed can flip up (farmer goes flying out of the barn). When I showed her the lever to flip the bed, she grasped it and tried to turn it. It required more dexterity than she had, but she went back to it again later to see if she could turn the lever. She must have spent several minutes playing with the barn before she flipped it over and walked away.

We’re really proud that Katherine is getting braver with some of her toys. We had bought in Santa Barbara a German inflatable red rocking horse called Rody. For the longest time, she would object to being put on the horse and try to get off or even cry. This past week, she’s started to enjoy rocking on Rody. She grasps on his red ears and uses her legs to try and rock the horse. Getting on the horse is a bit beyond her because she’s not tall enough to get her leg over the horse. But, she tries the nevertheless and slides off the horse with assistance.

I also bought her a pretty cool shape sorter book for Christmas. It has little puzzle pieces that she can insert in pages in a book. Once the pieces are inserted, they can then slide down into a box at the bottom of the book. While this sounds rather complex, Katherine understood the concept fairly quickly once we demonstrated it to her. She carries the book around if we leave it around. Once we dump the puzzle pieces on the carpet, she’ll pick a couple up and walk around with them. Katherine does the best with the page that has the simplest shapes – circle, square and triangle. She’ll try really hard to insert the shape in the page – unfortunately, she’s not quite coordinated enough to get it in on the first or second or third try. So, she’ll then jam the piece in any way she can – or she’ll even put the triangle in the square! What’s really neat is that she figured out that the pieces eventually go into a box with clear windows. So, she’s tried to skip the pages altogether and just get the puzzle pieces directly in the box!

Now that she does her Jumbo Puzzle and her shape sorter book, I put the plastic top with cut out shapes on her little Lego bucket. At first, she watched me insert the flower Lego in the corresponding shape and so on with the oval and triangle shapes. She then grabbed an oval Lego and inserted it (with help) where she had seen me put the oval. Given her relative success with the oval, she tried to jam the triangle into the oval hole – less success but still fun.

I guess what we’re seeing more and more of is an ability to do some basic problem solving – which is very cool. I just wish that she would spend more time with toys before cruising on to the next toy. I’ve put away some toys in the upstairs closet. Hopefully, if we have fewer toys out, she’ll spend more time with the toys available (which is still considerable!).

Imitating Mom

We have a new game now when we eat. Katherine has determined that she likes to eat apple, not just the slices we give her but the apple itself. The game goes like this. I take a bite of an apple. I then hand it to her. She takes teeny bite out of the skin and apple using her 7 teeth. She hands it back to me (occasionally taking more than her fair share of bites). What’s really cute is that she’ll say “ummppphhh!” as she takes the bite.

Steve has a lot of boxes in our den. Tonight, Katherine discovered that one box had packing peanuts. She grabbed them and started breaking them apart. I told and showed her how to take her peanuts and put them in another big box. Once I did it, she would then do the same. That said, the floor has its fair share of peanuts left. ๐Ÿ™‚

Katherine Language

Now that New Year Day is over, things are looking up. We’ve had an amazing 2-3 days with Katherine. It’s going to be tough to go back to work tomorrow and leave her at home all day. One small consolation…I bought and inserted pictures of our family in frames to take to work. Also, we are scheduled to start a family evening class with a local toddler group – part education for parents, part socialization and fun for the children – and a Kindermusik class on Saturday mornings.

Katherine Language

It goes something like “daba daba yib … yib….” and many other sounds as well. She’ll point at Bisco and say “dao.” We still don’t have a consistent “mama” but we get plenty of “dadas” and “da”. She’s definitely talking to us! We’re just not sure what she’s saying.

I think Katherine gets pretty frustrated sometimes with us. For instance, she was yawning by 4PM today when we were shopping. I popped her back in her crib for a late afternoon nap, but she must have spent 10 minutes crying intermittently before I heard a thump. It turns out that she had dropped her lamb and one of her shoes on to the floor. I got the picture and took her downstairs for a small snack. She was very hungry and ended up eating a bunch of green beans, cooked chicken and a fried egg – she had eaten less than 3 hours earlier!

Stranger Anxiety

Katherine has been definitely going thru a bout of stranger anxiety. This first showed up over the holidays whenever she saw Steve’s sisters’ in-laws. She’d seen them before, but they would look at her directly, and she would cry very hard.

This happened again last night. One of our PEPS friends, Frank, looked at Katherine and said “hello.” She just cried and cried until we distracted her with toys. For at least an hour, Frank would avoid any eye contact. Finally, towards the end of the evening, she walked straight up to him, smiled and handed him Bisco’s toy. What was really weird was that she was fine around all the other adults – they held her and she didn’t have any issues.

