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Allison

What a Week!

What a Week!

Christmas was chock full of family meals and get togethers this year! We kicked off our week with Christmas Eve dinner with our immediate family and grandparents. My mom, the Bushes and Great-grandpa Vasvary visited for a potluck dinner featuring ham, potato buds, beans, salad, rolls and cheesecake. Katherine was so wound up and managed to convince the Bushes that she should open just one present Christmas Eve. This morphed into two gifts…a Bodyworks book and gift card. Anyway, we managed to get her to bed after reading the “Night before Christmas.” She gave me one last instruction before going to sleep, “Mama, be sure and tell Santa not to put a candy cane in Allison’s stocking. She’s still a baby!”

The next morning the crew arrived at 8:30AM (what dedication!) to see the girls open their presents. Katherine was agog at the stockings which were stuffed the night before and at the plate of oatmeal cookies which were nearly gone. We first tackled the stockings and the gifts wrapped by Santa (aka Steve who insisted on wrapping half the stocking gifts at 1:00AM the night before!).

Then…on to the gift opening!! One of my goals this Christmas was to keep the number of gifts under control. We sort of accomplished this, as Steve and I gave the kids only a small handful of gifts. Between all the family members, the girls managed to receive clothes, instructional DVDs and music CDs and toys. Katherine was super happy to get her candy cane and Carl book. One disappointment came when she took a Hallmark Lambey out of her stocking, “This isn’t Lambey…”

We then ate brunch which included a strata, more ham (see a theme?), fruit and a Christmas bread. Katherine fell asleep several hours later with Bisco, both sprawled on the couch for two hours. To cap off the excitement, we headed off to the Fialas for dinner and play with the cousins. This Christmas was eventful in that Katherine really interacted with her cousins for the first time. We attribute this to her Montessori learning environment. Or, it could be her natural development as a three year old.

That week we also hosted a brunch with the broader set of great-grandparents and Fialas. Brunch included….ham again, yogurt/granola, quiche, yummy breads, fruit, bagels, etc. A subset of folks played bridge before dispersing.

Eating More Solids

Allison has continued to expand her eating repertoire to include peas and brown rice (oh yumm!) and cereal finally. Patty’s key learning today: warm the food! We’re really trying to feed her at least 2-3 times a day. She’s grown as a result to 14 lbs and 9 oz – a 1.5 lb increase since her 6 month appt – and 36.25 inches. She still lags many of her peers at 5-10% weight and 25-50% height. She’s going to be a skinny kid!!

Tis the Season

Tis the Season

Katherine has been so excited about Christmas, in part because of all the activities that are becoming family tradition. We started the weekend after Thanksgiving with a trip to the Christmas tree farm. Katherine ran around pointing at trees for about five minutes – at which point she got impatient and all the females in the family retired to the warm minivan. Decorating was a success again this year; Katherine helped me unpack the ornaments and put them on the tree. Our damage…only one ceramic ornament was broken. Allison wasn’t sure what to make of a tree in the middle of the living room and lights all over the tree!

That evening we went to an annual cookie exchange – where Santa made a star appearance. Katherine was a bit surprised and apprehensive about sitting on his lap. We asked her what she wanted and she said “a candy cane!” She ended up sitting on Steve’s lap and telling Santa “I want a candy cane. I have all my stuffed animals already.” Since then, she’s elaborated on her wish list, saying she wants: a candy cane, a new Lambey (hmmm), a new Carl book (Carl’s Sleepy Afternoon) and one other thing I can’t remember! She insists “I’m a good girl” and fully expects Santa to deliver on these items. She is also very concerned about Allison – telling me that Santa should not put a candy cane in Allison’s stocking because she’s still a baby.

Early the following week we decorated a gingerbread house. This is our third year of doing so. The first year, our friends the Sarins brought over a house. Tina glue-gunned the house together and we made a beautiful house. Last year Katherine was an active decorator, placing candy all over the tree. This year, I bought a kit and she was just beyond herself – holding the kit with a firm grip and telling Steve when he got home that we HAD to decorate the house that I had managed to glue together. Funny enough, Katherine understood that the candy was for decorating. She found Steve with candy in his mouth several times and admonished him “candy is for decorating, not eating!”

