Home of Steve, Christine, Katherine, Ally, Rosebud, and Rex
Christine shows Allison how to play her new 1/2 size violin.
The girls and Allison’s friend Charlotte go trick or treating around Yarrow Point. Rosebud who has been cooped up after her surgery comes along. Katherine met up with her friend Tori Williams along the way. Our first stop was to see the Porters. Brad and Bee answered the door.
Finally Pictures…
Here are pictures from Katherine’s birthday, Halloween, and other activities this month.
Katherine’s Party
Part one of Katherine’s fifth birthday occurred this morning. We took the girls to Pump it Up where a bunch of kids from class and a couple little friends stopped by for bouncing. We have many pictures to slog through, but I picked just a couple representative pictures for now.
When I asked Katherine what was her favorite part, she replied, “the whole thing…I loved the whole thing.” This referred to a full hour of bouncing, pizza, juice boxes, a butterfly cupcake cake and balloons. Katherine was excited to show Allison how to bounce and even took her to the water fountain several times for drinks. Allison did end up with a very wet shirt, but loved playing with the big kids.
I think many of her friends had told their parents what Katherine loves now: arts and crafts. Katherine spent the whole day lugging all her gifts around the house and trying out different parts of each arts and crafts kit. She even gave up stories tonight to color in a velvet picture. What else? She toted around a Lego ambulance that she constructed almost by herself! And, she spent a good half an hour playing with a Calico Corner dollkit which matches Allison’s house nicely.
All in all, it was a fun but exhausting day.
This is “Baking Soda”
I often have these surreal moments when I know that Allison is trying to say something, but it’s not coming out right. This afternoon we played with a USA puzzle, one that has say 12 pieces instead of 50. As she worked, Allison muttered to herself, “these are the lines…this is the boot (e.g. Louisana)…this goes here…and this is baking soda.” At that, I had to interrupt and ask, “what is baking soda?” She pointed to a state and repeated herself. Thinking hard, I finally figured it out, “You mean …Minnesota!” Allison then replied, “OK…OK…it’s Minnesota” The wierdest thing about this is that I hadn’t told her this, so this must be from Mom and/or Patty.
Happy Halloween
The kids were so fired up for Halloween. Katherine lay awake until 10PM last night telling me, “I’m so excited. I can’t sleep! (yawn)” Anyway, she headed off to school today dressed as a Chinese girl for Cultural Halloween. After Kindermusik, she come home to join me, Allison and my mom. Steve’s parents also stopped by for pictures of the kids dressed as Minnie Mousse.
A couple of funny stories:
Steve’s Mom: “Allison, what are you going to say when the door opens?”
Allison: “Helwo”
Katherine also took it upon herself to hand out candy after about 30 minutes of cold trick or treating with Allison and Steve. Here’s what would happen:
1) Doorbell rings
2) Katherine swings open door, profers candy, “Take any two pieces”
3) Allison scoots or skids to the front door to take her place next to her sister.
4) Allison exclaims, “I have gwowsticks!”
5) Kids says thanks. Katherine shuts the door, carries her bowl to the stairs and waits for the next kids.
Both girls were exhausted tonight.
Steve’s Birthday
This was perhaps the biggest blowout in family history:
1) Thursday – we constructed a new basketball hoop in our garage starting at 6:30PM and ending at 11PM. Lesson: it takes at least 3.5 hours to put one together, backwards!
2) Friday – we had a huge family party at our house. Steve, his cousin, uncle and Katherine manage to fix the basketball hoop.
3) Saturday – we go car and couch shopping. Steve and I go to dinner with friends.
4) Sunday – I finish car shopping. we go to the Trilogy Halloween party.
Funny enough, we’re not done yet with birthdays since Katherine’s birthday is right around the corner. Between this, various nasty colds, volunteer work, a trip to NYC, a broken dishwasher, and everything else, it’s been one of the craziest months ever.
Kid Conversations
We try so hard not to laugh at their conversations these days. One priceless story occurred while Allison had a cold and my mom took care of her. Apparently they went to QFC for a donut (why, i’m not sure). Allison peered into the donut case to select a chocolate donut. She carried it to the counter for my mom to pay. On the way out of the store, Allison tried to eat it and dropped it. Out of the sky, a crow flew to grab the donut. A week later, they’re back at QFC and my mom buys a donut for each kid.
On the way home:
Allison: “Kafrine”
Katherine: “What?”
Allison: “Kafrine, Pau-pau and I went to QFC. We bought you a chocolate donut!” Allison is also quite the comedian or jokester. I had noticed for a couple days an odiferous smell in the minivan. Rhetorically, I asked her as we were buckling up to pickup her sister from school, “Allison, what is that smell??” She replied, “Kafrine!” (Note: it was her car seat. I hosed it down a couple days later.)