Katherine also attended a birthday party for her friend Mac yesterday. She spent the first 20 minutes of the party wanting to be held or right next to us. She then ventured to play with her friends in an inflatable house with plastic balls. Once we were fully into the party, she joined other children playing with toys and even riding on a plastic rollercoaster. We put her on it a couple times and she was pretty excited to zip up and down the curves and then coast for 20 feet on a plastic cart with wheels.

More New Foods

I gave Katherine a fried egg for the first time this afternoon. She loved the yolk and ate the pieces as fast as she could pick them up. She would also pick up an egg pieces, place it on her spoon and then try to get the spoon to her mouth!

The other new food that she just wolfed down was a carrot cake cupcake at the party. I crumbled the cupcake and gave her maybe 6 or 7 little bites. Steve took her away to get cleaned up. After they were done, she walked back, stood next to my leg, raised her arms and pointed to indicate that she wanted more cupcake. I guess while she didn’t want to eat her own birthday cake, eating someone else’s birthday cake was fun.

Sporting New Sweaters

We’ve had record low temperatures, snow and ice over the last week. In addition to her cool new boots, I bought Katherine a couple new sweaters to see her thru the winter. On of the sweaters has this matching cupcake hat that looks really cute on Katherine. Check out the pictures to see her new duds – a whale sweater, a striped sweater with matching color hat.

What a Fun and Busy Christmas!

What a Fun and Busy Christmas!

We had yet another wonderful holiday. We spent Christmas with Steve’s extended family: his parents, Ramsays, Olbrights, and Fialas. To celebrate Christmas Eve, we went to Everett and a children’s Christmas service. Lots of families with little ones attended and Katherine and Kevin both did very well during the 30 minute service. It consisted primarily of singing and children enacting the Christmas story. Katherine was so taken by the service that she would zip around to the back of our seats and sing (off key) in a very spirited way. After the service we went to Steve’s sisters house and had a nice pork BBQ dinner. The cousins played very well with each other – Kevin even took Katherine’s hand and led her to the tree to see all the ornaments and lights. After the excitement, Katherine took her bath and we discovered a new rash, brought on we think by the heavy tights she wore. Thankfully, by the next morning, it had disappeared.

We opened our presents Christmas morning with Grandma and Grandpa Bush. After they left to participate in gift opening in Everett, Katherine took a very early morning nap. This was highly unusual as she’s been on a 1 nap schedule for several weeks. When she woke up, we piled back in the car, headed north and enjoyed an hour or so with the Olbrights. Katherine had great fun eyeing all of Kevin’s gifts. Kevin had received a musical keyboard with bright plastic instruments. Katherine wanted to play with the instruments and Kevin was determined to keep them with the keyboard. After tussling over them for a bit, Katherine finally grabbed two of the instruments, thrust them to her cousin, lifted her chin, turned around and walked off in the opposite direction. We weren’t sure if it was a case of “sharing” or having had enough, but it was quite amusing.

For dinner, we went to the Fialas where we had a delicious potluck with ham, beef, turkey (I think), beans, salad, pink stuff (yum), and mashed potatoes. The dinner closed with a vast array of cookies and ice cream that the Olbrights had brought. While the food was very tasty, the parents really enjoyed watching the three children interact. Will and Kevin ran around and by the end of the evening, Katherine had figured out that she could run around too. So, we had all three cousins doing laps in the living, dining and family room – with Katherine waving her hands and screaming (ahhhh!!). Even better, some adults joined in the fun too. ๐Ÿ™‚

Another highlight of the week was visiting the Seattle Aquarium. It really is a wonderful resource for families, and the whole family trooped out to see it. Will and Kevin were in perpetual motion, and Katherine took turns riding in her stroller and braving the crowds by walking around. We saw the fish get fed by a scuba diver (very cool), other fish get tossed food and the otters eat their shrimp. After a fun-filled couple hours, we headed to the Spaghetti Factory. Katherine ate mac and cheese, the boys played with plastic barber toys and crayons. The boys even treated us and neighboring diners to a rousing rendition of the ABC song.

Prior to a family dinner, we visited the Redmond Town Center and tried to go to Gymboree. Unfortunately, they were closed, so we stopped by a Paint store – its one of those places where you paint some object and then they put it in a kiln. I painted three ornaments, Steve painted a cake platter and Grandma Bush a heart platter. Katherine had her hands painted (three times!) and then stuck to the platters. That was probably the most interesting part of the visit, because she couldn’t check out the pottery or paints or brushes…Grandpa was a good sport and took Katherine around the neighboring stores while we painted. We did eventually go to Gymboree later with Grandpa, which was a good workout for Katherine.

On the last day of the Bush’s stay with us, we hosted a family dinner potluck at our home. It was a nice way to spend some quality time with family and allow the children to play together. Will really enjoyed playing with Hokey Pokey Elmo. The children took turns playing with the trike, and there was just a lot of running around and excitement in general. Grant seemed to enjoy the mayhem from the family room (what an adorable baby!). By the time the evening ended, both Will and Kevin were determined to stay and were very sad to leave. I guess that’s the mark of an enjoyable and successful play event!