Steve went to LA to visit his grandmother just a few days later. I tried to stick with our planned activities and took Katherine to a cookie decorating party for a little friend. She did amazingly well – telling me when she needed my help (for frosting), and asking nicely after decorating if she could eat a cookie! The cookies were laden with frosting, marshmallows, jelly beans, chocolate chips and M&Ms. She was in cookie heaven! The decorating was followed by a beautiful lunch – and the kids at the party did a great job behaving at the restaurant.

We discovered a new tradition yesterday with my mom who had visited the local nursery (Molbaks) and wanted to take pictures of the kids there. Molbaks is celebrating the holidays with a Festival of Poinsettias – literally hundreds of plants and a gigantic 10′ tree made of poinsettias with benches in front. A woman walking by was thoughtful enough to volunteer to take our picture – and the resulting picture was wonderful. I have a feeling this will be a new family tradition. Allison loved the colorful flowers as she kicked all the way through the visit. We finished up our visit picking up some new clothes for the kids and headed home for cookie decorating with Grandma.

Finally Eating!!

Allison is Finally Eating solids. It’s really been touch and go for the last month. While she’s eating only say a teaspoon of food at a time, she’s getting the hang of eating and getting really messy! Our first technique (courtesy of my mom) was to wait for Allison to open her mouth while she played with her own spoon and to gently jam a second spoon in her mouth. I learned that she loves to hold spoons and try and get the food in her mouth herself. She also LOVES finger food – namely the Whole Foods organic equivalent of Cheerios.

Allison now eats sweet potato, apple, bananas and a bit of peas. She still doesn’t eat cereal…Oh well.

Dorothy Elizabeth Vasvary

Dorothy Elizabeth Vasvary

Steve’s grandmother Dorothy Elizabeth Vasvary passed away today (Dec 13, 2005). Grandma Vasvary has been battling Alzheimer’s disease for the last seven years so the family is mourning her passing but thankful she’s no longer suffering from dementia. My grandfather is a wonderful husband. For the last seven years, he has cared for my grandmother almost to the point of exhaustion. Alzheimer’s patients are a lot of work because they cannot function for themselves and are often confused and irritable. My grandmother was spared the extremes of the disease but the family still had to watch her slowly slip away.

We were fortunate to have Grandpa and Grandma Vasvary visit the family in Redmond in August of this year. Grandma Vasvary got to meet a 3 month old Allison and spend some quality time with Katherine. Katherine had a hard time understanding Grandma Vasvary because she never had experienced a grown up with dementia. I explained Grandma Vasvary’s condition to Katherine as “sometimes old people have trouble with words just like babies”. Katherine enjoyed string Cheerio necklaces with Grandma Vasvary.

I wanted to close by saying some words about my Grandma Vasvary. My grandmother was a very independent, curious, and unique individual. Grandma Vasvary would babysit me a lot in my early years as I can credit a lot of my personality to spending quality time with her. She had a lot of patience for my thousands of questions and would often take me on outings to local parks, museums, or her favorite, garage sales. A lot of my personality I can trace back to my Grandma Vasvary: independence, curiosity, shaping yomyur environment to mybeliefs, having strong beliefs and not caring too much about what other people think. She taught me to question things and not accept the status quo. Grandma Vasvary grew up in the South and had a disarming southern charm. She could strike up a conversation with anyone and make them feel comfortable.

We will miss her deeply but her spirit lives on in me which I will pass along to our children. The family is looking forward to spending more quality time with Grandpa Vasvary over the Christmas holidays.

The photos are from a visit to Fullerton in June, 2003 with Katherine and a visit by the Vasvarys to Redmond in August, 2005.

Thanksgiving 2005

Thanksgiving 2005

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, despite our fifth preschool cold making its way thru the family. The Sunday preceding T-Day, Katherine complained of a sore throat and sported a 101 fever on Monday morning. She stayed home from preschool both Monday and Tuesday, which was grueling for Patty and me, and missed her stone soup exercise at school.