For Halloween, Steve had decided to dress up as Professor Plum, completing a Clue team at work. He worked hard to dye a cheap blue suit that he bought at Value Village. I watched as he wrung it out and then put it through the wash, and then as he pulled out a….blue suit! Anyway, the next day he wore it as reading parent at school and then to work. The kids got the biggest kick out of it. Katherine called Dad, “Professor Plum.” Allison declared at the party, “Happy Birthday Professor Plum…Ha Ha Ha Ha” in gales of laughter. She got such a reaction from family members that she repeated it over and over for good measure with lots of laughing.
Halloween & Birthdays
It seems that late October and early November are always a big blur. That is likely because Steve’s and Katherine’s birthday are almost a week apart, and then there is…Halloween!
Steve’s birthday was a low key event this year, with a dinner at his parents house and then an evening out with the kids. Funny enough, we went to Todai for dinner – and the kids just ate up a storm. Steve held Allison during dessert, pressed on her big belly, and she burped! Yes, Allison continues to eat, and Katherine continues to grow!
Following his birthday was four days of Halloween festivities. First we had a potluck party where the kids just had a blast. Then we went to the Trilogy Halloween party – more fun. The following day, Katherine went to the Space Needle with her Bush grandparents to celebrate her birthday in advance. Finally, both kids had parties at their schools the day of Halloween followed by some very chilly trick or treating.
To keep things low key, we decided to take the girls around to half a dozen or so houses in the neighborhood. They activated their little light sticks, grabbed their pumpkins, jumped in the red wagon and we took off. At the first two houses, Allison tried to go in the front door when the neighbors answered (very logical eh?). Then she learned from her sister that she was supposed to stick her hand in a bowl to get candy and put it in her bucket. Finally she learned that most kids in the neighborhood were walking. We ended the evening with Allison tripping over her bucket every few steps, as she insisted on “waaa”lking from house to house. She even cried when we entered our home – knocking on our front door as if to say “we need to go to more houses!”
These Halloween pictures show the girls after trick or treating, investigating their buckets and playing with their grandparents as they waited for others to arrive at our house. When that happened, Katherine and one of us would jump up, Katherine would insist on holding the big bowl of candy and tell the kids “take two pieces please!”
I should also explain their attire and outfits this year. Katherine decided that she and her sister would be Minnie Mouse this year. To that end, I ordered some outfits from Disney.com, and they arrived a couple weeks before Halloween. These outfits sort of worked out for Halloween. It turns out that it was close to freezing that evening. Both girls wore long underwear (hence the pink shirts); Allison wore a full body Hanna pink fleece under her Minnie outfit. Katherine wore pants and her shirt under her dress, and her winter coat over it. So, it really wasn’t clear what they were, but they had a great time nonetheless.”
No sooner had we recovered (sort of) from Halloween and Katherine’s birthday party arrived. I decided this year to have it at Emerald City Gymnastics, because it would accommodate a large group of kids and appeal to boys and girls. Katherine’s initial inclination was to invite her entire class – which is virtually impossible unless we went to an inflatable party. So, we scaled it down, with a close group of friends from school attending as well as other friends and cousins.
Aside from one injury, the kids had a great time tumbling, jumping and burning energy. Within 90 minutes, they had a fun workout, ate cake and ice cream and ripped open presents. We’re going to try and achieve some semblance of normalcy tomorrow and get everyone ready for school on Monday.
Allison’s Developments
I’ve been delinquent in reporting her progress on the site, so let’s see if I can summarize. In short, Allison’s vocabulary has blossomed. We have a list of written words on the fridge that she uses – in total I’d say she has a vocabulary of 50-75 words in English, Mandarin and Spanish. She’s able to clearly communicate what she wants to those who understand her sounds/words and understand her needs/wants. Allison is regularly singing too. We sing many songs together, and she tries to warble along with sounds that mimic the words in the song. Songs include Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider, ABC Alphabet, and several songs from Kindermusik. There is one song that we sing in class that involves dusters and we sing, “dust dust dust.” She loves that song. It’s really safe to say, without explicitly comparing word counts and such, that Allison is just as verbal as her older sister was at 18 months.
Allison has several nicknames: “Danger Girl,” “Miss Panipa,” and “Barnicle Girl.” The first and third are well deserved because she gets into EVERYTHING and likes to cling to me. Katherine calls her the second for no good reason at all. The funny thing is that if this nickname sticks we have no good explanation for it!
What does Allison call Katherine? She calls her “shisher” (sister) and very rarely Katherine. One of her favorite past-times is point to something that belongs to someone in the house like a big shoe and say “Dada!” Allison’s sense of humor is developing nicely – she cracks up at funny songs like one that she learned at Toby School. It goes like this: “I’m stirring and stirring and stirring my brew (x3)” “Tiptoe Tiptoe Tiptoe …. BOO!” We did this over Halloween, and she would scream with laughter. Other funny examples are putting her little foot inside other people’s shoes or boots and making a beeline for the pink booster in the back of the mini-van.
While distraction works, we are a point where we do have to say No to Allison sometimes when she climbs or egregiously tries to take her sister’s stuff. She gets so mad and screams or yells a few times before moving on to something else. The good news is that she recovers pretty quickly (fingers crossed she stays even tempered when she’s older.
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.