We capped the visit off with a family photo sitting at the local mall. While the Olbrights weren’t able to join us, we did get some nice shots of the Bushes with Katherine, us with Katherine and then all five of us. We’ll be sure to send pictures to the family.

Another Growth Spurt
Holy Cow – Katherine has been eating a ton lately. Two days ago, she must have eaten 5 meals. With every meal, she’s been stuffing down a lot of food. Favorites these days are spaghetti, tofu, peas, bread, yogurt…There really isn’t any food that she doesn’t eat. We also found that while we eat dinner that Katherine would tug our pants and try to climb in our laps. Grandpa Bush was very accommodating and we found Katherine perched in his lap pointing at food and trying to explore the food in his mouth. During a rotation on my lap, Katherine pointed at salmon, got a taste, wanted more and double fisted fish into her mouth. Of course, this whole eating thing has been accompanied by real growth. She now sort of fits into a while sweat suit that Grandma Chang gave her for her birthday. She also is starting to outgrow one of her red jackets.

More Learning- “What a Busy Child”

We must of heard this at least 5 or 6 times during the holidays from family, friends and random strangers. Katherine is indeed busy. She never stops very long for any one task or event. For instance, this morning I took out all of her shape blocks from her puzzle and asked her to put them back (a new development!). She inserted one, picked up another block, tossed it aside and headed off to her toy bin.
Katherine is so funny with her Jumbo Knob Puzzle. It has big wooden knobs with shapes – circle, square, pentagon, etc. For a couple weeks, this puzzle had been on our coffee table. Katherine would do a quick drive by, grab a puzzle piece and take off. We had encouraged her to put the pieces back, demonstrated and even had her friend Audrey play with it. Finally last week, she took the rectangle piece and managed to put it back in. Steve and I cheered and Katherine loved it. Now, she will grab any puzzle piece, put it back and look up to make sure we saw her do it. At a minimum, she gets a big smile – other times clapping and always encouragement.

We took her to the local children’s shoe store to get snow/rain boots. The sales person said as Katherine stomped off in her shoes, “what a busy child…” The shoes by the way are very cute – purple patent leather boots with flowers. She also got some pink leather shoes with a mouse chasing a piece of cheese. We can’t get away with putting her in this stuff much longer, as she’ll soon have her own opinions. So, we might as well buy it now!
Katherine has also reached a number of other milestones as well. She’s points consistently at food that she wants to eat and objects that she wants to checkout. It may be food on our plates or things on the counter. It’s been very handy for us, since we can now respond directly to her requests. The only downside is that she can be very insistent with what she wants.
We also have been trying to encourage scribbling…on paper that is. I read in a parenting book that scribbling is a key milestone. So we put her Crayola washable big crayons in a diaper wipe box. Assuming the box is open, she’ll dig around and pull one or two crayons. Katherine likes to walk around with crayons, and occasionally she’ll even draw a line on paper. ๐Ÿ™‚ Her other favorite activity is handing Bisco her crayons. He’s managed to eat and destroy a couple already. At least the stains wash off the carpet. Grrr.

An Inauspicious New Year
We sincerely hope that 2004 is better than what happened New Years Day. To start things off, I managed to get a nasty 24 hour stomach bug around…1:30AM on New Years. I’m about 90%, but to shake it required a ton of sleep and rest. While New Years Day sucked for me, it was even worse for Steve.

He decided to build his own PC from scratch (why, I don’t know…) Anyway, he goes to Fry’s and gets the parts. He comes home and discovers voila, no processor in the box! He heads back to Fry’s and they think that he stole the processor, so he has to wait at customer service while they figure this all out. He comes home, and I’m passed out on the couch trying to watch Katherine who can’t figure out why Mom is stuck on the couch. He then makes lunch for Katherine and in the process spills coffee beans, breaks a glass and then cuts himself on a soup can. Even worse, the credit card company thinks that between a gas station visit and Fry’s that the card has been stolen. Wait…it gets worse! The processor that he gets from Fry’s doesn’t even work because the box had been opened already and the pins had been bent.
Its a good thing he made the bean soup because we’re going to need all the luck we can get with 2004!

Final Stages of Weaning

Our goal had been to breast feed Katherine until she was 12 months old. Between pumping at work and managing milk inventory, we made it! Starting at 12 months, we began to remove one milk feeding every week. By late November and early December, we were down to one feeding at bedtime. The last several days have really been a great opportunity to finish the weaning process. My production has been down with the flu, and Steve has been home to feed her a bottle of formula at bedtime. Hopefully, in the next week or so, we can wean her from her bedtime bottle, and we’ll be done! From here on out, Katherine will be drinking full fat, organic milk and water from her Playtex insulator cup and straw.