On Wednesday, I kept both kids busy, playing lots of board games/puzzles and taking the kids to the local shopping mall for Katherine’s haircut. That evening, Sharon and Jamey arrived to the delight of Katherine. “Hi Uncle Jamey…we’re going to make pie!!”

It was a pretty low key day, which was great, since the preschool cold was making its way thru the house. (I managed to fight it off after several days with only a nice residual cough.) We went to my mom’s house for hot pot, pumpkin pie and cheesecake.

Friday: the family trooped to the local mall for posed pictures. Steve also went nuts and made a full turkey dinner!

Saturday: we took the kids to a local photographer for b&w pictures, to Chinatown for noodles/groceries and then my mom’s for a birthday dinner (yes, mine).

Sunday: we went shopping again for my birthday gift (grin) and then went to an informal dinner out with Steve’s parents, grandfather, my mom and the kids.

The girls were exhausted with all the excitement, taking full afternoon naps each day starting Sunday and thru today as well.

Allison’s developments

Allison now has another reason to be cranky. Her second bottom tooth started to cut through early last week! Poor kid didn’t want to be put down. Everytime I would put her down she’d yell at me and fuss until I picked her up. She didn’t want to sleep at all, and we finally resorted to Children’s Tylenol to help.

Allison has a new endearing trait…shrieking. She seems perfectly happy but screeches at us. Both Patty and I swear that we’re going to lose our hearing at this rate. Steve claims that Katherine did this as well, but I must have blocked this out.

Behind the Mirror

I went to visit Katherine’s classroom today with Steve’s mom. We observed for over 90 minutes watching the children go thru a “work cycle” and then hit circle time. Great news is that Katherine’s concentration and ability to work in the Montessori environment is much greater. There were some pretty funny moments…visiting the snack table periodically to see if she could grab a spot, having to revisit her work area four times to finish cleaning up, and watching the teacher and other children dancing (trying to figure out the movements). Her classroom participation / work is really night and day compared to late September…which is great.

It’s Finally Here!!

It’s Finally Here!!

Well, now we know what Allison has been cranky and running a low grade fever the last several days! Her first tooth cut through on Saturday. We found out when she chomped on Steve’s finger and he exclaimed “hey, here’s a tooth!” For reference, it’s the bottom left tooth and it’s barely cutting through.

Poor Allison has been having a hard time going to sleep which is very unusual for her. Yesterday we tried to give her Tylenol and she urped it up all over Steve. Tonight went a bit better.

I’m not sure if teething has anything to do with her lack of interest in solids. Unfortunately she’s really not eaten too much over the last week – not much rice cereal, oatmeal or even sweet potato. I really need to call the pediatrician about this.

Every letter makes a sound, the A says ahhh…

Every letter makes a sound, the A says ahhh…

For the last couple months I’ve been working on letter sounds with Katherine. The conversation would go like this…

Christine: “Katherine, what sound does Aaaallison start with?”

Dead Silence

Christine: “It starts with ahhh…Aaaallison starts with ahhh..”

Dead Silence

I was starting to wonder whether Katherine had entered her “sensitive period” for phonemic awareness or not. I was also wondering how long I’d have to have one way conversations…which is pretty unusual with Katherine. Thankfully, we borrowed a great Leapfrog DVD from Audrey two weeks ago which has worked wonders in a very short period of time.

What’s up with the Letter Factory DVD? Well, it uses Leap, Lily, Tad and a Dr. Quigley to sing the entire alphabet and the letter’s sounds. The great news is that Katherine has learned many sounds of the alphabet. If I ask her what sound a letter makes, she can make the correct sound about half the time. When we ask her what sound a word starts with, she can also nail it half the time. The bad news is that this song is stuck in my head and it probably will be for the next few months!

Katherine is also very excited to identify her letters. She can identify half of her letters now…mostly those associated with our names like A for Allison, B for Bisco, D for Daddy, K for Katherine, L for Lambey, M for Mommy, P for Patty, Q for ??, S for Steve, W (upside down M!), X for ?? and Y for who knows!

