Christine

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. 🙂

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. 🙂 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.