Yesterday we hit a big milestone as well. Katherine wrote her first letters! She was busy scribbling with her big pencils on some paper. She turned to me and said “Mama, I wrote an A!” I looked casually over and there was an A!! I came home yesterday afternoon to find another piece of paper on the table with several As, an M (or W) and X on it! Needless to say, Steve, Patty and I were very proud of Katherine and she just beamed at us.

Finally eating cereal!

Allison has been working hard to get her hands on some food for a while now. Whenever we hold her at the table, she’ll pull the plate towards her and reach for food. Now she can eat as well…we started rice cereal last Monday and then switched to oatmeal on Friday. Katherine was probably the most excited of any of us. She tried to help by shaking the formula for the cereal, getting the bib and then trying to convince me to let her feed Allison!

Allison has eaten a good meal maybe three or four times over the last week. She’s very strong willed about food and milk, only eating when she is super hungry. This perhaps helps to explain why she is still only 5-10% in weight (13 lbs 0.5 oz) and 50% or 25.5″ in height at her 6 month checkup. Sigh.

Katherine’s birthday
Katherine celebrated her birthday three times last week! The first time was actually on her birthday after Steve and I got home from PuzzleHunt. The second time was at Patty’s sister’s house. The third time was with her friends this past Saturday at an arts and crafts studio in Bellevue.

My mom was a huge help over PuzzleHunt weekend, watching the kids on Sunday until dinner time. Yes….we were solving puzzles for two straight days and didn’t even finish by 5PM when Steve and I had to leave! Anyway, that aside, we got home to find Katherine running around and fired up to open her twelve gifts. She had been planted by the dining room table all day, counting her presents and telling my mom about the chocolate ice cream cake in the freezer. It took her about 10 minutes to rip thru the gifts and then she spent the next hour or so examining games and puzzles from family.

Saturday’s official party was more riotous, with kids running around making dragon masks, butterfly wings, fuse bead artwork and tiled flower pots. Katherine came home with artwork, with lots of help from mom. She also got lots of cool gifts (some to remain in the toy closet for a couple weeks) and had a great time.

Another preschool cold

We’re on our fourth preschool cold this year. Katherine brought it home and promptly gave it to her sister. For the last week, we’ve had runny noses, interrupted sleep (primarily Allison) and some general crankiness. Steve and I are fighting it…fingers crossed we don’t get the full blown cold. As a result of all this interrupted sleep, Allison has been getting up regularly during the night. Steve and I were just exhausted and decided to try formula at night. Allison got up only once last night at midnight to drink formula before waking up at 6AM. We’ll have to try this again. Maybe Allison will decide that formula isn’t worth waking up for and sleep through the night. If that doesn’t work, then it’s time to Ferberize!

Preschool Progress

As you can see, we had a wonderful Harvest Fest right before Halloween this year. I co-chaired the event…learning all about how to manage a preschool project! Anyway, Steve’s parents were able to attend and it was a very special event. Katherine was at first standing in the back of her class until Miss Julie pulled her forward to the stairs. Katherine was a trooper and sang “The Cat came back” and “Earth my body” while mimicking the hand motions of her classmates. It was way too cute.

Last Thursday we had our first student-led parent teacher conference with Miss Tammy. Katherine showed us almost 10 different works from around the classroom in an hour. First she led off with a water project that involved many steps (a) fill the pitcher (b) pour water into bowl (c) use dropper to put soap in bowl (d) use hand mixer to make suds (e) use sponge to wipe mixer (f) pour water into sink. She also showed us how she washes her face in class – which was hysterical – and how she sorts, matches various objects with different works. She’s learning different shapes by feel and stacking the pink cubes in order. She’s learning the basics of counting through 1:1 correspondence. Steve and I had a blast watching Katherine’s progress which Miss Tammy said was phenomenal. (Yes, we’re very proud parents!!) I’ll have to make a point of dropping by the classroom and watching thru the 1 way mirror more often.